Confusion in the French Camp.
Marshal MacMahon, perplexed, but not dismayed, by the events of the 30th, remained for some time in doubt. “I do not know what I shall do,” said the Marshal early in the evening to Ducrot’s aide-de-camp. “In any case, the Emperor should at once start for Sedan.” At that time the Emperor was in the camp of Ducrot, who, instructed to protect the retreat of the Army either by Douzy or by Carignan, that is, towards Sedan or Montmédy, had divided his Corps between those two places. At a later period, when darkness had set in, MacMahon, seated at a bivouac fire, on the heights above Mouzon, sent for General Lebrun, and directed him to retreat, at once, upon Sedan, not by the highway, which was crowded with fugitives and wagons, but by cross roads leading upon Douzy. “We have had a bad time,” said the Marshal, “but the situation is not hopeless. At the most, the German Army before us cannot exceed in numbers sixty or seventy thousand men. If they attack us, so much the better; we shall be able, doubtless, to fling them into the Meuse.” The Marshal, who never spared himself, and seemed to live without sleep, rode back to Sedan, and Lebrun, stumbling along devious tracks, in the darkness, and apparently in dubious military array, fearing all the time that he might be attacked, entered Douzy at eight in the morning, and did not reach Bazeilles, his destination, until ten o’clock.
Meantime Ducrot, embarrassed by the presence of the Emperor, awaited anxiously, at Carignan, the final orders of MacMahon. He respectfully urged His Majesty to depart by train for Sedan, but the Emperor refused—“he wished to be with the Corps which covered the retreat.” He was astonished and incredulous when the rout before Mouzon was described. “It is impossible,” he repeatedly exclaimed, “our positions were magnificent!” In the night he vanished from Carignan; and it was only some hours after he had gone that Ducrot was informed of his departure by train. The General then, in concert with Margueritte, whose cavalry were on the Chiers, resolved to retreat in the morning, without waiting longer for orders, and to move upon Illy, because he assumed that MacMahon would certainly direct the Army on Mézières. He was mistaken. On reaching Villers-Cernay, about four in the afternoon of the 31st, Ducrot learned that he was to retire upon Sedan, and not upon Mézières, “whither I have not any intention of going,” said the Marshal’s despatch. In fact, the two Divisions of the 1st Corps, left at Douzy on the 30th, had been already ordered to retire on the Givonne. Lebrun, whom we saw follow in their wake, after his painful night march, did not destroy the bridge over the Chiers; so that, when he was passing Francheval, Ducrot actually saw the enemy—they were Saxon horsemen—issuing from the village, and cutting in upon the baggage and transport trains.
On that memorable 30th, when the Emperor informed the Empress by telegram, from Carignan, that there had been an “engagement of no great importance,” an officer destined to be conspicuous, dropped in upon the Army; it was De Wimpffen. He has been defined by General Lebrun, who was with him at St. Cyr, as a man of firm will, and “an unlimited confidence in his own capacity.” Indeed, he had come to restore victory. When he passed through Paris, the Comte de Palikao was good enough to tell him—so he writes, although Palikao “thinks” he could not have so expressed himself—that MacMahon chimed in too easily with the suggestions of the Emperor, which was not the fact; that His Majesty was in a false position, and that he caused the greatest embarrassment. “Send me to the Army,” said De Wimpffen, “I shall impart the needed boldness and decision.” So he was sent to supersede De Failly in command of the 5th Corps, carrying in his pocket a letter which authorized him to succeed MacMahon in command of the Army, should any accident befall the Marshal. It was this audacious personage who supervened on the 30th, and to his horror, found the Army he might have to guide and govern, falling to pieces under his eyes. He met troops in flight from Mouzon; they were frightened, famished, and could hardly be persuaded that the “Prussians” were not at their heels. As evidence of the reigning disorder, De Wimpffen says that he collected on the 30th, three regiments belonging to the 5th, 7th, and 12th Corps, some squadrons of De Failly’s cavalry, and several hundreds of men belonging to the 1st Corps, who obeyed a non-combatant officer. The General led them during the night to Sedan. A like confusion prevailed on all sides, as the soldiers, hungry and thoroughly wearied, fell asleep as they dropped on the ground in their dreary bivouacs.
