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Updated: May 29, 2025
The overthrow of the Geraldines and their allies in the South, the plantation of English Undertakers in the lands of the Earl of Desmond, the seizure of MacMahon's country, and the attempted plantation of Clandeboy, the appointments of presidents of Munster and Connaught, the reduction of several counties to shire-lands, the nomination of sheriffs to enforce English law, and the establishment of garrisons in several parts of the country, made it clear to any thoughtful Irishman that unless some steps were taken at once, the complete reduction of their country was only a matter of a few years.
The battle of Courcelles or Pange, on August 14, was followed two days later by that of Vionville or Mars-la-Tour, and, after yet another two days, came the great struggle of Gravelotte, and Bazaine was thrown back on Metz. At the Chalons conference it had been decided that the Emperor should return to Paris and that MacMahon's army also should retreat towards the capital.
The screen of cavalry which preceded the Army of the Meuse passed that river on the 22nd, when the bulk of the forces of the Crown Prince of Prussia crossed not many miles farther to the south. The two armies swept on westwards within easy distance of one another; and on the 23rd their cavalry gleaned news of priceless value, namely, that MacMahon's army had left Châlons.
It was the last favorable report, for they were quickly overwhelmed with tidings of defeat and disaster. Weissenburg, on the borders of Rhenish Bavaria, had been invested by a division of MacMahon's army.
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.
MacMahon's division, which assaulted with forty-five hundred bayonets and two hundred officers, lost in killed and wounded just half its strength.
With the hemming in of Bazaine at Metz and the capture of MacMahon's army at Sedan the crisis of the war was passed, and the Germans practically the victors.
In May, preceding Foch's advent, the communards led by a miserable little shoemaker who talked about shooting all the world took possession of the buildings belonging to the Polytechnic, and were dislodged only after severe fighting by Marshal MacMahon's Versailles troops. One shell burst in the midst of an improvised hospital there, gravely wounding a nurse.
The municipality sent out delegates with the keys of the city to Victor Emmanuel. At ten a.m. on the 7th, MacMahon's corps began to file down the streets. Words cannot describe the welcome given to them. How MacMahon lifted to his saddle-bow a child that was in danger of being crushed by the crowd will be remembered from the pretty incident having passed into English poetry.
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