At the outset of the Franco-German War, he applied for active service, but the imperial authorities would not employ him in France. In spite of the associations of his family with the first Empire, he was, like Trochu, accounted an Orleanist, and it was not desired that any Orleanist general should have an opportunity to distinguish himself in the contemplated "march on Berlin." Marshal MacMahon, however, as Governor of Algeria, had formed a high opinion of Chanzy's merits, and after Sedan, anxious as he was for his country in her predicament, the Marshal, then a prisoner of war, found a means of advising the National Defence to make use of Chanzy's services. That patriotic intervention, which did infinite credit to MacMahon, procured for Chanzy an appointment at the head of the 16th Army Corps, and later the chief command of the Second Loire Army. When I first saw him in the latter days of 1870, he was in his fifty-eighth year, well built, and taller than the majority of French officers. His fair hair and fair moustache had become grey; but his blue eyes had remained bright, and there was an expression of quiet resolution on his handsome, well-cut face, with its aquiline nose and energetic jaw. Such, physically, was the general whom Moltke subsequently declared to have been the best that France opposed to the Germans throughout the war. I never once saw Chanzy excited, in which respect he greatly contrasted with many of the subordinate commanders. Jaureguiberry was sometimes carried away by his Basque, and Gougeard by his Celtic, blood. So it was with Jaures, who, though born in Paris, had, like his nephew the Socialist leader, the blood of the Midi in his veins. Chanzy, however, belonged to a calmer, a more quietly resolute northern race.