Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it left him
dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded
since early that morning, General Ducrot commanding in his place for
the last two hours, the entire army retreating to the northward of
Sedan--and all these important events kept from the poor devils of
soldiers who were squandering their life's blood! and all their
destinies, dependent on the life of a single man, were to be intrusted
to the direction of fresh and untried hands! He had a distinct
consciousness of the fate that was in reserve for the army of Chalons,
deprived of its commander, destitute of any guiding principle of
action, dragged purposelessly in this direction and in that, while the
Germans went straight and swift to their preconcerted end with
mechanical precision and directness.

Bourgain-Desfeuilles had wheeled his horse and was moving away, when
General Douay, to whom a grimy, dust-stained hussar had galloped up
with another dispatch, excitedly summoned him back.

"General! General!"

His voice rang out so loud and clear, with such an accent of surprise,
that it drowned the uproar of the guns.

"General, Ducrot is no longer in command; de Wimpffen is chief. You
know he reached here yesterday, just in the very thick of the disaster
at Beaumont, to relieve de Failly at the head of the 5th corps--and he
writes me that he has written instructions from the Minister of War
assigning him to the command of the army in case the post should
become vacant. And there is to be no more retreating; the orders now
are to reoccupy our old positions, and defend them to the last."