immediate neighbourhood-every village serving as a fortress. When dislodged from one, they took up their stand in another, and so on from sunrise to sunset. Each battle was a mere series of skirmishes, in which, though the Germans were victorious, both armies left a vast tract of country strewed with their dead, who lay unheeded day after day. Had the movements of General Chanzy since the evacuation of Orleans been dictated by the most profound strategy, instead of by necessity or accident, they could not have been executed more skilfully, or in a manner more harassing to his foes. The vast quantity of stores which had been accumulated in Orleans were sent across to the left bank of the Loire, with a comparatively small force to protect them, and to deceive the Germans as to the position of the main body of the army, which waited on the right bank, and fell upon the flank of the inferior German force at Meung. Here, for four successive days, Chanzy fought so hard that so hard that the Germans gained very little ground, and had to send for heavy reinforcements; when they expected him to rest he attacked them; and when they expected him to attack, he was gone, no one at first knew whither. He thus forced the duke of Mecklenburg to change his front and follow the retreating enemy to the almost impregnable position he had taken up at Fréteval, and in the vast forests upon the right and left banks of the Loir; where there seemed to be nothing to prevent his keeping the Germans at bay, while the bulk of his army might by forced marches have moved in four days, by Châteaudun and Chartres, upon Versailles. As it was, the French held their opponents in front of Fréteval for four days, till their position being turned by the tenth and third army corps, directed by Prince Frederick Charles upon Vendôme, Chanzy was forced to choose between retreating upon Le Mans or upon Paris. The former town, with the great naval fortresses in its rear, offered important advantages to a retiring army wearied with constant fighting; and once reached, a junc-| tion with the French army of the west would be effected, and large reinforcements obtained. Chanzy, therefore, directed his march thither, making admirable use of many defensive positions, and on the 21st of December reached Le Mans, having saved his army and joined his supports. Although his troops had suffered terribly, he had lost only seven or eight guns. These operations reflected high credit from every point of view on the French commander, and proved what a part, at least, of the army of the Loire could do in untoward circumstances. Prince Frederick Charles apparently calculated that Von der Tann and the grand - duke of Mecklenburg were in sufficient force to destroy Chanzy; but he baffled these expectations, and his vigorous stand at Beaugency and Marchenoir not only weakened his foes, but by drawing a detachment against his right perhaps saved the rest of the army of the Loire. In falling back on Le Mans, and retreating upon his reinforcements when his wing was menaced, eye-witnesses told with what foresight he availed himself of natural obstacles to baffle and impede his pursuers. Though the retreat had been trying in the extreme, and many hundreds had disbanded, the great majority of the French troops had contended not without honour against their veteran and well-seasoned foes. and well-seasoned foes. That they should have been fighting in the open field at all, considering the helpless condition of France after Sedan, is not a little surprising. But that they should have fought, within thirteen days, ten such battles as Beaune-la-Rollande, Patay, Bazoches, Chevilly, Chilleure, Orleans, and the four about Beaugency, on terms so nearly equal, sometimes superior, against the best German troops, effecting their retreat on almost all occasions without any disastrous loss or confusion—is an achievement which reflects the highest honour on the generals who organized and commanded the army of the Loire. The weather had throughout been dreadful. As described by General Chanzy himself at one place in his valuable and concise work, "La Deuxieme Armée de la Loire," "A torrent of rain since the morning had melted the snow and produced a thaw. The roads were everywhere exceedingly slippery, and the fields were too muddy for the passage of horses and carriages. In point of fatigue to men and cattle, this day (12th December) was one of the most distressing of the campaign. Nevertheless, the march was effected with a reasonable degree of regularity, and by night all the corps were established precisely in the positions assigned to them." In fact, the sufferings of the troops can have been but little less severe while they lasted than what was endured in the retreat from Russia. To fight all through a short winter's day, the fingers almost too cold to handle a rifle, and to find oneself at nightfall on a bare frozen plain, or, even worse, a muddy field, with no supplies at hand, and often even no fuel, shivering the long night through in a furrow, or wandering about in a vain search for food-a night of this sort, followed by another day of hopeless fighting, was, during the first fortnight of this dreary December, the condition of the soldiers of the French army, in which the sufferings of the sound were only surpassed by those of the miserable wounded, who crawled unaided into the nearest ditch to die. