Every day in the provincial towns the war fever grew fiercer. The bugle sounded incessantly in the streets of any place where there were troops in garrison. Regiment followed regiment on its way into Paris, changing quarters or marching to depots to receive equipments. Orderlies galloped madly about, and heavy ammunition wagons lumbered noisily over the pavements. Everybody shouted "A Berlin," and took up the chorus of the "Marseillaise." The post-offices and telegraph-offices were crowded with soldiers openly dictating their messages to patient officials who put them into shape, and it was said that nearly every telegram contained the words, "Please send me..." Alas, poor fellows! it is probable that nothing sent them in reply was ever received.[1] [Footnote 1: I am indebted for much in this chapter to a private journal.] Parisians or residents in Paris all believed at that time in the prestige of the French army; only here and there a German exile muttered in his beard something about Sadowa. On July 27 all Paris assembled on the Boulevards to see the Garde Impériale take its departure for the frontier. This Imperial Guard was a choice corps created by Napoleon III. at the outset of the Crimean War. It was a force numbering nominally twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. It was a very popular corps, and the war with Germany was popular; consequently the march from its barracks to the railroad station was one continued triumph. At every halt the Parisians pressed into the ranks with gifts of money, wine, and cigars. "Vive l'armée!" shouted the multitude. "A Berlin!" responded the troops; and now and then, as the bands struck up the "Marseillaise," the population and the troops burst out in chorus with the solemn, spirit-stirring words. At the head of this brilliant host rode Marshal Le Bœuf, who was minister of war and military tutor to the Prince Imperial. After the departure of the main body of the corps, large detachments of cavalry and artillery which belonged to it were expected to follow; but they remained behind in the provinces, because Lyons, Marseilles, and Algeria, all centres of the revolutionary spirit, could not, it was found, be left without armed protection. Therefore only a portion of the crack corps of the French army went forward to the frontier,--a fact never suspected by the public until events, a few weeks later, made it known.