Maurice was greatly surprised when, on detraining at Rheims, the 106th received orders to encamp there. Were they not going to join the army at Châlons then? And a couple of hours later, when his regiment had piled arms at a league from the city, over towards Courcelles, amid the vast plain skirting the canal from the Aisne to the Marne, his astonishment increased on learning that the entire army of Châlons had been falling back since the morning and would bivouac on this very spot. And, indeed, tents were being pitched from one end of the horizon to the other, as far away as St. Thierry and La Meuvillette, and even beyond the high road to Laon; and the fires of all four army corps would be blazing there that same evening. Evidently enough, the plan of taking up a position under Paris, there to await the Prussians, had prevailed, and Maurice was delighted, for was not this plan the wisest?
He spent most of the afternoon of August 21 in strolling through the camp in search of news. Great latitude was allowed, there seemed less discipline than ever, and the men went off and came back just as they pleased. Maurice himself was able to return to Rheims to cash a post-office order for a hundred francs which he had received from his sister. Whilst there he entered a café, where he heard a sergeant talking of the factious disposition of the eighteen battalions of the Garde Mobile of the Seine, which had been sent back to Paris. The sixth battalion had almost murdered its officers. At Châlons the generals had constantly been insulted, and since the Frœschweiler defeat the men no longer saluted MacMahon. The café was filling with chatterers, and a violent discussion arose between two peaceful civilians respecting the number of men that the marshal might have under his orders. One of the disputants talked of 500,000 men, which was absurd. The other, more sensible, passed the four corps in review: the Twelfth, completed with difficulty at the camp by means of marching regiments and a division of Marine Infantry; the First, the disbanded remnants of which had been arriving since August 14, and were now being more or less successfully reorganised; then the Fifth, defeated without having fought, carried away and broken up in the rout; and the Seventh, just arriving, which was likewise in a demoralised state, and lacked its first division, mere shreds of which it had now found at Rheims. Altogether there were at the utmost 120,000 men, including the Bonnemain and Margueritte divisions of the reserve cavalry. However, the sergeant having mixed himself up in the dispute, alluding to the army with furious contempt as a mere jumble of men, a flock of innocents led by idiots to the slaughter, the two civilians became alarmed and took themselves off, fearing lest they might be compromised.