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Title: My experiences of the war between France and Germany, vol. 1 (of 2)
Author: Archibald Forbes
Release date: August 11, 2026 [eBook #79341]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hurst & Blackett, 1871
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY EXPERIENCES OF THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY, VOL. 1 (OF 2) ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Small caps in the text is denoted by UPPERCASE.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
MY EXPERIENCES
OF THE
WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY.
VOL. I.
“News of battle! News of battle!
Hark! ’tis ringing down the street;
And the archways and the pavement
Bear the clang of hurrying feet.
News of battle! Who has brought it?”
W. E. AYTOUN, _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_.
MY
EXPERIENCES OF THE WAR
BETWEEN
FRANCE AND GERMANY.
BY
ARCHIBALD FORBES,
ONE OF THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS OF “THE DAILY NEWS.”
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1871.
_The Right of Translation is Reserved._
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
PREFACE.
It is right to state that a large proportion of the material of these
two volumes consists of letters contributed to “The Daily News,” so
far as concerns the events written of in Parts II., III., and IV.; to
“The Morning Advertiser,” as regards Part I. I have modified, excised,
and re-written not a little, only to find the desire, which cannot be
gratified, grow stronger and stronger to re-write the whole. As it is,
what follows can claim to be no more than an honest narrative of events
which passed within my own ken; nor did I allow any consideration to
deter me from bringing as many events as possible within my ken. Yet
even of these the book makes no pretensions to be a historical record;
but it may be of some service to the historian which the late war is
sure to evoke.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE STROKES OF THE SLEDGE-HAMMER.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY DAYS 1
CHAPTER II.
SAARBRÜCK AND SPICHEREN 49
CHAPTER III.
COURCELLES, VIONVILLE, AND GRAVELOTTE 109
CHAPTER IV.
SEDAN: BEFORE AND AFTER 217
PART II.
METZ.
CHAPTER I.
THE SIEGE 285
CHAPTER II.
PUCELLA RAPTA 407
PART I.
THE STROKES OF THE SLEDGE-HAMMER.
MY EXPERIENCES
OF THE
WAR BETWEEN FRANCE & GERMANY.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY DAYS.
He must have lived in some very sequestered vale indeed who did not
in some measure participate in the thrill of excitement which ran
through Britain on that day, the 15th of July, 1870, on which the Duc
de Grammont in his master’s name proclaimed that France had resolved to
make war with Prussia. The general impression probably was, that there
would be a pitched battle the same evening, and when day after day
passed and no overt warfare was reported of a more serious character
than the blowing-up of a bridge, the capture of a couple of douaniers,
or the harmless exchange of shots between the hostile pickets and
patrols on the frontier line, the intensity of the concentrated
expectancy only grew keener because of the lurid hush that preceded
the breaking of the storm. In these early days, while access was
possible to the vicinity of the frontier line—on the German side at
least—there was little of interest to attract anyone whose mission it
was to contribute what he might toward feeding the popular appetite
with what has come to be known ever since the Crimean times as “War
Correspondence.” But there was no lack in Germany of more interesting
work than competing with Reuter in the transmission of telegrams, or
in gazing continuously across the boundary line through a field-glass
on the chance of seeing a few brisk little men in red breeches popping
out and in among the trees. One might see with his own eyes the working
of that huge machine, on the elaboration of every cog and pinion of
which Von Moltke and his subordinates had bestowed so much pains. The
word had gone forth for the mobilisation of the German army a few days
before I reached Cologne, on the 19th July. Already, before leaving
London, I had noticed and wondered what a power and scope had this
machine—the German military system—that it could bridge the Channel
and sweep into its feeder with a suction-power not to be resisted,
Germans long resident in Britain, and unthirled from the machine save
by the astriction of patriotism. There was little need in these days
of July to ask one’s way to the office of the North German Consul
in the city. You knew you were coming to the Consulate before you
got within sight of it. The pavements were thronged by Germans who
monopolised the “crown of the causeway” with a stolid masterful good
humour which was not to be gainsaid. You might have walked over the
heads of the densely-packed mass of men who stood about wedged in,
chatting, smoking, spitting, grumbling occasionally—not viciously—at
the delay they experienced in getting their passports put in order. I
should think at least three hundred Germans were in waiting for their
passports when I procured my _visa_. Four-fifths of the men—for the
most part stalwart, lissom young fellows—were starting to join the
German army. There was no compulsion on them, save what we might call
moral compulsion. They might have become naturalised Englishmen on
their arrival among us, or at all events when they found themselves
beginning to have a stake in the country. But Fatherland was their
all-in-all. They had thrown up, not a few of them, positions of high
trust and considerable emolument, that they might return to serve in
its ranks as private soldiers. Nor was there any impulsive, thoughtless
recklessness in the step. On the contrary, many of them regretted,
in my hearing, that prospects so good should thus be thrown to the
winds; but in this regret was not mingled a tinge of recalcitrancy.
It seemed as if they had never so much as let the consciousness dawn
upon them that it was possible to draw back. What they were doing was
a simple matter of inevitable duty. And it appeared to me that it was
in true consistency that there should have been but little display of
enthusiasm. They seemed to know each that his neighbour was genuine,
without bursting out into spasmodic professions of devotion and mutual
exhortations savouring of “high-falutin.” Several policemen were among
the number, and I was sorry to find—while the _employés_ of private
persons had not only been treated liberally as regarded the present,
but in many cases, on the part both of English and foreign houses, had
been promised favourable consideration on their return to claim their
hurriedly-vacated situations—that the public servants had been very
scurvily dealt with. One policeman, who was a third-class constable,
notwithstanding that he spoke four languages, and saved the force
the cost of an interpreter, had been suspended summarily immediately
on his intimating that duty to his native country compelled him to
quit the police; had been deprived of his uniform without a moment’s
warning, and in a contumelious manner; had been refused any testimonial
as to character, and finally was about to leave England, leaving
behind a week’s wages which were owing to him, and payment of which
was withheld. It was not a time favourable for the voyaging of the
migratory Britons, who are wont to crowd the Channel boats in the later
summer months. Such of our countrymen as were to be found on foreign
shores were for the most part hurriedly betaking themselves to their
insular fatherland to be out of harm’s way and the evil days that were
dreaded; and if perchance you encountered a few with their faces turned
the other way, those faces were set and anxious, for their owners were
hurrying to bring home children or relatives from school or residence
in some German town—peaceable enough still, but ere long, it might be,
to be the scene of a battle and the victim of a hostile occupation. But
the Ostend boats, for a few weeks at all events in the beginning of
the war, did not miss the suspension of the tourist exodus. There was
hardly standing room on their decks, thronged as they were by Germans
crowding home to swell the great national army. The night I crossed I
had a talk with two men who had come all the way home from New York for
this purpose, having started as soon as the first tidings of a probable
rupture crossed the Atlantic, and they assured me that they would be
speedily followed by vast numbers. What an extraordinary compound were
they of Germano-Yankee financial ’cuteness and pure single-hearted
patriotic zeal! Long and regretfully did they discourse about the
ill-effects of the war-panic; how this security went down seven per
cent., and that ten. But their quiet, contented conclusion was, “Never
mind, Germany will conquer, and what for that is the money?” No German
seemed to doubt that Germany would ultimately conquer; but there were
few who had not made up their minds to lose a battle or two at the
outset, and that for sure the opening scene at least of the stupendous
drama would be played within the borders of their native land. How the
world halted between two opinions till Wörth and Spicheren gave data
not to be resisted, seems strange and half unreal now when we have so
long stood in the full light of after-experience.
When I reached Cologne on the 19th July, working parties had already
begun to fell the trees on the ramparts and to face up the scarps of
the outlying forts. A state of siege had been formally declared, so
that the place might be got in trim for an actual siege if the fortune
of war and the traditional dash of the French should bring the crest
of the wave to lap against the hoary fortifications of the ancient
Rhineland city. And then, too, not in the city alone, but in every
village and parish throughout the length and breadth of the land, the
great mobilisation machine—Gneisenau’s patent, with improvements by
Von Moltke—was in full swing. How this machine does its work it is not
easy to realise, unless one has actually watched its operation. To do
this I halted for a few days, taking Cologne as headquarters, and made
daily excursions into the neighbouring country where the mobilisation
machine was in operation. What I saw left me divided between admiration
of its quiet regularity and its surprising efficiency; and a feeling
of sadness which no man with any feeling could escape. While the Uhlan
patrols and the Chasseurs-à-cheval are looking at each other across
the frontier, a short description of the working of the mobilisation
machine may not be uninteresting.
