Wants nothing but colored light! 
    Oh, papa, burn a lot of cities,
     And burn the next one at night!’
      “’Yes, child, it is operatic;
     But don’t forget, in your glee,
    That for your sake this play is playing,
     That you may be worthy of me. 
    They baptized you in Jordan water,—­
     Baptized as a Christian, I mean,—­
    But you come of the race of Caesar,
     And thus have their baptisms been. 
    Baptized in true Caesar fashion,
     Remember, through all your years,
    That the font was a burning city,
     And the water was widows’ tears,’”

When these lines were written, how little could any man have foreseen the fate of the poor lad, lying bloody and stark on a hillside of South Africa, deserted by his comrades, and above all by a degenerate descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, who should have risked his life to defend his charge!

The day after the attack on Saarbrueck compact masses of Germans were moving across the frontier into France, and the next day (August 4), a division of MacMahon’s army corps was surprised at Wissembourg, while their commander was at Metz in conference with the emperor.  The French troops were cut to pieces, and the fugitives spread themselves all over the country.  The battle had been fought on ground covered with vineyards, and the movements of the French cavalry had been impeded by the vines.  In this battle the French were without artillery, but they took eight cannon from the enemy.  The Prussians, however, being speedily reinforced, recovered their advantage and gained a complete victory.  Wissembourg, a small town in Alsace, was bombarded and set on fire.  There seemed no officer among the defeated French to restore order.  They had never anticipated such a rout, and were, especially the cavalry, utterly demoralized.

The French army was divided into seven army corps, the German into twelve.  Each German army corps was greatly stronger in men, and incomparably better officered and equipped, than the French.  The Germans began the war with nearly a million men; the French with little more than two hundred thousand on the frontier, though their army was five hundred thousand strong on the official records.  The habit of the War Office had been to let rich men who were drawn for the conscription pay four hundred francs for a substitute, which substitute was seldom purchased, the money going into the pockets of dishonest officials.

The two hundred thousand French were stretched in a thin line from Belgium to the mountains of Dauphine.  A German army corps could break this line at almost any point; and throughout the whole campaign the French suffered from the lack of reliable information as to the movements of the enemy.