[10] During the following days, the garrison was joined by 700 nurses for the Army of Châlons and by several small detachments of gendarmes from neighbouring towns: it reached a total strength of 2,500 to 3,000 men.

[10] On August 30, Near Chauvency-le-Château, a skirmish pits the 6th Regiment's vanguard against a detachment of fighters of the Bavarian Army: French infantry, threatened with encirclement, is saved by the arrival of reinforcements from Montmédy via rail.

They learn the next day that Marshal Patrice de MacMahon's army, coming from Châlons, has delivered and was off the loss at the Battle of Sedan with the following day being that a Saxon officer sent by the Royal Prince Albert of Saxony comes to inform the commander of Montmédy of the French defeat and to ask him very politely to surrender, which the commander Reboul refuses in the forms: "Sir, you know like me that ' a place of war cannot be surrendered without defending itself; take it if you can.".

Two-thirds of houses and all public buildings were damaged, and a fire in a fodder warehouse raised fears of an explosion in a nearby powder magazine.

Still, most were demoralized and lacking equipment but didn't stay out and prefer instead to join the Army of the Loire that the Government of National Defense is in the process of constituting further south.

An escaped artillery lieutenant works to improve the firing positions of the place but, following a series of quarrels, leaves the city after a month to join the Army of the North.

After a march in the rain, the French arrived in position near Stenay, but an Algerian rifleman, firing before the order, gave the convoy the alert and thwarted the attack.

[25] On October 4, following the attack on a train of troops by the inhabitants of Thonne-le-Thil, the German command ordered, as a punitive measure, a requisition of the surrounding villages.

In reaction, on October 5, The French undertake a new release with a detachment of 400 men to intercept the requisition convoy escorted by two or three hundred Saxons of the 65th Regiment.

[29] The German command, furious at its failure at Stenay, imposed a large contribution on the inhabitants and transferred its stopover service to Damvillers, further away from Montmédy.

[30] The withdrawal of the Montmédy garrison raised the morale of the troops: the Belgian border was virtually no longer monitored by the Germans for 40 to 60 km, which made it possible to receive mail and news from France via Belgium.

[31] However, Achille Testelin, National Defense Commissioner appointed to the Directorate of the Northern Forces, received unfavourable reports on Commander Reboul's conduct and ordered him to be dismissed from his post.

[32] The Government of National Defense, led by Léon Gambetta, calls for the creation of free corps (or companies) of snipers intended to harass the enemy: "That each Frenchman receive or take a rifle, and that he is put at the disposal of the authority: the fatherland is in danger!".

These volunteers appear in the Ardennes from August 1870 and multiplied after the disaster of the Imperial German Army, renewing a practice well known in border regions since the invasions of 1814 and 1815.

[33] At Montmédy, towards the end of September, a lieutenant proposed to form a franc-tireur company of 40 or 60 men, raised among the isolated soldiers coming from other units.

Then, towards the middle of October, another improvised leader took the lead of a company of snipers who raised among the isolated: A. de Lort-Sérignan, an officer of the regular army, was very critical of this troop which 'he presents as a band of looters, "confined in villages where their name, sad thing to say, was more feared than that of the enemy", ransoming the inhabitants and the travellers, avoiding any confrontation with the enemy in Sainte-Menehould and Reims.

[35] On October 28, a detachment from Montmédy collects and brings back to safety the crew of a balloon sent by the besieged Parisians, carrying mail, carrier pigeons and a secretary of Minister Jules Favre, intended for the Army of the North.

On November 10, Commander Tessier ordered a small expedition to the villages of Jametz and Marville to mark the French military presence there and reattach them to the unoccupied zone in the event of an armistice.

[37] On November 13, the German 14th Division, commanded by General lieutenant Georg von Kameke, coming from Metz, moved from Thionville and surrounded Montmédy.

Commander Tessier orders, on November 16, a local attack towards Chauvency to assess the forces available to the enemy: the latter, considerably reinforced in numbers, pushes back the French who lost 85 men.

[39] Between 16 and 17 November the German 27th Brigade (Colonel Pannwitz), part of the 14th Division, surrounds Montmédy in a tight circle and builds entrenchments.

On November 19, an emissary of Colonel Pannwitz presented himself to the French lines to try to negotiate an exchange of prisoners of the 300 Prussians then being held captive in the fortress.

[40][41] The winter cold began to be felt, the French garrison sent daily chores of wood in the forest of Mont Cé, exchanging rifle shots with the German infantrymen who held the other bank of the Chiers.

A large artillery force was moved from Thionville to Longuyon by rail, and from there to Montmédy by road, which made the trip difficult by the floods and cuts operated by the French garrison.

[45] It acts in contradiction with the military regulation of 1863, which prohibits a commander of the place, under penalty of death and degradation, to surrender as long as his fortress does not repel at least one ground assault making a breach.

[46] During the night of 13 to December 14, while the disorders worsen in the city and that the soldiers, often drunk, are on the verge of the mutiny, the commander Reboul and another emissary, by different paths, are sent to the Prussian lines to ask to capitulate.

They are brought to the German command to Iré-le-Sec: Major von Hilger, Chief of Staff of the 14th Division, telegraphed immediately to batteries the order to cease fire.

[48] The act of capitulation specifies that the French troops would have to leave the city at 1:00 pm by the Porte de Metz, laying down their arms; The French officers will remain in the city before they too are sent into captivity; The line troops and the Mobile National Guard would be prisoners of war but that the sedentary National Guard will be released against a written engagement.

Finally, on January 18, 1872, the board concludes, The damage caused in the city and to the military buildings by enemy fire, the impossibility of the place to respond to it with the two pieces of 24 which were in battery and had sufficient range, the fear of seeing the powder magazines jump, determined Commander Tessier to give up the place without any request having been made in this direction by the municipal council, nor the inhabitants of Montmédy.

The Board of Inquiry thinks that Commander Tessier prolonged his resistance as much as his means allowed him but that he was wrong not to destroy his artillery, arms and ammunition before the surrender was signed of any kind enclosed in place.