The object of the German forward movement was two-fold—if MacMahon had crossed the Vosges to join the Emperor, Strasburg was to be invested, and the rest of the Third Army was to pass through the hills to the Saar and effect a junction with the Second. If the Marshal were still east of the hills, then he was to be assailed wherever found. Consequently, the whole Army was set in motion, but it was by a gift of fortune, who, however, rarely favours the imprudent, that they were enabled to defeat the division exposed to their onset. At four and six in the morning, the Corps moved out on a broad front stretching from the hills to the Rhine. Bothmer’s Bavarians, on the right, marched direct on Wissembourg, followed by the other divisions of the Bavarian Army. Next in order, to the left, came the 5th Corps, which was directed upon Altenstadt; the 11th, which pushed through the Bien Wald; and the Badeners, whose object was Lauterbourg; while the remainder of the Army was still far to the rear. _The Combat on the Lauter._ Wissembourg, a picturesque old town, standing upon the Lauter at a point where it enters the plain, is defended by walls not armed with guns, and surrounded by deep ditches filled from the stream, one arm of which curves through the place. There were three gates. Under the archway of the northern, named after the town of Hagenau, passed the great road from Strasburg, which, turning to the eastward, quitted the ramparts by the gate of Landau. The western gate, a mere entrance cut through the wall, having in advance a small lunette, received the road from Pirmasens. It took its name from the fort of Bitsche, but the track from that place came down the folded hills by the Col du Pigeonnier, or Dove-cote Neck, and joined the Strasburg highway just outside the Hagenau gate. Beyond the walls were factories, pottery fields, and mills; above and below were the once famous Lines of the Lauter thrown up on, and following the right bank of the stream through the forest to Lauterbourg; while on the foot-hills were vines, which do not add to the beauty of any scene, and hop-gardens; and here and there the usual rows of stiff trees bordering, yet not shading, the roads. Distant about a mile or so to the eastward is a spur of the Vosges, the Geisberg, thrust into the plain, falling steeply towards it, and crowned by a substantial château, seated above terraces difficult of access. From this elevation were visible, spread out like a map, the woodlands stretching towards the Rhine, the roads to the east and south, and the town, with its railway station, now silent, near the gate of Landau.