Lack of villages means lack of roads; this has been one of
the great difficulties to be faced; but, at the same time, the movement
of wagons across country is possible to a far greater extent than in
Flanders, although it is often necessary to use eight or ten horses to
get a gun or wagon to the point desired.
From the military point of view the country is eminently suitable for
troops, with its possibilities of concealment, of producing sudden
surprises with cavalry, and of manoeuvre generally. It is, in fact, the
training ground of the great military centre of Chalons; and French
troops have doubtless been exercised over this ground in every branch of
military operation, except that in which they are engaged at the present
moment.
What commander, training his men over this ground, could have imagined
that the area from Perthes-lez-Hurlus to Beausejour Farm would become
two fortress lines, developed and improved for four months; or that he
would have to carry out an attack modeled on the same system as that
employed in the last great siege undertaken by French troops, that of
Sebastopol in 1855? Yet this is what is being done. Every day an attack
is made on a trench, on the edge of one of the little woods or to gain
ground in one of them; every day the ground gained has to be transformed
so as to give protection to its new occupants and means of access to
their supports; every night, and on many days, the enemy's
counter-attacks have to be repulsed.
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