The siege and capture of Sebastopol virtually ended the contest, though the war lagged during the greater part of the ensuing year. On the second of March, 1855, the Czar Nicholas died, and Alexander II. came to the throne, predisposed to peace. It was not, however, until the thirtieth of March, 1856, that the Treaty of Paris was concluded, in which Russia was obliged to yield to the allied powers, among which France held the first place.

The story of the Crimean War, and of the siege of Sebastopol in particular, has passed into history as one of the great events, of the century. The struggles at Balaklava, on the river Alma, at Inkerman, and the storming of the Redan and the Malakhoff became the subjects of great historical paintings, of poems and of songs, the echoes of which are heard to the present day.

SADOWA.

From a military point of view, nothing in this century has been more brilliantly successful than the campaign of Prussia into Bohemia against the Austrians, culminating on the sixth of July, 1866, in the great conflict called the battle of Sadowa or Koeniggraetz—the one or the other from the two towns near which it was fought. The historical painter, Wilhelm Camphausen, of the School of Duesseldorf, has left among the art trophies of the world a painting of this battle which is as true to the field and the combatants as anything which we recall from the sublime leaves of historical art.

The scene represented is the triumphant conclusion of the battle. The field is wide and stormy. In the centre, riding at full gallop with his staff, is King William. Already he is receiving the cheers and salutations of victory. By his side are seen the stalwart figures of Bismarck, Von Roon, Von Moltke, the Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, and many others destined in the ensuing ten years to rise to the heights of military fame. To the right of the group of commanders charges the column of the Uhlans. The Austrians before are broken, and falling into rout. Far to the left and in the distance may be seen the half-obscured wrecks of battle.

This conflict proved to be the Waterloo of Austria. It was the climax of the Seven Weeks' War. Already the Germans, under the leadership of Prussia, were making haste toward empire. The activity and energy displayed by the Prussian Government at this juncture were prodigious. It was like the days of Frederick the Great come again. The trouble with Austria had arisen about the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg to the government of Holstein. Bismarck desired that that duchy should be disposed of in one manner, while Austria was determined on another.

The German States were drawn into this controversy, and the support of Italy was sought by each of the contestants. Prussia held out to Italy the temptation of recovering Venice, as the reward of her entrance into a Prusso-Italian alliance. This bait was sufficient. The smaller German powers, with the exception of Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, the Saxon States, and three Free Cities, took their stand with Austria, and the German Diet approved of the Austrian demand. It looked for the time as though Prussia, with the exception of the aid of Italy, was to be left naked to all the winds of hostility. The event showed, however, that that great power was now in her element. She declared the action of the German Diet to be not only a menace, but an act of overt hostilities. This was followed by an immediate declaration of war against a foe that had nearly three times her numerical strength.

On the fifteenth of June, 1866, King William called upon Saxony, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Nassau to remain neutral in the impending conflict, and gave them twelve hours in which to decide! Receiving no answer, he ordered the Prussians out of Holstein to seize Hanover. This work was accomplished in two days. In another two days Hesse-Cassel was occupied by an army from the Rhine, while at the same time a third division of the Prussian forces was thrown into Dresden and Leipsic. On the twenty-seventh of the month, a battle was fought with the Hanoverians, in which the latter were at first successful, but were soon overpowered and compelled to surrender. George V., King of Hanover, fled for refuge to Vienna.

Within two weeks the field in the South was cleared, and the Prussian army was turned upon Austria. King William's forces numbered 260,000 men. They were commanded by the Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, Von Moltke, Von Roon and General Bittenfeld. The King in person and Bismarck were present with the advance. The impact was more than Austria could stand. On the twenty-seventh and twenty-ninth of June, Frederick Charles defeated the Austrian advance in four indecisive engagements. Count Clam-Gallas, the Austrian general, was obliged to fall back on the main body for support.

In these same days the Crown Prince gained several preliminary successes over the principal Austrian army under Benedek. Then, on the river Bistritz, on the sixth of July, came the great battle of Sadowa. The opposing commanders in the beginning of the engagement were Frederick Charles and Benedek. The battle began at eight in the morning, and raged with the utmost fury until two in the afternoon. Thus far the Prussians had gained but little advantage; but at that hour the powerful division of the Crown Prince, which, like that of Bluecher at Waterloo, had been delayed by recent rains, appeared on the Austrian right. The wing of Benedek's army was soon turned. Bittenfeld then broke the left, and under a general advance of the Prussian lines the Austrian centre gave way in confusion. The field was quickly swept. The overthrow of the Austrian army became a ruinous rout, and the out-flashing sun of evening looked upon a demoralized and flying host, scattering in all directions before the victorious charges of the Prussian cavalry.

The overwhelming victory of the Prussians was not without its rational causes. Indeed the antecedents of victory may always be found if all the facts of battle are known and analyzed. It remained for the battle of Sadowa to demonstrate practically the superiority of the needle-gun. This arm had been adopted by the Prussian government and was now for the first time on a great scale brought to the crucial test. Hitherto the old plan of muzzle-loading had been followed by all the nations of Europe and America. In our country the Civil War had come almost to its climax before breech-loading was generally introduced. Austria had continued to use the old muzzle-loading muskets. It seems surprising that nations, of whom intelligence and self-interest may well be predicated, should continue in such a matter as war to employ inefficient weaponry long after a superior arm has been invented.

If one might have looked into the gunshop of M. Pauli at Paris in the year 1814, he might have seen a gunsmith, twenty-seven years of age, plying his trade under the patronage of Napoleon the Great. That gunsmith was Johann Nicholas Von. Dreyse, of Soemmerda, who presently became an inventor as well as a smith, and in 1824, having returned to his own country, he took a patent for a new percussion method in musketry. Three years afterward he invented a needle-gun, retaining the muzzle-loading method. He continued his experimentation until 1836, when he made and patented the first breech-loading needle-gun complete. This was done under the patronage of the Prussian government. It was not until 1841, however, that this arm began to be supplied for Prussian troops, and it was twenty-five years after that date before the general adoption of this arm contributed to the rout of the Austrians at Sadowa.

The Prussians being armed with needle-guns, were enabled to get the double advantage of rapid firing by loading in a chamber at the breech of the piece, and the equally great advantage of a long range and most deadly missile; for in the cartridge of this gun the needle runs through the charge, firing it first at the front of the chamber, thus securing the whole force of the explosive, which burns backward in the enclosed space and expends itself entirely on the projectile. Those breech-loading pieces which fire the cartridge by percussion against its back end have the disadvantage of the charge burning forward, and thus wasting itself partly in the air after the bullet has left the muzzle. This difficulty, however, has been overcome in recent gunnery, and the needle-gun such as it was in the hands of King William's soldiers at Sadowa, must now be regarded as a clumsy and obsolete weapon.

The battle of Sadowa was to Francis Joseph the handwriting on the wall; but he made vain exertions to save his tottering fabric. Now it was that the shadow of a great hand was seen behind the conflict. It was the hand of Bismarck. His scheme was the unification of Germany. The NORTH GERMAN UNION was formed on the basis of Protestantism and the unity of the German race. Already the Empire might be seen in the distance.

CAPTURE OF MEXICO.

Whatever may be said of the justice of our war with Mexico, no criticism can be offered as to the brilliancy of the result. The campaign of General Scott against the ancient capital of the Aztecs, was almost spectacular; certainly it was heroic.

On the ninth of March, 1847, the General, then nearly sixty-one years of age, arrived at Vera Cruz, with an army of 12,000 men. That city was taken in about a week, and the way was opened from the coast to the capital. The advance began on the eighth of April, and ten days afterward the rocky pass of Cerro Gordo was carried by assault. Santa Anna barely escaped with his life, leaving behind 3000 prisoners, his chest of private papers, and his wooden leg!

On the twenty-second of the same month, the strong castle of Perote, crowning a peak of the Cordilleras, was taken without resistance. Then the sacred city of Puebla was captured. On the seventh of August, Scott, with his reduced forces, began his march over the crest of the mountains against the city of Mexico. The American army, sweeping over the heights, looked down on the valley. Never before had a soldiery in a foreign land beheld a grander scene Clear to the horizon stretched a living landscape of green fields, villages, and lakes—a picture too beautiful to be marred with the dreadful enginery of war.

