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Ducrot had been stubbornly holding ground near Mendon for two or three days, much to the embarrassment of the Germans too, since he kept them from closing a gap in their line to the southwest of Paris; but in the recent fight he had been driven from the field with such heavy loss as to render impossible his maintaining the gap longer.
To this General Vinoy acceded, but Count Moltke refused to treat with Trochu's General, who was drunk, and the chief of General Vinoy's staff had to be substituted. General Ducrot is still here.
He had felt that the army was doomed, and for the last twenty-four hours had been strenuously recommending the occupation of Illy and Saint-Menges in order to keep a way of retreat open on Mezieres. "Ducrot will carry out the plan we talked of yesterday: the whole army is to be concentrated on the plateau of Illy." And he repeated his previous gesture, as if to say it was too late.
A decree has been issued ordering a company of 150 men to be mobilised in each battalion of the National Guard. Three of these companies are together to form a mobilised battalion, and to elect their commander. The Journal Officiel contains two long reports upon the works of defence which have been executed since the commencement of the siege. They give the number of guns on each bastion, and the number of rounds to each gun, the number of cartridges, and the amount of powder in store. Unless these reports be patriotic fictions, it seems strange to publish them in the newspapers, as they must inevitably fall into the hands of the Prussians. Be this as it may, I do not feel at liberty to quote from them. General Ducrot publishes a letter protesting against a statement of the German journals that he escaped from Pont-
The general had already left the table, and was smoking in a small study. With him were Generals Ducrot and Vinoy. General Trochu rose, and shook him cordially by the hand; presented him to the other generals, and asked him to take a cigar, and sit down. "Generals Ducrot and Vinoy are surprised, I see, at your appearance, Captain Barclay," General Trochu began.
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 would make a good Minister of War in quiet times, but he is about as fit to command in the present emergency as Mr. Cardwell would be. His two principal military subordinates, Vinoy and Ducrot, are excellent Generals of Division, but nothing more. As for his civilian colleagues, they are one and all hardly more practical than Professor Fawcett.
De Wimpffen, we say, paid little heed to the remonstrances of Generals Douay and Ducrot at leaving the northern apex and the north-western front of the defence to be crushed by weight of metal and of numbers. He rode off towards Balan, near which village the former defenders of Bazeilles were making a gallant and partly successful stand, and no reinforcements were sent to the hills on the north.
At length, in about the middle of the afternoon, Claude heard the tramp of men approaching his prison; the door was opened, and he saw an officer enter, while three marines, with fixed bayonets, stood outside. "Have I the honor of speaking to Captain Ducrot?" asked Claude. "I am Captain Ducrot," said the other.
And the inevitable accusation of treason was again made to do duty; Ducrot and de Wimpffen wanted to get three millions apiece out of Bismarck, as MacMahon had done. Alone in advance of his staff General Douay sat on his horse a long time, his gaze bent on the distant positions of the enemy and in his eyes an expression of infinite melancholy.
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