It is impossible to state exactly the numbers present on the field—probably, 125,000 French to 77,000 Germans. The latter brought up two complete Corps, the 3rd and 10th, two divisions of cavalry, the 5th and 6th—these sustained the shock and bore the chief loss—a brigade of the 8th Corps, the 11th Regiment from the 9th, and four Hessian regiments of that corps under Prince Louis, the husband of the British Princess Alice. They also had, in action or reserve, 246 guns. The French mustered the Imperial Guard, the 2nd Corps, three divisions and one regiment of the 6th Corps, three divisions of the 3rd, and two of the 4th Corps, five divisions of cavalry, and 390 guns; so that on the 16th, they were, at all times, numerically superior in every arm. When Alvensleben came into action a little after ten o’clock with the 3rd Corps and two divisions of cavalry—perhaps 33,000 men—they had in their front the 2nd and 6th Corps, the Guard, and the Reserve Cavalry—not less than 72,000, the guns on the French side being always superior in number. The 3rd Corps, less one division, was at ten o’clock only three miles from the field; these and half the 4th Corps arrived in the afternoon, adding more than 50,000 men to the total, while the Germans could only bring up the 10th, and parts of the 8th and 9th, fewer than 40,000, some of them marching into line late in the evening. The French Marshal, who fought a defensive battle, did not use his great strength during the forenoon, or in the afternoon when his right wing had wheeled up to the front. The result was an “indecisive action”—the phrase is used by the official German historian—and that it was indecisive must be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that Marshal Bazaine, nor he alone, stood in constant dread of an overwhelming inroad of “Prussians” on his left, with intent to cut him off from Metz and thrust him, unprovided with munitions of all kinds, on to the Briey–Longuyon road. But it may be inferred from the mode in which the battle was fought by the French commanders, from the first shot to the last, that the Germans had obtained a moral ascendency over the leaders and the led, and that such an ascendency had a great influence upon the tactics, as well as the strategy, of Marshal Bazaine and his subordinates in command. Nothing supports the correctness of this inference more strongly than the fact that an Army of 120,000 men considered a great success had been achieved when it had resisted the onsets of less than two-thirds of its numbers, and had been driven from its line of retreat! CHAPTER IX. PRESSED BACK ON METZ