At length the embargo placed on all letters since the 30th of May has been removed, and the correspondents are free to telegraph without restriction as to matter or quantity. Since May the 25th, until ten days ago, General de Galliffet’s magnificent army has been quiescent under shelter of the strong camps of Langres, Epinal, and Belfort. Even our cavalry has had little to do beyond sending out numerous officers’ patrols, north, east, and west. The General preferred trusting to a strong screen of infantry outposts; and on their side the Germans, though reported to be very strong in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc, have remained inactive. It is surprising with what patience the French soldiery endured this weary time of waiting; but the men have supreme confidence in the hero of Sedan, and their intelligence is of a very high order. However, your Frenchman is a restless being, and discipline was put to a severe test when rumour of a German advance on Paris filtered through the camps. But General de Galliffet, by most judicious orders of the day, exposing the errors of the Germans in advancing without first securing their communications, and enlarging on the strength of the fortifications of the capital, appealed to the soldierly intelligence of the army, and not in vain. Still, the fierce desire of the troops to meet their detested enemies had been curbed almost beyond bounds by the 20th of June, and I scarcely think, strong as the General is, that he would have dared to delay movement for another day. Long before day had broken on the 20th the march began; and for nine days, over the magnificent roads which run through the rich pastoral country west of the Moselle, the long columns moved past in the blazing summer weather, their faces set northward, and their hearts longing for the battle so long deferred. The splendid marching powers of the French Infantry of to-day, as well as the high-training and experience of the Staff, make the movement of 200,000 men and more than 700 guns a matter of child’s play. The marches are long, and the dust stifling; but still order and regularity are the characteristics of the great exodus from the fortresses. The ambulances are empty, and, heavily weighted as they are, the little linesmen in their long blue capotes and wide red trousers swing steadily along, laughing and singing as the sun nears his setting even more cheerily than when the fields on either hand were fresh with the morning dew. Loud are the cheers that greeted the General, active as the youngest subaltern of Hussars in spite of his sixty odd years, as magnificently mounted, he rides slowly past the regiments, with cheery word of greeting and encouragement to his sturdy _fantassins_.