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Updated: May 4, 2025
One of the bloodiest storm centers lay east and west from the town of Vitry-le-Francois from Sermaize-les-Bains on the east to Fere-le-Champenoise, Montmirail, and Esternay on the west. For fifty miles there in the heart of Champagne the path of the cyclone can be traced by the blackened villages, the gutted churches, the countless crosses in the midst of green fields.
Entering Vitry-le-Francois we had a splendid example of the typical "motto" of the French trooper, "II ne faut pas s'en faire" One of the motor cars had broken down, and the officer-occupants, who were evidently not on an urgent mission, had gone to sleep on the banks by the side of the road whilst the chauffeur was making the necessary repairs.
From Langres the Marne flows almost north by west for about fifty miles through a hilly and wooded country, then, taking a more westerly course, it flows for approximately seventy-five miles almost northwest, across the Plain of Champagne, past Vitry-le-François and Châlons, thence almost due westward through the Plateau of Sézanne, by Epernay, Château Thierry, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and Meaux to join the Seine just south of Paris.
At noon the Emperor received a letter from Marie Louise, in which she said that in order to make greater haste she was leaving Vitry-le-Francois that very morning for Soissons. When this letter was handed to him, Napoleon was walking up and down in the park, as if to overcome the impatience which this interminable waiting produced.
The water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!" At Vitry-le-François there is also that same sinister canal which leads from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a wicked sound in these days Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-François of all places.
Their left is supported by Paris, their right by the fortresses of Verdun, and their center by the entrenched camps of Mailly, just south of Vitry-le-Francois. About thirty American and English newspaper men met at lunch to-day at the restaurant Hubin, Number 22 Rue Brouot. Among those present were Fullerton, Grundy, MacAlpin, Williams, Knox, Reeves, O'Niel, Sims, and others.
She dined at Bar-le-Duc, and at Vitry-le-Francois received the Prince of Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador, and the Countess Metternich. She had just made up her mind to hurry her journey, and thus to hasten the moment set by etiquette for meeting her husband. The hour which Napoleon had awaited so impatiently was now drawing near.
On this day our route led eastward through the villages which in September, 1914, woke from at least a century of oblivion, from the forgetting that followed Napoleon's last campaign in France to a splendid but terrible ten days: Courtacon, Sézanne, La-Fère Champenoise, Vitry-le-François, the region where Franchet d'Esperey and Foch fought, where the "Miracle of the Marne" was performed.
It seemed to him hardly probable, in view of what he had read in the newspapers at Rheims, that the third army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, could be at Vouziers, when, only two days before, it was just on the point of going into camp at Vitry-le-Francois.
At Vitry-le-François you pass almost without warning into the region which is the back of the front to-day, the base of all the line of fire from Rheims to the Meuse, and suddenly along the road appear the canvas guideposts which bear the terse warning, "Verdun."
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