CHANZY'S CAMPAIGN. 
93 
and made comfortable, &c., and that place was manifestly Le Mans, 
which, as you see from the map, had many advantages. Look to your 
map for Le Mans ; between the Germans and this town was a country 
exceedingly difficult to traverse which would delay the Germans while 
the French about Le Mans were getting reorganised and refreshed, 
supplied with ammunition, and so on; moreover, it was near abundant 
supplies—Cherbourg, Brest, great depots and arsenals—and the officers 
commanding at Le Mans could be supplied and could move by means 
of all four railways which you see-—railways to Paris, railways to 
Alenpon, Laval, and the south-west, could get any number of recruits 
up. In point of fact they did get up some 20,000 recruits, and some 
military stores from England and from America; there was no deficiency 
in military stores, there was no deficiency in ammunition ; there was 
abundance, a marvellous abundance, of provisions. All these things 
were forthcoming. Officers, organisation, military training were not 
forthcoming. Chanzy thought he would give them a good opportunity 
of getting what we call “ licked into shape " by retiring to Le Mans. 
But Frenchmen do not appear to be of a retiring disposition, or to do 
well under circumstances of retirement; and I believe no young troops 
in any country do well under those circumstances. For example, if you 
take the American Civil War you will see that in 1861-2 a defeat very 
frequently meant a rout on the part of the Northern levies. 1 2 And the 
sufferings of the troops made things worse. I have here a quotation 
from Chanzy ; s book, in which be points out the very deplorable features 
that characterised the retreat from the Loire to Le Mans—a retreat 
which reminded many literary men of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow 
as to the severity of the weather and the miserable condition of the 
young soldiers. 3 Between the Loir and Le Mans the country is like 
parts of the south of England. There are abundance of small rivers; 
there are not large mountains, but there are plenty of places about 200 
feet high, 170 feet, and so on ; the roads have a great tendency to become 
defiles; there are any amount of orchards, vineyards, villages, home¬ 
steads, farmsteads, and so on scattered through a country of considerable 
fertility and old cultivation. Necessarily, therefore, the Germans, who 
had a great superiority in cavalry and artillery, would not be able to 
use such a territory for their forces as well as other parts near Paris. 
With that idea Gambetta himself agreed, for he wrote saying:—“ I quite 
agree with you in not coming out into the open. If with your soldiers 
you come out into the open, say, beyond the mountains of Perche up 
north-west, you are certain to get overwhelmed in the plain; but if you 
can only get into close country you may possibly be able to neutralise 
the German cavalry and the German artillery." I may mention that the 
German infantry was about 58,000 strong, the German cavalry about 
17,000 strong, and the German guns about 324. The French cavalry 
was of small account; the French guns were numerous, but I am afraid 
the French gunners left much to be desired with regard to their train¬ 
ing; I do not mean to say the French gunners generally, but the 
particular men employed in this part of the campaign. 
1 See General Lee’s remarks on the effect of a flank attack on Federal levies in 1862. 
2 See Appendix. 
