servation in front
of the intrenched camp, and Prince Frederick Charles's, which had passed
the river higher up and come down along the left bank in order to bar
the French from access to their country; Borny, where the firing did not
begin until it was three o'clock; Borny, that barren victory, at the end
of which the French remained masters of their positions, but which left
them astride the Moselle, tied hand and foot, while the turning movement
of the second German army was being successfully accomplished. After
that, on the 16th, was the battle of Rezonville; all our corps were at
last across the stream, although, owing to the confusion that prevailed
at the junction of the Mars-la-Tour and Etain roads, which the Prussians
had gained possession of early in the morning by a brilliant movement of
their cavalry and artillery, the 3d and 4th corps were hindered in their
march and unable to get up; a slow, dragging, confused battle, which,
up to two o'clock, Bazaine, with only a handful of men opposed to
him, should have won, but which he wound up by losing, thanks to his
inexplicable fear of being cut off from Metz; a battle of immense
extent, spreading over leagues of hill and plain, where the French,
attacked in front and flank, seemed willing to do almost anything except
advance, affording the enemy time to concentrate and to all appearances
co-operating with them to ensure the success of the Prussian plan, which
was to force their withdrawal to the other side of the river. And on the
18th, after their retirement to the intrenched camp, Saint-Privat was
fought, the culmination of the gigantic struggle, where the line of
battle extended more than eight miles in length, two hundred thousand
Germans with seven hundred guns arrayed against a hundred and twenty
thousand French with but five hundred guns, the Germans facing toward
Germany, the French toward France, as if invaders and invaded had
inverted their roles in the singular tactical movements that had been
going on; after two o'clock the conflict was most sanguinary, the
Prussian Guard being repulsed with tremendous slaughter and Bazaine,
with a left wing that withstood the onsets of the enemy like a wall of
adamant, for a long time victorious, up to the moment, at the approach
of evening, when the weaker right wing was compelled by the terrific
losses it had sustained to abandon Saint-Privat, involving in its rout
the remainder of the army, which, defeated and driv