The American army advanced by the way of Ayotla. The route was the great national road from Vera Cruz to Mexico. The last fifteen miles of the way was occupied with fortifications, both natural and artificial, and it seemed impossible to advance directly to the gates of the city. The army was accordingly brought around Lake Chalco, and thence westward to San Augustine. This place is ten miles from the capital. The approach now lay along causeways, across marshes and the beds of bygone lakes. At the further end of each causeway, the Mexicans had built massive gates. There were almost inaccessible positions at Contreras, San Antonio and Molino del Rey. Further on toward the city lay the powerful bulwarks of Churubusco and Chapultepec. The latter was of great strength, and seemed impregnable. These various outposts were held by Santa Anna with a force of fully thirty thousand Mexicans.

The first assaults of the Americans were made on the nineteenth of August, by Generals Pillow and Twiggs. The line of communications between Contreras and Santa Anna's army was cut, and in the darkness of the following night an assault was made by General Persifer F. Smith, who about sunrise carried the place and drove the garrison pell-mell. This was the first victory of the memorable twentieth of August.

A few hours later, General Worth compelled the evacuation of San Antonio. This was the second victory. About the same time, General Pillow advanced on Churubusco, and carried one of the heights. The position was taken by storm, and the enemy scattered like chaff. This was the third triumph. The division of General Twiggs added a fourth victory by storming and holding another height of Churubusco, while the fifth and last was achieved by General Shields and Pierce, who drove back an army of reinforcements under Santa Anna. The Mexicans were thus forced back into the fortifications of Chapultepec.

On the following morning, the alarm and treachery of the Mexican authorities were both strongly exhibited. A deputation came out to negotiate; but the intent was merely to gain time for strengthening the defences. The terms proposed by the Mexicans were preposterous when viewed in the light of the situation. General Scott, who did not consider his army vanquished, rejected the proposals with scorn. He, however, rested his men until the seventh of September before renewing hostilities. On the morning of the eighth, General Worth was thrown forward to take Molino del Rey and Casa de Mata, which were the western defences of Chapultepec. These places were defended by about fourteen thousand Mexicans; but the Americans, after losing a fourth of their number in the desperate onset, were again victorious. The batteries were now turned on Chapultepec itself, and on the thirteenth of September that frowning citadel was carried by storm. This exploit opened an avenue into the city. Through the San Cosine and Belen gates the conquering army swept resistlessly, and at nightfall the soldiers of the Union were in the suburbs of Mexico.

During the night, Santa Anna and the officers of the Government fled from the city, but not until they had turned loose from the prisons 2000 convicts, to fire upon the American army. On the following morning, before day-dawn, a deputation came forth from the city to beg for mercy. This time the messengers were in earnest; but General Scott, wearied with trifling, turned them away with disgust. "Forward!" was the order that rang along the American lines at sunrise. The war-worn regiments swept into the beautiful streets of the famous city, and at seven o'clock the flag of the United States floated over the halls of the Montezumas. It was the triumphant ending of one of the most brilliant and striking campaigns of modern history.

The American army, as compared with the hosts of Mexico, had been but a handful. The small force which had left Vera Cruz on the march to the capital had lost considerably by battle and disease. Many detachments had been posted en route to hold the line of communications, and for garrison duty in places taken from the enemy. The army had thus dwindled until, after the battles of Churubusco and Chapultepec, fewer than six thousand men were left to enter and hold the capital.

The invasion had been remarkable in all its particulars. The obstacles which had to be overcome seemed insurmountable. There were walled cities to be taken, fortified mountain passes to be carried by storm, and frowning castles with cannon on the battlements to be assaulted by regiments whose valor and impetuosity were their only protection and warrant of victory. Yet the campaign was never seriously impeded. No foot of ground once taken from the Mexicans was yielded by false tactics or lost by battle.

The army which accomplished this marvel, penetrating a far-distant and densely peopled country, held by a proud race, claiming to be the descendants of Cortes and the Spanish heroes of the sixteenth century, and denouncing at the outset the American soldiers as "barbarians of the North," was, in large part, an army of volunteers—a citizen soldiery—which had risen from the States of the Union and marched to the Mexican border under the Union flag.

VICKSBURG.

The story goes that on a certain occasion some friends of General Grant, anxious to make him talk about himself—something he would hardly ever do—said: "General, at what time in your military career did you perceive that you were the coming man—that you were to have the responsibility and fame of the command-in-chief and end the war?" For little while the General smoked on, and then said, "After Vicksburg!"

Certain it is that the star of Grant, long obscured and struggling through storm and darkness, never emerged into clear light, rising in the ascendant, until after the capture of the stronghold of the Confederates on the Mississippi. After that it rose, and rose to the zenith.

The position of Vicksburg is hard to understand. The river at this place makes a bend to the north and then turns south again, leaving a delta, or peninsula, on the Louisiana side. Vicksburg occupies a kind of shoulder on the Mississippi side. The site is commanding. The river flows by the bluffs, as if to acknowledge its subjection to them. From the beginning of the war the Confederate authorities recognized the vast importance of holding this key to the great inland artery, and the Federal Government saw the necessity of clutching it from the enemy.

The mouth of the Mississippi was soon regained by the Government, so that there was no serious obstruction as far north as where the northern border of Louisiana crosses the river. From the north the Federal fleets and land forces made their way along the Tennessee border, and then the Arkansas border; but in the middle, between the twenty-second and thirty-third parallels, the Confederates got a strong grip on the Father of Waters, and would not relinquish their hold. Jackson, the capital of the State, was in their power also, and from Jackson eastward the great thoroughfare extended into Alabama, and thence expanded in its connections into all the Confederacy. From Jackson to Vicksburg reached the same line of communications, so that here, at Vicksburg, the Confederate power, having its seat in Richmond and its energy in the field, reached directly to the Mississippi river, and laid upon that stream a band of iron which the Union must break in order to pass.

Such was the situation at the beginning of 1863. General Grant, who had been under a cloud since Shiloh, had gradually regained his command, and to him fell the task of breaking the Confederate hold on the great river. He has himself in his Memoirs told the story of the Vicksburg campaign. He managed, by herculean exertions, to get his forces below Vicksburg, and then began his campaign from Grand Gulf inland toward the line of communication between Jackson and Vicksburg. It was some time before the Confederates took the alarm. When they did become alarmed about Grant's movements, General J.E. Johnston, who commanded at Jackson, and General J.C. Pemberton, who was in command at Vicksburg; made the most unwearied efforts to keep open the line of communications upon which the safety of Jackson and the success of Pemberton depended.

But Grant pressed on in a northwesterly direction until he came upon Pemberton in a position which he had chosen at Champion's Hill. Here, without doubt, was fought one of the critical battles of the Union war. If General Pemberton had been successful, that success would seem to have portended the end of Grant's military career. But a different fate was reserved for the combatants. Grant's army was strong, and had become seasoned by hardship into the veteran condition. His under officers—Logan, McPherson, Hovey, McClernand and A.J. Smith—were in full spirit of battle. The engagement was severely contested. The Union army, actually engaged, numbered 15,000, and Pemberton's forces were about equal in number; but the latter were disastrously defeated. The losses were excessive in proportion to the numbers engaged.

The Confederates now fell back to Big Black river. Their line of communication with Jackson was cut. A second battle was fought at Big Black River, and then, on the eighteenth of May, the victorious Union army surrounded Vicksburg, and the siege was begun. The siege lasted forty-seven days, and was marked by heroic resistance on the one side and heroic pertinacity on the other, to the degree of making it one of the memorable events in the military annals of the world. Gradually the Union lines were narrowed around the doomed town. Ever nearer and nearer the lines of riflepits were drawn. Day by day the resources of the Confederates were reduced. But their defences were strong, and their courage for a long time unabated.

General Pemberton hoped and expected that an attack on Grant's rear would be made in such force as to loosen his grip, and to enable the besieged to rise against the besiegers and break through. The Confederates, however, had not sufficient forces for such an enterprise. General Lee, in the East, had now undertaken the campaign of Gettysburg, and the Confederacy was already strained in every nerve. General Grant had the way open for supplies and re-enforcements. The siege was pressed with the utmost vigor, and Pemberton was left to his fate.

Meanwhile, however, two unsuccessful assaults were made on the Confederate works. The first of these occurred on the day after the investment was completed. It was unsuccessful. The Union army was flung back from the impregnable defences in the rear of Vicksburg, and great losses were inflicted on them. Grant, however, was undismayed, and, still believing that the enemy's line might be broken by assault, renewed the attempt in a gallant attack on the twenty-second of May. A furious cannonade was kept up for several hours, and then the divisions of Sherman, McPherson and McClernand were thrown forward upon the earthworks of the enemy.

