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Charles X., followed by his cortege, next proceeded to the abbey of Saint Remi, which dates from the eleventh century, and performed his devotions on the tomb of the saint whose shrine had been discovered. Then he remounted and went to review the troops of the camp of Saint Leonard, under the walls of the city, in a vast plain, along the river Vesle, on the right of the road to Chalons.
Not a farmhouse to be seen anywhere, not a living being; nothing but flocks of crows, forming small spots of blackness on the immensity of the gray waste. On the left, far away in the distance, the low hills that bounded the horizon in that direction were crowned by woods of somber pines, while on the right an unbroken wall of trees indicated the course of the river Vesle.
"The Germans held the line of the Marne, which was crossed by our forces on September 9, as a purely rearguard operation. Our passage of the Ourcq was not contested. The Vesle was only lightly held, while resistance along the Aisne, both against the French and the British, has been and still is of a determined character.
His men were dead beat by marching night and day over roads first covered by snow and now deep in slush: for a week they had had no regular rations, and great was their joy when, at the close of the 2nd, they drew near to the 42,000 troops that Bülow and Winzingerode mustered near the banks of the Aisne and Vesle.
The Marne, the Aisne, the Vesle, and other streams whose names adorn with sad pride so many of America's battle-flags, flow through it. After 1914 Belgium saw very little fighting; but this district saw almost four years of continuous and enormous battle. It was overrun time and again. Neither Belgium nor any other country suffered such devastation, nor such material destruction.
Over the high wooded ridge between the Vesle and the Aisne the Germans were driven back, and the Third Division, under General Hamilton, supported the cavalry in force, so that, by the evening, General Hamilton's division was able to camp below the hill of Brenelle, and even, before night fell, to get their guns upon that height, from which they could reply to the German batteries snugly ensconced upon the frowning ridge on the northern bank of the Aisne.
However, after the age of fourteen, it was too late! Well, she was the daughter of Guybertant, minstrel of the barges at Reims, the same who had played before King Charles VII., at his coronation, when he descended our river Vesle from Sillery to Muison, when Madame the Maid of Orleans was also in the boat.
The first week of August saw most of the Reims salient wiped out by the German retreat, while rear-guard actions were being fought along the Vesle as the Germans sought defensive positions farther in the rear.
The Forty-second and Thirty-second undertook the task of conquering the heights beyond Cierges, the Forty-second capturing Sergy and the Thirty-second capturing Hill 230, both American divisions joining in the pursuit of the enemy to the Vesle, and thus the operation of reducing the salient was finished.
On the 6th the French took Ham and Chauny, and on the 9th they were once more across the Crozat canal. Mangin was pushing his way towards the St. Gobain massif, and French and American troops were driving the Germans back from the Vesle across the Aisne. It looked as though winter might come with the line of battle much where it was before the German offensive began in March.
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