troupes, il ne me reste qu'à remettre mon épée entre les
mains de Votre Majesté.--Je suis de Votre Majesté le
bon Frère

NAPOLÉON.

SÉDAN, _le 1er Septembre, 1870_.

[Footnote 49: Lebrun, _op. cit._ pp. 130 _et seq._ for the disputes
about surrender.]

The King named von Moltke to arrange the terms and then rode away to a
village farther south, it being arranged, probably at Bismarck's
suggestion, that he should not see the Emperor until all was settled.
Meanwhile de Wimpffen and other French generals, in conference with von
Moltke, Bismarck, and Blumenthal, at the village of Donchéry, sought to
gain easy terms by appealing to their generosity and by arguing that
this would end the war and earn the gratitude of France. To all appeals
for permission to let the captive army go to Algeria, or to lay down its
arms in Belgium, the Germans were deaf,--Bismarck at length plainly
saying that the French were an envious and jealous people on whose
gratitude it would be idle to count. De Wimpffen then threatened to
renew the fight rather than surrender, to which von Moltke grimly
assented, but Bismarck again interposed to bring about a prolongation of
the truce. Early on the morrow, Napoleon himself drove out to Donchéry
in the hope of seeing the King. The Bismarckian Boswell has given us a
glimpse of him as he then appeared: "The look in his light grey eyes was
somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived too fast."
[In his case, we may remark, this was induced by the painful disease
which never left him all through the campaign, and carried him off three