It was a bitter sight for Georges, burning to defend his country. What was the French army good for, anyway, if it couldn’t protect this pretty, innocent little town, so charmingly scattered over the wooded heights of the Meuse? But Mouzon was doomed. Already the sappers with wires and sticks of melinite were blowing up the picturesque old stone bridge.

All next day Georges’s regiment, hidden in the woods, watched the shelling of the town; all next night, hungry, soaked with rain, enraged, they saw it burn, house by house, till at last the flames licked up the belfry of the church. That was the way they defended Mouzon.