has not a light hand.  The King, a blunt, straightforward man, showed the Emperor a pity involuntarily cruel.  There are pities which overwhelm.  The conqueror upbraided the conquered with the victory.  Bluntness handles an open wound badly.  “Whatever was your reason for declaring this war?” The conquered excused himself, accusing France.  The distant hurrahs of the victorious German army cut short this dialogue.

The King caused the Emperor to be reconducted by a detachment of the Royal Guard.  This excess of ignominy is called “an escort of honor.”

After the sword the Army.

On the 3d of September, Louis Bonaparte handed over to Germany 88,000 French soldiers.

“In addition” (says the Prussian report):—­

“One eagle and two flags.

“419 field-guns and mitrailleuses.

“139 heavy pieces.

“1079 vehicles of all kinds.

“60,000 muskets.

“6000 horses, still good for service.”

These German figures are not wholly to be depended upon.  According to what seems useful at the moment, the Aulic chancellors swell or reduce the disaster.  There were about 13,000 wounded amongst the prisoners.  The numbers vary in the official documents.  A Prussian report, reckoning up the French soldiers killed and wounded in the battle of Sedan, publishes this total:  Sixteen thousand four hundred men.  This number causes a shudder.  For it is that very number, Sixteen thousand four hundred men, which Saint Arnaud had set to work on the Boulevard Montmartre upon the 4th of December, 1851.

Half a league to the north-west of Sedan, near Iges, the bend of the Meuse almost forms an island.  A canal crosses the isthmus, so that the peninsula becomes an island.  It was there that there were penned, under the stick of the Prussian corporals, 83,000 French soldiers.  A few sentinels watched over this army.

They placed but few, insolently.  These conquered men remained there ten days, the wounded almost without care, the able-bodied almost without nourishment.  The German army sneered around them.  The heavens took part against them.  The weather was fearful.  Neither huts nor tents.  Not a fire, not a truss of straw.  For ten days and ten nights these 83,000 prisoners bivouacked with their heads beneath the rain, their feet in the mud.  Many died of fever, regretting the hail of bullets.

At length ox-wagons came and took them away.

The King placed the Emperor in some place or other.  Wilhelmshoehe.

What a thing of rags and tatters, an Emperor “drawn” like a fowl!

CHAPTER VIII.

I was there, thoughtful.  I looked on these fields, these ravines, these hills, shuddering.  I would willingly have insulted this terrible place.

But sacred horror held me back.