to improvise a fighting Army in the face of an enemy who, in perfect order, was advancing with the measured, compact, and irresistible force of a tidal wave. The plan followed was exactly the reverse of the German method. East of the Rhine no Corps was moved to the frontier, until it was complete in every respect, except the second line of trains; and consequently, from the outset, it had a maximum force prepared for battle. There were some slight exceptions to the rule, but they were imposed by circumstances, served a real purpose, and disappeared when the momentary emergency they were adapted to meet had been satisfied. West of the Rhine, not one solitary Corps took its assigned place in a perfect state for action. All the battalions of infantry, and of course the regiments, were hundreds short of their proper strength. Before a shot had been fired, General de Failly, at Bitsche, was obliged to send a demand for coin to pay the troops, adding notes won’t pass—“les billets n’ont point cours.” General Frossard, at St. Avoid, reported that enormous packages of useless maps had been sent him—maps of Germany—and that he had not a single map of the French frontier. Neither Strasburg, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Thionville, nor Mézières, possessed stores of articles—such as food, equipments, and carriage—which were imperatively required. The Intendants, recently appointed to special posts, besieged the War Office in Paris, to relieve them from their embarrassments—they had nothing on the spot. The complaints were not idle. As early as the 26th of July, the troops about Metz were living on the reserve of biscuits; there were sent only thirty-eight additional bakers to Metz for 120,000 men, and even these few practitioners were sadly in want of ovens. “I observe that the Army stands in need of biscuit and bread,” said the Emperor to the Minister of War at the same date. “Could not bread be made in Paris, and sent to Metz?” Marshal Lebœuf, a day later, took note of the fact that the detachments which came up to the front, sometimes reserve men, sometimes battalions, arrived without ammunition and camp equipments. Soldiers, functionaries, carts, ovens, provisions, horses, munitions, harness, all had to be sought at the eleventh hour. These facts are recorded in the despairing telegrams sent from the front to the War Office. The very Marshal who had described France as “archiprête,” in a transcendent state of readiness for war, announced by telegram, on the 28th of July, the lamentable fact that he could not move forward for want of biscuit—“Je manque de biscuit pour marcher en avant.” The 7th Corps was to have been formed at Belfort, but its divisions could never be assembled. General Michel, on the 21st of July, sent to Paris this characteristic telegram: “Have arrived at Belfort,” he wrote: “can’t find my brigade; can’t find the General of Division. What shall I do? Don’t know where my regiments are”—a document probably unique in military records.