[Sidenote: The ancient town of Chateau-Thierry.]
But now the valley widens once more as it enters the broad basin of
Chateau-Thierry. It is a beautiful spot, and at the same time, of great
military value. The little town long ago forgot its role of fortress,
but has been brutally reminded of it by the violence of the battles that
have been fought in its neighborhood. In the foreground is the wide
expanse of fields in the valley bottom; then a suburb of the town
enclosed between two arms of the Marne. Across the river, scaling the
slopes of a hill crowned by the ruins of a castle, the town rises,
terrace-like, at the mouth of a narrow valley. The position can be
carried by frontal attack only on the heels of a defeated foe, as
Napoleon carried it in 1814, and Franchet d'Esperey just a hundred years
later. But in 1918 the Americans had to take Chateau-Thierry in flank,
and in order to force their way into the town, had to fight the bloody
battles of Vaux, Bouresches, and Etrepilly, which carried them to the
north of the town and hastened its evacuation.
[Sidenote: Military operations difficult.]
What is the nature of the terrain above those steep cliffs which enclose
the valley of the Marne? Does it become more favorable to military
operations than the deep depression through which the river flows? Not
by any means. The surface of the table-land is broken by so many ravines
and narrow valleys which descend steeply to the Marne, that it is cut
into a multitude of ridges and hillocks amid which it is no longer
possible to recognize the original horizontal aspect of the plateau.
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