The hundred thousand men and the five hundred guns of the French army were heaped together, brought to bay within the triangle; and when the King of Prussia turned his eyes westward he perceived another plain, that of Donchery, with bare fields spreading out towards Briancourt, Marancourt, and Vrignes-aux-Bois, an infinite expanse of grey soil dusty under the blue sky; and when he turned to the east he also beheld, confronting the confined French lines, another immense open expanse, with an abundance of villages, first Douzy and Carignan, and then, ascending northwards, Rubécourt, Pourru-aux-Bois, Francheval, and Villers-Cernay, till at last there came La Chapelle, near the Belgian frontier. And all this surrounding ground belonged to him, and as he pushed forward at his pleasure the two hundred and fifty thousand men and the eight hundred guns of his armies, he could, at one glance, survey their invading march. The Eleventh German Army Corps was, on the one hand, already advancing on St. Menges, whilst the Fifth Corps was at Vrignes-aux-Bois, and the division of Wurtembergers was waiting near Donchery; and although, on the other side, the King's view was somewhat obstructed by the trees and hills, it was yet easy for him to realise the movements that were being accomplished. He had just seen the Twelfth German Corps enter the Chevalier Wood, and he knew that the Guard must by this time have reached Villers-Cernay. And the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, and the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony on the right, formed, as it were, the two branches of the vice which were opening and ascending with irresistible force to meet over yonder; whilst on their side the two Bavarian Army Corps were rushing upon Bazeilles.
And, at King William's feet, the German batteries, disposed in an almost uninterrupted line from Remilly to Frénois, were now thundering without cessation, covering La Moncelle and Daigny with shells, and sweeping the plateaux on the north with other projectiles which passed right over the town of Sedan. As yet it was hardly more than eight in the morning, and the King was already waiting for the inevitable result of the battle, his eyes fixed on the gigantic chessboard before him, his mind busy with the movements of that human dust, the bellicose madness of those few black specks which here and there dotted the surface of smiling and eternal nature.