ry place. The French general had made an effort
to drive the Germans under General von Einem from Champagne
Pouilleuse. The preliminary effort had been to stop the Germans from
using the railroad which ran from near the Nort to Varennes through
the Forest of the Argonne and across the upper Aisne to Bazancourt.

[Illustration: Prayer in a French church which the exigencies of war
have converted into a Red Cross hospital.]

After the battle of the Marne, the crown prince's army, severely
handled by the Third French Army under General Sarrail, pushed hastily
toward the north and established itself on a line running
perpendicularly through the Argonne Forest, at about ten or fifteen
kilometers from the road connecting Ste. Menehould with Verdun. Almost
immediately there developed a series of fights that lasted during a
whole year and were really among the bloodiest and most murderous
combats of the war. The German army in the Argonne, commanded by the
crown prince, whose headquarters had long been established at Stenay,
consisted of the finest German troops, including, among others, the
famous Sixteenth Corps from Metz, which, with the Fifteenth Corps from
Strassburg, is considered the cream of the Germanic forces. This corps
was commanded by the former governor of Metz, General von Mudra, an
expert in all branches of warfare relating to fortresses and mines.
Specially reenforced by battalions of sharpshooters and a division of
Wuerttembergers, the Twenty-Seventh, accustomed to forest warfare, this
corps made the most violent efforts from the end of September,
1914, to throw the French troops back to the south and seize the road
to Verdun. The crown prince evidently meant to sever this route and
the adjoining highway, leading from Verdun to Ste. Menehould. The road
then turns to the south and joins at Revigny, the main line of
Bar-le-Duc to Paris via Chalons, forming, in fact, the only possible
line of communication for the fortress of Verdun. The other line,
running from Verdun to St. Mihiel, was rendered useless after the
Germans had fixed themselves at St. Mihiel in September, 1914.

Up to the first months of 1916 there was only a small local railway
that could be used between Revigny and Ste. Menehould by Triaucourt.
Of the two big lines, one was cut by the Germans, and the other was
exposed to the fire of their heavy artillery.

The violence of the German attacks in the Argonne prove that so long
ago as September,