e change referred to--at any rate, not so far as the
assumption of the supreme command by the Emperor himself was concerned.
Anxious as the latter may have been, in the interest of his dynasty, to
reap the glory of one or two successful battles fought under his
immediate supervision, he was fully aware of his unfitness for such a
task, especially in his actual state of health. Louis-Napoleon believed
in his star, but he was not an idiot who counted upon luck to decide the
fate of battles. If he had ever fostered such illusions, the campaign of
1859 must have given a rude shock to them, for there he was, more than
once, within an ace of defeat; and no one knew this better than he did.
The fusing of the three armies into one was due, first, to the
difficulty, if not impossibility, of constituting three armies with
considerably less than three hundred thousand troops; secondly, to the
inveterate jealousy of his marshals of one another. Napoleon feared, and
justly, that if those three armies went forth under three separate
commands, there would be a repetition of the quarrels that had occurred
during the Austro-Franco war, when Niel accused Canrobert of not having
properly supported him at the right time, and so forth. It will be
remembered that the Emperor himself had to intervene to heal those
quarrels. Under those circumstances, the Emperor thought it better to
risk it, and to take the whole responsibility upon himself.

The Emperor left St. Cloud on the 28th of July. It is very certain that,
even before his departure, his confidence in the late Marshal Niel as an
organizer must have been considerably shaken, and that the words of
Leboeuf, "We are ready, more than ready," sounded already a hollow
mockery to his ear. Here are some of the telegrams which, after the 4th
of September, were found among the papers at the Tuileries. They were
probably copies of the originals, though I am by no means certain that
they were forwarded to St. Cloud at the time of their reception. It
would have been better, perhaps, if they had been.

"Metz, 20 July, 1870, 9.50 a.m. From Chief of Commissariat Department to
General Blondeau, War Office, Paris. There is at Metz neither sugar,
coffee, rice, brandy, nor salt. We have but little bacon and biscuit.
Despatch, at least, a million rations to Thionville."

"General Ducrot to War Office, Paris. Strasburg, 20 July, 1870, 8.30
p.m. By to-morrow there will be scarcely fifty men left to guard
Ne