originally intended to deploy General Alphonse Lecointe’s 1st Brigade to defend the entrenchments on the French right south of Amiens, but instead deployed Lecointe’s brigade in a position to support Bessol's 3rd Brigade around Villers-Bretonneux. The French right, centered on Dury — which lay west of Boves, south of Amiens, and north of Hébécourt and commanded the road south to Breteuil — therefore was defended by a mixed force consisting of three battalions of Garde Mobiles deployed from Pont-de-Metz eastward to the main road from Amiens through Dury and Hébécourt; a battalion of the 43rd Regiment, the 19th Chasseur Battalion, and two Fusiliers Marins companies in the vicinity of the road; and four Garde Mobile battalions to the east of the road. Behind the troops on the French right, the National Guard from Amiens formed a reserve. A 12-gun artillery battery, which had barely disembarked after arriving from Arras, occupied a shoulder which cut the road north of Dury, soon reinforced by a battery of four guns from the National Guard. Manteuffel established his headquarters at Thennes, near the middle of the French line. He planned to attack with a force of 30,000 troops on the morning of 27 November 1870. His plan called for his I Corps was to advance beyond the Luce, a tributary of the Avre and a subtributary of the Somme, screened by the 3rd Cavalry Division, while his VIII Corps, under the command of August Karl von Goeben, was to protect the Prussian left flank. During the battle, the swampy valley of the Avre would preclude mutual support between the Prussian left wing, facing the French center and right at Boves and Dury, and the Prussian right wing, facing the French left at Villers-Bretonneux. The battle The battle began on the morning of 27 November 1870 when the Prussian VIII Corps began an artillery bombardment of the French positions. Fighting quickly spread along the entire line. On the Prussian left wing, the VIII Corps under Goeben advanced to attack the French center and right. In the center around Boves, the main body of the Prussian 15th Division under General Ferdinand von Kummer advanced between the Celle and the Noye, moving its advance guard forward directly from a line stretching from west of Ailly-sur-Noye to Dommartin to the line Fouencamps–Sains-en-Amiénois on the left bank of the Noye. The Prussians appeared around 10:00 in three columns between