It was here that General McClernand reported to the commander that he had gained the Confederate intrenchments. General Grant says: "I occupied a position from which I thought I could see as well as he what took place in his front; and I did not see the success he reported. But his request for reinforcements being repeated, I could not ignore it, and sent him Quinby's division. Sherman and McPherson were both ordered to renew their assaults in favor of McClernand. This last attack only served to increase our casualties, without giving any benefit whatever." In these attacks large numbers of the Federal soldiers had got into the low ground intervening, under the enemy's fire, and had to remain in that position until darkness enabled them to retire. The Union losses were very heavy, and General Grant, years afterward, in composing his Memoirs, referred to this assault and to that at Cold Harbor as the two conspicuous mistakes of his military career.

Now it was that the regular siege of Vicksburg was undertaken. Toward the latter part of June, the Confederates, both soldiers and citizens, began to suffer. Houses became untenable. The people sought what refuge they might find. Some actually burrowed in the earth. The garrison was placed on short rations, and then a condition of starvation ensued. Pemberton held out with a resolution worthy of a better fate. But at length human endurance could go no further. On the fourth of July the white flag was hoisted from the Confederate works, announcing the end. Generals Grant and Pemberton, with three or four attendants each, met between the lines, and the terms of capitulation were quickly named and accepted. Vicksburg was surrendered. General Pemberton and all his forces, 30,000 strong, became prisoners of war.

This was the greatest force ever surrendered in America, though it was only about one-sixth of that of Marshal Bazaine and his army at Metz seven years afterward. Thousands of small arms, hundreds of cannon, and all the remaining ammunition and stores of the Confederates were the other fruits of this great Union victory, by which the prospect of ultimate success to the Confederacy was either destroyed or long postponed, and by which in particular the great central river of the United States was permitted once more to flow unvexed from the confluence of the Missouri to the Gulf.

GETTYSBURG.

The battle of Gettysburg is properly included among the great battles of the world. It was the greatest conflict that has thus far occurred in America. The losses relative to the numbers engaged were not as great as those at Antietam, Spottsylvania, and a few other bloody struggles of our war; but in the aggregate the losses were greatest. Gettysburg was in truth the high tide of the American Civil War. Never before and never afterward was there a crisis such as that which broke in the dreadful struggle for the mastery of Cemetery Ridge.

The invasion of the Northern States by General Lee had been undertaken at the close of the previous summer. That invasion had ended disastrously at the battle of Antietam. Once more the Confederate commander would make the trial. So well had he been able to beat back every invasion of Virginia by the Union forces that he now thought to end the war by turning its tide of devastation into Pennsylvania.

Doubtless Lee realized that he was placing everything upon the cast of a die. He undertook the campaign with a measure of confidence. He, almost as much as Grant, was a taciturn man, not much given to revelations of his purposes and hopes. No doubt he was somewhat surprised at the successful rising of the Union forces against him. Besides the Army of the Potomac, Pennsylvania seemed to rise for the emergency.

It has not generally been observed that before the great battle General Meade was in a position seriously to threaten the Confederate rear. Armies in the field rarely meet each other at the place and time expected. There is always something obscure and uncertain in the oncoming of the actual conflict. The fact is that General Lee was receding somewhat at the time of the crisis. Then it was that he determined to fight a great battle, and if successful then march on Washington. Should he not be successful, he would keep a way open by direct route for retreat into Virginia.

By the first of July, 1863, a situation had been prepared which signified a decisive battle with far-reaching consequences to the one side or the other, accordingly as victory should incline to this or to that. By this date General Reynolds, who commanded the advance line of the Union army, met the corresponding line of the Confederates at the village of Gettysburg, and the rest followed as if by logical necessity.

On July 1 and 2, the great body of the Union and Confederate armies came up to the position where battle had already begun between the advance divisions and the pressure of the one side upon the other became greater and greater with each hour. At the first the Confederate impact was strongest. General Reynolds was killed. Reinforcements were hurried up on both sides. General Howard, who succeeded Reynolds, selected Cemetery Hill, south of the town of Gettysburg, and there established the Union line.

General Meade arrived on the field on the afternoon of the first, and the two armies were thrown rapidly into position. That of the Federals extended in the form of a fishhook from Little Round Top by way of Round Top and along Cemetery Ridge through the cemetery itself, by the way of the gate, and then bending to the right, formed the bowl of the hook, which extended around as far as Culp's Hill and Wolf Creek. The ground was elevated and the convexity was toward the enemy.

By nightfall of the first, both armies were in state of readiness for the conflict. The Union army was on the defensive. It was sufficient that it should hold its ground and repel all assault. The Confederates must advance and carry the Federal position in order to succeed. How this should be done was not agreed on by the Confederate commanders. General Lee formed a plan of direct assault; but General Longstreet was of opinion that a movement of the army to the Union left flank would be preferable, and that by that method the flank might be turned and the position of Meade carried with less loss and much less hazard.

Longstreet, however, did not oppose the views of his commander to the extent of thwarting his purpose or weakening the plan adopted. On the second of July the battle began in earnest about noon. The Confederates advanced against the Union centre and left, and at a later hour a strenuous and partly successful attack was made on the Federal right. But complete success was not attained by Lee in any part of the field. About sundown the Confederates gained considerable advantage against Slocum, who held the line along Wolf Hill and Rock Creek; and on the Union left a terrible struggle occurred for the possession of Great and Little Round Top. In this part of the field the fighting continued until six o'clock in the evening; but the critical positions still remained in the hands of the Federals.

In the centre the contest was waged for the mastery of Cemetery Hill, which was the key to the Union position. Here were planted batteries with an aggregate of eighty guns, and here, though the assaults of the Confederates were desperate and long continued, the integrity of the Federal line was preserved till nightfall. The fighting along a front of nearly five miles in extent continued in a desultory manner until about ten o'clock on the July night, when the firing for the most part ceased, leaving the two armies in virtually the same position which they had occupied the day before.

This signified, however, that thus far the advantage was on the Union side; for on that side the battle was defensive. The Confederate army had come to a wall, and must break through or suffer defeat. The burden of attack rested on the Confederate side; but General Lee did not flinch from the necessity. In the darkness of night both he and the Union commanders made strenuous preparations for the renewal of the struggle on the morrow.

On the morning of the third both armies seemed loath to begin the conflict. This phenomenon is nearly always witnessed in the case of really critical battles. It was so at Waterloo, and so at Gettysburg. It seems that in such crises the commanders, well aware of what is to come, wait awhile, as though each would permit the other to strike first. As a matter of fact, the topmost crest of the Civil War had now been reached; and from this hour the one cause or the other must decline to the end.

The whole forenoon of the third of July was spent in preparations. There was but little fighting, and that little was desultory. At midday there seemed to be a lull along the whole line. Just afterward, however, General Lee opened from Seminary Ridge with about one hundred guns, directing his fire against the Union centre on Cemetery Hill. There the counter position was occupied by the American artillery of about equal strength, under command of General Hunt. The cannonade burst out at one o'clock with terrific roar. Nothing like it had ever before been seen or heard in the New World. Nothing like it, we believe, had ever up to that time been witnessed in Europe. Certainly there was no such cannonade at Waterloo. For about an hour and a half this tremendous vomit of shot and shell continued. It was the hope of General Lee to pound the Union batteries to pieces, and then, while horror and death were still supreme in the Union centre, to thrust forward an overwhelming mass of his best infantry into the gap, cut Meade's army in two, plant the Confederate banner on the crest of the Union battle line, and virtually then and there achieve the independence of the Confederate States.

It seems that an action of General Hunt, about half-past two, flattered Lee with the belief that he had succeeded. Hunt adopted the plan of drawing back his batteries over the crest of the hill, for the double purpose of cooling his guns that were becoming overheated and of saving his supply of ammunition, that was running low. The Union fire accordingly slackened and almost ceased for a while. Nor was Lee able to discover from his position but what his batteries under General Alexander had prevailed. It looked for the moment as though the battle were lost to Meade, and that victory was in the clutch of his antagonist.

Already a Confederate charge of infantry had been prepared. About 18,000 men, in three divisions, under Armistead, Garnett and Pettigrew, and led by General George E. Pickett, of Virginia, had been got into readiness for the crisis which had now arrived. Longstreet was the corps commander, and through him the order for the charge should be given. General Lee had himself made the order, but Longstreet seeing, as he believed the inevitable, hesitated and turned aside. It was not a refusal to send an army to destruction, but the natural hesitation of a really great commander to do what he believed was fatal to the Confederate cause. Pickett, however, gave his salutation to Longstreet, and presently said: "Sir, I am going to move forward!"

Then began the most memorable charge ever witnessed in America. The Confederate column was three-fourths of a mile in length. It was directed against the Union centre, where it was supposed the Confederate fire had done its work. What ensued was the finest military spectacle that had been seen in the world since the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo; and the results were alike! The brave men who made the onset were mowed down as they crossed rapidly the intervening space. Hunt's batteries were quickly run back to their position, and began to discharge their deadly contents against the head of the oncoming column. That column veered somewhat to the right as it came. The line staggered, but pressed on. It came within the range of the Union musketry. Gaps opened here and there. Armistead, who led the advance, saw his forces sink to the earth; but he did not waver. Nearer and nearer the column came to the Union line. It struck the Union line. There was a momentary melee among the guns, and then all was over. Hancock's infantry rose with flash on flash from among the rocks by which they were partially protected. The Confederates were scattered in broken groups. Retreat was well-nigh impossible. The impact of the charge was utterly broken, and the Confederate line was blown into rout and ruin. Victory hovered over the National army. The Confederate forces staggered away under the blow of defeat. Night came down on a broken and virtually hopeless cause. The field was covered with the dead and dying. Two thousand eight hundred and thirty-four Union soldiers had been killed outright; 13,709 were wounded, and 6643 were missing, making a total of 23,186 men. The Confederate loss was never definitely ascertained, but was greatly in excess of that of the Federals. The best estimate has been fixed at 31,621. The grand total of losses in those fatal three days thus reached the enormous aggregate of 54,807!

SPOTTSYLVANIA.

A losing cause never showed a braver front than the Confederacy put on in the Wilderness. It was a front of iron. A man weaker than Grant would have quailed before it. It was virtually the same old rim of fire and death that had confronted McClellan, that had consumed Pope, that almost destroyed both Hooker and Burnside. Either the Union army must go through this barrier of flame and destruction and scatter it like brands of fire to right and left, or else the Union could never be rebuilded on the foundation of victory.

There was much discussion—and some doubt—in the spring of 1864 whether the Silent Man of Galena, now made Commander-in-chief of the Union armies, could pursue his military destiny to a great fame with Robert E. Lee for his antagonist. This talk was bruited abroad; Grant himself heard it, and had to consider what not a few people were saying, namely, that he had had before him in the West as leaders of the enemy only such men as Buckner and Beauregard and Pemberton; now he must stand up face to face with "Old Bobby Lee" and take the blows of the great Virginian against whom neither strategy nor force had hitherto prevailed.

The Man of Galena did not quail. Neither did he doubt. His pictures of this epoch show him with mouth more close shut than ever; but otherwise there was no sign. Lee for his part knew that another foeman was now come, and if we mistake not he divined that the end of the Confederacy, involving the end of his own military career, was not far ahead. It is to the credit of his genius that he did not weaken under such a situation and despair ere the ordeal came upon him; but on the contrary, he planted himself in the Wilderness and awaited the coming of the storm.

Let the world know that Grant in entering upon his great campaign, in the first days of May, 1864, had to do so against the greatest disadvantages. The country south of the Rappahannock was against him. The fact of Lee's acting ever on the defensive was against him. The woods and the rivers were against him. All Virginia, from the Rapidan to Richmond, was a rifle-pit and an earthwork. The Confederates knew every hill and ravine as though they were the orchard and the fishing creek of their own homes. The battlefield was theirs, to begin with; it must be taken from them or remain theirs forever. To take a battlefield of their own from Virginians has never been a pleasing task to those who did it—or more frequently tried to do it and did not!

It remained for Grant and his tremendous Union army to undertake this herculean task. He moved into the Wilderness and fought a two-days' battle of the greatest severity. The contest of the fifth and sixth of May were murderous in character. The National losses in these two days in killed, wounded and missing were not less than 14,000; those of the Confederates were almost as great. In this struggle General Alexander Hays was killed; Generals Getty, Baxter and McAlister were wounded, and scores of under-officers, with thousands of brave men, lost their lives or limbs. Now it was that Lee is reported to have said to his officers, with a serious look on his iron face: "Gentlemen, at last the Army of the Potomac has a head."

On the seventh of May there was not much fighting. It is said that in the lull Grant's leading commanders thought he would recede, as his predecessors had done, and that not a few of them gave it as their opinion that he should do so. It is said that when coming to the Chancellorsville House, he gave the command, "Forward, by the left flank," thus demonstrating his purpose, as he said four days afterward in his despatch to the government, "to fight it out on that line if it took all summer," the soldiers gave a sigh of relief, and many began to sing at the prospect of no more retreating. General Sherman has recorded his belief that at this juncture Grant best displayed his greatness.

With the movement which we have just mentioned, the next stage in the campaign would bring both the Union and the Confederate armies to Spottsylvania Courthouse. The distance that each had to march to that point was about the same. It was at this juncture that the woods in which the two armies were moving, Grant to the left and Lee to the right, took fire and were burned. When the Union advance came in sight of Spottsylvania, Warren, who commanded, found that the place had been already occupied by the vigilant enemy. Hancock did not arrive in time to make an immediate attack, and Longstreet's corps was able to get into position before the pressure of the Union advance could be felt.

At this juncture Sheridan, in command of the Federal cavalry, was cut loose from the Union army and sent whirling with irresistible speed and momentum entirely around the rear of the Confederate army, destroying railroads, cutting communication, burning trains and liberating prisoners, as far as the very suburbs of Richmond.

The main divisions of the Union army came into position before Spottsylvania. Hancock had the right wing, and upon his left rested Warren. Sedgwick's corps was next in order, while Burnside held the left. Just as the commanders were forming their lines and some men at a Union battery seemed to shrink from the Confederate sharpshooters, Sedgwick went forward to encourage them, saying, "Men, they couldn't hit an elephant at that distance." But the next instant he himself fell dead! His command of the Sixth Corps was transferred to General Wright.

It now remained for Hancock on the extreme right to attack the Confederate left. This was done by Barlow's division, but without success. This attack and repulse was the real beginning of the battle of Spottsylvania. The Confederates in front were strongly intrenched, but near the northernmost point of their works what was thought to be a weak point in the line was discovered. This point was what is known as a salient. The position, however, was in the thick woods, or was at any rate concealed by the woods and ravines in front.

As soon as the position was discovered and its nature known, a large part of Wright's corps was sent against it. The attack was successful. The line was carried, and about a thousand men captured in the assault. But the reinforcements were not up promptly, and the assailants were driven back. A second assault ended in the same way. This fighting was on the evening of the tenth of May. The battle continued into the night, and the event hung dubious.

On the eleventh there was a heavy rain, but during that day General Grant, who placed great confidence in General Hancock and his corps, moved that brilliant officer to the point of attack before the salient. With the early light on the morning of the twelfth, Hancock sprang forward to the assault. So sudden and powerful was the charge that one-half of the distance had been traversed before the enemy knew what was coming. Then the storm burst wildly. The yell arose from one side, and the cheer from the other. Hancock's men in great force and with invincible courage sprang upon the breast-works, clubbed their guns, or went over bayonet foremost. They were met on the other side in like manner. The melee that ensued was perhaps the most dreadful hand-to-hand conflict of the war. The impetus of the Union attack was irresistible. Great numbers were killed on both sides, and the Confederates were overpowered.

General Edward Johnson and his division of about four thousand men were captured in the angle. General Stuart was also taken. He and Hancock had been friends in their student days at West Point. The story goes that Hancock, recognizing his prisoner, said, "How are you, Stuart?" and offered his hand. The hot Confederate answered, "I am General Stuart of the Confederate army, and under the circumstances I decline to take your hand." Hancock answered, "Under any other circumstances I should not have offered it!"

But there was no time for bantering. The very earth round about was in the chaos of roaring battle. Hancock had taken twenty guns with their horses, and about thirty battle flags. It was a tremendous capture, if he could hold his ground. No officer of the Union army ever showed to better advantage. The world may well forgive the touch of vanity and bluster in the undaunted Hancock, as he sent this despatch to Grant: "I have used up Johnson and am going into Hill." He found, however, that he should have terrible work even to keep the gain that he had made.

