In spite of a succession of occasionally very severe marches in bad weather, and of being in regard to supplies chiefly beholden to requisitioning, the Army of the Meuse advancing on the east, and the IIIrd Army on the south, were now directly in face of the concentrated French Army. Marshal MacMahon could scarcely have realized that the only chance of safety for his army, or even for part of it, lay in the immediate prosecution of his retreat on the 1st of September. It is true that the Crown Prince of Prussia, in possession as he was of every passage over the Meuse, would have promptly taken that movement in flank in the narrow space, little more than four miles wide, which was bounded on the north by the frontier. That nevertheless the attempt was not risked was only to be explained by the actual condition of the exhausted troops; for on this day the French Army was not yet capable of undertaking a disciplined march involving fighting; it could only fight where it stood. On the German side it was still expected that the Marshal would strike for Mezieres. The Army of the Meuse was ordered to attack the enemy's positions with the object of detaining him in them; the IIIrd Army, leaving only one Corps on the left bank, was to press forward on the right side of the river. The French position about Sedan was covered to rearward by the fortress. The Meuse and the valleys of the Givonne and the Floing brooks offered formidable obstructions, but it was imperative that those outmost lines should be obstinately held. The Calvary height of Illy was a very important point, strengthened as it was by the Bois de Garenne in its rear, whence a high ridge stretching to Bazeilles afforded much cover in its numerous dips and shoulders. In the event of a retreat into neutral territory in the last extremity, the road thereto lay through Illy. Bazeilles, on the other hand, locally a very strong point of support to the Givonne front, constituted an acute salient, which, after the loss of the bridges across the Meuse, was open to attack on two sides. FOOTNOTES: [19] Of 27th and 93rd Regiments. [20] Read in "rest of the." [21] Douzy is on the north bank of the Chiers. [22] Commanding Ist Bavarian Corps. BATTLE OF SEDAN. (September 1st.)