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My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
page 44 of 314 (14%)
in confusion, and my father decided to send me to join my stepmother and
the younger members of the family at Saint Servan, it being his intention
to go to the front with my elder brother Edward. But Simpson, the veteran
Crimean War artist, came over to join the so-called Army of the Rhine, and
my brother, securing an engagement from the _New York Times_, set out on
his own account. Thus I was promptly recalled to Paris, where my father
had decided to remain. In those days the journey from Brittany to the
capital took many long and wearisome hours, and I made it in a third-class
carriage of a train crowded with soldiers of all arms, cavalry, infantry,
and artillery. Most of them were intoxicated, and the grossness of their
language and manners was almost beyond belief. That dreadful night spent
on the boards of a slowly-moving and jolting train, [There were then no
cushioned seats in French third-class carriages.] amidst drunken and
foul-mouthed companions, gave me, as it were, a glimpse of the other side
of the picture--that is, of several things which lie behind the glamour of
war.

It must have been about July 25 when I returned to Paris. A decree had
just been issued appointing the Empress as Regent in the absence of the
Emperor, who was to take command of the Army of the Rhine. It had
originally been intended that there should be three French armies, but
during the conferences with Archduke Albert in the spring, that plan was
abandoned in favour of one sole army under the command of Napoleon III.
The idea underlying the change was to avoid a superfluity of
staff-officers, and to augment the number of actual combatants. Both Le
Boeuf and Lebrun approved of the alteration, and this would seem to
indicate that there were already misgivings on the French side in regard
to the inferior strength of their effectives. The army was divided into
eight sections, that is, seven army corps, and the Imperial Guard.
Bourbaki, as already mentioned, commanded the Guard, and at the head of
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