Lee no sooner perceived what was done than he threw heavy masses upon the position to retake it from the captors. Hancock was now on the wrong side of the angle! The Confederates came on during the day in five successive charges, the like of which for valor was hardly ever witnessed. The contested ground was literally piled with dead. There was hand-to-hand fighting. Men bayoneted each other through the crevices of the logs that had been piled up for defences. The storm of battle swept back and forth until the salient gained that name of "Death Angle" by which it will ever be known. The place became then and there the bloodiest spot that ever was washed with human life in America. The bushes and trees round about were literally shot away. At one point an oak tree, more than eighteen inches in diameter, was completely eaten off at the man-level by the bullet storm that beat against it. That tree in its fall crushed several men of a South Carolina regiment who still stood and fought in the death harvest that was going on.

The counter assaults of the Confederates, however, were in vain. They inflicted terrible losses, and were themselves mowed down by thousands; but they could not and did not retake the angle. Hancock and his heroes could not be dislodged. The battle of Spottsylvania died away with the night into sullen and awful silence, which was broken only by the groans of thousands of wounded men who could not be recovered from the bloody earth on which they had fallen. The antagonists lay crouching like lions, only a lion's spring apart, and neither would suffer the other, even for the sake of their common American humanity, to recover his dead.

In the retrospect it seems marvelous that within the memories of men now living and not yet old, so awful a struggle as that of the Death Angle in the Wilderness could have taken place between men of the same race and language, born under the flag of the same Republic, and cherishing the same sentiments and traditions and hopes.

APPOMATTOX.

Appomattox was not a battle, but the end of battles. Fondly do we hope that never again shall Americans lift against Americans the avenging hand in such a strife! Here at a little court-house, twenty-five miles east of Lynchburg, on the ninth of April, 1865, the great tragedy of our civil war was brought to a happy end. Here General Robert E. Lee, with the broken fragments of his Army of Northern Virginia, was brought by the inexorable logic of war to the end of that career which he had so bravely followed through four years of battle, much of which had shown him to be one of the great commanders of the century.

The story of the downfall of the Confederacy has been many times repeated. It has entered into our literature, and is known by heart wherever the history of the war is read. Generally, however, this story has been told as if the narrator approached the event from the Union side. We have the pursuit of General Lee from Petersburg westward, almost to the spurs of the Alleghanies. We follow in the wake. We see the unwearied efforts of the victorious host to close around the retreating army which has so long been the bulwark of the Confederacy. We hear the summons to surrender, and the answer of "Not yet;" but within a day that answer is reversed, and the stern wills of Lee and his fellow-commanders yield to the inexorable law of the strongest.

Only recently, however, the story has been told with great spirit from the Confederate side, by General John B. Gordon, who was at that time at the right hand of his commander-in-chief, and who stood by him to the last hour. General Gordon's account of the final struggle of the Confederate army and of the surrender is so graphic, so full of spirit, so warmed with the animation and devotion of a great soldier, that we here repeat his account of

THE DEATH STRUGGLE.

We always retreated in good order, though always under fire. As we retreated we would wheel and fire, or repel a rush, and then stagger on to the next hilltop, or vantage ground, where a new fight would be made. And so on through the entire day. At night my men had no rest. We marched through the night in order to get a little respite from fighting. All night long I would see my poor fellows hobbling along, prying wagons or artillery out of the mud, and supplementing the work of our broken-down horses. At dawn, though, they would be in line ready for battle, and they would fight with the steadiness and valor of the Old Guard.

This lasted until the night of the seventh of April. The retreat of Lee's army was lit up with the fire and flash of battle, in which my brave men moved about like demigods for five days and nights. Then we were sent to the front for a rest, and Longstreet was ordered to cover the retreating army. On the evening of the eighth, when I had reached the front, my scout George brought me two men in Confederate uniform, who, he said, he believed to be the enemy, as he had seen them counting our men as they filed past. I had the men brought to my campfire, and examined them. They made a plausible defence, but George was positive they were spies, and I ordered them searched. He failed to find anything, when I ordered him to examine their boots. In the bottom of one of the boots I found an order from General Grant to General Ord, telling him to move by forced marches toward Lynchburg and cut off General Lee's retreat. The men then confessed that they were spies, and belonged to General Sheridan. They stated that they knew that the penalty of their course was death, but asked that I should not kill them, as the war could only last a few days longer, anyhow. I kept them prisoners, and turned them over to General Sheridan after the surrender. I at once sent the information to General Lee, and a short time afterward received orders to go to his headquarters. That night was held Lee's last council of war. There were present General Lee, General Fitzhugh Lee, as head of the cavalry, and Pendleton, as chief of the artillery, and myself. General Longstreet was, I think, too busily engaged to attend.

General Lee then exhibited to us the correspondence he had had with General Grant that day, and asked our opinion of the situation. It seemed that surrender was inevitable. The only chance of escape was that I could cut a way for the army through the lines in front of me. General Lee asked me if I could do this. I replied that I did not know what forces were in front of me; that if General Ord had not arrived—as we thought then he had not—with his heavy masses of infantry, I could cut through. I guaranteed that my men would cut a way through all the cavalry that could be massed in front of them. The council finally dissolved with the understanding that the army should be surrendered if I discovered the next morning, after feeling the enemy's line, that the infantry had arrived in such force that I could not cut my way through.

My men were drawn up in the little town of Appomattox that night. I still had about four thousand men under me, as the army had been divided into two commands and given to General Longstreet and myself. Early on the morning of the ninth I prepared for the assault upon the enemy's line, and began the last fighting done in Virginia. My men rushed forward gamely and broke the line of the enemy and captured two pieces of artillery. I was still unable to tell what I was fighting; I did not know whether I was striking infantry or dismounted cavalry. I only know that my men were driving them back, and were getting further and further through. Just then I had a message from General Lee, telling me a flag of truce was in existence, leaving it to my discretion as to what course to pursue. My men were still pushing their way on. I sent at once to hear from General Longstreet, feeling that, if he was marching toward me, we might still cut through and carry the army forward. I learned that he was about two miles off, with his face just opposite from mine, fighting for his life. I thus saw that the case was hopeless. The further each of us drove the enemy the further we drifted apart, and the more exposed we left our wagon trains and artillery, which were parked between us. Every line either of us broke only opened the gap the wider. I saw plainly that the Federals would soon rush in between us, and then there would have been no army. I, therefore, determined to send a flag of truce. I called Colonel Peyton of my staff to me, and told him that I wanted him to carry a flag of truce forward. He replied:

"General, I have no flag of truce."

I told him to get one. He replied:

"General, we have no flag of truce in our command."

Then said I, "Get your handkerchief, put it on a stick, and go forward."

"I have no handkerchief, General,"

"Then borrow one and go forward with it."

He tried, and reported to me that there was no handkerchief in my staff.

"Then, Colonel, use your shirt."

"You see, General, that we all have on flannel shirts."

At last, I believe, we found a man who had a white shirt. He gave it to us, and I tore off the back and tail, and, tying this to a stick, Colonel Peyton went out toward the enemy's lines. I instructed him simply to say to General Sheridan that General Lee had written to me that a flag of truce had been sent from his and Grant's headquarters, and that he could act as he thought best on this information. In a few moments he came back with some one representing General Sheridan. This officer said:

"General Sheridan requested me to present his compliments to you, and to demand the unconditional surrender of your army."

"Major, you will please return my compliments to General Sheridan, and say that I will not surrender."

"But, General, he will annihilate you."

"I am perfectly well aware of my situation. I simply gave General Sheridan some information on which he may or may not desire to act."

He went back to his lines, and in a short time General Sheridan came forward on an immense horse, and attended by a very large staff. Just here an incident occurred that came near having a serious ending. As General Sheridan was approaching I noticed one of my sharpshooters drawing his rifle down upon him. I at once called to him: "Put down your gun, sir; this is a flag of truce." But he simply settled it to his shoulder and was drawing a bead on Sheridan, when I leaned forward and jerked his gun. He struggled with me, but I finally raised it. I then loosed it, and he started to aim again. I caught it again, when he turned his stern, white face, all broken with grief and streaming with tears, up to me, and said: "Well, General, then let him keep on his own side."

