All
the way from Chartres to Orleans the high-road is not once intersected by
a river. Nearly all of the few streams which exist thereabouts run from
south to north, and they supply no means of defence against an army coming
from the direction of Paris. The region is one better suited for the
employment of cavalry and artillery than for that of foot-soldiers.
The Chartres country is better watered than Beaude. Westward, in both
of the districts of Perche, going either towards Mortagne or towards
Nogent-le-Rotrou, the country is more hilly and more wooded; and hedges,
ditches, and dingle paths abound there. In such districts infantry can
well be employed for defensive purposes. Beyond the Loir--not the Loire--
S.S.W. of Chartres, is the Pays Dunois, that is the district of
Chateaudun, a little town protected on the north and the west by the Loir
and the Conie, and by the hills between which those rivers flow, but open
to any attack on the east, from which direction, indeed, the Germans
naturally approached it.
Beyond the Loire, to the south-east of Beauce and Orleans, lies the
sheep-breeding region called Sologne, which the Germans would have had to
cross had they prosecuted their intended march on Bourges.
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