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Updated: June 23, 2025
After a severe fight, the Crown Prince drove the French through Floing, and as the ground between this village and Sedan is an undulating open plain, everywhere visible, there was then offered a rare opportunity for seeing the final conflict preceding the surrender.
As when the ice breaks up and the great cakes come crashing, grinding down upon the bosom of the swollen stream, carrying away all before them, so now, from every position about Sedan that had been wrested from the French, from Floing and the plateau of Illy, from the wood of la Garenne, the valley of la Givonne and the Bazeilles road, the stampede commenced; a mad torrent of horses, guns, and affrighted men came pouring toward the city.
That village that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more distant still, a little to the right, is Fleigneux. Then those scrubby trees on the horizon, away in the background, are the forest of the Ardennes, and there lies the frontier "
Nevertheless, towards evening the leaders took some wise strategic precautions; they protected the army, which rested in the rear on Sedan and the Meuse, by two battle fronts, one composed of the 7th Corps, and extending from Floing to Givonne, the other composed of the 12th Corps, extending from Givonne to Bazeilles; a triangle of which the Meuse formed the hypothenuse.
Then a sharp rattle of musketry, quickly silenced, however, was heard proceeding from a point beneath Floing, and Captain Beaudoin received orders to move his company three hundred yards to the rear. Their new position was in a great field of cabbages, upon reaching which the captain made his men lie down.
The 12th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning; the 1st is strung out along the Givonne between la Moncelle and Holly, while the 7th is encamped on the plateau of Floing, and the 5th, what is left of it, is crowded together under the ramparts of the city, on the side of the Chateau.
The King and his staff were already established on these heights, and at a point so well chosen that his Majesty could observe the movements of both armies immediately east and south of Sedan, and also to the northwest toward Floing and the Belgian frontier.
Suddenly he turned his head and looked away to the north, over the city of Sedan, where the heights of Floing were visible in the distance. A battery had just commenced firing from that quarter; the smoke rose in the bright sunshine in little curls and wreaths, and the reports came to his ears very distinctly. It was in the neighborhood of five o'clock.
There were two points that appeared to him especially threatening, the mamelon of Hattoy, to the north of Floing on the left, and the Calvary of Illy, a stone cross with a linden tree on either side, the highest bit of ground in the surrounding country, to the right.
In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the bugler, sounded reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was possessed of, but the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the damp, heavy air, and the men, who had not had courage even to erect their tents and had thrown themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon the muddy ground, did not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their ashen features set and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion.
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