The fighting had continued up to this point. Indeed, after the flag of truce, a regiment of my men, who had been fighting their way through toward where we were, and who did not know of a flag of truce, fired into some of Sheridan's cavalry. This was speedily stopped, however. I showed General Sheridan General Lee's note, and he determined to await events. He dismounted, and I did the same. Then, for the first time, the men seemed to understand what it all meant, and then the poor fellows broke down. The men cried like children. Worn, starved and bleeding as they were, they would rather have died than have surrendered. At one word from me they would have hurled themselves on the enemy, and have cut their way through or have fallen to a man with their guns in their hands. But I could not permit it. The great drama had been played to its end. But men are seldom permitted to look upon such a scene as the one presented here. That these men should have wept at surrendering so unequal a fight, at being taken out of this constant carnage and storm, at being sent back to their families; that they should have wept at having their starved and wasted forms lifted out of the jaws of death and placed once more before their hearthstones, was an exhibition of fortitude and patriotism that might set an example for all time.

SEDAN.

BY VICTOR HUGO.

The Second Empire of the French was pounded to powder in a bowl. This is literal, not figurative. To attempt to describe Sedan after Victor Hugo has described it for all mankind were a work futile and foolish. To Hugo we concede the palm among all writers, ancient and modern, as a delineator of battle. His description of the battle of Waterloo will outlast the tumulus and the lion which French patriotism has reared on the square where the last of the Old Guard perished. His description, though not elaborate, is equally graphic and final. He was returning, in September, 1871, from his fourth exile. He had been in Belgium in banishment for about eighteen years. It is in the "History of a Crime" that he tells the story. He says that he was re-entering France by the Luxembourg frontier, and had fallen asleep in the coach. Suddenly the jolt of the train coming to a standstill awoke him. One of the passengers said: "What place is this?" Another answered "Sedan." With a shudder, Hugo looked around. He says that to his mind and vision, as he gazed out, the paradise was a tomb. Before substituting his words for our own, we note only that nearly thirteen months had elapsed since Louis Napoleon and his 90,000 men had here been brayed in a mortar. Hugo's description of the scene and the event continues as follows:

The valley was circular and hollow, like the bottom of a crater; the winding river resembled a serpent; the hills high, ranged one behind the other, surrounded this mysterious spot like a triple line of inexorable walls; once there, there is no means of exit. It reminded me of the amphitheatres. An indescribable, disquieting vegetation, which seemed to be an extension of the Black Forest, overran all the heights, and lost itself in the horizon like a huge impenetrable snare; the sun shone, the birds sang, carters passed by whistling; sheep, lambs and pigeons were scattered about; leaves quivered and rustled; the grass, a densely thick grass, was full of flowers. It was appalling.

I seemed to see waving over this valley the flashing of the avenging angel's sword.

This word "Sedan" had been like a veil abruptly torn aside. The landscape had become suddenly filled with tragedy. Those shapeless eyes which the bark of trees delineates on the trunks were gazing—at what? At something terrible and lost to view.

In truth, that was the place! And at the moment when I was passing by, thirteen months all but a few days had elapsed. That was the place where the monstrous enterprise of the second of December had burst asunder. A fearful shipwreck!

The gloomy pathways of Fate cannot be studied without profound anguish of heart.

On the thirty-first of August, 1870, an army was reassembled, and was, as it were, massed together under the walls of Sedan, in a place called the Givonne Valley. This army was a French army—twenty-nine brigades, fifteen divisions, four army corps—90,000 men. This army was in this place without anyone being able to divine the reason; without order, without an object, scattered about—a species of heap of men thrown down there as though with the view of being seized by some huge hand.

This army either did not entertain, or appeared not to entertain, for the moment any immediate uneasiness. They knew, or at least they thought they knew, that the enemy was a long way off. On calculating the stages at four leagues daily, it was three days' march distant. Nevertheless, toward evening the leaders took some wise strategic precautions; they protected the army, which rested in the rear on Sedan and the Meuse, by two battle fronts, one composed of the Seventh Corps, and extending from Floing to Givonne, the other composed of the Twelfth Corps, extending from Givonne to Bazeilles; a triangle of which the Meuse formed the hypothenuse. The Twelfth Corps, formed of the three divisions of Lacretelle, Lartigue and Wolff, ranged on the right, with the artillery between the brigades, formed a veritable barrier, having Bazeilles and Givonne at each end, and Digny in its centre; the two divisions of Petit and Lheritier massed in the rear upon two lines supported this barrier. General Lebrun commanded the Twelfth Corps. The Seventh Corps, commanded by General Douay, only possessed two divisions—Dumont's division and Gilbert's division—and formed the other battle front, covering the army of Givonne to Floing on the side of Illy; this battle front was comparatively weak, too open on the side of Givonne, and only protected on the side of the Meuse by two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains, and by Guyomar's brigade, resting in squares on Floing. Within this triangle were encamped the Fifth Corps, commanded by General Wimpfen, and the First Corps, commanded by General Ducrot. Michel's cavalry division covered the First Corps on the side of Digny; the Fifth supported itself upon Sedan. Four divisions, each disposed upon two lines—the divisions of Lheritier, Grandchamp, Goze and Conseil-Dumenil—formed a sort of horseshoe, turned toward Sedan, and uniting the first battle front with the second. The cavalry division of Ameil and the brigade of Fontanges served as a reserve for these four divisions. The whole of the artillery was upon the two battle fronts. Two portions of the army were in confusion, one to the right of Sedan beyond Balan, the other to the left of Sedan, on this side of Iges. Beyond Balan were the division of Vassoigne and the brigade of Reboul, on this side of Iges were the two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains.

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 fearful and exact aim of the Prussians. The density of the rain of shells upon the valley is so great that "the earth is completely furrowed," says an eye-witness, "as though by a rake." How many cannon? Eleven hundred at least. Twelve German batteries upon La Moncelle alone; the Third and Fourth Abtheilung, an awe-striking artillery, upon the crests of Givonne, with the Second Horse Battery in reserve; opposite Digny ten Saxon and two Wurtemburg batteries; the curtain of trees of the wood to the north of Villers-Cernay masks the mounted Abtheilung, which is there with the third Heavy Artillery in reserve, and from the gloomy copse issues a formidable fire; the twenty-four pieces of the First Heavy Artillery are ranged in the glade skirting the road from La Moncelle to La Chapelle; the battery of the Royal Guard sets fire to the Garenne Wood; the shells and the balls riddle Suchy, Francheval, Fouro-Saint-Remy, and the valley between Heibes and Givonne; and the third and fourth rank of cannon extend without break of continuity as far as the Calvary of Illy, the extreme point of the horizon. The German soldiers, seated or lying before the batteries, watch the artillery at work. The French soldiers fall and die. Amongst the bodies which cover the plain there is one, the body of an officer, on which they will find, after the battle, a sealed note containing this order, signed Napoleon: "To-day, September 1, rest for the whole army."

The gallant Thirty-fifth of the Line almost entirely disappears under the overwhelming shower of shells; the brave Marine Infantry holds at bay for a moment the Saxons, joined by the Bavarians, but outflanked on every side draws back; all the admirable cavalry of the Margueritte division hurled against the German infantry halts and sinks down midway, "annihilated," says the Prussian report, "by well-aimed and cool firing." This field of carnage has three outlets, all three barred: the Bouillon road by the Prussian Guard, the Carignan road by the Bavarians, the Mezieres road by the Wurtemburgers. The French have not thought of barricading the railway viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night. Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. The German army moves in one piece, in one absolute unity; the Crown Prince of Saxony is on the height of Mairy, whence he surveys the whole action; the command oscillates in the French army; at the beginning of the battle, at a quarter to six, MacMahon is wounded by the bursting of a shell; at seven o'clock Ducrot replaces him; at ten o'clock Wimpfen replaces Ducrot. Every instant the wall of fire is drawing closer in, the roll of the thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men! Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At one o'clock all is lost! The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan! But Sedan begins to burn, Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. The Third Zouaves, desperate, have set the example. Cut off from the rest of the army, they have forced a passage and have reached Belgium. A flight of lions!

Suddenly, above the disaster, above the huge pile of dead and dying, above all this unfortunate heroism, appears disgrace. The white flag is hoisted.

BAZAINE AND METZ.

A letter of Count Von Moltke has recently been published, showing that the question of the conquest of France was under consideration by the Count and Bismarck as early as August of 1866. It is demonstrated that these two powerful spirits were already preparing, aye, had already prepared, to trip the Emperor Louis Napoleon, throwing him and his Empire into a common ruin. The letter also proves that the plan of the North-German Confederation, under the leadership of Prussia, with German unity and a German Empire just beyond, was already clearly in mind by the far-sighted leaders who surrounded King William in 1866. Count Von Moltke shows that it was possible and practicable at that date, and within a period of two or three weeks, to throw upon the French border so tremendous an army that resistance would be impossible. The antecedents of the Franco-Prussian War had been clearly thought out by the German masters at a time when Louis Napoleon was still tinkering with his quixotical Empire in Mexico.