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, the methodical way in which the business of the headquarters was conducted during this time was most admirable. Night after night, when the troops were getting such fragments of rest as their condition made possible, was passed by Chanzy in writing long despatches to the provisional government, and dictating orders for the following day. Promotions were made, casualties filled up, and the business of the army generally carried on with the greatest detail and precision. To read General Chanzy's orders of the day at this time, one might suppose that they were issued by the commander of a confident, well-conditioned army, making war in ordinary fashion, in regular campaigning weather. The whole episode is a remarkable instance of the effect of character in war. With a less determined and obstinate commander, it is hardly doubtful that this army would have gone to pieces. As it was, Chanzy's determined attitude, and the spirit he succeeded in infusing into those around him, had the effect of keeping the Germans, who were also of course suffering very much from the weather, on very respectful terms. Altogether, the retreat from Orleans to the Loire during the first half of December was perhaps as creditable to French arms as anything that occurred during the whole war. It must in justice be remarked, however, that if the French had thus fought with heroic steadiness and courage, the Germans also bore up against their great hardships and heavy losses with their wonted fortitude; not excepting the Bavarians, about whose demoralization idle tales had been in circulation ever since their first mishap at Coulmiers. These troops had, indeed, suffered so severely, that they were reduced to about one-fifth of their original force; yet to the last they exhibited the utmost gallantry. Each corps d'armée left Germany 30,000 strong; before any of the fighting round Beaugency, the first was in sixteen battles, without reinforcements, and General von der Tann could not number more than 5000 effective bayonets. Some reserves arrived from Germany on the 7th December, and the active part they took in the engagements of that and the two following days may be judged by the fact that the corps sustained an additional loss of 1200 men and forty-eight officers. On the 12th the corps was ordered back to Orleans to enjoy a season of well-merited repose, and a very complimentary letter was addressed by the king of Prussia to General von der Tann. Not deeming it prudent to pursue their enemy further for the present, the armies of Prince Frederick Charles and the duke of Mecklenburg remained in the country between Orleans, Vendôme, and Blois; and with the exception of an expedition to Tours by Voigts-Rhetz and part of the tenth corps, no further encounter took place between the combatants until the winter campaign in January, the events of which will be related in a future chapter. When the Germans reached Blois and Vendôme they were at less than two day's march from Tours, on the two railways converging on that town, the one from Orleans, and the other from Châteaudun. After the government delegation left for Bordeaux, General Sol, who had the command of the Tours military division, seeing himself exposed to attack from these two lines, and also from Vierzon, immediately retreated. M. Gambetta, deeming the evacuation of Tours precipitate, removed him from active service, and appointed General Pisani in his place. The force of Voigts-Rhetz having been signalled in the immediate neighbourhood, General Chanzy sent a despatch to Pisani ordering him, with the 6000 troops under his command, to harass the enemy as much as possible, but by no means to risk a defeat. Accordingly, on December 20, he, with his little army, attacked the Prussians at Monnaie, and after inflicting on them no little damage and taking sixty prisoners, retreated with considerable loss. Pisani, watching the course of events, lingered for some time about the vicinity of Tours, before which the Prussians appeared the next morning. Thinking that, as the garrison had left, the town would make no resistance, they sent forward a squadron of cavalry to take possession. The towns-people, however, had made up their minds to attempt a defence, and when the hostile cuirassiers came within easy range, the Tours national guards fired on them, and forced them to retreat at full gallop. The Prussians then determined to try the effect of a bombardment, unlimbered a battery of artillery on the edge of the lofty plateau rising at only a few hundred yards to the north, and began shelling the town. As Tours was perfectly open and totally unprovided with the means of defence, this mode of attack soon began to tell. Several were killed by the shells, and amongst them M. Beurtheret, the editor of the Union Liberale. Fearing that the town might be totally destroyed, M. Eugène Gouiz, the mayor, accompanied by his adjuncts and an interpreter, went to the Prussian commander with a flag of truce, and asked for a cessation of the bombardment, which was at once and unconditionally accorded. The Prussians did not occupy the town, but, probably supposing that considerable French forces were in the neighbourhood, retired soon afterwards to Blois. Tours was thus again left in peace, and was re-occupied by General Pisani and his troops as soon as the enemy disappeared. Dropping for the present the subject of the operations of the armies on the several zones around Paris, we will glance briefly at the principal towns and fortresses captured by the Germans during December, taking them in chronological order. After the first battle of Amiens, which took place on the 26th and 27th November, and which resulted in the destruction of what was then called the French army of the north, some remnants of that force were said to have fled in the direction of Caen. General von Göben, with the first corps, was despatched to pursue these, with instructions also to make a reconnaissance upon the Rouen road, but not to attack the enemy there if in positions behind earthworks. At a meeting of the principal inhabitants and the military and civil authorities, it was determined not to defend Rouen, as in consequence of the incomplete state of the lines of defence any attempt at resistance would be useless. But changing their minds, an address was issued by the municipal council, intimating that the enemy was approaching nearer and nearer, that the military were concentrating for defence, and exciting the citizens to make an effort equal to the sacrifices the country required of them. The available forces of the town were accordingly sent to Buchy to arrest the course of VOL. II. the