Chapter XIII · (continued 2)

For one day more the fallen sovereign rested at Bellevue to meditate on the caprices of fortune or the decrees of fate. But that day, at the head of a splendid company of princes and generals, King William, crossing the bridge of Donchery, rode throughout the whole vast extent of the German lines, to greet his hardy warriors and be greeted by them on the very scene of their victories. And well they deserved regal gratitude, for together with their comrades who surrounded Metz, by dint of long swift marches and steadfast valour, they had overcome two great Armies in thirty days.

During the battle of Sedan, the Germans lost in killed and wounded 8,924 officers and men. On the other hand, the French lost 3,000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 captured in the battle. The number of prisoners by capitulation was 83,000, while 3,000 were disarmed in Belgium, and a few hundreds, more or less, made their way by devious routes near and over the frontier, to Mézières, Rocroi, and other places in France. In addition, were taken one eagle and two flags, 419 field guns and mitrailleuses, 139 garrison guns, many wagons, muskets, and horses. On the day after the surrender, the French soldiers, having stacked their arms in Sedan, marched into the peninsula formed by the deep loop of the Meuse—“le Camp de Misère” as they called it—and were sent thence in successive batches, numbered by thousands, to Germany. Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and the Paris politicians. Directed by General Vinoy, who was an able soldier, the troops brought to Mézières, escaped by rapid and clever marches from the German cavalry and the 6th Corps, and formed the nucleus of the improvised Army which afterwards defended the capital.

The End.

On the 3rd of September the Emperor Napoleon III. departed from Bellevue on his journey to the Castle of Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel. The morning was wet and gloomy, and a thunderstorm was gathering among the hills of the Ardennes. The Imperial baggage-train had been permitted to leave Sedan, and was drawn up on the road ready to start. Columns of prisoners also were moving out of the fortress and marching towards the peninsula formed by the Meuse. It was a lugubrious scene, and the superstitious might remark that as the sun shone resplendently on the German victory, so his light was obscured when the captive Emperor drove through the muddy streets of Donchery and thence to the northward, wrapped in the sombre mist and thickly falling rain. And as he journeyed, disconsolately, in the forenoon, upon the road to Bouillon, orders went forth from the German head-quarters, where time was never lost, directing the conquering generals to leave the 11th and one Bavarian Corps on guard over Sedan and the thousands of unhappy prisoners, and resume, with all the rest, that march on the capital of France which had been so abruptly interrupted only eight days before. So the victors and the vanquished went their different ways.

The Emperor travelled without haste, and on the evening of the 4th he slept at Verviers. The next morning he learned, in common with all Europe, indeed all the civilized world, that the fires which seethe under the bright surface of society in Paris had once more burst through the thin crust of use and wont, and that the dynasty of the Bonapartes had been utterly overthrown at a blow to make way for the Republic. Like intelligence reached the King of Prussia, also, at his head-quarters, which, on the 5th, were already in Reims. The contrast is painful. The King saw his hopes of an early peace destroyed; but his was a solidly planted throne and he was the leader of irresistible armies. The Emperor knew that his fond dream of founding an Imperial House had been dispelled in an hour by a blast of national wrath; and, being a kindly man, his agony was the keener because, as he pathetically says, “he was separated from his son, and knew not what fate had befallen the Empress.” Racked by such sad reflections, at the very time when his wife was escaping to England, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte went, by railway, from Verviers to Wilhelmshöhe. There, during a luxurious captivity of six months, he had ample leisure to meditate on the causes which led to the catastrophe of Sedan and the surrender of Metz; and to ascertain, if he could, why, after a second trial, ending in the third entry of hostile troops into Paris, the French nation had lost its belief in the saving qualities of a family bearing a name which, if associated with undying “glory,” has also become indissolubly linked with bitter memories of lost provinces and gigantic military disasters.