It is unnecessary to waste space in describing in detail the Prussian
military system, now adopted by all the German States. If there are
those among my readers who are not, by this time, familiar with these
details, it may be taken as pretty certain that such would obdurately
skip a paragraph furnishing them now. All that seems necessary is to
point out that there are three strata of fighting men in Germany—the
regular army, the “reserve,” and the landwehr. It is a mistake into
which many fall, and among others the _Times_ in a leading article in
the earlier days of the campaign, that the reserve is “in the rear
of the regular army.” This is not the case. The war strength of a
regiment is just double its peace strength, and the increment consists
of the reserve. The blending of the two in time of war is thorough
and complete. The medalled men of 1866, and of the Sleswig-Holstein
campaigns, called up from reserve, are welded into the same ranks with
the young soldiers who are serving their first period of three years.
Bayonet for bayonet, the old and the young soldiers balance each other,
and the amalgamation is perfect between dash and steadiness—between
whatever recklessness there may be in the bravery of youth, and the
staid valour of maturer years. It is an utter mistake to think of the
Prussian army or the Prussian reserves, as a militia similar to our
highly estimable but rather weak-kneed “constitutional force.” The
British militiaman has, in very few instances, been a soldier otherwise
than in the militia. He is quite a militia veteran, if he has gone
through his month’s drill once a year for four or five years, and he
is not liable to serve abroad. The Prussian reserve man, in whatever
stratum he may be, can point backward to three full years spent in
active soldiering with the colours of his regiment. He has his drill
every year, like our respected militiaman, but he is liable for foreign
service, and that, too, even after he is out of the “reserve,” and in
the ranks of the landwehr.
The mobilisation machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole
country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of which
are the head-quarters of the army corps recruited from that district.
Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilisation to the towns, the
villages, and the quiet country parishes. The authorities there make
out individual summonses, appointing day and place for the gathering,
and these are left at the “respective places of abode” of the reserve
men. Max has married, and children have begun to toddle around his
modest table. He is in the midst of his harvest, and Gretchen is
daily expected to add to the population of the Fatherland. Carl is
to be married next week; he has bought his humble plenishing, and
the priest or the minister has been spoken to. Hans is just entering
into partnership; he has built new premises, and his presence may be
essential to make the spoon—his absence will spoil the horn. Heinrich
is on the eve of emigrating. His traps are bought, and his ticket
is paid for. But the burgomaster’s clerk, or the orderly corporal,
comes round one pleasant summer evening, and serves on one and all a
certain bit of paper. Max, when he reads it, growls “Donner wetter,”
and actually lets his pipe out in the dismal pause that follows its
perusal. Carl walks off with it to his sweetheart, and there is a
blubbering match. But when the appointed day arrives, Max and all the
rest of them come to the front—genuine children of the Fatherland. Max
leaves the harvest _in statu quo_, kisses his Gretchen, and wishes
her well through her trouble, slobbers the bairns, and strides off
to the muster—the wallet on his shoulder, into which Gretchen has
crammed a couple of shirts, a lump of _schwartz brod_, a few slices of
_schinken_, and a coil of fearfully and wonderfully made sausages—a
little unaccustomed water in his eye, and a queer lump in his bare
brown throat. Carl puts off his wedding indefinitely, and war becomes
his mistress, _vice_ the other _fräulein_, superseded for the time
being. Heinrich postpones expatriation, perhaps to enrich the soil of
France with certain phosphates, the product of the decomposition of
bones. Hans leaves the new business and partner (an “exempt” let one
hope) to take their course; he for the time has other fish to fry. The
contingent of the village, duly called over and found complete, is sent
off towards head-quarters. By the way it meets other contingents, till
finally, as the rendezvous is reached, the several contingents make
quite a procession in traversing the streets. Now, it can be recognised
what a pure democracy, in a social sense, is the Prussian army. In the
same file walk the labouring man and his master’s son, the farmer’s boy
and the banker’s clerk. And if you follow them till they have got their
uniform, it is likely enough that you will find the labouring man, who
already has his medals on his breast, wearing the gold stripes round
his throat, and the petty centurion over his quondam superior, to whom
he sayeth, “Do this,” and he doeth it.
One is able also to recognise in this procession the genuine military
experience of Prussia. Many of its members look louts—they drag their
legs as if they had never been an hour at the goose step, and their
shoulders are as round as if they had never learned the meaning
of suppling motions. One of our smart sergeants of Charles Street
would emphatically d——n the lot all round as “heart-breaks.” But
the heart-breaks have seen and done what, in all probability, the
recruiting-sergeant has only a very faint conception of. They have
seen and shared in the shock of battle—they are veterans. Two-thirds
of the number wear the war-medals of former campaigns. Max was at the
storming of the Dannewerk; Heinrich plied the needle-gun at Königgratz.
Let us follow the party to the arsenal. On the road there is not a
drunken man to be seen, and there is no need of carts or ambulances to
carry the weary and footsore, for there are none such. “Falling out”
is a trick that the Prussian reserve men do not seem to have learned.
At the arsenal they get their uniforms, and on the peg whence each
military suit is taken, is hung up the civilian raiment, there to await
its owner on the return of peace. If the unclaimed personal flotsam
and jetsam is a perquisite of King Wilhelm, the worthy old-clo’ men of
the Juden Strasse have had a fine harvest of it. For Gretchen may have
been a widow before her baby was out of long clothes, and the priest
may have never been called upon to marry Carl. The serving-out process
is admirably systematic, betokening a state of active preparation
highly creditable to the quartermaster’s department. However, it
takes the best part of a day ere the clodhopper of the morning is
fully transformed into the soldier. And what a transformation is that
effected by a spiked helmet, pair of breeches, and boots! The man is
a different being now. The slouch has gone from his shoulders, his
chest is thrown forward, his legs straightened, his chin “well off
the stock” (in military phrase), his step brisk, and his carriage
altogether soldierlike. The associations of the uniform have done it
all. And now, as these newly re-made soldiers crowd the streets, one
can gauge their military physique with some precision. They are not
trim, dapper men. The regimental tailor of a British crack regiment
would have been in despair over the gaunt, long-thighed, big-jointed,
thin-flanked fellows, all corners and muscle. But it is clear they
are as tough as whip-cord, and strong, lasting, useful soldiers.
Their sobriety and docility are simply astonishing. They go about the
business of the hour as if they were working for their own hand; and
now, in the evening, although the town is swarming with soldiers, it
is as quiet as if there were not a man beyond the ordinary garrison.
No piquets promenade the thoroughfares to pick drunken men out of the
gutter, or to apprehend rioters; the barrack-gates are not infested
by hordes of soldiers’ women, and are not the theatres of scenes
calculated to make decent people shun the vicinity. All is orderly,
decent, and reputable.
We have an impression among us—and I confess I shared it—that he makes
the best soldier who is the most of an _enfant perdu_. Cut your soldier
off from all civil associations—no matter if from all associations
of civilisation as well—make the army his trade, the barrack-room
his home, and alternate the canteen with the low public-house as
his chosen haunt. Let every douce civilian body wag his head in a
half-kindly, half-chiding way over the soldier, regard him as more or
less God-forgotten, yet still a fine fellow in his way, and capital
food for powder. Let the soldier accept this view of himself, drink his
pay, wax his moustache, wink at the girls, and swagger about the world
in peace time—and in war? Of course your reckless scapegrace, without a
tie in the world, who carries his life in his hand, is just the man to
make a dashing charge, to cover himself with glory, to start the bells
a-ringing and the park guns a-firing, and—to drink himself to death
with the multitudinous pots which a temporarily proud and grateful
civilian population press upon his acceptance.
