Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
And clapping spurs to his horse, bobbing up and down on his saddle like an inflated wine skin, he galloped off toward Sedan. A winding path conducted the party down into the Fond de Givonne, an outskirt of the city lying between two hills, where the single village street, running north and south and sloping gently upward toward the forest, was lined with gardens and modest houses.
The masterful description of the great novelist and poet then continues in a narrative of the attack and catastrophe: Bazeilles takes fire, Givonne takes fire, Floing takes fire; the battle begins with a furnace. The whole horizon is aflame. The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrighted, starting up from sleeping a funereal swarming. A circle of thunder surrounds the army.
Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having gone further than Givonne. At Bazeilles we met the King, accompanied by Bismarck and several of the staff.
Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having gone further than Givonne. At Bazeilles we met the King, accompanied by Bismarck and several of the staff.
One of the officers alighted in front of the hotel and proceeded to give some friends, who were collected there, an account of their route, from la Moncelle to Givonne, up the entire length of the little valley among the soldiers of the 1st corps, who had already been pressed back by the Saxons across the little stream to the right bank; and they had returned by the sunken road of the Fond de Givonne, which was even then in such an encumbered condition that had the Emperor desired to make his way to the front again he would have found the greatest difficulty in doing so.
The possession of this village gave the Germans to the east of Sedan a continuous line, extending from the Meuse northward through La Moncelle and Daigny to Givonne, and almost to the Belgian frontier. While the German centre and right were thus engaged, the left had moved in accordance with the prescribed plan.
Sedan was ruined, and remained so until our own day, when it has begun to experience a little prosperity from the tourists desirous of seeing the place where the great French Army surrendered. When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny.
Since the time, now two years ago, when his wife had inherited a handsome fortune, he had been occupying a pretty villa, called the Hermitage, the terraces of which could be seen skirting the hillside of a suburb of Sedan, on the further side of the Fond de Givonne.
On it the line of the 7th corps had been established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were not sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly maintain his touch with the 1st corps, which was posted at right angles with his line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny. "Oh, isn't it grand, isn't it magnificent!"
Accordingly they deployed their forces almost wholly along the inner slopes of the Givonne brook and of the smaller stream that flows from the high land about Illy down to the village of Floing and thence to the Meuse.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking