As the fighting flickered out around Mars-la-Tour and Vionville, Moltke, King Wilhelm and Bismarck, wedged between the march columns of the Saxon XII Corps, finally crossed the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson. Prince Friedrich Karl had crossed earlier in the day and spent much of it at Gorze trying to direct the seesaw battle and its aftermath. With his usual perspicacity, Moltke grasped the larger significance of Mars-la-Tour. Bazaine was marooned, divided from the French hinterland by most of the Prusso-German army. Moltke immediately stopped the race to the Meuse and directed his IV, VII, VIII, and XII Corps to wheel into line beside Alvensleben and Voigts-Rhetz at Rezonville and Gravelotte. To reduce Steinmetz's potential for mischief, Moltke shifted VIII Corps to the Second Army and ordered Steinmetz to stand in place near Gravelotte with his sole remaining corps while the rest of the Prussian army pivoted north of him. Though hard days were ahead – Bazaine had a friendly fortress at his back and a strong defensive position – Moltke was groping for a decisive encirclement. He would either envelop Bazaine on the skirts of Metz, push him into the fortress to starve, or drive him north to Luxembourg, where, according to the laws of war, the French army would have to lay down its arms. Bazaine's thinking ran shallower; the marshal pondered until 10 p.m., when he and his general staff chief, General Louis Jarras, finally issued a dispiriting set of orders from their rooms in Gravelotte: