How much these and other indulgences impeded the military effort of the Crown Prince’s men, how much they strengthened the spirit of the French soldiers, may be supposed, but not measured. They mark with an odious emphasis for history the hour not only of a signal defeat, but of a profound disillusionment, which was to deepen slowly to the utter discredit of a system and an idea hitherto not seriously challenged. The game was played; with rage, the Prince Imperial submitted. Having held his left impassive for a day, while the right pivoted slowly backward toward the Argonne, on the night of September 12 the order was given for a general and rapid withdrawal; and on the following days, the French 4th and 3rd Armies found themselves in face of new enemy lines drawn iron the Moronvilliers hills near Rheims, by Souain, Ville-sur-Tourbe, and Varennes, to the Meuse at Forges, 8 miles north of Verdun. The Châlons–Verdun road and railway were disengaged, a result of great importance, and the old fortress, with its outposts on the Meuse Heights, was definitively relieved. The Crown Prince pitched his tent on the feudal eyrie of Montfaucon. General Sarrail picked up his direct communications with Paris, faced round to Metz and the north, and prepared for the future. And the master of the victorious host? On September 11, he had issued the following “Ordre general No. 15”: “_The battle that has been proceeding for five days is ending in incontestable victory. The retreat of the German I, II, and III Armies is accentuated before our left and our centre. In its turn, the IV enemy Army has begun to fall back to the north of Vitry-le-François and Sermaize. Everywhere the enemy is leaving on the ground many wounded and quantities of munitions. Everywhere prisoners are being taken. While they advance our troops note the marks of the intensity of the struggle, and the importance of the means employed by the Germans to resist our onset. The vigorous renewal of the offensive determined our success. Officers and soldiers, you have all answered my appeal. You have deserved well of the Fatherland._” In a telegram to the Minister of War, he added: “The Government of the Republic may be proud of the armies it has organised.” Neither then nor later did any phrase more worthy of the occasion than these fall from the pen or the lips of the Generalissimo. In success as in failure, he was the same silent, weighty, cheerful figure——Joffre the Taciturn, to the end. CHAPTER X THE DEFENCE OF THE EAST