Your most true V.B.

TO HIS WIFE

Note.—­This letter did not reach its destination, but, together with the entire post, was captured by franc-tireurs and published by a French newspaper.

     VENDRESSE, 3 September [1870].

     My Dear Heart: 

I left my present quarters before early dawn the day before yesterday, came back to-day, and have in the mean time witnessed the great battle of Sedan, in which we made about thirty thousand prisoners, and threw the remainder of the French army, which we have been pursuing since Bar-le-Duc, into the fortress, where they had to surrender themselves, along with the Emperor, prisoners of war.  Yesterday morning at five o’clock, after I had been negotiating until one o’clock A.M. with Moltke and the French generals about the capitulation to be concluded, I was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to speak with me.  Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I rode towards Sedan, found the Emperor in an open carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three in attendance on horseback, halted on the road before Sedan.  I dismounted, saluted him just as politely as at the Tuileries, and asked for his commands.  He wished to see the King; I told him, as the truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fifteen miles away, at the spot where I am now writing.  In answer to Napoleon’s question where he should go to, I offered him, as I was not acquainted with the country, my own quarters at Donchery, a small place in the neighborhood, close by Sedan.  He accepted, and drove, accompanied by his six Frenchmen, by me and by Carl (who in the mean time had ridden after me) through the lonely morning towards our lines.  Before coming to the spot, he began to hesitate on account of the possible crowd, and he asked me if he could alight in a lonely cottage by the wayside; I had it inspected by Carl, who brought word that it was mean and dirty.  “N’importe,” said N., and I ascended with him a rickety, narrow staircase.  In an apartment of ten feet square, with a deal table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat for an hour; the others were below.  A powerful contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in 1867.  Our conversation was a difficult thing, if I wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect painfully the man whom God’s mighty hand had cast down.  I had sent Carl to fetch officers from the town and to beg Moltke to come.  We then sent one of the former to reconnoitre, and discovered two and one-half miles off, in Fresnois, a small chateau situated an a park.  Thither I accompanied him with an escort of the cuirassier regiment of life-guards, which had meantime been brought up; and there we concluded with the French general-in-chief, Wimpffen, the capitulation by virtue of which forty to sixty thousand Frenchmen,—­I do not know it accurately at present,—­with all they possess, became our prisoners.  Yesterday and the day before cost France one hundred thousand men and an Emperor.  This morning the latter, with all his suite and horses and carriages, started for Wilhelmshoehe, near Cassel.

     THE SURRENDER AT SEDAN.