position, from the Great Quarries to the farm and copse of La Folie, impregnable, and renders it all the more difficult to comprehend how Marshal Bazaine could have shown such manifest distrust of the fastness which protected his left wing. The attack on St. Ruffine by Von Golz was merely a diversion shrewdly designed to increase the Marshal’s alarms, and its relative success shows how correctly Von Moltke estimated his adversary’s abilities as a soldier. He reaped an ample reward, since long before the last shot was fired in the neighbourhood of St. Hubert, the French had been worsted at the other and distant extremity of the vast field of battle. _The Prussian Guard on the Centre and Left._ It may be said, indeed, that not one, but several battles were fought on the 18th of August, in the long space between the Bois de Vaux and the Forest of Moyœuvre. They were inter-dependent, because one mass of combatants held fast another, and the essence of the German plan was that three-fourths of the French Army should be nailed to the positions they had taken up, while the remainder were crushed by the pressure of superior forces. The original design of Von Moltke was framed on the supposition that the French right stood near Amanvillers, and that he would be able to fling upon an exposed flank two Corps d’Armée. Before the error was discovered, several hours had been consumed; the Guard had been obliged to prolong the front fighting line; only a part of the Saxon Corps could be spared to engage in the turning movement, and the ground which they had to traverse grew longer and longer as the day waxed shorter. The extent of country over which the various armies operated, and the smoke which obscured the view, prevented a correct appreciation of the situation of affairs at a given moment, and the German commanders were liable to be deceived, and were deceived by appearances. The knowledge that so brief an interval of daylight remained, and an anxiety to make the most of precious moments, quickened the tendency to decisive action, and thus brought about the rash and premature attack which was so destructive, and nearly proved so fatal to the Prussian Guard.