The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-29 00:00:00

MOVEMENTS OF THE ARMIES.

We believe the Prussians will march on. There are
strong reasons, inherent to the constitution of such an
"armed nation" as is now invading France, which must
reduce a campaign to a great and rapid effort. Prussia
must either conquer within three months or change the
tactics that have been hitherto uniformly successful.
That army, that formidable " battering ram," as it has
been called, consisting of one phalanx of half a million
combatants, which is hurled at an enemy as against a wall
and must either break it or be broken, must do its work
speedily. It has forced the passes of -the Vosges, it has
stormed the plateaux around Metz; no matter at what
cost, no matter with what amount of bruising and shat-
tering to the catapult itself. It must breach the detached
forte'ef the enemy's capital, or compel it to submission.
Thereis no amount of blood and gold the Prussians will
not sacrifice. Time alone they cannot spare ; for, during
the struggle, their country is in a state of " suspended
animation," and the French boast, not without a certain
reason, that every day which passes is a clay gained for
themselves. —Times.
We have on a former occasion given reasons for think-
ing that, after its recent losses, Bazaine's army does not
exceed 60,000 men, but several of our contemporaries who
have also gone into the question carefully compute its
strength at 80,000 ; it may possibly reach that figure.
What force, then, should the King of Prussia leave to
observe and retain au army of this magnitude which, by
the bridges and gates of the fortress,, may appear
on either side of the river? It will probably be
thought that 160,000, or twice the number
of the French army should be sufficient
for the duty. Let us see, then, whether this number
could be spared, after sending a large corps away from
the fortress to supp )rt the Crown Prince. 'We know from
the composition of the armies of General Steinmetz and
Prince Frederick Charles that when they first took part
in the war at Forbach on the 6th of August their two
armies had a united strength of 353,000 men. Let us sup-
pose that their losses at Forbach, at Pange, at Mars la
Tour, and at RezonVille amounted to seventy thousand ;
this leaves them with a strength of 283,000. Here, then,
are men enough to allow of the assignment of 160,000 to
watch Bazaine at Metz, of 100,000 to join the Crown Prince
on his march to Paris, and of a reserve of 23,000 to remain
with the King at Bar-le-Duc, or wherever else he may
appoint. But this estimate, which has been constructed
in the ordinary manner, is far from representing the real
strength of the German armies. We ought not to have
deducted the 70,000 for loss, because under the German
system loss is, at any rate in the early stages of a war,
immediately repaired. The places of the men lost in the
recent battles are already filled, as our correspondent at
Frankfort has informed us, and thus the reserves which
we have supposed to be retained with the King should
be reckoned not at 23,000 but at 93,000. Supposing,
then, MacMahon to unite with Bazaine, their collective
strength, amounting to 160,000 old troops, we see that
they would have to contend with 253,000 German troops,
even if not one of the 250,000 men new with the Crown
Prince took any part in the struggle.—Daily News.
If the new G,...rman army is really, as we believe, com-
posed of corps drawn away from the environs of Metz, it
is easy to understand the despatches which inform us
that the Prussians are moving in the direction of Varen-
nes ; that the French population near Stenay is vigor-
ously defending itself against the Prussians; and that
there has been a collision at Stenay, from which many
wounded has been carried into Montmedy. Troops
detached from the west of Metz, to co-operate with the
Crown Prince against an army defending Paris on the
north bank of the Marne, would not unnaturally seek to
throw themselves upon one flank of the enemy's force,
while the Crown Prince from the south eastward pressed
against the othea. Thus the army of MacMahon might
find itself between two bodies of strength equal to
its own, and might be obliged either to fight at a dis-
advantage, or to withdraw beyond Paris
leaving the plain of Champagne clear for the
invader's advanoe. Stenay and Varennes, both in the
Forest of Argonne, on the very borders of Lorraine and
Champagne, lie on the path of a Prussian force crossing
directly westward from the Moselle to the Meuse and the
plain of Chalons. The direct road to Varennes—the
place where the luckless Louis XVI. was arrested
in his attempt to quit France is, indeed,
blocked by the fortress of Verdun ; but it is
not very difficult to turn the fortress; and since the
road of Varennes leads on the pass of Grandpr4, the
principal debouche from Northern Lorraine into Cham-
pagne, the appearance of Prussians in that quarter is
easily enough explained. By Stenay, on the Meuse,
twenty miles north of Varennes, and ten miles south-
west of Montmedy, passes the highway from Etain ; and
thence it returns south-westward on the -other slope
of the hills, by La Cheve or Vouziers to
Rethel and Rheims. We knew the other day
that the Prussians were present everywhere be-
tween the Moselle and the Meuse ; and it now
appears that Marshal MacMahon's break up from Rheims
on the morning of the 23rd betokened eomething more
than a further escape from the Crown Prince—even an
attempt to reach and liberats Bazaine, now, as his very
friends admit, beleaguered in Metz. MacMahon was
described by eye-witnesses of his new and sud
den start on Tuesday as taking the roads north-east
towards Rethel and Montmedy; and as the distance to
the latter place from Rheims is about sixty miles, his
advanced guard might well be in the neighbourhood of
Stenay on Thursday night, when a telegram sent from a
generally trustworthy source to an evening contemporary
states that an engagement took place there. If the new
army of the Crown Prince of Saxony was making
its way round the north of the Argonne Forest,
avoiding the fortress of Verdun, and seeking to take
the army of Chalons in flank, Stenay is just about the
point at which it might be expected to make its presence
known. And if IVlacMahon has really rushed off on the
boldest but maddest enterprise of the war—the attempt

