During the whole day the French columns were crossing the Swiss frontier. The Army Reserve in Pontarlier was at the beginning swept away by the tide of baggage-waggons and drivers, and only joined the XVIIIth Corps on reaching La Cluse. During the night they both followed the general line of retreat. Only the cavalry and the 1st Division of the XXIVth Corps reached the neighbouring department of l'Ain to the southward, the latter force reduced to a few hundred men. There crossed the frontier on to Swiss soil some 80,000 Frenchmen.
General Manteuffel had transferred his headquarters to Pontarlier. There, in the course of the night, he first heard through Berlin of the convention arranged between General Clinchant and Colonel Herzog of the Swiss Confederation.
General von Manteuffel had achieved the important success of his three weeks' campaign by hard marching and constant fighting, although there had been no pitched battle since that of the Lisaine. These marches, indeed, had been such as none but well-seasoned troops could have accomplished under bold and skilful leadership, under every form of fatigue and hardship, in the worst season and through a difficult country.
Thus two French armies were now prisoners in Germany, a third interned in the capital, and the fourth disarmed on foreign soil.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] Men of the 2nd Battalion, 61st Regiment, 8th Brigade, 4th Division, IInd Corps, which Corps consisted exclusively of Pomeranians.
[82] "Conviction bien arrêtée."
[83] The 77th Hanoverian Fusilier Regiment, of which this was the 2nd battalion, belonged to the 25th Brigade, 13th Division, VIIth (Westphalian) Army Corps.