The ground separating these two lines, the slight fall from the one, the level at the bottom, the slight rise to the other, demands particular notice. It was, as the reader will soon see, the whole matter upon which the fate of this cannonade, and therefore of Europe, turned. Save in one place, where a few bushes and superficial, disused diggings for marl disturbed its even surface, it is for the most part ploughland. At this date in the autumn, the twentieth of September, it is covered with stubble, and the short, stiff straws, cut close to the soil by the sickle, make it seem like the ground of any other open field. No trickle of water runs through it even after rains. There is no appearance of swamp or marsh. One is not warned by rushes or other water growths of any difference between this field and any other field. So it dips and rises again for its half or three quarters of a mile of breadth and for its mile or so of length, almost everywhere under crop, and now under autumn stubble, save here and there where balks of measly grass have been left that show between their insufficient blades the dirty gray-white of that half-chalky soil. It was across such land, such to the eye at least, that the Prussian assault upon the French must be made after the advance had been properly prepared by artillery. And prepared it was. The Prussian commanders let loose so furious a cannonade as had not been heard by any living soldier of that day. Miles away in the pass of les Islettes, an Englishman, who by strange adventure was the brigadier-general, holding that position to protect the rear of the French against attack, a man who had been through the whole American war (a certain General Money, of whose strange fate I have written elsewhere) marvelled at the continuity and sustainment of all that fire. Distant Argonne shook with it, and the ground carried the thuds mile upon mile. They felt it in Sainte-Menehould like the shocks of falling timber. But the range was long for the field-pieces of those days, and one’s target at a thousand yards very uncertain. Many a missle flew over the heads of the motley French line, many fell short, and buried themselves in the wet bank of the slope before it. The losses so inflicted by hour after hour of sustained battery-work were not great, nor did that loose line upon each side of the mill seem to fluctuate or waver, nor were the King of Prussia and his staff, or Brunswick, commanding all, over-certain when the apt time for the critical charge and the advance of their infantry would come.