ilway
viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night.
Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a
long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers
to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the
Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. The German army
moves in one piece, in one absolute unity; the Crown Prince of Saxony
is on the height of Mairy, whence he surveys the whole action; the
command oscillates in the French army; at the beginning of the battle,
at a quarter to six, MacMahon is wounded by the bursting of a shell;
at seven o'clock Ducrot replaces him; at ten o'clock Wimpfen replaces
Ducrot. Every instant the wall of fire is drawing closer in, the roll
of the thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men!
Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an
army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At
one o'clock all is lost! The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan!
But Sedan begins to burn, Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there
is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and
resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. The Third Zouaves, desperate,
have set the example. Cut off from the rest of the army, they have
forced a passage and have reached Belgium. A flight of lions!

Suddenly, above the disaster, above the huge pile of dead and dying,
above all this unfortunate heroism, appears disgrace. The white flag
is hoisted.

BAZAINE AND METZ.

A letter of Count Von Moltke has recently been published, showing that
the question of the conquest of France was under consideration by the
Count and Bismarck as early as August of 1866. It is demonstrated that
these two powerful spirits were already preparing, aye, had already
prepared, to trip the Emperor Louis Napoleon, throwing him and his
Empire into a common ruin. The letter also proves that the plan of the
North-German Confederation, under the leadership of Prussia, with
German unity and a German Empire just beyond, was already clearly in
mind by the far-sighted leaders who surrounded King William in 1866.
Count Von Moltke shows that it was possible and practicable _at that
date_, and within a period of two or three weeks, to throw upon the
French border so tremendous an army that resistance would be
impossible. The antecedents of the Franco-Prussian War had been
clearly thought out by th