Sedan, with the geometrical lines of its fortifications bathed on the south and the west by the flooded meadows and the river, stood out in the centre against the dark background of the Ardennes Forest, which draped the horizon as with a curtain of antique greenery. Houses were already blazing at Bazeilles, where all was misty with the dust of battle. Then, on the east, from La Moncelle to Givonne, only a few regiments of the Twelfth and First French Corps could be seen, looking like lines of insects as they crossed the stubble, and now and again disappearing in a narrow valley where some hamlets were also hidden; and, farther on, the ground rose again, and pale-tinted fields could be perceived, blotched with the green mass of the Chevalier Wood. The Seventh French Corps was especially well in view on the north, with its regiments represented by numerous black specks moving hither and thither over the plateau of Floing, a broad band of dark grey soil, which descended from the little wood of La Garenne to the herbage on the river bank. Beyond were Floing, St. Menges, Fleigneux, and Illy, all the villages scattered across the surging expanse, quite a rugged region, intersected by steep escarpments. And on the left, also, was the loop of the Meuse, with its slow waters glittering like new silver in the clear sunlight, and its long languid bend forming the peninsula of Iges, and intercepting all communication with Mézières save on one point, where, between the farther bank and the impassable forest, there opened the only entrance to the defile of St. Albert.