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The armies of the two Crown Princes were now at the outskirts of
Paris. They had come from Sedan mainly by two routes--the Crown
Prince of Saxony marching by the northern line, through Laon and
Soissons, and the Crown Prince of Prussia by the southern line,
keeping his right wing on the north bank of the Marne, while his left
and centre approached the French capital by roads between that river
and the Seine.
The march of these armies had been unobstructed by any resistance
worth mentioning, and as the routes of both columns lay through a
region teeming with everything necessary for their support, and rich
even in luxuries, it struck me that such campaigning was more a vast
picnic than like actual war. The country supplied at all points
bread, meat, and wine in abundance, and the neat villages, never more
than a mile or two apart, always furnished shelter; hence the
enormous trains required to feed and provide camp equipage for an
army operating in a sparsely settled country were dispensed with; in
truth, about the only impedimenta of the Germans was their wagons
carrying ammunition, pontoon-boats, and the field-telegraph.
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