Ste. Généviève is a village that lies about five miles south-east of Pont-à-Mousson, and rather less south-west of Nomeny, on the line of hills that runs from Nancy along the valley down to Metz, rising a little way back from the right bank of the river. As soon as the Germans turned off the road to their left to climb up to the French outpost at Ste. Généviève, which they were obliged to reduce before they could march further south, they began to find trouble. A thick belt of wire entanglements which the French had prepared to the left of their trenches and about half a mile in front of them obliged the attacking force to make the final advance from their own left front up a steep and exposed pitch. They did not, however, move forward at once. There was no need to take unnecessary risks, or they thought there was not, and for two whole days, with field artillery and a few heavier guns, which fired in all some four thousand shells on the village, they prepared the way with the now fashionable preliminary bombardment. The French had only one infantry regiment in Ste. Généviève, but they were well sheltered in their trenches, and in the two days they lost no more than three men killed and about twenty wounded. The batteries in support were also well-concealed—too well for the German aeroplanes, which failed to locate them—and they allowed the enemy to waste their ammunition without firing a shot in return. That must have been a severe test of their powers of self-restraint, but they knew that the crisis was extremely serious, and that in all probability the fate of Nancy depended on their standing firm. [Illustration: Pierre Petit phot. GENERAL FOCH. ] On the evening of the 24th the German commander, possibly deceived by their silence and imagining that the infantry had been crushed by the bombardment, gave the order for the attack. In massed columns his formidable little army of 12,000 men, four German soldiers for every Frenchman in front of them, advanced up the hill, still supported by the fire of their artillery. Then at last, when they had come to a convenient range, the 75’s opened on their closely formed ranks. Most of the work fell on one particular battery from Toul, as the others were so placed that they could not fire effectively without endangering their own infantry. For three hours they pounded the Germans, cutting them up badly, and then, when he had fired the last shell, the commandant of the battery ordered his men to join the infantry in a last resolute effort to check the assault.