interests of France, as he saw it. A week's further resistance would have potentially enabled the levies of the National Defence government to crush the weak forces of the Germans on the Loire and to relieve Paris. Upon Bazaine's surrender, the army of Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia was deployed to the Second Battle of Orléans. Military Commentary Bazaine's awareness of his army's shortcomings against the well-known speed and menacing efficiency of the Prussian military machine, was evidenced in his remark to a friend whilst boarding the train from Paris to Metz: "Nous marchons à un désastre." ("We are walking into a disaster.") In Bazaine's book Episodes de la guerre de 1870 et le blocus de Metz, he later stated:- "The initiatives of the Marshals or Generals placed at the head of the seven great Territorial Amry Divisions was simply null. They were left to the directions of the Minister of War, and, what is more they could obtain no information as to the works of the same, or movement of material. For my part I saw the mitrailleuses only on their arrival at Metz." From Bazinae's military analysis of various lessons of the war, e.g. Waterloo, i.e. that a line of resolute men on the defensive could again and again break an enemy attack; Mexico, i.e. Lee's dashing Confederates lose a war despite their commander's brilliance in attack; Africa, i.e. that dramatic sorties were invaluable in North Africa but risky against European armies; and the Prussian all-steel Krupp breech-loading gun which shaped the future of battlefield artillery, resulted on him concluding that the best approach for France is not an offensive one, stating "It is better to conduct operations systematically, i.e., defensively, as in the Seventeenth Century." Later, in his book Episodes de la guerre de 1870 et le blocus de Metz, he laid the blame on the course of the war upon:- "False patriots who mislead the nation, carrying it away to a resistance disastrous for the country, and only meant as a pedestal for themselves to mount on." Trial Prelude The defection of Bazaine liberated the army besieged by Germans, and who hastened to Orléans to front face the initiative in progress of raising a Republican Army. It was then therefore easy to assign the moral weight of the defeat to Bazaine. In August 1873, he arrived at Paris, where an investigation was opened on the initiative