The Emperor entered Sedan about midnight. The Marshal urged him to embark afresh in the train, and seek security in Mézières, where General Vinoy was expected, and where he did, indeed, arrive that night with the advance guard of one division of the 13th Corps. The Emperor refused to quit Sedan, but the Prince Imperial had been sent away. The movement of Vinoy was delayed several hours, because a train running to Avesnes, and bearing the young Prince, “his baggage, his escort, and his suite,” barred the way to Mézières.
When morning dawned upon the discomfited Army, Marshal MacMahon had not ceased to ponder. As he said before the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in 1872, he had no intention of fighting a battle at Sedan, but he wished to supply the Army afresh with provisions and munitions; and he spent part of the day in considering what he should do on the morrow, and in watching from the citadel the march of his foes. There were, he believed, a million rations in Sedan, but eight hundred thousand of these were stored in wagons at the station, and as shells reached them from beyond the Meuse, the station-master sent away the train to Mézières. With it went a company of engineers, instructed to blow up the bridge at Donchery; but frightened by the shells, the driver halted long enough to drop the engineers, and then hastily fled with the powder and tools. The Marshal did not hear of the mishap until ten o’clock at night, and when another company of engineers reached the bridge, they found it in possession of the enemy! Early in the morning, before that event occurred, Captain des Sesmaisons, carrying a message from Vinoy, entered Sedan, after having been fired on by a German battery established near Frenois. He saw the Emperor in the hotel of the Sub-Prefect, delivered his message, and received a despatch from His Majesty directing Vinoy to concentrate his troops in Mézières. Anxious that the Captain should return in safety, the Emperor gave him a horse, and traced on a map the road he should take, observing that the Army would retire by that route the next day; that the road would be open and safe, as it was new, had not been marked on the map, and was unknown to the enemy. But we learn from the German Staff history, that this recently opened road, although not laid down on the French, was duly figured in the German map, a contrast between diligence and negligence not easily paralleled. The Captain saw MacMahon, who then, nearly midday, seemed resolved to march on Mézières, and believed that he could crush any opposition.
At this moment General Douay arrived, and gave a new turn to his thoughts. Douay had surveyed the position in front of his camp with an anxious eye, and had noted that, unless reinforced, he could not hold the cardinal point—the Calvaire d’Illy. He got additional troops in the end. “But,” said the Marshal, who seemed to share Douay’s apprehensions, “I do not want to shut myself up in lines; I wish to be free to manœuvre.” “M. le Maréchal, to-morrow the enemy will not leave you the time,” was the General’s answer. According to Captain des Sesmaisons, it was Douay’s comments on the position which made the Marshal modify his judgment, and think of fighting where he stood rather than of retreating on Mézières. The Captain rode back to his General, and carried with him a gloomy account of the condition and outlook of the Army of Chalons. No troops were sent forth to watch the Meuse below Sedan and communicate with Vinoy. Later in the day, an old soldier who lived in the neighbourhood, sought out General Douay and told him that the enemy was preparing to pass the Meuse at Donchery—a fact, it might be thought, which could not escape the notice of the watchers in Sedan—and then it was that the General occupied the position between Floing and Illy, and began to throw up intrenchments as cover for men and guns. He had not done so hitherto, because his soldiers, thoroughly exhausted by incessant marches, sleepless nights, want of food, and rear-guard combats, needed some rest. Enough has been said to indicate the lamentable weakness of mind at head-quarters, and the dire confusion prevailing throughout the limited area between the Belgian frontier and the Meuse, within which the French soldiers were now potentially inclosed. It is time to show a different example of the practice of war.