would have made them pay for their temerity. Not until a late hour did the news of the battle reach the king, who had established his head-quarters at Herny, on the railway. Prince Frederick Charles, at Pont à Mousson, was only informed of the event the next morning. His Army, the Second, had been engaged in marching up to and towards the Moselle, and at eventide the several Corps halted at these points. The 4th Corps was over the Seille, and not far from Custines and Marbache, places just below the confluence of the Meurthe and Moselle; the Guard had one division a little lower down at Dieulouard; the 10th Corps, entire, was at Pont à Mousson, with a brigade to the westward; the 3rd, the 9th, and the 12th, were facing the Moselle between Pont à Mousson and the left of the First Army, prepared either to frustrate a French advance up the right bank—a possible movement always present to the mind of Von Moltke—or cross the river. The 2nd Corps had come up to Falquemont; and a Reserve Landwehr Division, under General Kummer, was being organized at Saarlouis. To complete the survey, it should be added that Gneisenau’s Brigade, sent to surprise Thionville, an enterprise which failed, was returning to rejoin the First Army; and that on the evening of the 14th, the foremost troops of the Crown Prince’s Army were some squadrons of cavalry in Nancy, and an infantry brigade in Lunéville. _The French Retreat._ Throughout the night the wearied French divisions, which had been either engaged in combat or standing under arms, filed over the Moselle, and the Emperor took up his quarters at Longeville, outside the town. Marshal Bazaine’s order, dated the 13th, directed the whole Army on the road to Gravelotte, whence one portion was to continue by Mars la Tour, and the other turn off to the right and march on Conflans. The rigorous construction of the Marshal’s order yields that interpretation, but he contended, at his trial, that he merely indicated the general lines of retreat upon Verdun, and that the Staff and Corps Commanders should have used any and every road or track which would have served the main purpose. There are, or at least were, in 1870, only two roads out of Metz available for the march of heavy columns of troops of all arms and large trains—the excellent highway to Gravelotte, which is a long defile, and the road through Woippy, turning the uplands on the north. All the intermediate lanes or cross-roads are rugged and narrow, and only one, that passing by Lessy, has or had any pretension to the character of an inferior village road. Guns and carts can move along and up them in Indian file, but not easily if numerous, and nowhere at a good pace. Thus, even, on the 14th, the Corps of Frossard and Canrobert, who both started late, found the Gravelotte road so encumbered by trains that they could only make their way slowly, and did not arrive at Rozerieulles until after dark. The Emperor was still at Longeville, anxiously awaiting the issue of