mobilized, to what may be called immobilized, troops in the French Army was for the moment, at all events, necessarily somewhat lower than in the German, because the Imperial military system, as we have already explained, was so clumsy, as well as so incomplete. _The Moral and Political Forces._ One other fact may be usefully noticed, because it had a considerable influence on the campaign. It is this—the moral force, represented by public opinion in politics, and in the Armies by what the French call the _moral_, which has nothing to do with morals, but means cheerfulness, good will, confidence—had passed wholly over to the German side. Public opinion, which ran in a strong and steady current, condemned the declaration of war, although a certain superstitious belief in the invincibility of French soldiers, at least when opposed to Germans, still prevailed, even among military men who ought to have been better informed and less under the sway of prejudice. While Germany was united and hearty, and willingly obeyed an executive which no one questioned, while Saxony and Hanover, Würtemberg and Bavaria vied in patriotic ardour with Pomerania and Brandenburg; there was no such complete and consentaneous feeling in France; and there was, on the one hand, a powerful, ambitious, and indignant group of Imperialists, who thirsted for the possession of office, which they strove to snatch from Emile Ollivier and his semi-Liberal colleagues, and on the other, outside all the Imperialist sections, the repressed, enraged, and sturdy republicans of Paris who, it is not too much to say, waited for the first decisive defeat of the Imperial Armies to overturn an arbitrary system of government which they detested on account of its treacherous origin, and dreaded, as well as despised, while they writhed beneath its power. Jérôme David and Clement Duvernois were resolved to expel the so-called constitutionalists; and Gambetta, Favre, and their friends were equally determined, if an opportunity occurred, to destroy the Empire, root and branch. There were no such elements of weakness beyond the Rhine.