enemy, and the result closely resembled the memorable battle of Bull's Run. Buchy is a village, very insignificant in itself, but strategically of no small importance, as there the road and railway from Amiens to Rouen bifurcates, the northern branch going on to Clères and St. Victor (on the way from Rouen to Dieppe), thus forming the apex of a triangle, of which the lines to Rouen and to Clères form the sides, and the railway from Rouen to the Clères station of the Dieppe Railway, the base. The French force consisted of undisciplined mobiles and mobilized national guards, from several departments, of a corps of franc-tireurs, a provisional regiment of the line (regiment de marche), and a small detachment of cavalry. The Prussians advanced on Buchy from St. Saens, and about five o'clock on the morning of 3rd December sent some shells into the French positions. The first discharge dismounted one of the three guns with which the French attempted to open fire against a Prussian battery of from thirty to forty. The mobiles, who were drawn up to protect them, no sooner heard a shell bursting than they fled across country, and paused not until they reached Rouen in the evening. There they scattered all over the place, filled every café and wine shop, drank very freely, confessed that they had retired, but boasted loudly of what they would have done in other circumstances, and gave exaggerated accounts of the enemy's numbers. A panic spread throughout the city. The treasure and notes in the Bank of France and in the receveur-général's hands were embarked on board the Protectrice, a powerful ironclad floating battery, supposed to have been moved to Rouen for the defence of the city; but she now got up steam and was soon out of sight. The various French merchantmen in the river also dropped down with the tide. Early next morning, which was very cold, the rappel was sounded for the muster of the national guard, who turned out with readiness. They were kept waiting for nearly six hours in the cold, and were then marched to the railway station for conveyance to Clères. Ultimately, however, the authorities again changed their minds, and the guards remained, to be disarmed and disbanded by the Prussians. A number of siege guns, which had been landed on the quay only two days before, were spiked and thrown into the river. The town, meanwhile, was scemingly emptied of its male population, and the sad, 2 D anxious faces of the women expressed the fears by which they were agitated. the first lines of the French works. In the middle of the road lay two heavy ship guns, 24-pounders, which it was clear that the French had not had time to put into position. Everything betokened a hasty retreat. The batteries were unfinished; while, on either side of the road, the Prussian troops actually marched among the still burning camp-fires of their opponents. The question naturally arose, what had the French general at Rouen been doing for the last two months? He had more than ample time, money, and material, to say nothing of his close proximity to Havre, Dieppe, and Boulogne, to establish a line of defence before the city that might have very greatly altered the face of matters. He had done nothing but abandon every position which, with immense labour, his troops had constructed between Isneauville and Gaillefontaine, where every village might have been made a fortress; all the more easily because his army, instead of being made up entirely of mobiles, included several line regiments, and the In the meantime, the strange manner in which the French troops, evidently strong in numbers, had abandoned position after position from Gaillefontaine along the road to Rouen, induced General von Göben to make one of those rapid advances which had so often led to triumph. The forces under his command received with their usual enthusiasm the order to advance upon the road to Rouen; and notwithstanding the severe marching and fighting of the last few days, all strode along seemingly as fresh as when they left the banks of the Rhine. They anticipated a battle before Rouen; believing that the French were strong in numbers, well armed, and provided with artillery, with the advantage of occupying a fortified position. A halt was made at Buchy, where the precipitate retreat of the French took place to which we have already alluded. Little knowing the terror they had caused, the Prussians concluded the force they had dispersed was but the outpost of a more formid-fifth hussars, with thirty-five guns. able body. But on their arrival at Quincampoix, on the morning of December 5, the advanced guard brought in an elderly gentleman, taken prisoner as he drove from Rouen in his gig, and who turned out to be the mayor of Quincampoix. From him the Prussians learned that 35,000 troops had camped at Quincampoix the previous night, but had only remained for an hour, and then continued their retreat upon Rouen, which intended to make no resistance. The intelligence was so astounding, that it was at first believed to be a ruse to induce the somewhat wearied Germans to advance upon a strong position defended by fresh troops. But after a short consultation with Colonel von Witzendorff, the chief of his staff, and Major Bomki, General von Göben ordered the troops to advance. Just at this moment the omnibus from Rouen arrived, with intelligence to the general which seemed almost incredible. In the morning the French troops had all retreated upon Havre. The town had subscribed 10,000,000 francs as a contribution, which General von Göben was invited to come and take. Everything was now boot and saddle; the fortieth and seventieth regiments, forming the thirty-first brigade, with the ninth hussars and two batteries of artillery, pushed along the road to Isneauville, and the staff waited in Quincampoix, to let the infantry advance. Arrived at Isneauville, the Germans came upon Rouen lies in a basin, surrounded by high hills, from which Von Göben's army quickly had a view of the famous city. A patrol of hussars was sent forward to arrange for the