On the Allied Right 211 Verdun and the Argonne, aiming to cut the railroad leading back to Paris and to isolate Verdun, the forces of von Heeringen, reduced by two corps sent west to St. Quentin, were sent against the barrier forts north of Toul. 7 his new drive was to cut Verdun off and open, not the Verdun-Paris and the Nancy-Paris railways, but merely the former road. By October the Crown Prince had reached or was almost on the Verdun-Paris railway line, hav- ing taken Varennes and continued south. Between the circle of forts surrounding Verdun and the sim- ilar circle about Toul there were a number of de- tached forts, some on the east, some on the west bank of the Meuse, along which run the road and railroad from Verdun to Toul. At the point where, the Woevre Plateau, dividing the Meuse from the Moselle Valley, is narrowest and the hills lowest, following the highroad from Pont-a-Mousson through Beaumont to Commercy, the Germans had come in, captured Beaumont, taken the fort of Camp des Romains, one of the most considerable of the detached forts, and at this point crossed the Meuse near St. Mihiel. Paris reported that the crossing party was sub- sequently repulsed. Berlin insisted that it was not. Paris asserted that fresh troops coming north from Nancy by Toul were already on the flank of this army and had driven it out of Beaumont. Berlin denied this. On October i, the truth was still un- discoverable, or in other words the issue of the