It has been already stated that both commanders had intended to assume the offensive and fight a battle on the 7th, the Crown Prince proposing to bring up the greater part of his Army and envelop the French, and Marshal MacMahon, who thought he was dealing with the heads of columns, having drawn up a plan to attack the Germans in front with the 1st and turn their right flank with the 5th Corps. Had he known how strong and how compact was the array of his opponent he never could have framed a scheme which would have transferred to the enemy all the advantages possessed by himself. The contingency of a forward movement on his part had been foreseen and guarded against, and the precautions adopted on the evening of the 5th would have become far more formidable had the next day passed by without a battle. But those very protective measures, as will be seen, tended to precipitate a conflict by bringing the troops into contact on the front and left flank of the French position. Marshal MacMahon had selected and occupied exceptionally strong ground. He posted his divisions on a high plateau west of the Sauer and the Sulz, between Neehwiller and Eberbach, having Froeschwiller as a kind of redoubt in the centre, and the wooded slopes of the hills running steeply down to the brooks in his front. The left wing, where General Ducrot commanded, was thrown back to guard the passages through the woodlands, which led down the right bank of the Sulz from Mattstal into the position. The centre fronted Woerth, which was not occupied, and the right, without leaning on any special protective obstacle, was in the woods and villages south-east of Elsasshausen, with reserves in the rear which, says the German official narrative, together with the open country, were a sufficient guard against a direct flank attack, an opinion not justified by the result. The Sauer was deep, the bridges had been broken, and the ascents on the French side were prolonged, except on one point, and swept by musketry and cannon. Among the vines and copses, in the villages and farmsteads, everywhere protected by open ground, over which an assailant must pass, stood the French Army—Ducrot on the left, facing north-west, Raoult in the centre, Lartigue on the right, having behind him Conseil-Dumesnil’s division of the 7th Corps. Pellé, who succeeded Abel Douay, was in reserve; and the cavalry were partly in rear of the right, and partly behind the centre. The official German history speaks of the position as especially strong, regards the mass of troops seated there, put down at forty-five thousand men, as amply sufficient for a vigorous defence, and contends that the defect of numbers was balanced by a respectable artillery and the superiority of the Chassepot over the far-famed needle-gun. A Bavarian soldier-author, Captain Hugo Helvig, however, says that the ground held by the French had all the disadvantages of so-called “unassailable” positions—it had no issues to