Meanwhile at Paris the Chamber of Deputies had overthrown the Ollivier Ministry, and the Empress-Regent installed in office Count Palikao.  There was a general outcry against Leboeuf, and on the 12th the Emperor resigned the command to Marshal Bazaine (Lebrun now acting as Chief of Staff), with the injunction to retreat westwards to Verdun.  For the Emperor to order such a retreat in his own name was thought to be inopportune.  Bazaine was a convenient scapegoat, and he himself knew it.  Had he thrown an army corps into Metz and obeyed the Emperor’s orders by retreating on Verdun, things would certainly have gone better than was now to be the case.  In his printed defence Bazaine has urged that the army had not enough provisions for the march, and, further, that the outlying forts of Metz were not yet ready to withstand a siege—­a circumstance which, if true, partly explains Bazaine’s reluctance to leave the “virgin city[40].”  Napoleon III. quitted it early on the 16th:  he and his escort were the last Frenchmen to get free of that death-trap for many a week.

[Footnote 40:  Bazaine gave this excuse in his Rapport sommaire sur les Operations de l’Armee du Rhin; but as a staff-officer pointed out in his incisive Reponse, this reason must have been equally cogent when Napoleon (August 12) ordered him to retreat; and he was still bound to obey the Emperor’s orders.]

While Metz exercised this fatal fascination over the protecting army, the First and Second German Armies were striding westwards to envelop both the city and its guardians.  Moltke’s aim was to hold as many of the French to the neighbourhood of the fortress, while his left wing swung round it on the south.  The result was the battle of Colombey on the east of Metz (August 14).  It was a stubborn fight, costing the Germans some 5000 men, while the French with smaller losses finally withdrew under the eastern walls of Metz.  But that heavy loss meant a great ultimate gain to Germany.  The vacillations of Bazaine, whose strategy was far more faulty than that of Napoleon III. had been, together with the delay caused by the defiling of a great part of the army through the narrow streets of Metz, gave the Germans an opportunity such as had not occurred since the year 1805, when Napoleon I. shut up an Austrian army in Ulm.

The man who now saw the splendid chance of which Fortune vouchsafed a glimpse, was Lieutenant-General von Alvensleben, Commander of the 3rd corps, whose activity and resource had so largely contributed to the victory of Spicheren-Forbach.  Though the orders of his Commander-in-Chief, Prince Frederick Charles, forbade an advance until the situation in front was more fully known, the General heard enough to convince himself that a rapid advance southwards to and over the Moselle might enable him to intercept the French retreat on Verdun, which might now be looked on as certain.  Reporting his conviction to his chief as also to the royal headquarters, he struck