nnoissance was made that night; the guards were
not doubled. The French believed themselves more than forty miles
from the German army. They behaved as if they thought that army
unconcentrated and ill-informed, attempting vaguely several things
at once, and incapable of converging on one point, namely, Sedan.
They thought they knew that the column under the Prince of Saxony
was marching upon Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia
was marching upon Metz.

"But that night, while the French army, in fancied security, was
sleeping at Sedan, this is what was passing among the enemy.

"By a quarter to two A. M. the army of the Prince of Saxony was
on its march eastward, with orders not to fire a shot till five
o'clock, and to make as little noise as possible. They marched
without baggage of any kind. At the same hour another division of
the Prussian army marched, with equal noiselessness, from another
direction, on Sedan, while the Wuertemburgers secured the road to
Mezieres, thereby cutting off the possibility of a retreat into
Belgium.

"At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on all the hills around
Sedan, at all points of the compass, appeared a dense, dark mass
of German troops, with their commanders and artillery. Not one
sound had been heard by the French army, not even an order. Two
hundred and fifty thousand men were in a circle on the heights round
the Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily and as silently as
serpents. They were there when the sun rose, and the French army
were prisoners."

The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded every
part of the crowded valley. Indeed, the fight was simply a massacre.
There was no hope for the French, though they fought bravely. Their
best troops, the Garde Imperiale, were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal
MacMahon was wounded very early in the day. The command passed
first to General Ducrot, who was also disabled, and afterwards to
Wimpfen, a brave African general who had hurried from Algeria just
in time to take part in this disastrous day. He told the emperor
that the only hope was for the troops to cut their way out of the
valley; but the army was too closely crowded, too disorganized,
to make this practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this
feat, and reached Belgium.

That night--the night of September 1--an aide-de-camp of the Emperor
Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the king of Prussia:--

MONSIEUR MON FRERE,--Not havi