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Updated: June 3, 2025
The recent fall of that stronghold and the conduct of Marshal Bazaine supplied the chief subject of the conversation carried on at the Creteil outposts between the officers of the contending nations. Now and then, too, came a reference to Sedan and the overthrow of the Bonapartist Empire.
Much progress had been made in both respects, when, after the result of the battle of Gravelotte had been known in Paris, he received instructions from the Count of Palikao to march with the four army corps at his disposal northward toward the Meuse, and to give a hand to the beleaguered Bazaine. MacMahon prepared to obey. But circumstances ordered otherwise.
General Bazaine was at this time the most popular man in the army. Hitherto eminently successful in all his military undertakings, he had risen from the ranks, having won his honors step by step upon the battle-field, at first by his courage, later by his remarkable military ability.
Indeed, it is exasperating and sickening to think of all this; to think that Bazaine carried into Metz a place that should have been held, if at all, with not over 25,000 men an army of 180,000, because it contained, the excuse was, "an accumulation of stores."
MacMahon was cut off from Bazaine, and in the gigantic battles at Bézonville and Gravelotte, Bazaine, with his force of one hundred and fifty thousand men, was driven back into Metz. Strasburg was besieged, and MacMahon cut off from the road to Paris. In every battle that was fought the Prussians remained masters of the field, and it was always they who took charge of the wounded.
Yet in spite of this disadvantage, Cannes is for its size a busy and populous little town. Immediately opposite are the Isles de Lerins, St. Honorat and St. Marguerite. On the latter is Fort Montuy, where the "man with the iron mask" was confined from 1686 to 1698, and which has more recently been the prison of Marshal Bazaine. St.
It was uncertain whether or not the dispatch for Bazaine would get through, for communication with Metz had seemed to be interrupted for the past few days, but the second dispatch was another and more serious matter; and lowering his voice almost to a whisper the apothecary repeated the words that he had heard uttered by an officer of rank: "If they get wind of this in Paris, our goose is cooked!"
I want to see something on a larger scale, not that the Metz business isn't large enough two hundred thousand men, six hundred cannon and the Red Prince licking their chops and getting up an appetite for poor old Bazaine and his battered, diseased, starved, disheartened army, caged under the forts and citadel of a city scarcely provisioned for a regiment."
By the bye, the question of the treason of Bazaine turns with us upon what your correspondent at Saarbruck meant by the word "stores," which he says were discovered in Metz. If munitions of war, we say that Bazaine was a hero; if food, that he was a traitor. If sieges were likely to occur frequently, the whole system of ambulances, as against military hospitals, would have to be ventilated.
The latter movement was determined on by the French, but was carried out in a dubious and uncertain manner, the time lost giving abundant opportunity to the Germans to learn what was afoot and to prepare to prevent it. As soon as they were aware of MacMahon's intention of proceeding to Metz they made speedy preparations to prevent his relieving Bazaine.
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