l, where the Emmane
tumbles noisily over the dam, the road was choked with a long line of
stranded baggage wagons, while close at hand, at the inn of the Maltese
Cross, a constantly increasing crowd of angry soldiers pushed and
struggled, and could not obtain so much as a glass of wine.

All this mad hurly-burly was going on at the southern end of the
village, which is here separated from the Meuse by a little grove of
trees, and where the engineers had that morning stretched a bridge of
boats across the river. There was a ferry to the right; the ferryman's
house stood by itself, white and staring, amid a rank growth of weeds.
Great fires had been built on either bank, which, being replenished from
time to time, glared ruddily in the darkness and made the stream
and both its shores as light as day. They served to show the immense
multitude of men massed there, awaiting a chance to cross, while the
footway only permitted the passage of two men abreast, and over the
bridge proper the cavalry and artillery were obliged to proceed at a
walk, so that the crossing promised to be a protracted operation. It was
said that the troops still on the left bank comprised a brigade of the
1st corps, an ammunition train, and the four regiments of cuirassiers
belonging to Bonnemain's division, while coming up in hot haste behind
them was the 7th corps, over thirty thousand strong, possessed with the
belief that the enemy was at their heels and pushing on with feverish
eagerness to gain the security of the other shore.

For a while despair reigned. What! they had been marching since morning
with nothing to eat, they had summoned up all their energies to escape
that deadly trap at Harancourt pass, only in the end to be landed in
that slough of despond, with an insurmountable wall staring them in the
face! It would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer's turn
to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians should not be
enterprising enough to continue their pursuit in the darkness they would
be there with the first glimpse of daylight. Orders came for them to
stack muskets, however, and they made their camp on the great range of
bare hills which slope downward to the meadows of the Meuse, with the
Mouzon road running at their base. To their rear and occupying the
level plateau on top of the range the guns of the reserve artillery were
arranged in battery, pointed so as to sweep the entrance of the pass
should there be n