Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1892-04-27
HE FRENCH AT SEDAN.
Archibald Forbes. War Correspondent.
 Draws n Picture of the Battle.

Draws n Picture of the Battle.
 Never was fortune kinder to any director of a great war than she was to Von Moltke in 1ST0 Spite Of the significant warning of Ssdowa if seemed alnausf as fl in later years the second empire. as regaYling its army. had hcea deliberately riding fall.
 With the melancholy exposure of its military deeadence al the world k familiar. When Marshal Mel en. joined the defensive as the compile ment of tho chassepot, he throttled the traditional eIan of the soldiers of France. Her army. deficient in every thing save innate courage. lacked most of all competent leadership, and the assumption of the chief com mand by the emperor made the Ger mans a present of the issue before a shot was fired.
 The campaign begun, fortune seemed 10 shower her fayors on Moltke. It appeared as if the very stars in their courses fought in his favor. Ar essential feature of his plan was to push for the enemy $ capital. Bazaine helped him in this by bottling himself up in Metz Mac Mahon yielded him the fair way by moving out of his path
 It is true saying that nothing sue ceeds like success. and its converse is not less t-ue-that nothing fails like failure. But the eyewitness of the Franco German war must be pul'- blind or warped. who dare aver that the old spirit had faded out of the army on which had shone the sun of Austerlitz, and which had storned the Malaloff with a rush.
 No; the poor, mIscommanded, be- wildered. harassed. overmatched, outnumbered soldiers in the blue kepis and red brooches fought on with a royal valor that ever commanded respect and admiration The sad. noble story of unfailing devotion is to be told of the French regular army iron, tue first battle to the ending at Selan
 With swelling heart and wet eyes 1 looked down on the final scene of the awful tragedy The picture rises now before me of that terrible after noon. The stern ring of German fire ever encircling with stronger grip that plateau on which stood, had- dled, the Frenchmen in the sham bles; the storm of shell fire that tore lanes through the dense masses. all exposed there to it's pitileaS blasts the vehement yet impotent protests against the inevitable in the shape of furious scrties now a headlOng charge of Margeeritte's cuirasiers, laundering in ghttering. steel clad splendor down the slope of lily with an impetus that seemed resistleSs till the fire of the German infantry men smote the squadrons fair in the face and strewed the swaId with dead and dying; now the frantic galIop to their fate of a regiment of light holsemen on their iron gray stallions, up to the very muzzles of the needle guns which the German hnesmen held with so unwavering steadiness: now passionate out burst of red trousered foot soldiers darting against chance gap in the tightening environment. too surely to be crushed by the ruthless flank ing fire.
 No semblance of order there, no token of leadership; simply hell, in the heart of which writhed an inde- scribable mass of brave men, with no thought but of fighting it out to the bitter endl shudder as write at the recollection of that ghastly fields horrors on the day after the battle.
 The shell fire hurled on the exposed French masses had been so close and so incessant that numbers had been torn or blown into fragments.
 The ground was still slippery with blood. and in the hollows lay little puddles. to look at which made one faint.
 Yet this fell experience did not deaden in the soldiers of the French army the passion to keep on fighting. Napoleon's one wise act was his dis playing the white flag on the after noon of Sedan But with what fury the soldiers execrated him and his conduct. Archibald Forbes in Nine teeth Century.