The debates continued for more than six weeks.
The greater part of it was occupied by the depositions of the witnesses, old companions of glory of the accused. Ten times the tragedy experienced by the Army of the Rhine was evoked:
The troops were in terrible distress, General Changarnier soberly admits...
The soldiers were in terrible mud, says Canrobert, and had nothing to live on but meat from horse, without salt and fat, because the horses were thin. During his internment, the Army of Metz left two-thirds of its effective force in Germany, and when they performed the autopsy of one of these poor children, they recognized by his stomach that he belonged to the Army of Metz. br class='autobr' />Despite this situation, morale was not affected, says Marshal Leboeuf. The discipline was good until the last moment.
So good and the officers held their men so well in hand that Canrobert, recalling that Bazaine, when he informed his staff of what he had decided, spoke only of "convention" and not of capitulation. , don't be afraid to say:
If we could have imagined that this would get us nowhere, we would have said to the Marshal, "Drive- us to the fire, we will sell our lives dearly. And we would have sold it dearly!
Definitely Bazaine has no excuses... All the ones he could have invoked escape him one after the other and it is his own comrades-in-arms who, without even trying to overwhelm him and just by relating the facts in which they were involved, show the seriousness of his fault.