The German force detached from the neighbourhood of Metz consisted of the Prussian Guards, the 4th and 12th corps, and two cavalry divisions.  This army, known as the Army of the Meuse, was placed under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony.  Its aim was, in common with the Third German Army (that of the Crown Prince of Prussia), to strike at MacMahon before he received reinforcements.  The screen of cavalry which preceded the Army of the Meuse passed that river on the 22nd, when the bulk of the forces of the Crown Prince of Prussia crossed not many miles farther to the south.  The two armies swept on westwards within easy distance of one another; and on the 23rd their cavalry gleaned news of priceless value, namely, that MacMahon’s army had left Chalons.  On the next day the great camp was found deserted.

In fact, MacMahon had undertaken a task of terrible difficulty.  On taking over the command at Chalons, where Napoleon III. arrived from Metz on the 16th, he found hopeless disorder not only among his own beaten troops, but among many of the newcomers; the worst were the Garde Mobile, many regiments of whom greeted the Emperor with shouts of A Paris.  To meet the Germans in the open plains of Champagne with forces so incoherent and dispirited was sheer madness; and a council of war on the 17th came to the conclusion to fall back on the capital and operate within its outer forts—­a step which might enable the army to regain confidence, repress any rising in the capital, and perhaps inflict checks on the Germans, until the provinces rose en masse against the invaders.  But at this very time the Empress-Regent and the Palikao Ministry at Paris came to an exactly contrary decision, on the ground that the return of the Emperor with MacMahon’s army would look like personal cowardice and a mean desertion of Bazaine at Metz.  The Empress was for fighting a outrance, and her Government issued orders for a national rising and the enrolling of bodies of irregulars, or francs-tireurs, to harass the Germans[43].

[Footnote 43:  See General Lebrun’s Guerre de 1870:  Bazailles-Sedan, for an account of his corps of MacMahon’s army.

In view of the events of the late Boer War, it is worth noting that the Germans never acknowledged the francs-tireurs as soldiers, and forthwith issued an order ending with the words, “They are amenable to martial law and liable to be sentenced to death” (Maurice, Franco-German War, p. 215).]

Their decision was telegraphed to Napoleon III. at Chalons.  Against his own better judgment the Emperor yielded to political considerations—­that mill-stone around the neck of the French army in 1870—­and decided to strike out to the north with MacMahon’s army, and by way of Montmedy stretch a hand to Bazaine, who, on his side, was expected to make for that rendezvous.  On the 21st, therefore, they marched to Reims.  There the Emperor received a despatch which Bazaine