remaining divisions poured forward through Lower Alsace in pursuit of MacMahon. The Second Army advancing from the Rhineland, swept across the Saar in immense forces, and passed into the north of Lorraine, driving before it the feeble French corps now seeking a refuge under the guns of Metz. Meanwhile, the Third Army made a parallel movement; and, uniting with the right of the Second, marched rapidly in overwhelming front on Metz, already threatening with its right wing to overlap and surround the great fortress. By the 18th August, 300,000 Germans with large reserves in their immediate rear had made good their way into France, and from Strasburg to Thionville and thence into the heart of Lorraine, were taking military possession of the country and menacing with ruin the enemy in their path. During this mighty advance of the Germans, the strategic operations of the French, in part owing to the bad disposition of their forces for combined movements, and in part to the weakness of their commanders, had been characterised by much indecision. MacMahon, indeed, had effected his retreat from the field of Woerth with the wreck of his troops, and escaped safely through the Vosges passes; and though his corps was almost ruined, he had shown some ability in getting away, for he ought to have been destroyed by the Germans. In fact, the pursuit of the Crown Prince had not been marked by energy or speed, whatever indiscriminate flatterers may urge; his own reports more than once refer to the comparative slackness of his cavalry or at least to their extreme caution. De Failly, too, though the disaster at Woerth must be laid to a great extent to his charge, had been prompt in breaking up from Bitsche, and he had succeeded in approaching MacMahon without being caught by the enemy; his escape, however, being in a great measure due to the resistance made by the fortress of Bitsche, which retarded the march of one of the Crown Prince's columns. The broken right of the French army, though its losses had been terrible, and its morale was destroyed, was, in a word, making good its way to Châlons; and, as the corps of Douay was moving towards it, and as the whole mass was about to concentrate, we cannot find fault with these arrangements. But in the remaining part of the theatre of war the French dispositions revealed nothing but feebleness, vacillation, and want of forethought. The instant Woerth and Forbach were fought, and the right and right centre of the French were forced back on either side of the Vosges, it cannot be doubted that the whole French army ought to have retreated in a parallel line; and it ought certainly to have retired on Châlons, having thrown a strong garrison into Metz, for it was at Châlons only that it could hope to reunite, and when there it would be in a position to save Paris and defend the interior on the well-known lines of the Marne and Seine. To effect this would not have been easy, for the disseminated state of the