When the war between France and Germany actually broke out, four years later. Germany was prepared, and France was unprepared for the conflict. Louis Napoleon did not know that Germany was prepared. He actually thought that he could break into the German borders, fight his way victoriously to the capital, make his headquarters in Berlin, and dictate a peace in the manner of his uncle. It was the most fallacious dream that a really astute man ever indulged in. From the first day of actual contact with the Germans, the dream of the Emperor began to be dissipated. Within five days (August 14-18, 1870,) three murderous battles were fought on French soil, the first at Courcelles, the next at Vionville, and the third at Gravelotte. In all of these the French fought bravely, and in all were defeated disastrously, with tremendous losses.

By these great victories, the Germans were able to separate the two divisions of the French army. The northern division, under command of the Emperor and MacMahon, began to recede toward Sedan, while the more powerful army, under Marshal Bazaine, numbering 173,000 men, was forced somewhat to the south, and pressed by the division of Prince Frederick Charles, until the French, in an evil day, entered the fortified town of Metz, and suffered themselves to be helplessly cooped up. There was perhaps never another great army so safely and hopelessly disposed of!

Metz, after Antwerp, is the strongest fortress in Europe. It is situated at the junction of the rivers Seille and Moselle. It is the capital of the province of Lorraine, destined to be lost by France and gained by Germany in the struggle that was now on. The place was of great historical importance. Here the Roman invaders had established themselves in the time of the conquest of Gaul. It was called by the conquerors, first Mediomatrica, and afterward Divodurum. Its importance, on the very crest of the watershed between the Teutonic and Gallic races, was noted in the early years of our era, and to the present day that importance continues for the same reason as of old. Metz is on the line of a conflict of races which has not yet, after so many centuries, been finally decided.

The position is one of great strategic importance. But such were the military conditions at the end of August, 1870, that to occupy Metz with one of the greatest armies of modern times was the most serious disaster that could befall the French cause. Bazaine's army was needed, not in a fortified town, but in the field. It was a tremendous force. The army that Prince Frederick Charles locked up in Metz could have marched from Parthia to Spain against the resistance of the whole Roman Empire, at the high noon of that imperial power! It could have marched from end to end of the Southern Confederacy in the palmiest day of that Confederacy, and could not have been seriously impeded! And yet this tremendous force was pent up and shut in, as if under seal, while King William and the Crown Prince and Bismarck and Von Moltke hunted down the French Emperor and his remaining forces, brought them to bay, and compelled a surrender.

This was accomplished by the first of September. The Empire of Napoleon went to pieces. The Third Republic was instituted. The Empress fled with the Prince Imperial to England, while her humbled lord was established by his captors at the castle of Wilhelmshohe. Republican France found herself in possession of a political chaos which could hardly be stilled. She also found herself in possession of a splendid army of more than one hundred and seventy thousand men shut up helplessly in Metz. The situation was highly dramatic. The Republic said that Bazaine should break out, but the Marshal said that he could not. What he said was true. The Germans held him fast. But the Republic believed, as it still believes, that Bazaine, loyal to the fallen Emperor rather than to his country, wished to handle his army in such a manner as should compel the restoration of the Empire, under the auspices of the German conquerors.

This idea was hateful above all things to the French Republicans. September wore away, and more than half of October; but still the siege of Metz was not concluded. Vainly did the new Republic of France strive to extricate herself. Vainly did she raise new armies. Vainly did she look for the escape of Bazaine. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of October, that commander surrendered Metz and his army to the Germans. It was the most tremendous capitulation known in history. Never before was so powerful an army surrendered to an enemy. The actual number of French soldiers covered by the capitulation was fully one hundred and seventy thousand! The prostration of France was complete, and her humiliation extreme.

Bazaine became the Black Beast of the public imagination. A tribunal was organized at Paris, under the presidency of the Duc d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe—the same who with the Prince de Joinville had been on McClellan's staff during the peninsular campaign in our Civil War. Before this court Bazaine was haled as a traitor to his country. He was tried, convicted and condemned to degradation and death. It was only by the most strenuous efforts in his behalf that a commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for twenty years was obtained.

The Marshal was accordingly incarcerated in a prison at Cannes, whither he was sent in December of 1873, and from which he effected his escape in the following August. He succeeded in making his way to Madrid, and took up his residence there. He sought assiduously by writings and argument and appeal to reverse the judgment of his countrymen and of the world with regard to the justice of his sentence; but he could not succeed. It is probably true that the greatest surrender of military forces known in the history of the world was brought about by the preference of the commanding general of the conquered army for an Emperor who was already dethroned, as against a true devotion to his country. There was also in the case a measure of incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin.



Astronomical Vistas.

THE CENTURY OF ASTEROIDS.

The nineteenth century may be called the Age of the Asteroids. It was on the first night of this century that the first asteroid was discovered! Through all the former ages, no man on the earth had had definite knowledge of the existence of such a body. It was reserved for Guiseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer at Palermo, to make known by actual observation the first member of the planetoid group. If human history had the slightest regard for the calendars of mankind—if the eternal verities depended in any measure on the almanac or the division of time into this age or that—we might look with wonder on the remarkable coincidence which made the discovery of the first asteroid to happen in the first evening twilight of the first day of the nineteenth century!

At the close of the eighteenth century, mankind were acquainted with all the major planets except Neptune. Uranus, the last of the group, was discovered by the Elder Herschel, on the night of the thirteenth of March, 1781. True, this planet had been seen on twenty different occasions, by other observers; but its character had not been revealed. Sir William called his new world Georgium Sidus, that is, the George Star, in honor of the King of England. The world, however, had too much intelligence to allow the transfer of the name of George III. from earth to heaven. Such nomenclature would have been unpopular in America! The name of the king was happily destined to remain a part of terrestrial history!

For a while it was insisted by astronomers and the world at large that the new globe, then supposed to bound the solar system on its outer circumference, should be called Herschel, in honor of its discoverer. But the old system of naming the planets after the deities of classical and pagan mythology prevailed; and to the names of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, was now added the name Uranus, that is, in the language of the Greeks, Heaven.

Piazzi, scanning the zodiac from his observatory in Palermo, in the early hours of that first night of the century, noticed a hitherto unobserved star, which under higher power proved to be a planet. It presented a small irregular disc, and a few additional observations showed that it was progressing in the usual manner from west to east. For some time such a revelation had been expected; but the result did not answer to expectation in one particular; for the new body seemed to be too insignificant to be called a world. It appeared rather to be a great planetary boulder, as if our Mount Shasta had been wrenched from the earth and flung into space. Investigation showed that the new body was more than a hundred miles in diameter; but this, according to planetary estimation, is only the measurement of a clod.

There had been, as we say, expectation of a discovery in the region where the first asteroid was found. Kepler had declared his belief that in this region of space a new world might be discovered. Following this suggestion, the German astronomer Olbers, of Bremen, had formed an association of twenty-four observers in different parts of Europe, who should divide among themselves the zodiacal band, and begin a system of independent scrutiny, either to verify or disprove Kepler's hypothesis.

There was another reason also of no small influence tending to the same end. Johann Elert Bode, another German astronomer, born in 1747 and living to 1826, had propounded a mathematical formula known as Bode's Law, which led those who accepted it to the belief that a planet would be found in what is now known as the asteroidal space. Bode's Law, so-called, seems to be no real law of planetary distribution; and yet the coincidences which are found under the application of the law are such as to arouse our interest if not to produce a conviction of the truth of the principle involved. Here, then, is the mathematical formula, which is known as Bode's Law:

Write from left to right a row of 4's and under these, beginning with the second 4, place a geometrical series beginning with 3 and increasing by the ratio of 2; add the two columns together, and we have a series running 4, 7, 10, etc.; and this row of results has an astonishing coincidence, or approximate coincidence with the relative distances of the planets from the sun—thus:

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 6 12 24 48 96 192 384 — — — — — — —- —- —- 4 7 10 16 28 52 100 196 388

The near agreement of this row of results with the row containing the actual relative distances of the planets from the sun may well astonish, not only the astronomer, but the common reader. Those distances—making 10 to represent the distance of the earth—are as follows:

Mercury, 3.9; Venus, 7.2; Earth, 10; Mars, 15.2; Asteroids, 27.4; Jupiter, 52; Saturn, 95.4; Uranus, 192; Neptune, 300.

