I. The German Field Armies—II. The French Army—III. The Protocol of Capitulation—IV. A List of the Principal Works Consulted for the Campaign of Sedan 339 INDEX 359 MAP AND PLANS. I. BATTLE OF WOERTH. II. BATTLE OF SPICHEREN. III. BATTLE OF COLOMBEY-NOUILLY. IV. BATTLE OF VIONVILLE-MARS LA TOUR. V. BATTLE OF GRAVELOTTE. VI. BATTLE OF SEDAN. VII. GENERAL MAP. THE CAMPAIGN OF SEDAN. INTRODUCTION. In July, 1870, fifty-five years after the Allied Armies, who had marched from the decisive field of Waterloo, entered Paris, a young diplomatist, Baron Wimpfen, started from the French capital, for Berlin. He was the bearer of a Declaration of War, from the Emperor Napoleon III., to William I., King of Prussia; and the fatal message was delivered to the French Chargé d’Affaires, M. le Sourd, and by him to the Prussian Government on the 19th of July. Thus, once again, a Napoleon, at the head of a French Empire, was destined to try his strength against the principal German Power beyond the Rhine. Yet, under what different conditions! The Emperor was not now the Napoleon who surrounded the Austrians at Ulm, broke down the combined forces of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz, and extorted a peace which set him free to overthrow, at Jena and Auerstadt, the fine army left by Frederick the Great, and allowed to crystallize by his weak successors. Nor did the late Emperor find in his front a divided Germany, and the mere survival of a great military organization. He found a united people, and an army surpassing in completeness, as it did in armaments—the victors of Prague, Rosbach, and Leuthen. The Germany known to the Congress of Vienna had disappeared—the deformed had been transformed. The little seed of unity, sown early in the century, had grown into a forest tree. The spirit of Arndt had run through the whole Teutonic nation, which, after the turmoil of 1848 had subsided, and the heavy hand of Russia had been taken off by the Crimean War, found a leader in the strongly-organized kingdom of Prussia. When the weak and hesitating will of Frederick William IV. ceased, first, by the operation of a painful disease, and then by extinction, to disturb the course of his country’s fortune, Prussia, in a few years, became practically a new Power. King William I., who crowned himself with his own hands at Königsberg, began his task, as a ruler, in a grave and earnest spirit, holding that kingship was not only a business, but a trust, and taking as his watchwords, Work and Duty. No monarch in any age, no private man, ever laboured more assiduously and conscientiously at his _métier_, to use the word of Joseph II., than the King of Prussia. He became Regent in 1858, when Napoleon III.