Why? Wherefore should a man fight any better because he is a
disreputable scapegrace? You talk of a stake in the country having a
tendency to stimulate patriotism in civil life. Why should the same
cause not have the same effect in military? Whether do the “tears fall
and blind” the soldier most, when the band strikes up “The girl I leave
behind me,” if she be an honest woman, a true wife, and the mother of
his children, or some dirty garrison trull hardly troubling to see him
off in her anxiety to make the acquaintance of his successor? In most
of the printsellers’ windows in London is an engraving representing
a farewell between an officer and his wife, as he quits for foreign
service. I often appreciated the true sentiment of Millais’ picture,
yet never more so than during those early days when the mobilisation
mill was grinding. The husband, leaning from a carriage window,
stretches forth his hand, which the wife clasps in both of hers, gazing
into his face in a speechless yearning agony of parting. I witnessed
the scene, with variations, dozens of times in town and country
Rhineland. Now it was a sun-burnt woman with tanned cheeks, and deeper
tanned hands, grim, thin-cheeked, and angular-featured, who gripped
the hand of a slightly greasy, equally brown man, in a blue slop, and
boots suggestive of small boats. But the look out of the eyes was the
same as in the picture; and the hussar officer had no fuller heart as
the bell rang and the train started, than had the greasy _landmann_ as
he turned away with the broken muttered “Goot behüte Dich,” and pulled
his cap over his eyes for a spell before he re-lit his pipe. Did the
_landmann_ fight any the worse, think you, because he had left behind
him in the village the sunburnt _frau_ and their young ones, than would
your dashing devil-may-care, who goes jauntily away to the war with a
laugh and a jeer? I venture, for my part, to think not.
After a run to Frankfort-on-the-Main in connection with the great
“legitimation” question, I set my face at length, on the 24th July,
towards the frontier. France was still unaccountably holding her hand,
and every day Germany was breathing the freer, as the high-pressure
mobilisation machine rapidly and efficiently overtook its work.
Even pessimists dared to hope that the Turcos might not, after all,
be quartered on them the day after but one; and the confidence was
steadily gaining ground that the army to inaugurate invasion would
consist not of Gauls but of Teutons. Men came to realise with flashing
eyes and speech unwontedly excited, how the lean, silent man, in his
bureau in Berlin, was fulfilling the engagement, which not a few
thought an impossible boast unworthy of Von Moltke.
The 24th of July was among the last of the days for ordinary traffic
on the Rhine Valley Railways, till the hosts had done passing on their
way to battle. Mayence was quite on a war footing. Bingerbruck—the
terminus of the line which quits the Rhenish system and runs up the
Nahe, towards Saarbrück, was totally blocked for civilian passengers
and given over to the transport of troops and munitions of war. With
a permission from General Von Göben, commanding the 8th Army Corps, I
found no difficulty in travelling by the military trains, and capital
fun it was. I went up the Nahe in a long Noah’s ark style of railway
waggon, in one corner of which I found sitting room on my knapsack;
and my fellow-passengers were thirty-nine men of one of the regiments
of the Prussian Guard. Better fellows there could not be—all civil,
jolly, and well bred. The sergeant of the squad was a medical student,
who had temporarily given up learning how to cure, to betake himself
to the practice of the art of killing, and several of his comrades
were the sons of merchants. As the train jogged along at a very slow
pace, for it had sixty carriages, and contained about two thousand men,
the soldiers were vehemently cheered by the crowds collected at every
station and every wayside village. Of course they cheered back again,
the bugler or the drummer giving vent to his patriotic emotions on his
instrument; while occasionally the spirit moved a grave young man—who
looked as if he were doing chronic battle with a huge brazen serpent,
but who was merely a trombonist or ophecleidist—to send a stave
gurgling and throbbing through the many involutions of his fearful and
wonderful instrument, that emerged at length from the big end in a
deafening roar. We exchanged cigars. My soldier friends proffered me
brown biscuits harder than the nether millstone, and seemed seriously
hurt when I could not make an impression on them. Water-bottles,
containing something that was not water, went the round; then came a
song, something, of course, about the “Vaterland,” and so we moved on
merrily. Those water-bottles served out to the Prussian troops are
very different to the horrible wooden tubs, with the inevitable leak,
which British soldiers are condemned to carry, cursing them as they
go. They are flat glass flasks, securely covered with stiff leather,
and have a screw stopper. No fall will break them; they are cooler than
wood, and they lie conveniently on the side opposite the sword. It
was at Kreuznach where we had the earliest opportunity of recognising
a fact with which all the world is now familiar, the extraordinary
marching power of the German troops. A battalion marched in during
the evening, after a fifteen miles’ tramp in heavy marching order,
under an intensely hot sun, and the men wearing new boots. Powdered
thick, as the sturdy square-built fellows were, it was plain they
were good, if need were, for another fifteen miles. I saw a battalion
in complete marching order come into Bingen the night before. It had
marched about ten miles, and was, of course, powdered white with
dust. The pace at which the battalion passed could have been but
little short of four miles an hour. The men marched four abreast, with
considerable intervals between the files, so that the air circulated
freely. But there was no straggling all over the road; a single word of
command would have sufficed to bring the battalion into regularity of
formation; and, notwithstanding the length of the march, and the rate
at which the ground was covered, only one man had been compelled to
fall out.
I suppose it is pretty well appreciated by this time everywhere, how
much this remarkable power of the Germans to march long distances
quickly, and that for consecutive days, helped to win for them their
victories. Yet, without having personally witnessed their endurance
displayed, often under unfavourable conditions, it is difficult for
one to believe in the possibility of the accomplishment of perfectly
well authenticated feats. I have known men march thirty English miles
a day for three consecutive days. It must be remembered, too, that
when the day’s march was over the troops had to do their fire-lighting
and cooking, and, indeed, had occasionally to go some distance for the
food to cook. Nor must it be forgotten that the German troops on the
march almost invariably bivouac in the open. They carry no tents—an
excellent arrangement in fine summer weather, when it is a positive
pleasure to sleep “under the beautiful stars,” but one that is very
trying when the weather is broken and inclement. They carry burdens on
the march much heavier than the kit of our English soldiers, and in
the burning dog-days they plodded sturdily forward all day long, yet
I only heard of a few cases of sunstroke. I attribute this exemption
to the comparative sobriety of the German soldiery. It was not long
ago—nor is the case an isolated one—that a loud clamour was raised
in England because a regiment had been marched some distance in the
sun with the result of several sunstrokes, one of which was fatal.
Those who cried shame over the trifling Kingston march should have
seen the Germans striding steadily forward, the thermometer at eighty
or eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty
rounds of ammunition, huge greatcoat, camp kettle, sword (a useless
encumbrance), spade, water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends
dangling about them, with perhaps a loaf, like a curling stone, under
the arm, and without the remotest symptom of sunstroke. But then they
had not been drunk with bad beer or worse spirits the night before,
and it is this over-night intoxication to which, I think, inquiry
would demonstrate that cases of sunstroke on the march are mostly
attributable. So steady and unfluctuating are the marching pace and
endurance of the German troops, that it must be a miscalculation on his
own part if a leader is out in a reckoning having these conditions for
its basis. The generals know what the men can do, and feel assured that
they will do it; and this confidence enables them to devise strategical
combinations in the full conviction, which is never falsified, that the
troops will turn up at the appointed place true to time, and ready,
too, for fighting, no matter how long and severe the road has been.
A day or two before our _Militär-zug_ got to Kreuznach there had been a
panic in that mildest of all German watering places, and the visitors
had quitted hotels and lodging-houses with as much precipitation as
if the town had been warned that the fate of Gomorrah was to overtake
it next day. Princesses—German—thankfully accepted places—not seats—in
coal waggons; and duchesses—German also—prayed to be allowed to squeeze
into the goods vans. But I met one sturdy Briton who, although his wife
and children were with him, valiantly refused to quit. He had lived
three years and more among the Germans, and from his experience of them
was thoroughly convinced that Kreuznach was not to be violated by a
French foot; so he was living on here contentedly, with all the healing
waters in the baths to himself.
The Kreuznach arrangements for the comfort of the troops _in
transitu_ may be taken as an example of that which was in force
during this period at every considerable railway station in Germany.
The magistrates and leading citizens had formed themselves into a
committee, and they and other townsmen provided as much good bread
and meat and as much wholesome Rhine wine as the soldiers could
conveniently stow away. As each train came up, the wine, mixed with
water, went round in pails, the solid viands on huge trays. When a
regiment halted long enough, it was marched into a large shed and
liberally regaled.
Our _Militär-zug_ stuck fast at Kreuznach on the morning of the 25th
July, and nobody in authority seemed to have the faintest idea when
it or another train would proceed in the Saarbrück direction. When
the evening came, and with it continued haziness on the part of the
officials, I came to the resolution of walking to Kaiserslautern, a
town on the Palatinate Railway, about midway between the Rhine at
Speyer and Saarbrück, in the expectation of finding trains still
running on the line between it and the latter place. Before I quitted
Kreuznach three battalions of infantry and one regiment of cavalry
had arrived by train, and commenced the march up the Nahe Valley by
the road, taking billets for the first night, some in Kreuznach,
others in the villages up the valley. The infantry battalions were
composed of men of splendid physique, as became the “Queens Guards;”
the cavalry, which were dragoons, impressed me less favourably. It
was surprising to find train after train discharging its contents at
Kreuznach, instead of proceeding to a point much nearer the frontier;
but the explanation indicated great sagacity. The infantry battalions
comprised a large number of newly-mobilised men. A march was necessary
to season these, and in fact the whole body, and to make the new boots
fit easily and comfortably. A constant stream of troops was thus to
continue pouring up the roads of the Nahe Valley; their concentration
was easy at any given point: and, if need were, supports could have
been expeditiously brought up the railway to unite with them. A very
large army might in this way have been massed at any point on the
slope of the Saar water-shed, looking towards France, or on or inside
the frontier itself, with a punctuality and precision impossible were
the railway only to be resorted to. It may be mentioned that while this
Nahe Valley itself is rugged and precipitous in the extreme, its right
and left banks—the former looking towards Mayence, the latter towards
Coblentz—form rather broad plateaus of favourable configuration for
the march of troops, although obstructed and narrowed in places by
forests. The railway runs almost in the river bed, and between Kirn
and St. Wendel bores no fewer than twelve tunnels through the rocks.
Preparations were in progress for facilitating the blowing up of these
tunnels, it case it should have become necessary to make the railway
useless.
All night long I trudged along the country roads in the direction of
Kaiserslautern. After ten o’clock not a soul was to be seen, and I
doubtfully held on the road, guided by the compass and by an occasional
friendly finger-post. The road is fringed by frequent villages, but
whether they were occupied by soldiers or not it was impossible to
tell. As I progressed in the early morning, and presently approached
Rockenhausen—a small town—rather more than half-way to Kaiserslautern—I
found the country being gradually more and more densely billeted. At
Rockenhausen my pedestrian powers gave out, and I had to drive for
the remainder of the journey, the troops becoming more plentiful as
I proceeded, till at Kaiserslautern it seemed as if I had reached
the head-quarters of a considerable army. There I found the railway,
and a train which conveyed me first to Neunkirchen, where the Nahe
Railway was rejoined, and thence down into Saarbrück. At Neunkirchen
first became visible the earnest of actual warfare, in the shape of
the well-known white flag with the red cross floating over occasional
buildings along the line; but not a single soldier, far less an enemy,
was to be seen. The children played merrily in the smiling villages
as if the millennium had arrived; the smoke poured from the chimneys
of the factories, and from the pit-heads on the grimy embankments the
output of coal and iron was progressing as if France and Germany had
sworn indissoluble brotherhood. When we reached Saarbrück we found the
station crowded with nonchalant civilians, male and female. The streets
wore the most everyday aspect; the shops were open, the working folks
were strolling in from the townlands, and the young ladies daintily
promenaded, exciting a flutter among the trim subalterns. A sentry on
the door of the hotel inhabited by the military commandant, a little
piquet of Uhlan lancers in a corner of the market-place, and the
eloquent white flags constituted the few tokens of war visible.
Although the early operations of which Saarbrück formed the centre
have been snuffed out by the stupendous fighting to which they were
merely the overture, yet they ought not to be without some little
interest, if the analogy be followed that people are found listening
to the overture without impatience. This summer, doubtless, the quiet
frontier town will be swarming with visitors, and with such the use of
their eyes will supersede topographical description. But _non contigit
cuique adire Corinthum_—everybody will not go to Saarbrück, and a few
lines about the localities will scarcely be greatly out of place.
The railway line traversing Saarbrück, crossing the frontier beyond
it at right angles, and stretching away to Forbach, and thence to
Metz and the heart of France, emerges in a south-westerly direction,
out of a range of wooded knolls that bound the Saarbrück plain on
the north-east. These knolls, becoming quite a chain farther to the
south, have as their backbone the Bavarian frontier, which runs almost
parallel with the Saar Valley nearly as far as Saarguemines, about ten
miles to the south-east of Saarbrück, at the point at which converge
the Prussian, Bavarian, and French frontiers. In the centre of the
valley into which the railway line runs down from these heights stands
Saarbrück, a well-built, clean, and business-like town, penetrated
by the river Saar, which is crossed by three bridges, of which one
is the railway bridge. The portion of the town north of the Saar is
called St. Johann, that to the south is Saarbrück proper. Each of
the bridges connecting these two had its thoroughfare, at the time of
which I write, partially obstructed by casks filled with stones, while
other casks stood in readiness to block the remainder of the passage.
Traversing Saarbrück, the Forbach road encounters westward a very
abrupt rise, up which it winds with twists and cuttings, and finally
has a somewhat deep cutting through the crest and crown of the ridge.
The ground on the face of this slope is very much broken, and, with the
town and the bridge at its foot, is calculated materially to dismember
an army that might be forced backward off the plateau of which it
forms the margin towards Saarbrück. Emerging on this plateau, we find
it falling with a very gradual slope down into a valley that lies
parallel to the ridge, bounded on the further side, both to the right
and left, by densely-wooded rising ground. From the centre of this
valley there runs up at right angles another valley, in the throat of
which, and directly opposite the centre of the ridge above Saarbrück,
lies the French town of Forbach, at a distance of five miles. This
valley is bounded on its left, as one looks from Saarbrück, by an
abruptly-rising series of heights, crowned with a table-land. Those
heights project boldly into the first-named valley, almost in the form
of a natural bastion, gliding gradually away further on the left into
the lower wooded slopes. These heights, with their bluff bastion-like
termination, form the famous “Spicheren-Berg.” Across the débouchement
of the transverse valley into the parallel valley runs the imaginary
frontier line; traversing on one side the wooded rising grounds at
Schönecken, on the other the Spicheren-Berg, crossing the railway, and
going first north-west and then due west to the right, while on the
left it trends away in a south-easterly direction till it strikes the
Saar, which continues the boundary till the projecting frontier point
near Saarguemines.
All along this imaginary line, the hostile piquets and videttes
confronted each other. As one stood on the Forbach road, looking up
the transverse valley toward Forbach, he saw below him a Prussian
piquet of Uhlans and infantry, and on the little knolls in advance,
the videttes circling singly, their lance-pennons fluttering in the
wind. Several hundred yards further away, by the side of the Forbach
road, was a big block-house, which served the French as a piquet-house.
Outside this the Frenchmen were to be seen sitting or lounging about in
considerable numbers. In their front was the chain of their videttes.
All along the frontier line to the right and left of this point, there
ran this arrangement of videttes and piquets. The French Chasseurs
had a camp of about fifty tents some distance to the right of the
Forbach road, and occupied the wood behind it, seemingly in some force.
Towards Saarguemines, French and Prussian soldiers confronted each
other in larger bodies; but in this important part of the frontier,
where Prussia and Bavaria are, as it were, projected some distance
into France, they kept at a rather more respectful distance from each
other. In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves
on the Spicheren-Berg, and no shattered men lying in the Lazarettes,
or littering the platform of the railway station in the blood-stained
stretchers, the piquets and videttes formed quite the diversion of
the Saarbrück people. After work was over, the labouring people used
regularly to take a stroll up the heights, to watch the dropping fire,
which was lazily maintained, fain to see a German marksman prove his
skill by hitting a Frenchman. Both sides were very cautious, and few
casualties took place. As yet the Saarbrück hospital contained but
two wounded Germans, both linesmen of the Hohenzollern regiment. The
French were reputed to be in force at Forbach, as many as 15,000 men.
Saarbrück was, however, in no trepidation, and kept a good face up
with its little garrison of one battalion of the 40th infantry (the
Hohenzollern regiment) and the 7th (or Rhineland) Uhlan regiment. Now
and then a German and a Frenchman appeared to lose their temper, and
blazed away at each other as fast as they could load. As regards aim,
there was nothing to boast of on either side.
A plucky little cavalry expedition, which had the crowning merit
of being successful, occurred opportunely enough to furnish the
Saarbrückians with fresh gossip-matter, and the little garrison with
encouragement. About the 20th July, a detachment of thirty Rhineland
Uhlans left Saarbrück, under the command of Lieutenant von Voight,
charged with the duty of destroying a viaduct on the railway line which
connects Metz with Saarguemines, Bitche, Hagenau, and Strassburg. A
single glance at the map will show the reader the great use of this
line to the French. Branching off from the Forbach-Metz railway, near
Cocheren, a little place a few miles inside the frontier, it skirts
the frontier throughout its whole length, and admitted of the speedy
transport of supports all along it. To interrupt the communication
thus afforded, was manifestly of immense importance to the Germans,
and the point selected was a viaduct of considerable height, a little
on the Saarguemines side of Bitche. The little band proceeded first
inland to Neunkirchen, where the services were enlisted of a body of
miners from the ironworks and collieries there, men experienced in the
conducting of blasting operations, and ready to face danger for the
sake of Germany. Those were mounted on led horses, and the detachment
proceeded to Zweibrucken, whence the frontier was reached at a point
almost due south. It was found that the French were on the frontier
line in considerable force, sufficient to frustrate efforts made to get
at the bridge on two successive nights. To cut the line of outposts
would have been easy, but the aim was not to do so, but to blow up the
viaduct, and to effect this it became obvious that a flank movement of
rapidity would have to be executed. A few riding-lessons were given
to the mining engineers, to enable them to sit the troop horses at a
gallop; and then, on the night between the 24th and 25th, the frontier
was crossed, without molestation, at a secluded point to the right of
where the French were on the outlook. A gallop of about seven miles
brought the party to the bridge. The engineers went to work at once,
the Uhlans covering the working party on both sides. In a very short
time the viaduct blew up with a grand explosion, and the French, then
for the first time becoming aware of how they had been circumvented,
hurried from the frontier inland to the spot. The Uhlans kept them at
bay till the artificers had completed the work of destruction. A large
quantity of material, both warlike and commercial, was destroyed, the
engineers remounted, and the party galloped back, reaching German
soil without a single casualty. The Uhlans met with an enthusiastic
reception, when they rode back into Saarbrück after their little
exploit.
As yet the evil days were not, and it was not easy to realise the wrath
to come, as one sat by the table d’hôte, in the sunshiny Rheinischer
Hof, clinking glasses with those right pleasant comrades, the officers
of the Hohenzollern battalion. Over the good Rhine wine, the projected
undertakings of the patrols were freely discussed, and there existed
for a few of us a standing eligibility for the reception of stray
French bullets, in return for the trifling inconvenience of getting up
in the small hours, and accompanying the patrol of the morning. The
narrative of one of those expeditions—it was made, if my notes are
correct, on the 28th of July—will suffice as a sample. In the grey
dawn, a small party of the 40th, consisting of twelve men and two
under-officers, started from the barracks, to reconnoitre the frontier
line; and this party I accompanied. It was about four in the morning
that we reached the top of the rising ground outside Saarbrück, of
which I have had occasion to speak so often. Everything seemed quiet
in the valley below, and we went onward to the right front, in the
direction of a little house that is very close to the frontier line. We
found it unoccupied, save by an old woman, who dwelt in it contentedly
while the bullets were hourly whistling over her roof. She told us with
a yawn that all was quiet, and we went forward again, inclining to the
right to gain the cover of the edge of a wood that occupies a rising
ground, over the summit of which goes the frontier line. Skirting
this wood for some distance, we had crossed the frontier, and were in
French territory, still without seeing anything in the shape of French
troops. Suddenly there came a piff-paff of smoke from behind a tree,
a little way up the knoll, less than one hundred yards to our right.
There was but one shot, but the cover was so dense that, for all we
could tell, the wood might be alive with Frenchmen; so we discreetly
slanted away to the left, crossing an interval of open ground near the
railway line, and then striking into a wood which occupies an isolated
knoll that rises out of the valley. The trees in this wood are much
less close than in the other, and we thought that if any Frenchmen were
in it, we could hardly fail to see them. The aim of the reconnoitring
party was to get to its left edge, as far forward as possible, so as
to be parallel with the French vidette, and to have the opportunity of
investigating, at as short distance as possible, the dispositions of
the French in the neighbourhood of their piquet-house on the Forbach
road. We had got about half through the wood when we heard a wild
screech directly in our rear, and between us and home. Turning round I
saw about twenty red-breeched French soldiers dancing about excitedly,
and alternating gesticulations with the discharge of their rifles. They
were within a short eighty yards of us, and, if they could have shot
straight, had as easy a mark as might be. They had to all appearance
been lining the edge of the wood where it fronted Saarbrück, and we
had unwittingly turned their flank. If they could only have kept down
their excitement, and held their tongues, they might literally have
stalked us from behind, for we had not the remotest suspicion that
there was anything in our rear, and the party was concentrating its
attention on its front. The coolness of the under-officer who commanded
the little party was inimitable. He was smoking his morning pipe, and
never troubled to take it out of his mouth. He grunted an order or two,
which brought us out of the wood on to the plain on its left, across
which we struck steadily, slanting inward toward our outpost on the
Forbach road. The Frenchmen continued to fire after us for some time,
and managed to hit one of the men on his pouch. Had the shot taken
effect, it would have penetrated the wrong way for honour, but the ball
was a spent one. We ultimately got back to breakfast all right, the
under-officer’s pipe still in full blast.
On the same day, when the one o’clock _table d’hôte_ was in progress,
a report was brought in that the French were moving cannon over the
brow of the Spicheren-Berg, on to a little table-land about half-way
down the slope. Of this little plateau they were very fond, having
continually their sharpshooters posted all round it. On the previous
evening, a French general had reconnoitred from it the German slope
of the valley, and, as reported by a countryman, had put a number of
questions to the rustics, as to the position of Saarbrück, and the
strength of the force occupying it. Immediately the drummers paraded
the town, beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied
each of the bridges, the cavalry sent a detachment on to the height,
while the rest remained standing to their horses in the Central Platz,
and a third company of the Hohenzollerns marched up the hill, and took
up a position of watchfulness just behind its crest. On the summit,
besides the Uhlans, there was a considerable collection of civilians,
eagerly watching the disposition of the cannon on the plateau. Crowds
ever have a tendency to draw fire, so I gave this one a wide berth,
and sat down some distance aside, on a spot whence a view of the whole
front was commanded. There were six field-pieces in all, which seemed
to be drawn by infantry men into position. What the object was did not
seem very apparent. It might be, I thought, that under the diversion
of a cannonade on the left, an attempt might be made to steal round on
the right, and get into Saarbrück by a _coup de main_, or, again, to
ascertain the range might have been all that was intended.
Presently there came a thunder plump, which sent the civilians crowding
inside a little beer-house called “The Belle Vue,” that stands on the
brow of the hill, just off the road. Almost immediately I saw a puff
of smoke come from the mouth of one of the cannon, and a shell struck
on the road close by the beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a
stampede on the part of the civilians out of the beer-house, and they
scuttled vigorously under cover over the hill. They were only just
in time. Indeed the house was by no means empty when another shell,
ricocheting off the road, struck its front, went through the wall as if
it had been paper, and burst inside, blowing out the windows and part
of the roof. Another followed, also striking the front, but it did not
burst. Three more shots were fired, one of which wrecked an outhouse
behind the beer-house, and then the French gave over firing, and
withdrew their cannon from the plateau backwards out of sight. When the
artillery had been withdrawn I entered the beer-house, which already
had been re-occupied by its inhabitants. The women-folk stood weeping
and bewailing the mischief. A more complete wreck, indeed, I never saw.
Two rooms had been blown into one, the bar knocked into little pieces,
the table, at which I had drunk a glass of seltzer-water a couple of
hours before, split up into tinder, and a great gap torn in the floor,
exposing the cellarage, where there had evidently been a smash royal
among the bottles. The French practice was by no means bad. Three shots
out of six struck the house. It was shut up, and there was no more cool
seltzer-water after a hot walk on the hill.
