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Updated: July 19, 2025
To the south of Sedan the village of Bazeilles was lost to sight in the dense smoke of its burning houses, in the clouds of dun vapor that rose above the furious conflict. And tranquilly, ever since the morning, the King had been watching and waiting. An hour yet, two hours, it might be three, it mattered not; it was only a question of time.
Almost at the same minute, with German precision, the Wurtemburgers seized the bridge of La Platinerie, and hidden by the Chevalier Wood, the Saxon battalions, spread out into company columns, occupied the whole of the road from La Moncelle to Villers-Cernay. Thus, as we have seen, the awakening of the French Army was horrible. At Bazeilles a fog was added to the smoke.
Almost immediately upon entering on her duties at the hospital the young woman had been shocked to recognize in that Bavarian soldier the features: big blue eyes, red hair and beard and massive nose, of the man who had carried her away in his arms the day they shot her husband at Bazeilles.
To the south, in the direction of Bazeilles, a few quivering little flames that rose fitfully on the air told where had been the site of the unhappy village, while toward the north the farmhouse in the wood of la Garenne, that had been fired late in the afternoon, was burning still, and the trees about were dyed of a deep red with the ruddy blaze.
This division, which met at first with little opposition, belonged to a force which was detached from the main army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and placed under the command of the Grand-Duke Frederick Francis of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Near this "Armee-Abtheilung," as the Germans called it, was the first Bavarian army corps, which had fought at Bazeilles on the day of Sedan.
Sleep did not visit Henriette's eyes that night. She knew her husband to be a prudent man, but the thought that he was in Bazeilles, so near the German lines, was cause to her of deep anxiety.
He told his wife that she need not expect to see him again that night, as he would sleep at Bazeilles, where they had recently bought and furnished a little place to serve them as a residence during the hot months. It was near a dyehouse that belonged to M. Delaherche.
We now resume the account of the battle. The fighting in and around Bazeilles speedily led to one very important result. At 6 A.M. a splinter of a shell fired by the assailants from the hills north-east of that village, severely wounded Marshal MacMahon as he watched the conflict from a point in front of the village of Balan.
He at once came up and greeted them, apparently delighted to meet Maurice, to whom he said that he had just returned from accompanying Captain Beaudoin over to Floing, where the regiment was posted, and he became, if that were possible, even more gracious than ever upon learning that Weiss proposed to pass the night at Bazeilles, where he himself, he declared, had just been telling the captain that he intended to take a bed, in order to see how things were looking at the dyehouse.
From their position on the plateau the whole wide field of battle lay stretched before them to the south and west: Sedan, almost at their feet, whose citadel they could see overtopping the roofs, then Balan and Bazeilles, dimly seen through the dun smoke-clouds that hung heavily in the motionless air, and further in the distance the hills of the left bank, Liry, la Marfee, la Croix-Piau.
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