eight o'clock
This was what he beheld to the west , and if , turning to the east , he found his view obstructed in that quarter by tree-clad hills , he could picture to himself what was passing , for he had seen the XIIth corps entering the wood of Chevalier , he knew that by that time the Guards were at Villers-Cernay . There were the two arms of the gigantic vise , the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left , the Saxon Prince 's army on the right , slowly , irresistibly closing on each other , while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles . Underneath the King 's position the long line of batteries , stretching with hardly an interval from Remilly to Frenois , kept up an unintermittent fire , pouring their shells into Daigny and la Moncelle , sending them hurtling over Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus . It was barely eight o'clock , and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board he directed the movements of the game , awaiting the inevitable end , calmly controlling the black cloud of men that beneath him swept , an array of pigmies , athwart the smiling landscape . In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude , the bugler , sounded reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was possessed of , but the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the damp , heavy air , and the men , who had not had courage even to erect their tents and had thrown themselves , wrapped in their blankets , upon the muddy ground , did not awake or stir , but lay like corpses , their ashen features set and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion . To arouse them from their trance-like sleep they had to be shaken , one by one , and , with ghastly faces and haggard eyes , they rose to their feet , like beings summoned , against their will , back from another world . It was Jean who awoke Maurice .