Soon after the defeats in the first week in August, Mr. Washburne
had his last interview with the Empress Eugénie.

"She had evidently," he says, "passed a sleepless and agitated
night, and was in great distress of mind. She at once began to
speak of the terrible news she had received, and the effect it
would have on the French people. I suggested to her that the news
might not be quite so bad as was reported (alas! it was far worse),
and that the consequences might in the end be far better than present
circumstances indicated. I spoke to her about the first battle of
Bull Run, and the defeat that the Union army had there suffered,
which had only stimulated the country to greater exertions. She
replied: 'I only wish the French in these respects were like you
Americans; but I am afraid they will get too much discouraged,
and give up too soon.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: Recollections of a Minister to France.]

All this time the "Figaro" was publishing articles that held out
hopes of victory and flattered the self-confidence of the Parisians.
Marshals MacMahon and Bazaine were represented as leading the enemy
craftily into a snare, and the illusion was kept up that the Germans
would be cut to pieces by the peasantry "before they could lay
their sacrilegious hands," said Victor Hugo, "upon the Mecca of
civilization." Instead of this, the Crown Prince's army was marching
in pursuit of MacMahon's forces through the great plains of Champagne.
MacMahon had some design of turning back, uniting with another
army corps, and attacking the Prussians in the rear, thus hemming
in part of their army between himself and the troops of Bazaine
in Metz; but he seems to have been really in the position of a