chanzy’s campaign. 
91 
and many a man’s life slipped away because there was no one suffici¬ 
ently skilled to bind up his wounds. The dead lay thick among the 
dying. 1 2 I think it is not desirable to go on piling up the agony, but 
there is one little point I would just mention, and now I quote Hozier : 
“It will always be a satisfaction to the subscribers to the great English 
fund for the sick and wounded to know that numbers of the French 
were spared unutterable torture and owed their lives to the supply of 
English chloroform, blankets, bandages, and wine which was fortunately 
forthcoming V 3 I need scarcely say that for all that the British, like 
other philanthropists, got no thanks from the parties concerned. 
Recently French orators and authors have informed us that 25,000 well 
equipped soldiers would have been worth all the bread and cheese and 
doctors in England. 
Well, after the 10th December the Germans imagined that Ohanzy 
had retreated south, and you will admit that his ability in regard to this 
deserves commemoration; they thought he had retreated south towards 
Blois, and indeed the 10th German Corps followed him there. Now, 
he must have managed his plans exceedingly ably to have an army like 
the Germans pursuing him in the direction of Tours, whereas in point 
of fact he had retreated to the west to the river Loir—-they pursued 
him by the right of the Loire. But he had retreated to a place between 
Vendome and Freteval. He had thus brought a young army by a 
flank march right out of the way of a veteran army like the Germans, 
and had put his army on the river Loir from Vendome to Freteval and 
Moree on the flank of the Germans, and was, therefore, as near Paris as 
they were. They were immediately compelled to turn again to the 
west; they turned almost worn out from the Loire to the Loir. 
(Describing the same on the blackboard). Chanzy’s position was very 
strong indeed; it was a kind of salient, like that by which Marmont 
puzzled Wellington in 1812 on the Douro. The river Loir, is in a close 
country full of villages, woods and other obstacles marked on your map; 
and he, therefore, would be in a salient angle as against the Germans, 
about Moree, Freteval and Vendome. He proposed to stay there for 
some time and to occupy their attention. He pressed again and 
again on the Central Government in a series of very able despatches 3 
the necessity of Bourbaki not going too far east, but keeping near enough 
to the German army of the Loire to occupy them and to slip north 
of them, and so to get up towards Paris; and to combine this with the 
proposed sortie by General Trochu from the invested capital. I hope, 
gentlemen, I make clear to you the situation : that Bourbaki’s three 
corps being reinforced by other troops from Lyons and different parts 
of France still available, from all parts of the south-east, might make a 
mighty army of 160,000 or 170,000 men, and that Chanzy on the river 
Loir would occupy Mecklenburg, and the 9th Corps, under Manstein, 
the 3rd Corps under Alvensleben, and the 10th Hanoverian Corps 
under Voigts-Rhetz, not to speak of five divisions of cavalry; while 
J For fuller and eloquent details see Hozier’s narrative. 
2 In what I consider most able despatches, written with that elegance and clearness that illus¬ 
trates and, since the days of Froissart, has illustrated all French military literature. It is a lesson 
m manhood to follow the deeds of the Teutons, but brightness and glory pervade every page of the 
brilliant soldiers and journalists of Gaul. See Appendix. 
