When morning dawned upon the discomfited Army, Marshal MacMahon had not ceased to ponder. As he said before the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in 1872, he had no intention of fighting a battle at Sedan, but he wished to supply the Army afresh with provisions and munitions; and he spent part of the day in considering what he should do on the morrow, and in watching from the citadel the march of his foes. There were, he believed, a million rations in Sedan, but eight hundred thousand of these were stored in wagons at the station, and as shells reached them from beyond the Meuse, the station-master sent away the train to Mézières. With it went a company of engineers, instructed to blow up the bridge at Donchery; but frightened by the shells, the driver halted long enough to drop the engineers, and then hastily fled with the powder and tools. The Marshal did not hear of the mishap until ten o’clock at night, and when another company of engineers reached the bridge, they found it in possession of the enemy! Early in the morning, before that event occurred, Captain des Sesmaisons, carrying a message from Vinoy, entered Sedan, after having been fired on by a German battery established near Frenois. He saw the Emperor in the hotel of the Sub-Prefect, delivered his message, and received a despatch from His Majesty directing Vinoy to concentrate his troops in Mézières. Anxious that the Captain should return in safety, the Emperor gave him a horse, and traced on a map the road he should take, observing that the Army would retire by that route the next day; that the road would be open and safe, as it was new, had not been marked on the map, and was unknown to the enemy. But we learn from the German Staff history, that this recently opened road, although not laid down on the French, was duly figured in the German map, a contrast between diligence and negligence not easily paralleled. The Captain saw MacMahon, who then, nearly midday, seemed resolved to march on Mézières, and believed that he could crush any opposition.