In addition to Kepler's prediction and the indications of Bode's Law, there was a general reason for thinking that a planetary body of some kind should occupy the space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The mean distance of Mars from the sun is about 141,500,000 miles; that of Jupiter, is about 483,000,000 miles. The distance from one orbit to the other is therefore about 341,500,000 miles. Conceive of an infinite sheet of tin. Mark thereon a centre for the sun. Measure out a hundred and forty millions of miles, and with that radius strike a circle. From the same centre measure out four hundred and eighty-three millions of miles, and with that radius strike a circle. Cut out the sheet between the two circles, and the vast space left void will indicate the vacant area in the mighty disc of our solar system. That this space should be occupied with something accords with the plan of nature and the skill of the Builder.

So Olbers and his twenty-three associates began, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, to search diligently for the verification of Kepler's prediction and the fulfillment of Bode's Law. Oddly enough, Piazzi was not one of the twenty-four astronomers who had agreed to find the new world. He was exploring the heavens on his own account, and in doing so, he found what the others had failed to find, that is, the first asteroid.

The body discovered answered so little to the hopes of the astronomical fraternity that they immediately said within themselves: "This is not he; we seek another." So they continued the search, and in a little more than a year Olbers himself was rewarded with the discovery of the second of the planetoid group. On the twenty-eighth of March, 1802, he made his discovery from an upper chamber of his dwelling in Bremen, where he had his telescope. On the night in question he was scanning the northern part of the constellation of Virgo, when the sought-for object was found. This body, like the first of its kind, was very small, and was found to be moving from west to east in nearly the same orbit as its predecessor.

Here then was something wonderful. Olbers at once advanced the hypothesis that probably the two bodies thus discovered were fragments of what had been a large planet moving in its orbit through this part of the heavens. If so there might be—and probably were—others of like kind. The search was at once renewed, and on the night of the first of September, 1804, the third of the asteroid group was found by the astronomer Hardy, of Bremen. The belief that a large planet had been disrupted in this region was strengthened, and astronomers continued their exploration; but two years and a half elapsed before another asteroid was found. On the evening of March 29, 1807, the diligence of Olbers was rewarded with the discovery of the fourth of the group, which like its predecessors, was so small and irregular in character as still further to favor the fragmentary theory.

How shall we name the asteroids? Piazzi fell back upon pagan mythology for the name of his little world, and called it Ceres, from the Roman goddess of corn. Olbers named the second asteroid Pallas; the third was called Juno—whose rank in the Greek and Roman pantheon might have suggested one of the major planets as her representative in the skies; and the fourth was called Vesta, from the Roman divinity of the hearthstone.

Here then there was a pause. Though the zodiac continued to be swept by many observers, a period of more than thirty-eight years went by before the fifth asteroid was found. The cycle of these discoveries strikingly illustrates the general movement of scientific progress. First there is a new departure; then a lull, and then a resumption of exploration and a finding more fertile than ever. It was on the night of the eighth of December, 1845, that the German astronomer Hencke discovered the fifth asteroid and named it Astraea. After a year and a half, namely, on the night of the first of July, 1847, the same observer discovered the sixth member of the group, and to this was given the name Hebe. On the thirteenth of August in the same year the astronomer Hind found the seventh asteroid, and named it Iris. On the eighteenth of October following he found the eighth, and this was called Flora. Then on the twenty-fifth of April, 1848, came the discovery of Metis, by Graham. Nearly a year later the Italian De Gasparis found the tenth member of the system, that is, Hygeia. De Gasparis soon discovered the eleventh body, which was called Parthenope. This was on the eleventh of May, 1850.

Two other asteroids were found in this year; and two in 1851. In the following year nine were discovered; and so on from year to year down to the present date. Some years have been fruitful in such finds, while others have been comparatively barren. In a number of the years, only a single asteroid has been added to the list; but in others whole groups have been found. Thus in 1861 twelve were discovered; in 1868, twelve; in 1875, seventeen; in 1890, fourteen. Not a single year since 1846 has passed without the addition of at least one known asteroid to the list.

But while the number has thus increased to an aggregate at the close of 1890 of three hundred and one, many of the tiny wanderers have escaped. Some have been rediscovered; and it is possible that some have been twice or even three times found and named. The whole family perhaps numbers not only hundreds, but thousands; and it can hardly be doubted that only the more conspicuous members of the group have ever yet been seen by mortal eye.

A considerable space about the centre of the planetary zone between Mars and Jupiter is occupied with these multitudinous pigmy worlds that follow the one the other in endless flight around the sun. It is a sort of planetary shower; and it can hardly be doubted that the bodies constituting the flight are graded down in size from larger to smaller and still smaller until the fragments are mere blocks and bits of world-dust floating in space. Possibly there may be enough of such matter to constitute a sort of planetary band that may illumine a little (as seen from a distance) the zone where it circulates.

As to the origin of this seemingly fragmentary matter, we know nothing, and conjectures are of little use in scientific exposition. It may be true that a large planet once occupied the asteroidal space, and that the same has been rent by some violence into thousands of fragments. It may be observed that the period of rotation of the inferior planets corresponds in general with that of our earth, while the corresponding period of the superior or outside planets is less than one-half as great. The forces which produced this difference in the period of rotation may have contended for the mastery in that part of our solar system where the asteroids are found; and the disruption may have resulted from such conflict of forces.

Or again, it may be that a large planet is now in process of formation in the asteroidal space. Possibly one of the greater fragments may gain in mass by attracting to itself the nearer fragments, and thus continue to wax until it shall have swept clean the whole pathway of the planetary matter, except such small fragments as may after aeons of time continue to fall upon the master body, as our meteorites now at intervals rush into our atmosphere and sometimes reach the earth.

Some astronomers have given and are still giving their almost undivided attention to asteroidal investigation. The discoveries have been mostly made by a few principal explorers. The astronomer, Palisa, from the observatory of Pola and that of Vienna, has found no fewer than seventy-five of the whole group. The observer, Peters, at Clinton, New York, has found forty-eight asteroids; Luther, of Duesseldorf, twenty-four; Watson, of Ann Arbor, twenty-two; Borrelly, of Marseilles, fifteen; Goldschmidt, of Paris, fourteen, and Charlois, of Nice, fourteen. The English astronomers have found only a few. Among such, Hind of London, who has-discovered ten asteroids, is the leader.

The Italian, German and American astronomers are first in the interest and success which they have shown in this branch of sky-lore. Their investigations have made us acquainted with the dim group of little worlds performing their unknown part in the vast space between the Warrior planet and Jove.

THE STORY OF NEPTUNE.

The discovery of the planet Neptune by Dr. Galle on the twenty-third of September, 1846, was one of the most important events in the intellectual history of this century. Certainly it was no small thing to find a new world. Discoverers on the surface of our globe are immortalized by finding new lands in unknown regions. What, therefore, should be the fame of him who finds a new world in the depths of space? Perhaps the discoverer of an asteroid or planetary moon may not claim, in the present advanced stage of human knowledge, to rank among the flying evangels of history; but he who found the great planet third in rank among the worlds of the solar system, a world having a mass nearly seventeen times as great as that of our own, may well be regarded as one of the immortals.

We have referred the discovery of Neptune to Dr. Johann Gottfried Galle, the German astronomer and Professor of Natural Sciences at Berlin. But this Dr. Galle was only the eye with which the discovery was made. He was a good eye; but the eye, however clear, is only an organ of something greater than the eye, and that something in this case consisted of two parts. The first part was Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier, the French astronomer, of the Paris Observatory. The other part was Professor John Couch Adams, the astronomer of the University at Cambridge, England. These two were the thinkers; that is, they were, as it were, jointly the great mind of the age, of which Galle was the eye.

In getting a clear notion of the discovery of Neptune, several other personages are to be considered. One of these is the astronomer Alexis Bouvart, of France, who was born in Haute Savoie, in 1767, and died in June of 1843, three years before Neptune was found. Another personage was his nephew, the astronomer E. Bouvart, and a third was the noted Prussian, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Director of the Observatory at Koenigsberg, who was born in 1784, and died on the seventeenth of March, 1846, only six months before the discovery of our outer planet.