The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-03 00:00:00

THE WEEK'S FIGHTING.

It was then, according to the King's despatch, the 4th
and 12th Corps of the Crown Prince of Saxony's army'
which defeated the army of MacMahon, with the aid of
the Ist Bavarian corps, which belongs to the army of
the Crown Prince of Prussia. No more of the Crown
Prince's army seems to have come up, and the
Guards were apparently not engaged. We may gain
some notion of the practicability of the design
to relieve Metz by observing the movements of MacMahon
and these various corps. On the 22d MacMahon left
Rheirn,s. On the 24th, we learn, from the special corre-
spondent of the Times that the Ist Bavarian Corps passed
through Ligny, a little south-east of Bar-le-Duo; and it
was only on that day that intelligence reached the Crown
Prince's headquarters of • the abandonment of the camp
of Chalons. MacMahon, therefore, had two days' start of
this Ist Bavarian Corps,. Yet It caught him up and
attacked him on the left bank of the Meuse on the 29th.
Again, while MacMahon started on the 22nd from
Rheims, the •own Prince of Saxony was engaged on the
25th in an unsuccessful attaok upon Verdun. If
MacMahon's army had marched twenty miles a day, it
Might have effected the passage of the Meuse almost,
if not quite, unmolested. But it took seven days to
march less than seventy miles. Its movement was known
by the Prussians two days of ter it commenced ; and in five
days they were able to throw themselves into its path and
on its flank. On the 29th a portion of it was met on the
right bank of the Meuse by a body of troops strong
enough to succeed in driving it out of Carignan, and back
towards Sedan ; while at the same time such portion as
was on the right bank was " driven back from Beaumont
beyond the Meuse, near Mouzon." Was it that MacMahon
utterly miscalculated time ; was it that he found his
intendance defective, his transport out of order, his army
demoralised ; or was it that he never moved or thought of
moving the bulk of his army across the Meuse towards
Metz ? The defeat • of, the French by the Prussians
with such remarkaLle ease can only be accounted for
in two ways. Either the French army was composed
of very inferior troops to those which fought at
Weissemburg, at Woerth, at Forbach, and at Metz,
or it ivas numerically much inferior to its enemy.
Another fact worthy or notice is, that the railway com-
munication between Paris and the north has been
much interrupted for the last two or three days.
This may mean that troops and stores were being
sent- from Paris northwards to strengthen and
supply MacMahon ; but it may possibly mean
and we have thrown out this idea before—
that MacMahon is sending troops with the utmost
rapidity southwards to strengthen Paris. Tne intelli-
gence, somewhat ostentatiously proclaimed, that 50,000
men had left Paris to join MacMahon may very possibly
only be a ruse to induce the Crown Prince to send larger
forces northwards, and so gain more time for
the preparation of the defences, and the increase of the
garrison of Paris. But the Emperor, it will be said, was
with MacMahon at Carignan. Well, that might only be
a repetition of an old trick of the First Napoleon, which
served him in good stead more than once, notably, if our
memory serves us, in the campaign of Marengo, when he
sent Lannes southward to Chivasso to mask the march on
Milan, and showed himself there to the troops
,of Melas,
leading them to suppose his army was going to cross the
river Po. We do not attach' much importance to these
speculations, but we advance them to show how, if the
French under MacMahon had the design to retreat on
Paris; by the northern railways, the course they have
adopted •is admirably suited to veil that intention.—
SCandard.

Although the contrary idea has found careless sup-
porters, it is evident that in. reality two, if not even three,
battles were fought on Tuesday. There is some confusion
about the dates of two of them. The first account,
from Buzaney, said that the victory of Beaumont was
won, on Tuesday, the day on which the despatch was
dated ; while a telegram from King William to Queen
Augusta, despatched from Varennes at 3.30 p.m. do
August tile 30th, says that the battle was fought " yes-
terday " Monday. But Varennes is thirty miles from
Beaumont, and the results of a pursuit that only ended
at nightfall could not be summed up in a despatch dated
four hours previously ; so we are dispbsed to think that
the Buzancy telegram is correct, and that tl?e King's
should bear the date of the 31st. On the other hand,
two telegrams informed us that, on Tuesday, the
vanguard of the Twelfth Corps was engaged with De
Failly's men, at Nouart, and that the Corps itself took
. part in the greater battle at Beaumont on the same day.
Now, it is quite possible that both these events actually
happened on Tuesday ; but since the probabilities lie in
the other direction, and since people in Berlin believe
that the Nonart affair took place on Monday, we
are disposed to think the telegrams wrong and the
' other supposition right. And, indeed, we need find no
difficulty in explaining the circumstances. We have
already brought the Crown Prince of Saxony's army to
Stenay on the one hand, and the Montmedy-Carignan-
Sedan road on the other. We shall not be far out in
supposing that the Prussian Guard was among the yet
unspecified troops which attacked MacMahon's position
on the plateau of Vaux on Tuesday. If, as
now seems to be the case, the smaller portion only
of MacMahon's men advanced on his left wing, north-
of the Meuse, then the Guards alone, which form the
strongest corps in the North German army, might
have succeeded in driving back the enemy towards
Sedan. The King says that the corps engaged at
Beaumont were the Fourth, the Twelfth, and the First
Bavarian —in all, about 90,000 men. Evidently,
they had crossed the Meuse at Stenay, perhaps on
Sunday or Monday ; and on that day the advanced guard
of the Saxons may have advanced on the Buzancy road,
thrown back a part of De Failly's corps moving to gain the
bridge, and compelled it to retreat upon the main body of
MacMahon's right wing, moving by Beaumont to Laneu-
ville. However this may be, the Crown Prince of Saxony's
army attacked the French at Beaumont on Tuesday ; and,
since so many Germans were engaged, and since the
King's telegram speaks of the battle-field is very exten-
sive, it may be inferred that more than the half of
MacMahon's army was on the south of the Meuse.
A telegram from Bouillon, on the Belgian frontier, dated
yesterday, says that " MacMahon was reported between
Douzy, and Bazeilles "—a little place three or four
miles nearer to Sedan ; while the Prussians were between
Remilly, on the left hand of the Meuse opposite to
Douzy, and Balan, a village between Bazeilles and
Sedan. The telegram shakes our faith in its credibility
by the statement that, if the Prussians have advanced
so far from Tuesday's battle-fiield, it is because "Marshal
Bazaine is driving them towards Sedan." We may
therefore receive with much suspicion the further
assurance of this authority, thr t on Wednesday
the French took thirty guns ; and, indeed, he admits
that down to yesterday morning "no positive result had
yet been received." No doubt MacMahon will fight
hard to secure his retreat; for his advance to the relief of
Bazaine it is hopeless now to fight—and, indeed, there
is little hope on either side. For as yet there is
silence as to the movements of the three German
corps that conquered easily at Beaumont ; from Beaumont
to Flize or Donchery, on the Meuse between Sedan and
Maibres, is but twenty-five miles by the longest road ; .
and if the river were crossed there, while MacMahon was
fighting on the Chiers, Sedan might become another and a
still more hopeless Metz.—Telegraph.