The incident of the afternoon stimulated the videttes with unwonted
alertness, and they blazed away at each other till it was nearly quite
dark. One of the last shots fired killed an Uhlan who was making the
patrol. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and must have
died instantaneously. I was on the height when the infantry men
carried in the corpse on a stretcher improvised of their guns. The
drops of blood pit-patted on the road as they carried him past me, his
cloak thrown over his limbs. But his face was bare, and I knew the man
at once. I had given him a cigar in the afternoon as I met him on the
Forbach road going out on vidette. Quite a lad he was, with the down
hardly grown on his cheek, and likely enough a mother might have been
thinking of him to-night, little knowing that he was lying stark and
cold, waiting for a grave.
In the sunshiny bloodless days of the end of July, spy-hunting was
another great diversion to idle men. Not that the German patrols
thought or looked upon it by any means in the light of an amusement;
on the contrary, they regarded it as a very serious and responsible
occupation indeed, and, not having as yet got the gauge of the French
_fainéance_ in this important department of military operations, gave
open ear to all the stories about suspicious persons having been seen
which were retailed to them by wiseacres. On the forenoon of the 30th
of July I witnessed with great amusement one of these expeditions. To
a sergeant in command of a detachment came a young civilian in a light
coat, who had seen a person, looking very like a Frenchman, prowling
about away to the right of the German advanced centre. Sergeant, on
receiving the information, solemnly draws his sword, and then betakes
himself to consideration. Having finished his cogitation, he takes his
pipe out of his mouth and orders out a party of four Fusiliers. The
squad start at a brisk walk, headed by the sergeant, who brings his
sword down to the “right engage” as he proceeds. Getting excited, he
begins to run, and his men run after him. The civilian in the white
coat accompanies the sergeant. An eminence is reached commanding
rather an extensive view. Nobody is to be seen. Sergeant turns on to
civilian resentfully, reproaches him for being the communicant of a
canard, sheathes his sword, re-lights his pipe, and commences a return
with his party at his heels. The civilian, whose _amour propre_ is
wounded, suddenly detects a crouching individual in the foreground,
and there is triumph in the tone in which he calls the sergeant back.
Sergeant wheels about, pouches his pipe, draws his sword, and then
looks in the direction indicated. Having marked his prey, he with
his party starts off at top speed down the hill, and captures the
crouching individual, who finds himself between a file of men, with the
sergeant’s sword in the immediate foreground, before he can collect his
senses. When he has accomplished this, crouching individual explains
with some indignation—its vent impeded by the necessity for keeping
his pipe alight—that he has been specially commissioned by the German
Commandant to watch the French, and, if possible, to get among them.
The sergeant, in fact, has apprehended his own spy. Sergeant seems
inclined to look foolish, and of course gets angry at the civilian
again. Civilian, however, is prepared to vindicate himself. He has seen
another “suspicious” close to the edge of the wood to the left, and
the sergeant, mitigating his choler, makes off for this supposed spy
No. 2. I should have mentioned that a little procession of loafers has
from the first dogged the heels of the party, and that suggestions are
freely tendered by everybody at once, including the small boys. When
spy No. 2 is reached he is found to be a sheepish-looking rustic in
a ragged blue blouse, who is sitting on the dyke-side with a female,
presumably his sweetheart. The account he gives of himself is not
considered satisfactory—indeed he can give no coherent account at all,
the proximity of the sergeant’s sword having apparently addled him.
Accordingly he is made a prisoner in due form. The Fusiliers fix their
sword-bayonets and take position on either side of him. The sergeant,
with his sword still at the “right engage,” marches bravely in the
van; the civilian looks as if he had saved the Fatherland; the small
boys whisperingly compare notes as to the personal appearance of the
“spy,” who they seem to consider deserves to be shot on the spot. And
so the procession takes its way to the Commandant’s quarters, where
it probably turns out that the “spy” is no spy at all, but a bumpkin
German to the soles of his huge brogues.
Sunday, the 31st of July, was a day of fast, humiliation, and prayer
for the success of the German arms, appointed by an edict of King
Wilhelm. It was kept devoutly. Men in Saarbrück went to church this day
who had not darkened the church door for years. The garrison, as well
as a great proportion of the townsfolk, attended the great church in
the central Platz, whither I also turned in with the rest. The piled
arms, with the bayonets fixed, that flanked the principal entrance,
spoke of war time. The Covenanters worshipped their God with their
weapons in hand—
“The lyart veteran leaning on his spear.”
The German soldiers left their arms outside the church,
but ready to be grasped and used at a moment’s notice. The preliminary
music was emblematic. It began with a low wail of pain and sorrow.
The nation confessed its many sins, and bemoaned its unworthiness of
the favour of God. Then broke out sharp and shrill the urgent call
to arms. Then followed a bicker and clash as of two mighty hosts
joining the battle one with the other. After the loud din of the
fray there pealed forth the joyous notes of triumph—victory had been
won, and the appropriate finale was the ever-noble _Te Deum_. Then
arose the preacher, an old man with a worn ascetic face, snow-white
hair, eyes that sparkled like live coals under excitement, and a
voice that pealed like a trumpet to the uttermost corner of the great
church, and thrilled the auditor with its indescribable vibration. His
discourse was the music done into words. After telling the people in
sternly plain language that they were wicked enough to have forfeited
the Divine favour, he implored them to merit it by humiliation,
repentance, and faith. Then, raising his voice, he spoke of the
goodness of Germany’s cause,—how that she courted not war, but for
her honour’s sake accepted it when forced upon her. The colour came
into the withered cheek, and the right arm swayed above the head as
if it grasped a sword, as the old man fervently enjoined the duty of
patriotism and invoked the blessing of Heaven on the arms of Germany.
The most casual observer could notice the thrilling effect on the
audience. It would scarcely have been surprising had a cheer broken out
from the people who hung on the preacher’s words.
Not a dozen miles from this Saarbrück church a very different scene
was meanwhile being enacted. A detachment of forty infantry men,
part of the garrison of Saarlouis, was patrolling the frontier
between Geisweiler and Ludweiler, when, about half-past eleven in the
forenoon, they came suddenly on a body of French, consisting of three
companies of infantry. These were invaders, for the soil was German;
and, notwithstanding the discrepancy of numbers, the children of the
Fatherland steadily advanced to the encounter. The hostile bodies
were already exchanging shots when a squadron of French Chasseurs
suddenly dashed into the arena, and, with loud cheers, charged
over the broken ground towards the Germans. These waited till the
horsemen, disorganised by the nature of the ground, had come within
point-blank range, and then gave fire in a volley. French saddles
were emptied, and the Chasseurs whirled hurriedly away to the left.
The Germans, encouraged by this triumph, pressed forward to meet the
French infantry. Several volleys were exchanged, the Germans still
pushing on, till at length the Frenchmen withdrew in a rout, throwing
off their knapsacks as they ran to lighten their flight. On the field
lay dead eight French soldiers and one officer. The Germans sustained
inconsiderable damage. Two were severely wounded and several slightly.
The ex-Emperor Napoleon has placed upon record his piteous testimony
to the skill with which the German Commander-in-Chief masked his
dispositions till the hour came for the veil to be drawn aside with a
result so disastrous for the French arms. If there was bewilderment
and ignorance on the French side of the frontier, there was scarcely
less puzzlement for those who were on the German side of the hedge.
The secret was so well kept that not a glimmer of it had dawned on
Saarbrück on the last day of July. When the war was declared the
garrison of Saarbrück consisted of a battalion of infantry and a
regiment of Uhlans. A fortnight had passed, and the reinforcements
might have been reckoned by the half-dozen. It was known that
Frossard, with a whole army corps, was looking across at Saarbrück
over the ridges of the Spicheren, and nobody had the means of knowing
what everybody knows now, the reason, so discreditable to French
organization, which prevented him from blowing out of his path the
sparse picquets and patrols, and invading the territory which had
its frontier only nominally guarded. Men asked each other if it were
possible that the Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. The
infantrymen and the Uhlans were manipulated dexterously and assiduously
to make it seem that a battalion was a brigade, and a few hundred
horsemen a powerful cavalry force; yet it was felt universally that
the place was held only by dint of sheer impudence—for there were no
supports of importance as yet nigh at hand—and that the bubble must
burst summarily if Frossart should fling aside his unaccountable
inactivity. With long faces and boding hearts the townspeople, striving
still to wear an aspect of confidence, muttered amongst themselves,
“How long, how long?” Students of military topography, men who read
Lavallée and pored over their maps, failed not to arrive at the
conviction that somewhere between the Moselle and the Vosges lay an
eligible tract for an invasion of France. The French frontier here,
as it stood before the recent annexations, was unnatural in a physical
sense; and therefore it was weak. The prominent natural features—the
rivers and hills—ran transversely to the boundary line, and the valleys
accordingly afforded so many natural roads whereby the country might
be penetrated. Were the hills which separate these straths rough and
prominent, the difficulty of penetration would have been greatly
increased from the danger that presented to an invading army of being
taken in flank; but hardly anywhere is such their characteristic,
and the low hills and insignificant heights may be swept by an army
advancing up one of the shallow valleys. This configuration, in
combination with the artificial frontier line, leaving, as it were, so
many open portals inviting to the entrance of France, Vauban, the great
French engineer, had devoted his energies to the erection of artificial
guardians over the frontier naturally so open. On the Moselle he
fortified Metz and Thionville. The Vosges bulwark is strengthened by
Bitche and Phalsburg; but there lies a wide plain between the Vosges
and the Moselle, with nothing in the shape of natural or artificial
defence. Vauban had fortified Saarlouis, but in 1815 the Allies
deprived the French of Saarlouis, which was now in the possession of
a German garrison, and instead of being a protection to the French
frontier was a thorn in its side. The result seemed to be that a
German army could advance, plunge into France, elude Metz by way of
Nancy, and reach the basin of the Marne without encountering any other
obstacle than Toul. Once in the Marne basin, the road to Paris was open.
