On Sunday, Marshal Bazaine died in poverty at Madrid of
heart-disease, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He must have been a man with unusual ability of a kind, for he rose from the ranks to be a Marshal of France, and his comrades thought him fit to command great armies. Not an objection was made to his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of sixty thousand men in Mexico, or to his command of the immense force, one hundred and seventy-five thousand, which he interned in Metz. His gifts, however, were completely spoiled or made injurious by want of simplicity of character. He was always thinking, about himself, his own career, his own position. We will not say he rained the Emperor 'Maximilian, for nothing could have saved that well-meaning adventurer, who had no more business in Mexico than in Paris ; but he un- doubtedly used the army of Metz for dynastic instead of national purposes. He husbanded it in order that when peace was made, he might be head of the only organised force re- maining. His punishment was extreme, for France longed for a scapegoat ; but he did not deserve well of his country.
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