Human ingenuity has imputed various motives to the French Marshal, some of them being discreditable to his loyalty, all based on a low estimate of his character as a man, and capacity as a soldier. His own account is that he did not persevere in trying to effect his retreat, either by force or skill, partly because the Army was not well supplied with food and munitions, and partly, as is apparent from his evidence and books, because he had formed a military theory which he proposed to work out near Metz to the disadvantage of the enemy. He held that he had a strong post on the flank of the German communications, and that, if he could make his adversaries waste their troops in repeated attacks upon “inexpugnable” positions, he might be able to resume the offensive when the Army at Chalons should take the field. Secretly, we suspect, he had become imbued with a belief or apprehension that what the French call the _moral_ of the Army had been seriously impaired; that their staying power in action was not what it should have been, and that they could not be trusted to perform so delicate an operation as a long flank march within reach of a foe exalted by victory, aided by a powerful and audacious cavalry, and an infantry capable of marching twenty miles a day, and enjoying the advantage of greatly superior numbers. As usual, the motives of Bazaine were “mixed,” but there does not seem any good reason to believe that he was selfishly disloyal to the Emperor, faithless to France, or insensible to the charms of “glory.” His chief defect was that he did not possess sufficient military competence to command a large Army—a defect he shared with his comrades of high rank; and his misfortune was that he succeeded to an inheritance of accumulated error entailing severe penalties, from the infliction of which only a rare genius, like that of the First Napoleon, could have saved himself and his Army. Active warfare had now continued for a fortnight, and at sundown on the 17th of August the “Army of the Rhine” found itself obliged to form front facing, not Berlin, but Paris; while the formidable Armies of King William, with their backs to the French capital, turned their eyes towards the Rhine. _The Battlefield of Gravelotte._