a valley of no slight beauty, abounding in objects of pastoral peace and rustic comfort. It was soon, however, to be the scene of a sanguinary contest. Suddenly a storm of shells broke over the camp and the neighbouring town, setting fire to the latter. The Crown Prince of Prussia had planted his guns on the heights of Schweigen, a village on the other side of the river, in Bavaria; and, although the French had prosecuted a reconnaissance in that direction on the previous day, and had not discovered the presence of the enemy, it was now evident that a very considerable force held the ground. In fact, the Crown Prince had under his orders, in that commanding position, the greater part of the 5th and 11th Prussian corps, and the 2nd Bavarian corps - the whole variously estimated at 50,000 and 100,000 men. The French division posted in the neighbourhood of Weissenburg seems to have numbered no more than 10,000. It had been stationed there in order to protect the march of MacMahon from Strasburg, on the right of the French line, to join the forces under de Failly at Sarreguemines and Bitsche, some miles to the north-west of Weissenburg. MacMahon, being too iso

consequences were seen in the action that took place on August 4th.

The country on the Bavarian side of the Lauter is so thickly wooded that the approach of the Crown Prince's army was not perceived. Its advanced posts had been stationed a few miles off, at Bergzabern, and at Veuden Junction, on the railway from Trèves. The troops, having been massed at these points during the night of the 3rd, were ready to advance by dawn on the following morning. Suddenly confronted by an immense host of adversaries, who poured across the river at various points, the French did their best to

lated at Strasburg, had been ordered by the Emperor to close up to the left; but in so doing he was obliged to make his way through that portion of the French frontier-territory where the Rhine no longer forms the boundary, and where, in fact, there is no great natural line of demarcation. At this point the Marshal's right flank was so much exposed to the possibility of an attack by the Germans that it was thought prudent to send General Abel Douay to cover the march of MacMahon's four divisions in the locality where they were most in danger of being surprised. The precaution was a very proper one; but it seems to have been forgotten that the protecting force was in itself also liable to a sudden incursion. Nothing effectual was done to ward off such a result, and the

defend the position

they occupied; but the task was hopeless from the first. They soon found themselves attacked in front and on both flanks. The Geisberg was stormed and carried, and a hand-tohand conflict ensued. Douay's troops rushed forward with great spirit, leaving their knapsacks and other impediments behind. them. They had only three guns, while the artillery of the Prussians was very considerable, and did so much execution that the French, after a while, took shelter behind some farmhouses near the town, from which, however,

The two regi

they were speedily dislodged by the terrible fire that rained upon them. The Turcos are said to have fought with extraordinary courage and resolution, repeatedly charging the enemy at the point of the bayonet, and losing large numbers from the volleys of grape-shot. ments of the Line also greatly distinguished themselves, and lost many officers and men. In the course of the action a detachment of the Line arrived by rail without knowing that a battle was going forward until they reached the scene of conflict. The soldiers at once jumped out, seized their muskets, and threw themselves into the thick of the fight. At about eleven A.M. General Voscan's division began to retire; shortly afterwards, however, a new attack was ordered, and

the Turcos again charged with the bayonet on one of the Prussian batteries. But no valour, however splendid, no determination, however persistent, no self-sacrifice, however heroic, could possibly have prevailed against such a vast superiority in numbers and in arms. At noon General Douay was himself struck down by a shell, and killed on the spot. General de Montmarie was wounded, and many other officers fell at the head of their men. By two o'clock P.M. it was evident that any further attempt to resist the Prussians would be attended by the utter destruction of the division. The French therefore began to retreat; but, being followed some way by the Prussian artillery, the movement was soon converted into a rout. The troops began running, making their way through the woods and vineyards to the further side of Weissenburg, and leaving behind them tents, weapons, and wounded. According to a French correspondent, the Turcos at one time took eight guns, which, however, were subsequently re-captured, after a murderous struggle, in which they suffered greatly themselves, and half destroyed a regiment of Prussian Hussars. The same writer

continues :

"I arrived at Haguenau at eight in the evening. The streets were thronged with people talking over the sad events of the day. Then came a mournful sight— long trains of carts drawn by oxen or horses, filled with furniture and bedding, and men, women, and children in tears. They were the inhabitants of Reidseltz, Schoenenburg, and neighbouring villages, flying before the enemy. They installed themselves in the streets under the trees. A crowd surrounded them. They wept, and imagined that their villages were burnt down. Then, pouring through the Weissenburg gate, came the soldiers who had been that day engaged in this unequal struggle. They arrived weary, dead beat, having tasted no food for twenty-four hours, mourning a commander, a comrade. I questioned forty or fifty

of them. They all told the same tale-that it was impossible to keep up the fight; had they only been twenty thousand, they would have driven the enemy back. Their feeble columns had more than once held him in check. A few wounded came up, leaning on their muskets: one Turco shows his arm run through by a bayonet ; another carries the sword of his captain, killed by his side, and kisses the weapon of his unfortunate commander. All this is very sad, and pro

At

duces an extraordinary effect at dead of night. eleven two carts arrived filled with wounded; they were taken to the ambulances. At midnight the Sisters of Charity were running about the town in search of assistance. At one A.M. the drums beat in the street of Haguenau. The firemen were mustered, and sent along the road to pick up the wounded, and help to bury the dead."