entry of the troops; but in the meantime a magistrate appeared, a thin old man, with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour on his coat, asking the general to send some troops into the town as quickly as possible? The square of the Hôtel de Ville was in the hands of the gamins, who, armed with the weapons thrown away by the national guard, were trying their best to shoot the mayor. In that drunken, reckless style in which a French mob delights, they were firing upon the Hotel de Ville, the façade of which was pitted with bullets, the windows broken, and the members of the commune, huddled together in a back room, in despair. Fortunately for the mayor and the town, the German troops were soon upon the spot, when one battalion of the fortieth, with two guns, took up its position in the Place Cauchoise; while the other two battalions, with the seventieth regiment, filed in different directions through the town. The general then rode to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, where, beside the statue of Napoleon I., he saw the sixteenth division, with bands playing and colours flying, march past. Great indignation was expressed in other parts of France at the capitulation of Rouen without resistance; but it was only one of a large number of instances in the course of the war, in which every one cried "forward" to his neighbour without moving a foot in advance himself. Nancy and Rheims were pronounced cowards because they offered no resistance to the enemy, having indeed neither arms nor men. Châteaudun was, in fact, the single open town which defended itself; for with this exception every other in France, so defiant when the enemy was distant, learned prudence at its near approach. A "mild invasion" is almost a contradiction in terms; yet if ever a city was mildly invaded it was Rouen. Not one shop was closed, nor, as far as an ordinary observer could judge, was the petty commerce of the place interfered with. But capital was too sensitive not to take the alarm. Nearly all the great factories and printworks, on whose operations Rouen depended, were closed, and the distress of the workpeople was soon obviously very great. Some ingenious speculators in the locality had formed a special insurance company for guaranteeing subscribers against the various evils of war; but among these evils the occupation of Rouen by the enemy had not been foreseen, and the company, too severely tested at the very outset of its enterprise, collapsed. In Rouen the German army of the north found many of its wants abundantly met. Among other things obtained was a supply of fresh horses, 40,000 pairs of boots, 10,000 blankets, 2000 shirts, 20,000 pairs of socks, and 100,000 cigars, and the city could, if needful, have furnished a considerable amount of specie. Here the army was in secure and comfortable winter quarters, in direct communication with the Crown Prince of Saxony and the army of Paris; and from this point, unless the communication by way of Amiens should be disturbed, a great military movement might be organized. The cost of all these advantages to the army of the north was eleven men killed and fifty wounded, without the loss of a single officer. The French had lost five officers killed and eighteen wounded, forty-five rank and file killed, 100 wounded, 600 prisoners, and twenty-seven pieces of heavy marine artillery, together with the wealthiest city of Western France. Apparently from a desire to reach the sea, and thus be able to say that the Prussians had crossed France from the Rhine to the British Channel, a detachment of Manteuffel's army visited Dieppe from Amiens. The much dreaded occupation had been for weeks past the nightmare of the worthy Dieppois, who had spent much time in making defensive preparations. In spite, however, of wooden barricades and innumerable drillings of the national guards, when the inhabitants heard of the near approach of the enemy, the guns were spiked, the arms and ammunition were shipped to Havre, the brave nationales and douaniers doffed their uniforms, and all prepared to receive the invader as amicably and cordially as dignity would permit. On the morning of December 9 the usual advanced guard of uhlans gave the customary warning of a large body of troops being behind them, who would require unlimited food, board, and lodging. Accordingly, a few hours afterwards, in marched the main body, with bands playing and colours flying, as if they were returning from a victory into one of their own towns. Many of the houses had been dressed out with flags of various nationalities, the English strongly predominating; hung out to show that the occupants were not French, and therefore not liable to the obligation of billeting the enemy. Every house, however, on which the lot fell had to receive its soldier guests; and the English residences were apparently at a premium-perhaps a delicate though unwelcome compliment to proverbial British hospitality. The troops behaved with great moderation, and all passed off quietly. As no resistance was offered, the Prussians levied no contribution. There were even less than the usual requisitions, though 25,000 cigars were demanded at the manufactory, and the authorities had to supply large quantities of provisions, wine, and brandy. Shortly after their entry into the town the uhlans rode to the Plage, where many of them for the first time saw with admiration the broad expanse of the ocean, and gave three hurrahs for the king and Vaterland. Orders were issued towards nightfall that no lights should be exhibited at the entrance of the port. Frenchmen were stationed at the pierhead to warn off every vessel that should attempt to force an entrance, under the penalty of being fired upon by the enemy. This measure seemed hard; but a man-of-war had been seen cruising in the offing in the latter part of the afternoon, and measures had to be adopted to thwart a night attack from the seaboard, should such be attempted. The departure of the troops, which took place the day after their arrival, was regretted |