How differently was the precious time employed on the other side of the Rhine. When the Imperial Government rushed headlong into war, they actually possessed only one formed Corps d’Armée, the 2nd, stationed in the camp of Chalons, and commanded by General Frossard. Yet even this solitary body was, as he confesses, wanting in essential equipments when it was hurriedly transported to St. Avold, not far from Saarlouis, on the Rhenish Prussian frontier. Not only had all the other Corps to be made out of garrison troops, but the entire staff had to be provided in haste. Marshal Niel, an able soldier, and the Emperor, had studied, at least, some of Baron Stoffel’s famous reports on the German Army, and had endeavoured to profit by them; but the Marshal died, the Corps Législatif was intractable, favouritism ruled in the Court, the Emperor suffered from a wearing internal disease, and the tone of the Army was one not instinct with the spirit of self-sacrificing obedience. In time it is possible that the glaring defects of the Imperial military mechanism might have been removed, and possible, also, that the _moral_ and discipline of the officers and men might have been raised. Barely probable, since Marshal Lebœuf believed that the Army was in a state of perfect readiness, not merely to defend France, but to dash over the Rhine into South Germany. His illusion was only destroyed when the fatal test was applied. Nominally, the French Army was formidable in numbers; but not being based on the territorial system, which includes all the men liable to service in one Corps, whether they are with the colours or in the reserve, and also forms the supplementary landwehr into local divisions, the French War Office could not rapidly raise the regiments to the normal strength. For a sufficient reason. A peasant residing in Provence might be summoned to join a regiment quartered in Brittany, or a workman employed in Bordeaux called up to the Pas de Calais. When he arrived he might find that the regiment had marched to Alsace or Lorraine. During the first fortnight after the declaration of war thousands of reserve men were travelling to and fro over France in search of their comrades. Another evil was that some Corps in course of formation were split into fragments separated from each other by many score miles. Nearly the whole series of Corps, numbered from One to Seven, were imperfectly supplied with a soldier’s needments; and what is more astonishing, the frontier arsenals and depôts were sadly deficient in supplies, so that constant applications were made to Paris for the commonest necessaries. There were no departmental or even provincial storehouses, but the materials essential for war were piled up in three or four places, such as Paris and Versailles, Vernon and Chateauroux. In short, the Minister of War, who said and believed that he was supremely ready, found that, in fact, he was compelled almost