On November 9, D'Aurelle de Paladines defeated Von der Tann at Coulmiers, west of Orleans. The young French troops behaved extremely well, but the victory not being followed up with sufficient vigour by D'Aurelle, remained somewhat incomplete, though it constrained the Germans to evacuate Orleans. On the whole this was the first considerable success achieved by the French since the beginning of the war, and it did much to revive the spirits which had been drooping since the fall of Metz. Another of its results was to change Ducrot's plans respecting the Paris sortie. He and Trochu had hitherto taken little account of the provincial armies, and the success of Coulmiers came to them as a surprise and a revelation. There really was an army of the Loire, then, and it was advancing on Paris from Orleans. The Parisian forces must therefore break out on the south-east and join hands with this army of relief in or near the forest of Fontainebleau. Thus, all the preparations for a sortie by way of Gennevilliers were abandoned, and followed by others for an attempt in the direction of Champigny. Such was roughly the position at the time when I reached Brittany and conceived the idea of joining the French forces on the Loire and forwarding some account of their operations to England. During my stay in Paris with my father I had assisted him in preparing several articles, and had written others on my own account. My eldest brother, Adrian Vizetelly, was at this time assistant-secretary at the Institution of Naval Architects. He had been a student at the Royal School of Naval Architecture with the Whites, Elgars, Yarrows, Turnbulls, and other famous shipbuilders, and on quitting it had taken the assistant-secretaryship in question as an occupation pending some suitable vacancy in the Government service or some large private yard. The famous naval constructor, E. J. Reed, had started in life in precisely the same post, and it was, indeed, at his personal suggestion that my brother took it. A year or two later he and his friend Dr. Francis Elgar, subsequently Director of Dockyards and one of the heads of the Fairfield Shipbuilding Company, were assisting Reed to run his review _Naval Science_. At the time of the Franco-German war, however, my brother, then in his twenty-sixth year, was writing on naval subjects for the _Daily News_ and the _Pall Mall Gazette,_ edited respectively by John Robinson and Frederick Greenwood. A few articles written by me during my siege days were sent direct to the latter by balloon-post, but I knew not what their fate might be. The _Pall Mall_ might be unable to use them, and there was no possibility of their being returned to me in Paris. My father, whom I assisted in preparing a variety of articles, suggested that everything of this kind--that is, work not intended for the _Illustrated London News_--should be sent to my brother for him to deal with as opportunity offered. He placed a few articles with