Metz, after Antwerp, is the strongest fortress in Europe.  It is situated at the junction of the rivers Seille and Moselle.  It is the capital of the province of Lorraine, destined to be lost by France and gained by Germany in the struggle that was now on.  The place was of great historical importance.  Here the Roman invaders had established themselves in the time of the conquest of Gaul.  It was called by the conquerors, first Mediomatrica, and afterward Divodurum.  Its importance, on the very crest of the watershed between the Teutonic and Gallic races, was noted in the early years of our era, and to the present day that importance continues for the same reason as of old.  Metz is on the line of a conflict of races which has not yet, after so many centuries, been finally decided.

The position is one of great strategic importance.  But such were the military conditions at the end of August, 1870, that to occupy Metz with one of the greatest armies of modern times was the most serious disaster that could befall the French cause.  Bazaine’s army was needed, not in a fortified town, but in the field.  It was a tremendous force.  The army that Prince Frederick Charles locked up in Metz could have marched from Parthia to Spain against the resistance of the whole Roman Empire, at the high noon of that imperial power!  It could have marched from end to end of the Southern Confederacy in the palmiest day of that Confederacy, and could not have been seriously impeded!  And yet this tremendous force was pent up and shut in, as if under seal, while King William and the Crown Prince and Bismarck and Von Moltke hunted down the French Emperor and his remaining forces, brought them to bay, and compelled a surrender.

This was accomplished by the first of September.  The Empire of Napoleon went to pieces.  The Third Republic was instituted.  The Empress fled with the Prince Imperial to England, while her humbled lord was established by his captors at the castle of Wilhelmshohe.  Republican France found herself in possession of a political chaos which could hardly be stilled.  She also found herself in possession of a splendid army of more than one hundred and seventy thousand men shut up helplessly in Metz.  The situation was highly dramatic.  The Republic said that Bazaine should break out, but the Marshal said that he could not.  What he said was true.  The Germans held him fast.  But the Republic believed, as it still believes, that Bazaine, loyal to the fallen Emperor rather than to his country, wished to handle his army in such a manner as should compel the restoration of the Empire, under the auspices of the German conquerors.

This idea was hateful above all things to the French Republicans.  September wore away, and more than half of October; but still the siege of Metz was not concluded.  Vainly did the new Republic of France strive to extricate herself.  Vainly did she raise new armies.  Vainly did she look for the escape of Bazaine.  Finally, on the twenty-seventh of October, that commander surrendered Metz and his army to the Germans.  It was the most tremendous capitulation known in history.  Never before was so powerful an army surrendered to an enemy.  The actual number of French soldiers covered by the capitulation was fully one hundred and seventy thousand!  The prostration of France was complete, and her humiliation extreme.