There is no manufacturing and little commercial activity; but a
skillful, varied, and persistent culture of the soil, with special
attention to those most exacting of crops, the vine and vegetables,
which are successfully raised only by dint of hard labor, and to the
production of vast quantities of sugar-beets and cereals.
[Sidenote: The villages are built of stone.]
The villages, built of the beautiful stone of the district, have, one
and all, an air of dignity and prosperity which gives animation to the
landscape. The very names are among the most pleasant to the ear, and
often among the most illustrious in the language. Our great men of
letters, La Fontaine and Racine, Pope Urban II, who preached the First
Crusade, and other statesmen and princes, all born in the province, had
already made it a genuinely historic spot; and the memory of the battles
fought by Napoleon at Chateau-Thierry and Soissons, against the invaders
of 1814, has not yet faded. When they turned the enemy back from Paris,
the Americans were fighting in the most truly French of all the
districts of France, and their gallantry has imparted to it a new charm,
a more resplendent glory.
[Sidenote: Topography from the Marne to the Vesle.]
But this attractive region does not exhibit everywhere the same
features. The topography of the Ile de France is so varied that one can
distinguish several families, or groups, of landscapes between the Marne
and the Vesle. Let us follow them, in the order followed by the
different stages of the battle.
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