in office Count Palikao.
There was a general outcry against Leboeuf, and on the 12th the Emperor
resigned the command to Marshal Bazaine (Lebrun now acting as Chief of
Staff), with the injunction to retreat westwards to Verdun. For the
Emperor to order such a retreat in his own name was thought to be
inopportune. Bazaine was a convenient scapegoat, and he himself knew it.
Had he thrown an army corps into Metz and obeyed the Emperor's orders by
retreating on Verdun, things would certainly have gone better than was
now to be the case. In his printed defence Bazaine has urged that the
army had not enough provisions for the march, and, further, that the
outlying forts of Metz were not yet ready to withstand a siege--a
circumstance which, if true, partly explains Bazaine's reluctance to
leave the "virgin city[40]." Napoleon III. quitted it early on the 16th:
he and his escort were the last Frenchmen to get free of that death-trap
for many a week.

[Footnote 40: Bazaine gave this excuse in his _Rapport sommaire sur les
Operations de l'Armee du Rhin_; but as a staff-officer pointed out in
his incisive _Reponse_, this reason must have been equally cogent when
Napoleon (August 12) ordered him to retreat; and he was still bound to
obey the Emperor's orders.]

While Metz exercised this fatal fascination over the protecting army,
the First and Second German Armies were striding westwards to envelop
both the city and its guardians. Moltke's aim was to hold as many of the
French to the neighbourhood of the fortress, while his left wing swung
round it on the south. The result was the battle of Colombey on the east
of Metz (August 14). It was a stubborn fight, costing the Germans some
5000 men, while the French with smaller losses finally withdrew under
the eastern walls of Metz. But that heavy loss meant a great ultimate
gain to Germany. The vacillations of Bazaine, whose strategy was far
more faulty than that of Napoleon III. had been, together with the delay
caused by the defiling of a great part of the army through the narrow
streets of Metz, gave the Germans an opportunity such as had not
occurred since the year 1805, when Napoleon I. shut up an Austrian
army in Ulm.

The man who now saw the splendid chance of which Fortune vouchsafed a
glimpse, was Lieutenant-General von Alvensleben, Commander of the 3rd
corps, whose activity and resource had so largely contributed
to the victory of Spicheren-Forbach. Though the orders of his