when our daily papers tell us we are more numerous than the Germans?" At that time every man in France under fifty years of age, whether married or single, had been called to arms. Eleven camps were being formed for the instruction of the Mobilised National Guards from the different departments; and in these the young soldiers might often be seen keeping up their animal warmth by athletic sports and national dances. The first category of the army was composed of men drawn by conscription-that is to say, of regular, professional soldiers. The second class was formed of Mobiles; single men under fifty, capable of bearing arms, and who had in some cases served their time in the army, or had either purchased immunity from military service, or drawn a lucky number in the conscription. The third class consisted of National Guards, mobilised from time to time, according to the exigencies of the situation. The regulars and Mobiles were sent against the enemy; but the National Guards were formed into a body of reserve, and drilled in the practice of The effect of this immense drainage of ablebodied men from the ordinary fields of labour was that the country was left almost desolate, and that only women, children, and feeble old men were to be seen in the villages and small towns. Outpost skirmishes in the neighbourhood of Le Mans were of daily occurrence. The town was in part defended by several bodies of Francs-tireurs, composed of gentlemen of good families, who took their meagre pay of one franc per diem, and lived sumptuously on their own means. They are described as fighting desperately, and doing great execution amongst the foreposts of the enemy.* Yet the Germans continued to advance, and the French receded more and more.

war.

Châteaudun was once more entered by the Germans about the close of November. It was found almost deserted when the head of the 1st Bavarian Corps marched into the town. Up to a recent date some 20,000 or 30,000 French had been stationed in the vicinity; but they had all withdrawn by this time. In the town itself the poorer classes, who still clung to their homes, though the more wealthy had sought safer quarters, listened in fear and trembling for the sounds of distant contest, as the capture and partial destruction of the place on October 18th were still fresh in their memories. Not far from Châteaudun the 10th Infantry Regiment and the 9th Rifle Brigade of the Bavarians had an encounter with the rear-guard of the French, and took 150 prisoners, principally Francs-tireurs,

Morning Post correspondent with the Army of the West.

all of whom were armed with revolvers, and who had only one piece of artillery to answer the two guns of the Germans. The Bavarian infantry had very hard work with this incessant marching; and the boots of many were so worn that the men were almost barefooted. In some instances, indeed, they took the shoes off the feet of the peasantry, and appropriated them to their own use. The Uhlans also suffered much,' for they were the continual marks of the Francs tireurs, and were frequently picked off from behind hedges and walls. When the invaders could get into comfortable quarters at night, they would sometimes play and dance, with the light-heartedness commonly found among men who follow desperate lives; but, for the most part, a feeling of gloom and depression was observable about this period in the various German armies. The weather was becoming severe; it often snowed; and the contrast between marching in summer and marching in winter was very painfully felt. Even the patriotic Herr Wachenhusen was compelled to acknowledge this. He said that the German soldiers had still the same invincible spirit, but that now, when the skies were grey and clouded, and when the wind shook the last sere leaves over the whitened roads, the moments of rest after a toilsome march necessarily became moments of melancholy reflection. Thoughts of home, and of the loved ones awaiting the return of the absentees, would intrude unbidden into the minds of the watchers or dreamers round the camp-fire. In the evening there was stillness in the villages and cantonments; the streets were deserted, snow covered the roofs, and round the fires sat quiet, serious men, who hummed a melancholy tune. Yet, added Herr Wachenhusen, these were the men "who, as long as the sky was blue, marched with merry songs through France, and planted Germany's banner before the gates of Paris. To-day it was worse than yesterday; to-morrow it may be worse than to-day. But what matters? The Francs-tireurs will be no better off. We sleep in their beds, drink their wine, as far as there is any left in this region; and in the end this peasant war must terminate." Such was the cold comfort to which the Germans were reduced in the peculiarly harassing warfare which, from inability to pursue any other course, except in the neighbourhood of Orleans, the French had succeeded in imposing on their adversaries.

The truth is that the much-despised Francs-tireurs had become a veritable power, which the Germans felt, though they did not like to acknowledge it. The exasperation with which they always alluded to these guerillas is sufficient proof of the fact; but

there is other testimony.

respondent of the Times remarked that the Francstireurs were now a very important element in the war—not so much from the numbers of the enemy they killed as from the serious interruption they caused to that system of "tentacular feeling of the far-distant surrounding country" which had been one of the chief features of the German invasion of France. In the early days of the war the Uhlans would be sent forward, in small detached parties, thirty, forty, or fifty miles in advance of the main armies, collecting intelligence, and creating confusion and alarm by the apparent omnipresence of the invaders. Against this system the French, in their first paralysis of utter defeat, had nothing effectual to oppose.

"The Uhlan scouting system," continued the Times writer, "was as essential to the Prussian method of invasion as the long tentacles are to various marine animals, or as his long thin six or eight limbs are to the small central body of Daddy-Longlegs. Well, if they have not done much else, the omnipresent Francstireurs have clipped many, at least, of those important tentacles. We hear little more of the 'four Uhlans.' The German corps and divisions and minor massed bodies have to make their way about the country as they best can-sometimes in the dark, sometimes in twilight, but no longer in the blaze of noonday (to them), as they did at first. No wonder that a sagacious instinct prompted the great Prussian strategists to declare a war of extermination against them from the outset, to say that they were not regular, respectable, commissioned soldiers, entitled to the immunities of war when captured. At the beginning, in the eastern departments, there was some show of military justification for this position taken up by the Prussian authorities, when they could say that they could not distinguish between Francs-tireurs and peasants; that they had no distinctive dress, no public commission; that they were the illegitimate poachers of war, ready alike to kill a Uhlan at long range from behind a hedge, or to throw their gun into a ditch, and to appear trudging along their fields as the most innocent and inoffensive of bloused peasants. But the Francs-tireurs have now grown into a great, serious, and regular institution. Why have

they not a right to serve and defend their country, thus invaded, in this way, as well as in any other? Why have the wandering, far-penetrating Uhlans (splendid corps), who move audaciously in twos, and fours, and dozens, any right to greater immunities than they? And yet I understand the Prussians go on, and claim the right to go on, shooting every Franc-tireur off-hand as fast as they catch them. A great military mistake, in my judgment! The very peril makes the service the more honourable. It attracts all the more the daring

and devoted class of men; it makes them the more

desperate and unyielding in the field; it supports them under privation; it sharpens their aim; and it makes them sell their lives the more dearly when they find

