provisions and stores from the fortress, and on the morrow, or the 2nd,
make their escape by way of Mézières. Possibly they might have done so
on that night, and certainly they could have reached the Belgian
frontier, only some six miles distant, and there laid down their arms to
the Belgian troops whom the resourceful Bismarck had set on the _qui
vive._ To remain quiet even for a day in Sedan was to court disaster;
yet passivity characterised the French headquarters and the whole army
on that afternoon and evening. True, MacMahon gave orders for the bridge
over the Meuse at Donchéry to be blown up, but the engine-driver who
took the engineers charged with this important task, lost his nerve when
German shells whizzed about his engine, and drove off before the powder
and tools could be deposited. A second party, sent later on, found that
bridge in the possession of the enemy. On the east side, above Sedan,
the Bavarians seized the railway bridge south of Bazeilles, driving off
the French who sought to blow it up[44].

[Footnote 44: Moltke, _The Franco-German War_, vol. i. p. 114. Hooper,
_The Campaign of Sedan_, p. 296.]

Over the Donchéry bridge and two pontoon bridges constructed below that
village the Germans poured their troops before dawn of September 1, and
as the morning fog of that day slowly lifted, their columns were seen
working round the north of the deep loop of the Meuse, thus cutting off
escape on the west and north-west. Meanwhile, on the other side of the
town, von der Tann's Bavarians had begun the fight. Pressing in on
Bazeilles so as to hinder the retreat of the enemy (as had been so
effectively done at Colombey, on the east of Metz), they at first
surprised the sleeping French, but quickly drew on themselves a sharp
and sustained counter-attack from the marines attached to the 12th
French corps.