Both sides suffered severely in this action. The

French are said to have had 3,000 killed and wounded; while in officers alone the Prussians lost 158, either slain or disabled, and doubtless a proportionate number of privates. The German official accounts stated that upwards of 500 unwounded prisoners, including many Turcos, fell into the hands of the attacking force, which, it was admitted, suffered severely. One gun also was captured. This is attributed in the French official account to the fact of the carriage being smashed, and the horses killed. The French troops, according to the same report, fell back upon the ridge of the Pigeonnière, which commands the line to Bitsche. The pursuit was not prosecuted very far. Some Baden troops, which had crossed the Lauter at Lauterburg, made a slight attempt to cut off the retreating force; but the flight was so rapid as soon to outstrip the victors. The Crown Prince had arrived without his two Prussian cavalry divisions, and was therefore not in a favourable position for following up his success.

In this encounter-the first serious battle of the war-the French soldier proved that his old courage and gallantry were as brilliant as ever. But he was badly led, and suffered, both in person and reputation, from the faults of indolent, purblind, and incompetent commanders. Douay's situation was so exposed as to invite attack; a comparatively small number of men were placed at the mercy of a large army; and nothing was done to guard against surprise, or to ascertain the position of the enemy. Yet, under the most disadvantageous circumstances, the French held their ground with a tenacity that nothing could surpass. Overwhelmed with immensely disproportionate numbers, they maintained a desperate and hopeless fight for nearly half a day; and, though possessed of scarcely any guns with which to oppose the sweeping artillery of the Crown Prince, they nevertheless inflicted terrible reprisals. selves acknowledged the splendid valour with which their opponents fought after the Geisberg had been stormed. Fourteen men of the 74th were all who were left of that regiment towards the close of the day; and even those refused to surrender, but kept on fighting at the point of the bayonet, until the Prussians, not liking to kill them, rushed upon them in a body and threw them down wrestling. As in other operations of the war, the French soldiers were at once outnumbered and out-generalled; but in courage they were only equalled, not surpassed.

The Germans them

On the part of the Germans nothing could be

* Frankfort correspondent of the Daily News.

more magnificent than the way in which they stormed the Geisberg-a feat requiring the utmost courage, resolution, and force. One of the battalions engaged in this exploit lost eleven officers and 247 men. The French were stationed at the top, with their chassepôts. The Germans rushed up the slope amidst a tempest of fire, without giving a single shot in response to the showers of bullets with which they were greeted, though numbers of men fell mortally stricken on the route. As soon as they gained the crest, they charged the French at the point of the bayonet, and bore them down by sheer weight. It was found by an experiment at the hospitals at Mannheim that, as a rule, two Germans weigh nearly as much as three Frenchmen. The advantage of this in a bayonet charge is obvious; and it has gone far to neutralise the superior deadliness of the French arms of precision as compared with those of Prussia.

The death of General Douay looks like an act of voluntary self-sacrifice. When the battle was hopelessly lost he stood apart upon a mound, watching the last desperate struggles of his men. He then gave some orders to the officers of his staff, and when they had left him he descended the slope alone. At the bottom he drew a pistol, killed his charger (like Roland at the battle of Roncesvalles), and, sword in hand, began to ascend the opposite hill. "Where are you going?" he was asked by some of his soldiers. "To the enemy," he replied. They endeavoured to dissuade him, but he continued calmly to advance. In a few minutes he was struck dead.

The Baden troops who crossed the river at Lauterburg (a little town situated at the junction of the Lauter with the Rhine) made a reconnaissance in the direction of Seltz, took possession of thirty boats which they found on the banks, and re-crossed, with but little molestation, to the German side of the Rhine. In accomplishing this exploit they lost only one lieutenant and two men killed, and one man wounded. These repeated reconnaissances testify to the vigour, enterprise, and daring with which the Germans opened the war, and by virtue of which, even more than by superiority of numbers, they were enabled to vanquish their enemy.

him that the force advancing from Landau was so large that it was impossible to encounter it even with the whole corps which the Marshal had under his command. An able and courageous general was not likely to listen to these arguments of fear; and MacMahon accordingly took up a strong defensive position fifteen miles to the south-west of Weissenburg. His forces certainly did not exceed 55,000 men,* whom he disposed in a semi-circular line, looking for the most part to the north-east. The right wing, which was thrown back, and fol lowed the line of the great road and railway from Weissenburg along the Rhine to Strasburg, occupied the summit of some neighbouring hills, and extended from Morsbronn to Elsasshausen. From the latter place the centre reached to the heights in front of Fröschwiller, and, by reason of a jutting hill detached from the main line of eminences, was thrust out towards the enemy in the direction of Wörth and Gorsdorf. The left terminated in a mound covering the village of Reichshofen, and was protected by a wood. It was also in proximity to a branch of the railway already mentioned, turning off from the main line at Haguenau, and traversing the Vosges by the pass of Bitsche.

The scenery around these positions is of the same character as that in the immediate vicinity of Weissenburg. Indeed, the place of Douay's defeat, and that which was about to be signalised by the rout of MacMahon, are not far apart, and form portions of the same general country. Alsace is a picturesque province, woody and mountainous, here broken up into charming valleys, there spreading out into fair stretches of fields, watered by many runnels and quiet inland rivulets. Through this country the Crown Prince, coming in a southwesterly direction from Weissenburg, steadily made his way during the 5th, and on the evening of that day was close to the French position. He had 130,000 men under his command (140,000 according to MacMahon); so that the French were again greatly overmatched. The Prussian cavalry and some other detachments being still in the rear, the Prince, notwithstanding his known superiority of numbers, would gladly have postponed giving battle for some little while, owing, probably, to the strength of the enemy's position; but a skirmish between his outposts and those of the French precipitated a general collision at seven o'clock on the morning of the 6th. At that hour the Prussians, together with two Bavarian corps and the Wurtemberg division, showed themselves in advance of the heights of * The Marshal himself, in his report of the battle, says 35,000.

Some accounts, however, place the number at 40,000; others at