Swarms of these freeshooters passed through Tours during the month of November. They came from every province of France, from Greece, from Italy, from Spain, from Algeria, from the United States and Canada, from Rio Janeiro and Montevideo. The costumes of some showed that the picturesque had been considered almost as much as the practical requirements of service. A writer from Tours said that the melodramatic brigand was largely represented, and that, the observer was constantly reminded of Fra Diavolo, and Massaroni, and other well-known theatrical celebrities. This was especially the case with the South American corps. Its chief, M, de Friès, was popularly called by the name of one of the heroes of M. Alexandre Dumas.

He was described as a tall, handsome young man, dressed in a Mousquetaire coat and plumed hat, with a light-coloured moustache of extraordinary length. He and his men wore the South American poncho, and they were said to carry with them a lasso, with which, after the fashion of the celebrated riders of the pampas, they could catch a horse while galloping at full speed, and bring it to the ground. The Basque battalion, composed of hardy mountaineers, showed to great advantage. A company from the Gers consisted of only fifty picked men, dressed in black, and as taciturn as the monks of La Trappe. More than half of the body had recently been killed in an encounter with the Germans; and twenty-two, who had been captured, were ordered to be shot. They were actually paraded for that purpose; but their gallant bearing in presence of imminent death excited the admiration of the enemy, and their lives were spared. Men of all ranks were to be found among these irregular combatants, and a battalion from Dauphiné had a distinguished lawyer for a trumpeter.

The farther the army of the Grand Duke got from Paris the more numerous did the Francstireurs become. "Hitherto," said a correspondent of the Cologne Gazette, "we have had to contend with soldiers; but now begins the war with the people. Surprises of single orderlies, of small detachments, of provision-wagons and field-posts, are the order of the day. Every tree, it may be said, is now inhabited by a blue-bloused Franctireur, who fires from behind it at every Prussian. The Francs-tireurs have ceased to be a distinct

class; every peasant, every artisan, is a Franctireur." Another German writer remarked:-" "The blindness which makes the peasantry grasp the musket is inconceivable. Their resistance is useless, as they already feel and confess; yet their fanaticism is always extreme. To realise all the misery which this foolish and fruitless national resistance brings on their families, one must see the incensed and haughty mien of the prisoners as they are carried away by hundreds, while the women stand weeping and wringing their hands at the doors of the villages, or throng the churches to pray for the rescue of the unfortunates out of the hands of the Prussians. Yet, whoever has luckily escaped from captivity, again seizes his gun, in order the more certainly to get into trouble." At Orleans, Bishop Dupanloup ordered the priests to preach a crusade against the enemy; as a consequence of which direction patrols were fired at

from every building and every hedge, and officers carrying orders were shot down by labourers working in the fields, who were secretly furnished with rifles. Numerous priests were arrested for partici pation in these acts, and the towns of Sens and Némours were severely punished for conniving at the surprise of Prussian detachments. These endeavours on the part of the French to arrest the invasion that was overwhelming them were in the result entirely unavailing; and it may be said, judging by the light of after events, that they were never likely to succeed, and were therefore imprudent. Yet it is impossible to blame men for risking all in the defence of their homesteads against foreign incursion. Such generous sacrifices will be made as long as any portion of the manhood of a nation remains; and when that is wholly gone, the permanent subjection of the country is at hand.

THE Comparative inaction which had characterised the month of November after the defeat of von der Tann, and which had only been broken by the strategical movements of German armies, and the feeble resistance from time to time of small bodies of French irregulars, was now about to give place to serious and important contests on a scale of great magnitude. General d'Aurelles de Paladines had let his best opportunity slip by, and the enemy had to some extent recovered the position of advantage which for a little while he had lost. Fronting or flanking the Army of the Loire were the forces of Prince Frederick Charles, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, and General von der Tann. The Army of the West, but recently dreaded by the Prussians, had been scattered into weak and ineffectual fragments; and d'Aurelles had now simply himself to rely on for resisting that onslaught of the combined armies with which he was threatened. A forward movement on the part of all those armies was commenced on the 26th of the month. The

Grand Duke (who, in the pursuit of Kératry, had marched across the department of the Eure-etLoire, and through the Orne and the Sarthe) advanced towards Le Mans; von der Tann in the direction of Châteaudun; and Prince Frederick Charles from Toury, Pithiviers, and Montargis, towards Beaune-la-Rolande and Orleans. The position, however, was not without danger for the Germans. Owing to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg having been sent so far westward in pursuit of the army of Kératry, he was at a considerable distance from von der Tann in the closing days of November. His movements were extremely slow, and have been likened to those of a corkscrew; for the swarms of Francs-tireurs who were continually firing upon his men from the shelter of woods and hedges, and whose exploits were related in the last chapter, had delayed, though they could not stop, his march. The consequence was that on the 26th of November there was a large gap between the forces of the Grand Duke and General von der