To the Vth Corps had been precautionally assigned the duty of covering the march of the other two. The troops had reached the vicinity of Beaumont only at 4 a.m., and were thoroughly exhausted by fighting and the night-march. General de Failly therefore determined to halt his Corps for cooking and rest before pursuing the march. Precautionary measures seem to have been altogether neglected, though it must have been known that the enemy was now close at hand. While at half-past one the officers and men were engaged in their meal, Prussian shells suddenly burst among these heedless groups. The two Corps of the German right wing had to move through a wooded tract in four wholly independent columns, by ways sodden with rain. The Crown Prince of Saxony therefore ordered that no single column should attempt to enter on an attack before the neighbouring one was ready to co-operate. The IVth Corps had started very early, and after a short rest had pursued its march at ten o'clock. When at noon the head of the 8th Division emerged from the forest, it discerned from its elevated position the enemy's camp about 800 paces distant, in the condition as described. General Schoeler (commanding the Division) held that the opportunity of so complete a surprise was not to be let pass; the proximity of his force could not long remain undetected by the enemy. He announced it by his cannon-fire. The Division soon recognized that it had drawn upon itself an enemy of immensely superior strength. The French rapidly got under arms, and dense swarms of riflemen hurried to the front, whose long-range Chassepots inflicted great losses, especially upon the artillerymen. The main body of the 8th Division had meanwhile come up to the assistance of its advanced guard, and ere long the 7th Division appeared on the right. The French assailed it too with great impetuosity, and could only be repulsed at the bayonet-point. Presently, however, the foremost battalions of both Divisions made their way into the French camp in front of Beaumont, into the town itself, and finally into a second camp located northward of it. Seven guns, of which the teams were missing, and which continued firing up to the last moment, a number of gunners, waggons and horses, fell into the hands of the assailants. Whilst now, about two o'clock, a pause occurred in the infantry fight, fourteen batteries of the IVth Corps engaged in a contest with the French artillery deployed on the stretch of heights north of Beaumont. The German artillery mass was presently strengthened by the Saxon artillery on the right, and by the Bavarian batteries on the left. This formidable and commanding artillery line, constantly advancing in echelon, promptly squandered the mitrailleuses, and at three o'clock the remaining French batteries also were silenced.