First, he and Leboeuf planned a retreat beyond the Moselle and Meuse; next, political considerations bade them stand firm on the banks of the Nied, some twelve miles east of Metz; and when this position seemed unsafe, they ended the marchings and counter-marchings of their troops by taking up a position at Colombey, nearer to Metz.
Meanwhile at Paris the Chamber of Deputies had overthrown the Ollivier Ministry, and the Empress-Regent installed in office Count Palikao.
There was a general outcry against Leboeuf, and on the 12th the Emperor resigned the command to Marshal Bazaine (Lebrun now acting as Chief of Staff), with the injunction to retreat westwards to Verdun.

For the Emperor to order such a retreat in his own name was thought to be inopportune.

Bazaine was a convenient scapegoat, and he himself knew it.
Had he thrown an army corps into Metz and obeyed the Emperor's orders by retreating on Verdun, things would certainly have gone better than was now to be the case.

In his printed defence Bazaine has urged that the army had not enough provisions for the march, and, further, that the outlying forts of Metz were not yet ready to withstand a siege--a circumstance which, if true, partly explains Bazaine's reluctance to leave the "virgin city[40]." Napoleon III.

quitted it early on the 16th: he and his escort were the last Frenchmen to get free of that death-trap for many a week.
[Footnote 40: Bazaine gave this excuse in his _Rapport sommaire sur les Operations de l'Armee du Rhin_; but as a staff-officer pointed out in his incisive _Reponse_, this reason must have been equally cogent when Napoleon (August 12) ordered him to retreat; and he was still bound to obey the Emperor's orders.] While Metz exercised this fatal fascination over the protecting army, the First and Second German Armies were striding westwards to envelop both the city and its guardians.