One ran from Namur to Charleroi and the other by Givet to Mezieres.

From the line of La Fère and Mezieres, occupied by the Allies after the battles at Mons and Charleroi, they fell back 70 miles in seven days, disputing every step of the way, but withdrawing gradually to the line of defenses around the French capital.

Farther to the east, the road from Mezieres led the Germans to Rheims, Mourmelon, and opposite Chalons on the River Marne.

In the very last hours before armistice took effect, German batteries poured a deluge of high explosives and poison gas on Mezieres, where there were no allied soldiers at all, but only civilians, men, women and children, twenty thousand of them, penned like rats in a trap, without possibility of escape.

It had begun by furiously ravaging Belgium in August, 1914; it ended with the awful, wanton murder of noncombatants at Mezieres in November, 1918.

American troops the 5th and 6th of November had advanced to within five miles of the main communication line of the Germans between Metz, Mezieres, Hirson and the north.

ELEONORA, born 1684; married the Marquis de Mezieres on the 5th of March, 1707-8, and deceased June 28, 1775, aged 91.