extricate Bazaine—we may expect important tidings ere
long from the totally novel direction of the Ardennb
Forest. Mac Mahon's movement to the north-east makes
one thing perfectly clear—that Bazaine, despite every
affirmation to the contrary, is and was closely shut up in
Metz.— Telegraph.

With the march of the King to Bar-le-Duc a possibility
of relieving Metz opened itself before MacMahon, and
may have seemed far more flattering than it is. He pro-
bably does not believe that Paris is defensible ; he
has no means of knowing the extent of the
German reinforcements ; and he probably hopes
that if by possibility he can reach Monttn6dy,

so as to make from thence a furious attack upo

the Prussians, whilst lia,zaine breaks out towards him
from his entrenchments, he may save the Army of the
Rhine. The attempt is nearly hopeless, for the game
has to be played against a player who forgets nothing—
the terrible Baron who, it is said, explained to the Crown
Prince before the frontier was crossed every event that
has yet occurred—that is, of course, who has resolved to
carry out his fixed plans, be the losses what they

may. The Marshal must move at his highest speed, or
the Crown Prince may strike him down, and speed means
loss of means loss of men and means ; he has to pass right
through Prussian outposts announced on Friday to
extend from Stenay to Varennes, and able even if they
are only cavalry, to inform Prince Frederick Charles of
the approaching foe ; and even if he reaches his
object in time, he may well find his enemy
too strong for both himself and Bazaine. His own men
are evidently in bad order ; the Commissariat, as usual,
has gone wrong--else why the scene reported by M.
Jeannerod, the men plundering their own officers ?
and his first enemy may be a most dangerous
one, General von Falkenstein, the stern offices who
crushed Hanover, who till recently commanded an ih)
coast, but who, when the Baltin expedition was abandoned,
was ordered to the front with two oorp3, and was seen by
a earrespondent of the geotarman moving forward " upon
Thionville,". that is, as we presume, towards "Verdun.
Nevertheless, the attempt, though almost rash amidst

so many difficulties, has about it a certain grandeur of
audacity with which it is as impossible not to sympathise
as it isnot to admire the "Cavalry officer" who at Phals-
burg, with his town in flames, his communications cut

off, and surroundered by German troops, coolly declares
that he shall surrender when he cannot fire, and not one

moment before. If MacMahon succeeds he will rouse

France to a frenzy of enthusiasm, and make peace lighter ;
and if he fails—well, a marshal of France will have died
_ _ _ _

in the saddle instead of capitulating. Marshals of France
should die so, and the terms of peace will not he the

heavier for that.—Spectator.

GERMAN OFFICIAL

REVIEW OF TII

WAR.

The Prussian Staatsanzeiger publishes an official survey
of the campaign, so far as it has proceeded. It says :
" Our army authorities preferred, when France in breath-
less haste pushed its local troops to the frontier, to c3rry
out completely the difficult and complicated task of
mobilisation. The Ministerial order directed this
to be done systematically, as it bad been elabo-
rated'in the smallest and most intricate details after
mature consideration in time of peace. This was ac-