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Updated: September 10, 2025
From time to time in History, Divine logic makes an onslaught. Sedan is one of those onslaughts. Thus on the 1st of September, at five o'clock in the morning the world awoke under the sun, and the French army under the thunderbolt. Bazeilles takes fire, Givonne takes fire, Floing takes fire; the battle begins with a furnace. The whole horizon is aflame.
The chief strength of the position for defence lay in the deep loop of the river below the town, the dense Garenne Wood to the north-east, and the hollow formed by the Givonne brook on the east, with the important village of Bazeilles.
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.
The Crown Prince of Prussia was on horseback on the hill of Frénois. At the same moment, upon every point of the horizon, other and similar movements were taking place from every side. The high hills were suddenly overrun by an immense black army. Not one shout of command. Two hundred and fifty thousand men came silently to encircle the Givonne Valley. This is what the circle consisted of,
And all at once they came out upon the Fond de Givonne road, not far from Sedan. For the third time Jean raised his eyes toward the western sky, that was all aflame with a bright, rosy light; and he heaved a sigh of unspeakable relief. "Ah, that pig of a sun! at last he is going to bed!" And they ran with might and main, all three of them, never once stopping to draw breath.
The latter, which, after its retrograde movement, had never been able to regain possession of the posts it had occupied in the morning, leaving Daigny in the hands of the XIIth Saxon corps and Givonne to the Prussian Guards, had been compelled to retreat in a northerly direction across the wood of Garenne, harassed by the batteries that the enemy had posted on every summit from one end of the valley to the other.
On the thirty-first of August, 1870, an army was reassembled, and was, as it were, massed together under the walls of Sedan, in a place called the Givonne Valley. This army was a French army twenty-nine brigades, fifteen divisions, four army corps 90,000 men.
The plain of Illy, the heights of La Moncelle, Daigny, Givonne, and Frénois were vast cemeteries. Dredging was going on along the river, whither the curious small boys of Sedan betook themselves and stayed from morning till night watching the recovering of rusty sabres, bayonets, rifles, cannon, and often more grewsome flotsam.
The ground in front of his main defence was naturally strong, the entire front being covered by the Givonne rivulet, and the slopes to that rivulet, on the French side of it. The possibility that the French marshal would accept battle at Sedan had been considered at the German headquarters on the night of the 31st, and arrangements had been made to meet his wishes.
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.
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