within its outer forts--a step which might enable the army to regain
confidence, repress any rising in the capital, and perhaps inflict
checks on the Germans, until the provinces rose _en masse_ against the
invaders. But at this very time the Empress-Regent and the Palikao
Ministry at Paris came to an exactly contrary decision, on the ground
that the return of the Emperor with MacMahon's army would look like
personal cowardice and a mean desertion of Bazaine at Metz. The Empress
was for fighting _à outrance_, and her Government issued orders for a
national rising and the enrolling of bodies of irregulars, or
_francs-tireurs_, to harass the Germans[43].

[Footnote 43: See General Lebrun's _Guerre de 1870: Bazailles-Sedan_,
for an account of his corps of MacMahon's army.

In view of the events of the late Boer War, it is worth noting that the
Germans never acknowledged the _francs-tireurs_ as soldiers, and
forthwith issued an order ending with the words, "They are amenable to
martial law and liable to be sentenced to death" (Maurice,
_Franco-German War_, p. 215).]

Their decision was telegraphed to Napoleon III. at Châlons.
Against his own better judgment the Emperor yielded to political
considerations--that mill-stone around the neck of the French army in
1870--and decided to strike out to the north with MacMahon's army, and
by way of Montmédy stretch a hand to Bazaine, who, on his side, was
expected to make for that rendezvous. On the 21st, therefore, they
marched to Reims. There the Emperor received a despatch which Bazaine
had been able to get through the enemies' lines on the 19th, stating
that the Germans were making their way in on Metz, but that he (Bazaine)
hoped to break away towards Montmédy and so join MacMahon's army. (This,