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John of Chalons, one of Philip's envoys, demanded, in his name, that the king should be recognized as lord of all Flanders, and authorized to punish the insurrection of Bruges, with a promise, however, to spare the lives of all who had taken part in it.
The shouting people little knew that he was the last English monarch who would ever embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest which the Christians had made in the Holy Land at the cost of so much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all this came to pass. There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France, called Chalons.
Upon 29th August the French centre fell back behind Rethel, the Germans crossed the Aisne, occupied Rheims and Châlons, while the British contingent on the left and the French 6th Army now protecting its flank continued also to fall back towards Paris. And on Sedan day, 2nd September, we may regard the great movement as having reached its end.
Up to a point beyond Châlons, the "Ligne de l'Est" follows in general the course of the great river, and therefore the line of the battle.
In the flight he passed over hills, valleys, rivers, villages, and woods on his journey from Chalons to Rheims, which he accomplished in twenty minutes. In the early models of the Voisin machine there were fitted between the two main planes a number of vertical planes, as shown clearly in the illustration facing p. 160.
At Châlons the allies would be but ninety miles from Paris, and then nothing would remain but vengeance, and vengeance the more complete the greater the crime had been. All went well with them up to Valmy. The German advance on August 11, 1792, reached Rodemach, and on August 19, the bulk of the Prussian army crossed the frontier at Rédagne.
At Fandor's entrance he was wide awake in a moment: he swore: it was the sergeant. "What do you want?" he demanded roughly. Adopting a military manner, Fandor announced: "Corporal Vinson, just arrived from Châlons, exchanged from the 214th, sergeant!" "Ah! Quite so. Wait! I will show you your company."
Prince Schwartzenberg soon passed the Aube and marched upon Vitry and Chalons. Napoleon, counting on the possibility of defending Paris, threw himself, with the velocity of the eagle, on Schwartzenberg's rear by passing by Doulevant and Bar- sur-Aube.
"Quite true; perfectly true, Francois," said the major; "Piccotin did the thing with the most admirable temper and good-breeding." "That was the tone of Chalons when we were both boys," said François, proudly; "he and I were reared together." He finished a bumper of wine as he made this satisfactory explanation, and looked round at the company with the air of a conqueror.
Since they left Chalons he had kept himself in the background, had issued no orders, content to be a nameless nullity without recognized position, a cumbrous burden carried about from place to place among the baggage of his troops, and it was only in their hour of defeat that the Emperor reasserted itself in him; the one order that he was yet to give, out of the pity of his sorrowing heart, was to raise the white flag on the citadel to request an armistice.
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