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A pleasant pastoral country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or Foudai, and there are many other excursions within reach. Here, for the present, the romance of Alsace travel ends, and all is prose of a somewhat painful kind.
His orders were to seek battle along the line Saarburg-Donon, in the Bruche Valley, at the same time possessing himself of the crests of the Vosges as well as the mountain passes. These operations were to have as their theaters: the Vosges Mountains, the plateau of Lorraine to the northwest of Donon, and the left bank of the Meurthe.
As soon as it had become master of the Donon and the passes, the first French army pushed forward into the defile of Saarburg. At St. Here a connection was established with the army of Lorraine, which had commenced its operations on the 14th. A violent battle ensued, known under the name of the Battle of Saarburg.
This rear-guard movement was accomplished over a very difficult piece of country down to the Baccarat-Ban de Sapt-Provenchère line, south of the Col du Bonhomme. It was found necessary to abandon the Donon and the Col de Sapt.
At times, the forest was so thick that they could see no glimpse of the sky, and the trunks of the trees seemed to make a wall, all round them; then again, it would open, and they would obtain a glimpse over the country far away, rise beyond rise, to the plain of Champagne or if the view were behind, instead of in front of them they could see the tops of the highest range of the Vosges, rising hill above hill, and often wooded to the very summit the Donon, one of the highest points of the range, being immediately behind them.
This belief was long maintained; in 1547 and again in 1667 fossil remains were found in the cave of San Ciro near Palermo; and Italian savants decided that they had belonged to men eighteen feet high. Guicciadunus speaks of the bones of huge elephants carefully preserved in the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp as the bones of a giant named Donon, who lived 1300 years before the Christian era.
The hill of Léomont, and the many graves upon it, were quiet enough as we stood talking there. The old farm was in ruins; and in the fields stretching up the hill there were the remains of trenches. All around and below us spread the beautiful Lorraine country, with its rivers and forests; and to the south-east one could just see the blue mass of Mont Donon, and the first spurs of the Vosges.
Donon on the north to the Belfort gap were seized; counter-thrusts by the Germans towards Spincourt and Blamont in the plain of Lorraine were parried; Thann was captured, Mulhouse was re-occupied, and the Germans looked like losing Alsace as far north as Colmar.
I recollect, too, an ascent of the Donon, one of the peaks of the Vosges, with a charming family of the name of Chevandier, and in the loveliest weather What a view there was! All Lorraine, all Alsace, with the spires of Strasbourg that beautiful country which my forefathers of the old monarchy had made so truly French. Alas! Alas! I went back to my duty.
Named after the principal ministers of former administrations Donon, Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated façades.
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