The struggle attained to especial violence in the Champenoux Forest.  On September 5, 1914, the enemy won Maixe and Remereville, which they lost again in the evening, but they were unable to dislodge the French from the ridge east of the forest of Champenoux.  The Mont d’Amance was violently bombarded; a German brigade marched on Pont-a-Mousson.  The French retook Crevic and the Crevic Wood.

On the 7th the Germans directed on Ste. Genevieve, north of the Grand Couronne, a very violent attack, which miscarried.  Ste. Genevieve was lost for a time, but it was retaken on the 8th; more than 2,000 Germans lay dead on the ground.  The same day the enemy threw themselves furiously on the east front, the Mont d’Amance, and La Neuvelotte.  South of the Champenoux Forest the French were compelled to retire; they were thrown back on the ridge west of the forest.  On the 9th a new bombardment of Mont d’Amance, a struggle of extreme violence, took place on the ridge west of the forest of Champenoux, the French gaining ground.  General Castelnau decided to take the direct offensive, the Germans giving signs of great fatigue.  On the 12th they retired very rapidly.  They evacuated Luneville, a frontier town, where they left a great quantity of arms and ammunition.  The French began immediately to pursue them, the Germans withdrawing everywhere over the frontier.

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CHAPTER VII

SIEGE AND FALL OF NAMUR

When the Germans occupied Brussels on August 20, 1914, we observed that corps after corps did not enter the city, but swept to the south.  This was Von Kluck’s left wing moving to attack the Allies on the Sambre-Mons front.  The forces which passed through Brussels were Von Kluck’s center, advancing south by east to fall in line beside the right wing, which had mainly passed between Brussels and Antwerp to the capture of Bruges and Ghent.  The whole line when re-formed on the French frontier would stretch from Mons to the English Channel—­the great right wing of the German armies.

Meanwhile, Von Buelow’s second army had advanced up the valley of the Meuse, with its right sweeping the Hisbaye uplands.  Some part of this army may have been transported by rail from Montmedy.  Its general advance in columns was directed chiefly upon the Sambre crossings.  As Von Kluck’s wide swing through Belgium covered a greater distance, Von Buelow’s army was expected to strike the Allies some twenty-four hours earlier.  Its march, therefore, was in the nature of an onrush.