_An old town with Vauban fortifications, of which the photograph shows the moat, which was taken by storm in November, 1918._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXIX._ DESTRUCTION OF ORCHARDS (1917). _A copy from a captured German photograph of a blown-up railway bridge, incidentally showing the deliberate destruction of the fruit-trees in the German retreat of 1917._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXX._ HIRSON. _Everywhere in their retreat of 1918 the Germans naturally blew up bridges in order to hinder our progress behind them. At Hirson the old bridge was still only replaced by a timber structure._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXXI._ A PILE BRIDGE. _One of the very rapidly constructed pile bridges (in this case over the Condé Canal), which the Engineers threw up in place of those destroyed in the German retreat._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXXII._ SEDAN. _The River Meuse at Sedan,--where the entrance of Americans and French in 1918 avenged the catastrophe of half a century earlier._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXXIII._ MAUBEUGE. _The fortifications of Maubeuge, although of an old type, held a considerable force of Germans back in the advance of 1914. The bridge was, of course, destroyed by the retreating Germans in 1918, and the girder bridge has temporarily replaced it._] [Illustration: _PLATE CXXIV._ MONS. _For us the war began here on the 23rd of August, 1914, and ended on the 11th of November, 1918._] PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Obvious printer's errors corrected. Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, inconsistently hyphenated words, inconsistent accent marks, and other inconsistencies. End of Project Gutenberg's Ypres to Verdun, by Alexander B. W. Kennedy