The narrow pass about 2000 paces long between the heights and the river traversed by the road to St. Albert, was neither held nor watched by the French. It was not till the advanced guard reached St. Menges that it encountered a French detachment, which soon withdrew. The German advance then deployed against Illy. Two companies moved to the right and took possession of Floing, where they maintained themselves for the next two hours without assistance against repeated attacks.
The earliest arriving Prussian batteries had to exert themselves to the utmost to maintain themselves against the much superior strength of French artillery in action about Illy. At first they had for their only escort some cavalry and a few companies of infantry, and as these bodies debouched from the defile of St. Albert, they found themselves an enticing object of attack to Margueritte's Cavalry Division halted on the aforesaid plateau of Illy. It was at nine o'clock that General Galliffet rode down to the attack at the head of three regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique and two squadrons of Lancers formed in three lines. The first fury of the charge fell upon two companies of the 87th Regiment, which met it with a hail of bullets at sixty yards range. The first line charged some horse-lengths further forward, then wheeled outward to both flanks, and came under the fire of the supporting troops occupying the broom copses. The Prussian batteries, too, showered their shell fire into the throng of French horsemen, who finally went about in confusion, and, having suffered great losses, sought refuge in the Bois de Garenne.
At ten o'clock, the same hour at which the assaults of the French on Bazeilles and about Daigny were being repulsed, fourteen batteries of the XIth Corps were already in action on and near the ridge south-east of St. Menges; to swell which mass presently came up those of the Vth Corps. Powerful infantry columns were in march upon Fleigneux, and thus the ring surrounding Sedan was already at this hour nearly closed. The one Bavarian Corps and the artillery reserves on the left bank of the Meuse were considered strong enough to repel any attempt of the French to break through in that direction; five Corps were on the right bank, ready for a concentric attack.