But there were no signs of a German army on the frontier, and every
day, it was argued, must be adding to the strength of the French army
now standing stockade-wise across the track. But surely the province of
a defensive stockade was one hardly in accordance with the precedents
or idiosyncrasies of the armies of France. Why the men in red breeches
lay so long basking in the sun on the slopes of Spicheren we could not
comprehend, but the day must surely be near now, we said one unto the
other, when they would gird up their loins and roll their columns on
over the Exercise Platz and across the Saar into the Köllerthaler Wald
or the Pfalz. And in their path stood but an open town, a couple of
bridges half barricaded with barrels, a battalion of infantry, and a
regiment of Uhlans.
The 1st of August, while the French were yet supine, brought to
Saarbrück what all hoped was the earnest of a host, not alone of
resistance, but invasion. On the afternoon of that day the third
battalion of the 40th, two companies of its first battalion, and two
batteries of artillery, reached the vicinity and made their bivouac
on a flat upland in front of a wood. They had left Trèves a fortnight
before, and marched down by what seemed strangely easy stages. As
soon as the news of their arrival reached Saarbrück, I went out to the
encampment with some friends, carrying boxes of cigars, which form an
excellent introduction to German troops everywhere. The first bivouac
we saw, it naturally interested us greatly, and the reader may care
to read of it as a type of the system. It was a very pretty sight.
On the left were the artillery, the guns regularly parked, with the
ammunition-waggons in their rear, and in front of each line so formed
the picquet ropes, with the horses fastened to them, and the harness
deposited on the ground behind them. The forge was alight, and the
farriers busy shoeing horses, while the armourer had also his fire
alight, and was tinkering some small arms. Further on the right was the
battalion of infantry, or rather the two half-battalions, each of two
companies. The Germans always bisect their battalions in this way, both
in camp and in action—a little interval constituted the separation.
In the fore-front lay or sat the officers, enjoying their Rhine wine.
In their rear, in the centre, was the battalion colour in its cover,
and stuck deep in the ground, with the drum-major’s halberd alongside
of it, and the drums and instruments of the band lying all around it.
Then came a straight row of knapsacks, each surrounded by the rolled
great-coat, just as the front rank had deposited them. About ten paces
to the rear was another similar row, and in the interval stood the
stacks of piled needle-guns. This formation existed mathematically
right away to the rear. The men were dispersed in various directions,
but none strayed to a great distance, the limit being marked by a
cordon of sentries. There was a crowd round a beer cart, another
round a wine cart. There was soon a crowd round us as we produced
the cigars we carried. On a knoll sat a band of singers chanting a
song of Fatherland. A squad, whose bivouac lay in an orchard, engaged
themselves in shaking the trees and eating the fruit as it fell.
Others, again, amused themselves by gymnastic exercises, running races,
or jumping against each other. Evidently they were as fresh as if
they had not marched a mile; yet they had been on the road fourteen
days, and had never had their clothes off, lying in the bivouac night
after night. In the rear, close to the wood, the pioneers had dug
trenches and gathered wood. The fires were alight, and slung on poles
extending from bank to bank were the simmering camp-kettles, evolving
a very savoury odour. What were their contents was not difficult to
guess. In the ditch by the woodside lay some yet warm bullock hides.
The animals had been slaughtered, cut up, and the pieces were in the
pot, all within a couple of hours of the halt. Meanwhile, the men
stayed the edge of their appetite with the black bread and the beer,
of which latter there was a plentiful supply. The dusk gradually
began to gather. The kettles were taken off the fires, and their
contents distributed. The men ate and were filled, and then gathered
round the fires to sing and to gossip. The good people of Saarbrück
had come up among their countrymen in some numbers, and great was the
fraternisation. In the foreground, by little camp-tables, which had
sprung up as if by magic, the officers sat clinking their glasses of
Rhine-wine and smoking placidly, as they listened to the band which
played for half an hour before the watch-setting at nine o’clock.
Then the “lie down” sounded, and the men, unrolling their cloaks,
gave themselves a shake, put their heads upon their knapsacks, and in
less than a quarter of an hour there arose a sound of conscientious
snoring, to which a marsh full of frogs was not fit to hold a candle.
The officers sat later by lantern light; but they, too, one by one
quitted the social circle, and stretched themselves on their cloaks on
the ground. By-and-by there were left, tarrying over the wine cup, only
a burly senior captain, the jovial adjutant, and a silent lieutenant,
the last of whom I had at intervals suspected of being asleep, but who
always livened up to fill his glass as the bottle passed him. Then
they, too, “turned in,” if the phrase is allowable, when everything was
outside, and, excepting the chain of sentries and the quarter guard,
the whole camp was wrapped in the deepest slumber.
At three punctually the bugler of the night sounded the reveille,
and the camp awoke and rubbed its eyes, with many yawns. Cloaks were
rolled, and the fragrance of the morning pipe scented the cool clear
air. The cooks stirred the unextinguished embers of the fires and piled
on the billets. The camp-kettles were again strung on the cross-poles,
this time filled with coffee, and in about three-quarters of an hour
from the reveille some 1,500 men were masticating the black bread and
drinking the black, milkless coffee out of their mess-tins. Then the
band played again, and the men got under arms and answered to the
roll-call. This done they were ready for the road, the hour being
half-past four A.M. Had there been a march they would have journeyed
till about eight or nine, taken a rest during the heat of the day,
and probably have done a few miles more in the cool of the evening.
But no marching was in orders for the day, and so the arms were piled
again, and the men were free to do as they liked, always keeping
within the limits indicated by the sentries. Many went to sleep again,
others betook themselves to tailoring jobs with as much aptitude as if
they were genuine sons of the goose, and occasionally with a little
disregard to the critical niceties of decorum in the way of costume.
Others did nothing but smoke in all the luxurious _dolce far niente_
of perfect idleness. Ten minutes would have sufficed to see the camp
struck and the troops on their march. It was impossible to conceive men
in better heart; officers and men alike self-reliant, buoyant, and
ready for anything, in the fullest conviction that they could not be
beaten.
This Trèves contingent brought in three spies—rather a curious
assortment. One was a French officer; the other a clergyman, or at
all events a person who wore the dress of one; the third, outwardly
and visibly, was a woman. For a couple of days she had dogged the
Hohenzollerns, who, with all chivalry, had refrained from prying
very closely into her business; but one morning a sergeant, of a
matter-of-fact turn of mind, interviewed the lady, and the result
was the discovery—I fear I perpetrate a bull—that she was a man. The
make-up was of a character to do some credit to the sergeant’s power of
observation.
CHAPTER II.
SAARBRÜCK AND SPICHEREN.
On the morning of the 2nd of August, when the Hohenzollerns were
lounging in their sunshiny bivouac, the French Emperor, with his boy,
was travelling by train from Metz to Forbach. The German videttes
down in the valley heard the gusts of cheering with which Frossard’s
soldiers welcomed the Head of the State and his heir. Ignorant of the
cause, some put the cheering down as a response to the announcement of
a French success somewhere; others ascribed it to an extra issue of
beer. How could the honest Uhlans discern that the father had come to
the frontier to make a military promenade to tickle wherewithal the
Parisians, and that “Lulu,” as they irreverently called the heir to the
imperial diadem, was with his father that he might obtain his baptism
of fire?
