"By a quarter to two A. M. the army of the Prince of Saxony was on its march eastward, with orders not to fire a shot till five o'clock, and to make as little noise as possible. They marched without baggage of any kind. At the same hour another division of the Prussian army marched, with equal noiselessness, from another direction, on Sedan, while the Würtemburgers secured the road to Mézières, thereby cutting off the possibility of a retreat into Belgium. "At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compass, appeared a dense, dark mass of German troops, with their commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand men were in a circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They were there when the sun rose, and the French army were prisoners." The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded every part of the crowded valley. Indeed, the fight was simply a massacre. There was no hope for the French, though they fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Impériale, were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early in the day. The command passed first to General Ducrot, who was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and reached Belgium. That night--the night of September 1--an aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the king of Prussia:-- MONSIEUR MON FRÈRE,--Not having been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty. I am your Majesty's good brother, NAPOLEON. The king of Prussia replied,-- MONSIEUR MON FRÈRE,--Regretting the circumstances under which we meet, I accept the sword of your Majesty, and I invite you to designate one of your officers, provided with full powers, to treat for the capitulation of the army which has so bravely fought under your command. On my side I have named General von Moltke for that purpose. I am your Majesty's good brother, WILLIAM. Before Sedan, Sept. 1, 1870. "The next morning early, a carriage containing four French officers drove out from Sedan, and came into the German lines. The carriage had an escort of only three horsemen. When it had reached the Germans, one of its occupants put out his head and asked, in German, for Count von Bismarck? The Germans replied that he was at Donchéry. Thither the carriage dashed away. It contained the French emperor."