Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/20

 flour, and some bacon, but neither rice, coffee, salt, nor wine.

The telegrams sent by the various commanders reveal the state of the supplies at the very commencement. On 19th July, General de Failly telegraphed: "I have nothing — not even money; we require supplies of every kind." On the 24th the intendant of the 5th division telegraphed: "Metz, which supplies the 3d, 4th, and 5th corps, has no more biscuit or oats." The same day the intendant of the 3d corps says: "The 3d corps leaves Metz to-morrow: I have no infirmiers, no workmen, no ambulance-waggons, no field-ovens, no carts, and not one intendant in two divisions." On the 25th July, the sous-intendant at Mézières sent word: "There is neither biscuit nor salt-meat to-day at Mézières or Sedan." On the 28th, Maréchal le Bœuf telegraphed: "We cannot march for want of biscuit." On the 29th, General Ducrot telegraphed to Strasburg, from Reichshoffen, where he was with his division: "The question of food is becoming more and more grave; the intendance gives us absolutely nothing; everything is eaten up around us." And all this, let it be borne in mind, took place in France itself, with the bases of supplies close to the army, and before one battle had been fought.

The same disorder existed in the fortresses; not one of them was in a state of defence. We have already described the state of Strasburg; the Bazaine trial has shown the condition of Metz; the construction of the outlying forts there was scarcely commenced; at Belfort nothing was done until two or three months after the declaration of war: Toul, a most important strategic point, was not armed. In Paris the state of things was almost worse; the forts contained one guardian each; not a gun was in battery in them.

Whichever way we look through this long, saddening testimony, the story is the same. M. Wolf, intendant of M$c$Mahon's corps, says that there were no orders and no plans; that, though the railway company could carry nearly all that was required, it could not, for want of men, unload the waggons when they arrived at their destination, and that the unloading had to be done by the troops; that it often happened that a mile of waggons stood for a week full of objects which were most urgently required, because it was impossible to discharge them. Everybody declares that there were no ambulances, no hospitals, and no nurses; and that if it had not been for private charity and for the society for helping the wounded, the men would have been left to die where they dropped. But let it be remembered that, while all this was happening in Alsace, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of hospital attendants and army-workmen were at that very moment on their way to Africa, in obedience to routine. General Ducrot says that, before his division quitted Strasburg, he applied for permission to leave the shakos of the men in store there; that the ministry of war had not dared to consent to so bold a measure; and that, in consequence, as his men preferred to fight with their képis, they flung their shakos into the ditches to get rid of them, and that they "became the playthings of all the boys in Alsace," who picked them up on the roadsides. In many of the regiments the men had no spare needles for their chassepots; "no one knew how to fire a mitrailleuse, except one officer; a few shots, with powder, were fired from them before starting, so as to see how 'these machines' were to be employed." The cavalry was organized on five different bases between 15th July and 15th August; it often happened that regiments and even divisions of cavalry were annexed to divisions of infantry; the plans and projects varied every day, and sometimes several times each day, as is proved by the orders and counter-orders which were telegraphed to Paris as to the supplies of food to be sent by rail to the army.

Such is, in all truth and fairness, with no exaggeration, and with no selection of exceptionally bad facts, the story told by the witnesses. Such was the state of the French army at the commencement of the campaign — such was the practical effect produced by the "system" of military management which was then in force in France.

This was the condition of things down to the 10th of August. On that day the Ollivier government was turned out and the Palikao ministry came in. The first stage of the story ends there. On the 10th of August the Germans were streaming across the Saar and through the Vosges and were close to Metz, where the larger part of the army of the Rhine was waiting to be shut up; the rest of it had been defeated and had fallen back on Chalons. A new army was required, with new arms and new stores. Then the second series of preparations commenced. General de Palikao says in his book that he provided "a reconstituted army of 140,000 men, at Châlons; that he got 