cannot acquit him of want of resolution, though sheer ignorance and incapacity did not lead him to make the greatest of blunders ever made perhaps by a commander-in-chief. Our space precludes us from describing at length the series of great events that ensued. On the 22nd of August MacMahon's army, already giving melancholy proofs of weakness, indiscipline, and insubordination, had reached Rheims from the camp of Châlons; and on the 23rd it was on its way to Rethel. The march of the columns was extremely sluggish, in consequence of the bad organisation of the troops, and eye-witnesses have recorded that the unfortunate marshal was even now evidently dispirited and anxious. Rethel was not passed until the 25th; and as the movement to the Meuse and the Argmues was to be accomplished as soon as possible, MacMahon divided his army into three parts; one to go northward, by railway to Mézières, and the other two to advance easterly by Vouziers and Nouart, and Le Chène and Stonne. The Emperor and his ill-fated child attended mournfully the doomed army, but if we are to credit newspaper reports, Napoleon III. still felt confident that he was marching to assured victory. Though the dispositions of the French marshal were evidently made with a view to speed, the movement of his columns was exceedingly slow, no doubt owing to their inefficient state, and also probably to commissariat defects; and even by the morning of the 29th they had only attained Nouart and Stonne, that is, they were still a day's march from the Meuse, which they ought to have found on the 28th. These delays aggravating the inherent perils of a strategic plan essentially vicious, were sure to lead to disastrous consequences; and while MacMahon had been going northwards the German commanders had been preparing the means of utterly overwhelming him. On the 19th and 20th of August, after Bazaine had been shut up in Metz, a fourth German army had been despatched, under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony, to co-operate with that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and it had been moved by Verdun, on St. Menehould, to be in readiness for any event. Meanwhile the third German army, after passing Nancy, had advanced on the great road to Paris to Ligny and Bar le Duc, its light cavalry, the well-known Uhlans, having scoured the whole country to beyond Châlons. By the 24th the Crown Prince of Prussia, who had been rejoined by the king from Metz, had his head-quarters at Bar le Duc, and when there the news arrived that MacMahon had broken up from the camp, and was aiming northward toward Mézières and Rethel. The plan of the French was immediately perceived by the eminent strategist who in this campaign had been the genius of the German armies, and he proceeded to defeat it, and ensure victory. Orders were at once issued to the Crown Prince of Saxony to move northerly towards the Meuse, and intercept the heads of MacMahon's columns; while the third German army, under the