seditious spirit among the men at the very first reverse, had already
made the army a demoralized, disintegrated rabble that would melt away
at the first indication of catastrophe. There they were, under the
walls of Belfort, without having sighted a Prussian, and they were
whipped.

The succeeding days were a period of monotony, full of uncertainty and
anxious forebodings. To keep his troops occupied General Douay set
them to work on the defenses of the place, which were in a state of
incompleteness; there was great throwing up of earth and cutting
through rock. And not the first item of news! Where was MacMahon's
army? What was going on at Metz? The wildest rumors were current, and
the Parisian journals, by their system of printing news only to
contradict it the next day, kept the country in an agony of suspense.
Twice, it was said, the general had written and asked for
instructions, and had not even received an answer. On the 12th of
August, however, the 7th corps was augmented by the 3d division, which
landed from Italy, but there were still only two divisions for duty,
for the 1st had participated in the defeat at Froeschwiller, had been
swept away in the general rout, and as yet no one had learned where it
had been stranded by the current. After a week of this abandonment, of
this entire separation from the rest of France, a telegram came
bringing them the order to march. The news was well received, for
anything was preferable to the prison life they were leading in
Belfort. And while they were getting themselves in readiness
conjecture and surmise were the order of the day, for no one as yet
knew what their destination was to be, some saying that they were to
be sent to the defense of Strasbourg, while others spoke with
confidence of a bold dash into the Black Forest that was to sever the
Prussian line of communication.