142 The Great War to Paris open, while Bazaine, behind the walls of Mctz, was doomed to surrender when starvation came. No thought of further resistance save a brief siege of Paris could have troubled the German invaders. No ally in Europe moved to succor pros- trate France. Yet Paris resisted for long months. Gambetta raised hundreds of thousands of men, who fought brave battles, even won one, strained German endurance severely before the inevitable surrender came. On Sedan Day 1914 no army of France had been routed or captured. On the Vosges the Eastern Army was fighting on even terms with an army it had confronted for weeks, now advancing, now retiring. On the Meuse a second army, from Verdun to Me- zieres, still held the ground which, like the position to the south, was the first line of French defence within sight of the frontier. Only on the north had French retreat been se- rious, and here some hundreds of thousands of French with hardly more than a hundred thousand English had been fighting and retiring, now thrust- ing back, now slipping away from the main German Army, which had penetrated some eighty miles into France. The fact that a political Ministry sent masses of troops to the remote Vosges and left Paris open explained German progress, but already French corps were coming back and reenforcements were arriving from England and from the south and west of France,