Denmark, where it would create a diversion that would serve to
neutralize one of the Prussian armies? They would be taken by
surprise; the arrogant nation would be overrun in every direction and
crushed utterly within a few brief weeks. It would be a military
picnic, a holiday excursion from Strasbourg to Berlin. While they were
lying inactive at Belfort, however, his former doubts and fears
returned to him. To the 7th corps had been assigned the duty of
guarding the entrance to the Black Forest; it had reached its position
in a state of confusion that exceeded imagination, deficient in men,
material, everything. The 3d division was in Italy; the 2d cavalry
brigade had been halted at Lyons to check a threatened rising among
the people there, and three batteries had straggled off in some
direction--where, no one could say. Then their destitution in the way
of stores and supplies was something wonderful; the depots at Belfort,
which were to have furnished everything, were empty; not a sign of a
tent, no mess-kettles, no flannel belts, no hospital supplies, no
farriers' forges, not even a horse-shackle. The quartermaster's and
medical departments were without trained assistants. At the very last
moment it was discovered that thirty thousand rifles were practically
useless owing to the absence of some small pin or other
interchangeable mechanism about the breech-blocks, and the officer who
posted off in hot haste to Paris succeeded with the greatest
difficulty in securing five thousand of the missing implements. Their
inactivity, again, was another matter that kept him on pins and
needles; why did they idle away their time for two weeks? why did they
not advance? He saw clearly that each day of delay was a mistake that
could never be repaired, a chance of victory gone. And if the plan of
campaign that he had dreamed of was clear and precise, its manner of
execution was most lame and impotent, a fact of which he was to learn
a great deal more later on and of which he had then only a faint and