There was more than half a mile, but less than a mile, of very shallow, concave dip separating this swell, or crest, upon which the King of Prussia and his staff had drawn up their regiments and another similar swell, or crest, opposite where was the French left, the troops of Kellermann. This opposing crest beyond the very shallow and perfectly bare valley bore, standing in the midst of the French line, a windmill--a windmill famous now in the legends and songs of the French army, an object that has grown symbolic, and that you will find in all the legends and pictures of the battle. It was the Mill of Valmy. Indeed, Valmy village was close by, but hidden by the crest, for it lay upon the farther slope. The French line thus strung on each side of the mill upon the crest presented a contrast indeed to the strict rod-like files of the Prussian infantry that watched them from over the depression. Their loose order, their confusion, their lack of officers, their heterogeneous composition, their doubtful discipline--all these in the soul of that army were externally expressed by something straggling and unsure. The very uniforms, so far as one could discern them at such a distance, formed groups grotesque, often ragged, and sometimes interspersed with dull, civilian clothes. A man, when he saw that sight, might have thought, perhaps, that he was watching a crowd stretched out for a spectacle rather than soldiers. But in one arm, by which the French have often conquered, and to which the greatest of their captains was later strongly attached,--I mean the guns,--something stricter prevailed; forty pieces were drawn up on the cusp of the crescent near the mill. For a mile or two, in various groups, northward of this position that Kellermann had taken up, lay the French right under Dumouriez, and opposite him in turn were the Austrians. From the Prussian ridge, which I take for my point of view (since it was there, or rather in sight of it, that the issue was determined) uncertain portions of Dumouriez’s command and bodies of Austrians could be just discerned in the cloud. But the immediate business lay between those two lines, the one so [Illustration: MARSHAL FRANÇOIS-CHRISTOPHE KELLERMANN, DUKE OF VALMY _To face p. 183_ ] strict, the other so loose, that faced each other from either crest of that long, shallow trough under Valmy Mill.