With the exception of three divisions (30,000 men) and the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orleans and Chateaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade. Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. "Everything was ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses," has been said by an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event. The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honorable peace; this was almost certain. Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies. At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already numbering 80,000 men. If it had pushed between the Bavarians at Orleans and the Prussians at Chateaudun; if--and this was an easy matter with its numerical superiority--it beat the enemy one after another, the route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris almost sure. The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to recovering Orleans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionist, at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. Instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles established before Blois, disposed of 40,000 men at least, and the next day he was to have left for Orleans.