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Updated: June 12, 2025
Bismarck replied that Jules Favre was assured that the garrisons of those fortresses were staunchly Republican; but that his own belief was that Bazaine's army of the Rhine was probably Imperialist. Then Regnier offered to go at once to Metz. "If you had come a week earlier," said Bismarck, "it was yet time; now, I fear, it is too late."
The Count himself had sat in the Legislative Body of the Second Empire, but had begun life as a soldier, serving both in the Crimea and in Mexico, in which latter country he had acted as one of Bazaine's orderly officers.
The lost ground being thus regained, and the French having been beaten on their right, it was not long before word came that Bazaine's army was falling back to Metz, leaving the entire battle-field in possession of the Germans.
It had become necessary to demand a sacrifice from the cavalry for the good of the army, to enable Prince Frederick Charles, with only 24,000 infantry, to hold in check Bazaine's army of 180,000 until his own main body came up. Bredow's cavalry brigade consisted of six squadrons of the 7th Cuirassiers and the 16th Uhlans.
Bazaine's army was needed, not in a fortified town, but in the field. It was a tremendous force. The army that Prince Frederick Charles locked up in Metz could have marched from Parthia to Spain against the resistance of the whole Roman Empire, at the high noon of that imperial power!
It will be remembered that Orizaba was for a considerable time the headquarters of General Bazaine's army, and it was here that the French general finally, in 1866, bade good-by to the ill-fated Maximilian, whose cause he deserted by order of his royal master, Napoleon the Little.
Bazaine's surrender made the Germans masters of one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, with 800 heavy guns, 102 mitrailleuses, 300,000 Chassepots, and placed at the disposal of the king an entire blockading army. It was at this juncture that Gambetta astonished the world. Reaching Tours in a balloon from Paris, and there assuming the ministry of war, he became practically dictator of France.
M. Berton came. I read to him L'Expiation, which he is to read. M. and Mme. Meurice and d'Alton-Shee were present at the reading. News has arrived that Metz has capitulated and that Bazaine's army has surrendered. Bills announcing the reading of Les Chatiments have been posted. M. Raphael Felix came to tell me the time at which the rehearsal is to take place tomorrow.
Just listen to the bloody fool, saying he is at Angouleme!" It was impossible to extract any explanation from Lapoulle. He had insisted that morning that the uhlans that they sighted were some of Bazaine's troops. Then darkness descended on the camp, black as ink, silent as death.
The first of these gross faults was the fight at Worth, where MacMahon, before his army was mobilized, accepted battle with the Crown Prince, pitting 50,000 men against 175,000; the next was Bazaine's fixing upon Metz as his base, and stupidly putting himself in position to be driven back to it, when there was no possible obstacle to his joining forces with MacMahon at Chalons; while the third and greatest blunder of all was MacMahon's move to relieve Metz, trying to slip 140,000 men along the Belgian frontier.
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