regiments fought on, the batteries continually shifted their positions from one place to another with wonderful mobility, some of the villages where the fighting was hottest were taken and retaken two or three times over, and step by step the long line of French bayonets forced the enemy back towards and at some points beyond the two rivers. At last, on September 4th, though the battle was still far from won, the great attack had been so effectively checked that it was found possible to move the XVth corps across to the Argonne, to help General Sarrail and the Third Army in their struggle against the Crown Prince. From the moment when they had assumed the offensive on August 25th, they had fought with extraordinary courage. In two days one regiment alone, the 112th of the line, had forty-eight officers killed and wounded out of sixty-one. But losses had no effect on them now. The past was wiped out, and both during the defence of Nancy, and later on in the Heights of the Meuse and the Argonne, especially at Vassincourt, they took a prominent share in the victories by which General Sarrail relieved the pressure on Verdun. From every point of view the story of what they did and suffered and the way in which—like a ship on her maiden voyage—they found themselves after their first defeat, was and is one of the most significant features of the war. For it means that France cannot and will not be beaten. The steadying support and fellowship which they received in the hour of crisis from the sorely pressed corps on either side of them, their own heroic recovery, and the confident and confidence-inspiring leadership of the generals under whose command they redeemed themselves from the reproach of their momentary failure, all point to the same conclusion—the invincible solidarity of the whole of the French armies. On August 20th the chain of the eastern armies snapped at its weakest point. By the 25th the jagged ends of the broken link had been welded together and it was firmly joined up, stronger than it had ever been, with those on each side of it. Morhange might have been the beginning of another Sedan. Instead it was the prelude to the glorious triumph of the Battle of the Grand Couronné of Nancy. CHAPTER XIII BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNÉ. II