by Verdun on Châlons, where MacMahon was to form a new army with reinforcements sent from Paris. The Germans were out of sight when the retreat began on the morning of the 14th, but they detected the movement, and the same day Steinmetz threw himself on the French rearguard outside the forts of Metz. The French held their own that evening, but the retreat was interrupted, half a day was lost, and Prince Frederick Charles had time to get across the Moselle with part of his army. Bazaine marched by two roads, which part a few miles west of Metz, at Gravelotte, and unite at Verdun. On the 16th the Germans overtook him on the southern road, near Mars-la-Tour. They were greatly outnumbered, for the bulk of their force was many miles to the rear, and the French divisions that were following the northern road came up in time. They gained their object with a loss which, in proportion to the numbers they brought into action, is almost unexampled in European warfare, — a loss of 17,000 men. That night an Englishman seeking a drink of water for the wounded in a stream that crossed the battlefield, found it so dark with blood that he was obliged to walk three miles to fill his bucket. Bazaine had been stopped, but not actually defeated, and the northern road was still open to him. But the shock of the great battle made him lose a day. He feared to be cut off from Metz, and resolved to give battle under cover of the fortress, in a position which would force the Germans to fight with their backs to Paris, and their line of retreat interrupted by the Moselle. His movements after the battle converted what was no more than a repulse into a gigantic disaster. The Germans on the following day did not know the extent of their good fortune. They brought together more than 200,000 men, and early on the 1 8th they set out to look for Bazaine on the northern road to Verdun. They found him in a strong position near Gravelotte, immovable, leaning on the outworks of Metz, with a force less by 60,000 men than their own. Wheeling round to their right they began the attack about the middle of
