The great battle before Sedan, on Thursday, 1st September, of
which we gave the King of Prussia's telegraphic account last week, and the great result of which we were able to give last Saturday in a second edition, ended in far the most terrible defeat the French have yet sustained. It was fought under the eye of the King and Von Moltke, by the united armies of the Crown Prince and the Prince of Saxony, the latter having advanced from the east to check the French advance towards Metz, and the former coming up from the south to cut off their retreat on the west and to surround Sedan. The French Army was not only outnumbered and out-generalled, and out-artilleried, and worst of all, out-disciplined by the Prussians, but it was also in one respect singularly unlucky. Its General, MacMahon, was fearfully wounded early in the day, and his place was taken by an excellent officer, General De Witnpffen, who had only just joined, and knew scarcely anything of General MacMahon's plans and of the disposition of his troops. This was pure misfortune ; but the hungry and ill-disciplined con- dition of the French troops was, like the great inferiority in their guns, a signal proof how little a soldier-Emperor, who has made artillery his special study, and who wrote thirty years ago upon its " future," is any guarantee for the efficiency of the imperial army and the scientific character of the imperial armament.
