How this war proceeded I need not recount. You have all read the record day by day, sorrowing for Humanity,--how, after briefest interval of preparation or hesitation, the two combatants first crossed swords at Saarbrücken, within the German frontier, and the young Prince Imperial performed his part in picking up a bullet from the field, which the Emperor promptly reported by telegraph to the Empress,--how this little military success is all that was vouchsafed to the man who began the war,--how soon thereafter victory followed, first on the hill-sides of Wissembourg and then of Woerth, shattering the army of MacMahon, to which the Empire was looking so confidently,--how another large army under Bazaine was driven within the strong fortress of Metz,--how all the fortresses, bristling with guns and frowning upon Germany, were invested,--how battle followed battle on various fields, where Death was the great conqueror,--how, with help of modern art, war showed itself to be murder by machinery,--how MacMahon, gathering together his scattered men and strengthening them with reinforcements, attempted to relieve Bazaine,--how at last, after long marches, his large army found itself shut up at Sedan with a tempest of fire beating upon its huddled ranks, so that its only safety was capitulation,--how with the capitulation of the army was the submission of the Emperor himself, who gave his sword to the King of Prussia and became prisoner of war,--and how, on the reception of this news at Paris, Louis Napoleon and his dynasty were divested of their powers and the Empire was lost in the Republic. These things you know. I need not dwell on them. Not to battles and their fearful vicissitudes, where all is incarnadined with blood, must we look, but to the ideas which prevail,--as for the measure of time we look, not to the pendulum in its oscillations, but to the clock in the tower, whose striking tells the hours. A great hour for Humanity sounded when the Republic was proclaimed. And this I say, even should it fail again; for every attempt contributes to the final triumph. A WAR OF SURPRISES. The war, from the pretext at its beginning to the capitulation at Sedan, has been a succession of surprises, where the author of the pretext was a constant sufferer. Nor is this strange. Falstaff says, with humorous point, “See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when ’tis upon ill employment!”[194]--and another character, in a play of Beaumont and Fletcher, reveals the same evil destiny in stronger terms, when he says,-- “Hell gives us art to reach the depth of sin, But leaves us wretched fools, when we are in.”[195]