The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-09 00:00:00

SATURDAY'S
~ BATTLES.
_ _

i•: •
The correspondent of: the Stattdard at Luxembourg has.
also some remarks on the two great fights which took

place on Saturday at Spicheren and at Worth. On
Friday I expected the French would have taken their
revenge. Therein I was wrong. The repulse of
the day before was too decisive. MacMahon
must have been puzzled to know what to do,
and must have hesitated to push on to the aid of
his derelict division at the back of Weissenburg
under the impression that the advance there was a feint
to mask a real attempt on Strasburg. In any case, what-
ever the reason of the delay, he did not go against the
victorious Prussians on Friday, but sent for aid to Can-
robert. The enemy, meantime, moved on in force by a
range of wooded hills leading from Weissenburg,by Sauer-
bach and Drachenbronn in a south-westerly direction,
towards the forest of Haugueneau, but they moved with
an inclination rather to the right, as if meditating to
fall upon the French at Bitsche, The day was close, with
occasional sharp showers—a hard spell for marching ; and
a little after nightfall there was an angry thunderstorm,
followed by a heavy, almost West Indian down pour of
thick, hot rain, through which the fre'quent gleam of sheet
lightning streamed like a sudden play of lime-light on
water let down fr3m a sieve. it must have been trying
for the healthiest man under canvas that bleak night—
the sloppy ground under, and the saturated' covering
above preserving him sandwich-like in uncomfort-
able moisture. To the wounded wretch it must have
been death. An i many such creatures there were under
it all; the poor boys who had traversed Paris streets
three weeks before in happy thoughlessness to the cry
of " A Berlin 1" and others who had quitted their homes
at the trumpet-call to fight for the beloved fatherland
and the Father Rhine. Down it sluiced in wet misery
as they lay on their trusses of straw, the improvised
ambulances, in groaning heaps, pale, weak, and
bleeding from wounds of jagged lead, in and around the
streets and hills of Weissenburg ! Saturday came.
Marshal MacMahon's corps was no longer to be sought
for at Strasburg, but in front of the wave of Prussian in-
fantry which was pouring by Weissenburrwith the Crown
Prince on its crest. Surely now we are to have the real
tug of war, and the dearly-desired satisfaction for the
victory won by stealth on Thursday. Tug of war,
as when Greek meets Greek, yes ; but satisfaction
no ! It cannot be concealed ! it will leak out ;
the disquieting whisper goes from mouth to mouth,
gathers strength as it moves, and at length swells into a
cry, " the French have been beaten—beaten on the whole
line !" Those Luxemburgeois like the pettillants
Francais, as Heinrich Heine did—they like them be-
cause a Prussian garrison was here over half a century,
and the military behaved to the civilians as only
lords and masters should behave—like them, not
for love of the French so much as for hatr6d of
the Prussians. And here is the dread tale that
speeds from gossip to gossip ; the dear French have been
beaten again, and soundly; are now in retreat ; they
have forsaken the heights over Saarbruck they took four
days ago, and grim, melancholy Metz is again filled with
soldiers, but this time they are glum, sulky, and crest-
fallen. The guard had rushed off on Thursday morning
because Prince Frederick Charles was coming down on
Thionville from the north with a host of a quarter of a
million, and now it turns out that the story was false ;
and while France was watching its left, Prussia had
stolen a march on its right, invaded the soil of Alsace, and
flung back its choicest legions. " Unmerciful disaster
follows fast and follows faster." Later we learn that on
this Black Saturday there was an advance on the whole
French line, that three cnrps d'armee had been overcome,
that Frossard was pushed to hold his own on the centre,
and that the beau MacMahon, the saviour of Magenta,
he in whom the nation had such high hopes, had been
foiled, beaten back towards the lines of Bitsche, some say
wounded even.