must be held accountable.  The first of these gross faults was the fight at Worth, where MacMahon, before his army was mobilized, accepted battle with the Crown Prince, pitting 50,000 men against 175,000; the next was Bazaine’s fixing upon Metz as his base, and stupidly putting himself in position to be driven back to it, when there was no possible obstacle to his joining forces with MacMahon at Chalons; while the third and greatest blunder of all was MacMahon’s move to relieve Metz, trying to slip 140,000 men along the Belgian frontier.  Indeed, it is exasperating and sickening to think of all this; to think that Bazaine carried into Metz—­a place that should have been held, if at all, with not over 25,000 men—­an army of 180,000, because it contained, the excuse was, “an accumulation of stores.”  With all the resources of rich France to draw upon, I cannot conceive that this excuse was sincere; on the contrary, I think that the movement of Bazaine must have been inspired by Napoleon with a view to the maintenance of his dynasty rather than for the good of France.

As previously stated, Bismarck did not approve of the German army’s moving on Paris after the battle of Sedan.  Indeed, I think he foresaw and dreaded the establishment of a Republic, his idea being that if peace was made then, the Empire could be continued in the person of the Prince Imperial who—­, coming to the throne under German influences, would be pliable in his hands.  These views found frequent expression in private, and in public too; I myself particularly remember the Chancellor’s speaking thus most unguardedly at a dinner in Rheims.  But he could not prevent the march to Paris; it was impossible to stop the Germans, flushed with success.  “On to Paris” was written by the soldiers on every door, and every fence-board along the route to the capital, and the thought of a triumphant march down the Champs Elysees was uppermost with every German, from the highest to the lowest grade.

The 5th of September we set out for Rheims.  There it was said the Germans would meet with strong resistance, for the French intended to die to the last man before giving up that city.  But this proved all fudge, as is usual with these “last ditch” promises, the garrison decamping immediately at the approach of a few Uhlans.  So far as I could learn, but a single casualty happened; this occurred to an Uhlan, wounded by a shot which it was reported was fired from a house after the town was taken; so, to punish this breach of faith, a levy of several hundred bottles of champagne was made, and the wine divided about headquarters, being the only seizure made in the city, I believe, for though Rheims, the centre of the champagne district, had its cellars well stocked, yet most of them being owned by German firms, they received every protection.