course of twenty-four hours, each corps d'armée consumed 1800 loaves of 3 lbs. each; 120 cwts. of rice or pearl barley; either 70 oxen, 120 cwts. of bacon, or a proportionate amount of prepared sausage; 18 cwts. of salt; 30 cwts. of coffee; 12 cwts. of oats; 3 cwte. of hay; 35,000 quarts of spirits and 3500 ounces of orange essence, or some other bitter tincture, to mix with the spirits. To this gigantic repast must be added 60 cwts. of tobacco, 1,100,000 ordinary cigars, and 50,000 officers' cigars for each ten days. Multiply these figures by twenty-five, and we have the sum total of the consumption in one day, or as regards tobacco in ten days, of the German troops in France. The difficulties of bringing up such gigantic stores were often aggravated by the usual disasters incidental to warfare. Sometimes a large number of the oxen, having become infected with the cattle plague, had to be destroyed; and frequently stores would arrive in such a condition that they had to be thrown away and replaced by fresh cargoes. The wear and tear of the war in a rainy autumn and an unusually cold winter, moreover, required the continuous forwarding of an incalculably large stock of every article of clothing. Several times during the campaign each corps had distributed among them woollen shirts, flannel bandages, woollen comforters, woollen plaids, woollen stockings, boots, &c. The field-post, too, in an army where everybody could read and write, took up no inconsiderable amount of rolling stock. From the 16th of July to the 31st of December, 1870, no fewer than 67,600,000 letters and 1,536,000 newspapers-in other words, about 400,000 letters and 9090 papers per day—were despatched from and to the army. In the same period 41,000,000 thalers and 58,000 parcels of all sizes and weights were sent by the War Office to the German military authorities in France. The soldiers received from or sent to their friends and relatives at home 13,000,000 thalers and 1,219,533 parcels, or 22,173 of the latter per day. A large number of sick and wounded were constantly being conveyed back to Germany, besides prisoners, the number of whom was unprecedentedly large. Add to all this that, towards the close of 1870, from 180,000 to 200,000 new troops were brought up to the seat of war, and that the transport of guns, shell, and every variety of ammunition never ceased for one day until peace was declared, and we can then form some idea of the extreme importance of

having secure command of the various roads and railways of German communications. Colonel de Bigot rightly judged, therefore, that if the transport of such vast and necessary supplies could be effectually stopped, German armies in France must soon cease to exist, and they would fall an easy prey to levies of men who, however raw, were well armed, and operating in their own country.

The scheme of isolating the Germans from their base of supplies, after defeating them in Franche Comté, would have been feasible, and even prom ising, had Bourbaki had a trained and well-organized army of 150,000 men, and could the forces of Chanzy have been counted on to cope successfully with Prince Frederick Charles and the grandduke of Mecklenburg, on the supposition of their acting together. But even on these hypotheses it is doubtful whether it would not have been more prudent to attack the communications of the Germans at points considerably nearer Paris than a few marches to the west of Belfort; and in the actual state of the combatants the whole project was, we think, desperate. Bourbaki's army, even if reinforced to 150,000 men, was known to be raw and ill provided; its movements would have to be conducted in an exceedingly intricate and mountainous country, in the depths of a severe winter; it was, therefore, by no means certain that it would overpower Werder and raise the siege of Belfort, and far from probable that it could master, at least for a sufficiently long time, the great line of the German communications, already not without protection, and which reinforcements could easily reach. Success, therefore was far from assured, even where it appeared most promising; and even success, unless extraordinary, would leave the rest of the forces of France exposed to defeat and disaster. The march of Bourbaki from Bourges and Nevers would obviously set Prince Frederick Charles, in conjunction with the grandduke, free to move against and attack Chanzy; and how could he, with an unorganized and inefficient army, contend against masses of veteran troops, who could, moreover, speedily receive additions? The notion that Prince Frederick Charles would follow Bourbaki, and leave Chanzy to deal separately with the grand-duke, was a mere assumption; and it was absurd to imagine that the prince, a really great commander, would halt, irresolute where to strike, and allow his enemies to elude him. Thus, while the operations of