These arrangements indicated a profound feeling of security.  In the first place, the Emperor Napoleon III. would not have come there if he had not been perfectly tranquil.  This Givonne Valley is what Napoleon I. called a “wash-hand basin.”  There could not have been a more complete enclosure.  An army is so much at home there that it is too much so; it runs the risk of no longer being able to get out.  This disquieted some brave and prudent leaders, such as Wimpfen, but they were not listened to.  If absolutely necessary, said the people of the imperial circle, they could always be sure of being able to reach Mezieres, and at the worst the Belgian frontier.  Was it, however, needful to provide for such extreme eventualities?  In certain cases foresight is almost an offence.  They were all of one mind, therefore, to be at their ease.

If they had been uneasy they would have cut the bridges of the Meuse, but they did not even think of it.  To what purpose?  The enemy was a long way off.  The Emperor, who evidently was well informed, affirmed it.

The army bivouacked somewhat in confusion, as we have said, and slept peaceably throughout this night of August 31, having, whatever might happen, or believing that they had, the retreat upon Mezieres open behind it.  They disdained to take the most ordinary precautions, they made no cavalry reconnoissances, they did not even place outposts.  A German military writer has stated this.  Fourteen leagues at least separated them from the German army, three days’ march; they did not exactly know where it was; they believed it scattered, possessing little unity, badly informed, led somewhat at random upon several points at once, incapable of a movement converging upon one single point, like Sedan; they believed that the Crown Prince of Saxony was marching on Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia was marching on Metz; they were ignorant of everything appertaining to this army, its leaders, its plan, its armament, its effective force.  Was it still following the strategy of Gustavus Adolphus?  Was it still following the tactics of Frederick II.?  No one knew.  They felt sure of being at Berlin in a few weeks.  What nonsense!  The Prussian army!  They talked of this war as of a dream, and of this army as of a phantom....

The masterful description of the great novelist and poet then continues in a narrative of the attack and catastrophe: 

Bazeilles takes fire, Givonne takes fire, Floing takes fire; the battle begins with a furnace.  The whole horizon is aflame.  The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrighted, starting up from sleeping—­a funereal swarming.  A circle of thunder surrounds the army.  They are encircled by annihilation.  This mighty slaughter is carried on on all sides simultaneously.  The French resist and they are terrible, having nothing left but despair.  Our cannon, almost all old-fashioned and of short range, are at once dismounted by the