The night had passed in extreme quiet all along the frontier, and
in the morning it seemed as if the 2nd was to be as monotonous as
had been the 1st. General von Klepsal and another brigadier went on
reconnoitring expeditions, and came back again to a placid breakfast.
A couple of guns with their detachments, part of the batteries that had
arrived the previous night, went up the Saar to St. Arnual, and finding
nothing threatening there, the officer brought them back. Two more, on
their return, went out in the same direction, their functions appearing
purely those of patrol. Two guns were leisurely got up on the height
above the town at the Bellevue, and there remained. The soldiers in
the barrack-yards, and in the several posts around the environs of the
town, slept and smoked and gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the
officers sat under the trees drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole
place seemed oppressed by the drowsy effect of a fervently hot day.
A little after ten, having crossed over the Saarbrück valley from the
night’s bivouac, I leisurely climbed the slope of the Bellevue height.
There was no bustle on the road, and I saw nothing out of the common
on our side as I reached the Exercise Platz at the top. But across the
valley on the French side there was a sight to see. I use the terms
“right” and “left” with reference to my position, looking across at the
French, whether in speaking of their attack or of the German defence.
On the left, then, of the bastion-like plateau, already mentioned
more than once, there runs tortuously a fine road leading up out of
the valley intervening between the German and the French frontier
positions. It conducts over the brow of the hill, skirting the right
of a wood, and behind this wood and hill it had long been known that
the French were located in force. Near the top this road throws out two
branch roads, which both also lead down into the valley. One is a rough
country road that skirts the right edge of the plateau; the other is a
mere green track, of, however, some breadth, which crests the plateau,
and tumbles off its edge down the abrupt poplar-clad slope that parts
the upland from the valley.
Down all these three roads were streaming dense and glittering currents
of French troops; the stream on the great road flowing swiftest and
farthest. The sun struck on the bright bayonets, and threw out from the
grey and green background the scarlet-legged infantrymen. Those came on
in the true careless irregular French style, about six abreast, with
hardly a pretence at formation, but with a speed that was remarkable.
The moment that the head of the column touched the valley it broke like
spray. As file after file reached a certain point it became dissipated;
the men composing it extended at a run farther and farther, till by
the time that the heads of all three columns were in the valley, an
unbroken line of skirmishers was drawn several hundred yards to the
front. Then began the steady deployment of company after company,
battalion after battalion; and almost before one had realised the
position, a long dense line had been ruled along the bottom of the
valley behind the fainter line of the skirmishers. Squadrons of cavalry
streamed down, and, forming line at a gallop, rapidly overtook the
infantry. Passing through the intervals, they re-formed and pushed on
to occupy and cover the flanks of the advance.
While this was going on in the valley the stream from behind the wood
and the hill seemed to flow from a source that never would run dry. It
was hardly a gap that was caused in it by the two batteries of field
artillery that came down and wheeled off the road on to the verge of
the plateau, the gunners unlimbering and standing ready by the venomous
pieces that looked across at us with their wicked black mouths. Higher
up on the crest there was visible another field battery, apparently of
larger guns. In all, before I had to quit the heights, I am satisfied
that from 6,000 to 7,000 French troops were in sight. The peculiarity
of the movements I have just described was their perfect quietness
and uninterruption. The French tirailleurs were already breasting the
slope that led up to the positions held by the Germans; their main
advance was more than half across the valley, and yet not a Chassepot
gave tongue. The range must have been within 300 yards, and still the
Frenchmen pressed on with lissom agility, but without a single shot.
On the German side there existed as profound quietness; either side
seemed reluctant to begin the ball.
The German position demands a short explanation to aid in the
comprehension of what took place. The height known indifferently as
the Bellevue Height and the Exercise Platz is a natural rampart thrown
up between Saarbrück and the frontier. It is depressed a little to the
left of its centre, and the southern eminence is in its turn slightly
cleft, the _coll_ to the right being surmounted by a pleasure-garden
and serrated with terraces. The lumpy hill on the left slopes more
gently on the French side than on the German, and extends eastward so
as to form a cover to the village of St. Arnual, lying about three
miles nearer Saarguemines than Saarbrück. This height, or rather
these series of heights, present tempting opportunities for taking
up a strong defensive position. But they have two fatal defects. The
frontier valley circumvents them both to the right near Schönecken
and to the left a little beyond St. Arnual. Thus from either hand
the heights may be turned, the valley of the Saar penetrated, and
Saarbrück taken. Of this formation the French were evidently aware.
They presently began to echelon their advance, and to bring up their
left shoulders as if they meant sweeping round the height to the left,
and pouring into the Saar valley _viâ_ St. Arnual. And it seemed as
if the German disposition had anticipated this intention. The German
force was indeed so weak that it was hopeless to attempt keeping the
whole line; and, so far as it had been made available at all, the
concentrations tended towards the defence of the St. Arnual gap. On
the heights, then, when and for some time after the French made their
appearance in the valley, there was hardly anything but the ordinary
outposts and supporting detachments. I question, indeed, if there
came any reinforcements at all on to the berg. What force there was
extended itself in a thin line along the crest, taking advantage of a
scooped-out road that traversed that direction. It was policy on its
part to delay firing as long as possible, since the paucity of its fire
would betray its weakness. And it was evident that the French did not
half like the berg, with what secrets there might be concealed behind
it, but inclined rather to the St. Arnual direction, although cautious
not to offer their flank towards the berg.
But the long silence of the Germans appeared to give rise to the
impression on the part of the French that after all there could be
nothing formidable in that position, since opportunities so tempting
were not taken advantage of. So with one impulse the French echelons
brought forward their right shoulders, re-formed a continuous line, and
confronted now the swell of the height directly in front of Saarbrück.
Their tirailleurs opened a spattering fire, and then the Germans
replied. This was the moment of the bursting of our little Saarbrück
bubble. The French opened fire all along their line, sweeping the
height with a storm of Chassepot bullets. Their artillery took up the
sombre music from the plateau over against the valley, and the height
was at once untenable. I was behind a tree in front of the Exercise
Platz when it began. What of German defence there was lay entirely to
the left of me, and there was nothing between the Frenchmen and the
trees but a Uhlan’s horse careering wildly, riderless. This isolation
might have been of service as not calculated to draw the French fire,
had the gentlemen who plied that fire only been aware of it; but to
make sure they blazed away at the height all along its length. Bullets
had struck the tree behind which I stood, and a shell had ploughed
a spiteful furrow athwart the Exercise Platz in my rear. Evacuation
seemed eminently advisable, and so I started at a run and got into the
dip of the road without any casualty. The fusiliers were making a short
rally on the bank above it, and the ping of the bullets flew over the
road high above my head. As I stopped to take breath, a fusilier on
the edge of the bank was shot through the back and came crashing down
the shrubs on to the road at my feet. His back was broken, I think;
anyhow, he could not move the upper part of his body, but he took
a grateful pull at the flask which I held to his lips. As I passed
downward towards the town I found the Uhlans drawn up in the shelter
formed by the bend of the road as it winds up to the Bellevue. The
whizz of the bullets coming over the bank above them, and the sight
of the beaten-back fusiliers, convinced them of the inadvisability of
proceeding further. They went about and retreated through Saarbrück,
over the bridge through the suburb of St. Johann, and having passed the
railway station took post on a road leading into the interior. Just as
I turned the corner which brought me in sight of the Uhlans a shell
burst in the centre of a knot of fusiliers who were hurrying down the
road. Had the party been in the shell itself, it could not have been
more effectually shattered. A sergeant and five men were struck down by
this one shell—how many of these were killed I did not stop to look.
By this time the French had crowned the heights all along, and were
driving the German fusiliers down the inner slope towards us; and they
had been very quick with their artillery. Already they had got one
battery on to the _coll_ at the pleasure-garden, and another showed
its teeth through the trees of the Exercise Platz. One could see the
quick flashes in rapid succession. All Saarbrück and St. Johann were of
course fully commanded. The town was naturally in a state of intense
excitement, but the people in the houses lining the street that leads
to the height stuck to their homes like rabbits to their burrows, even
when the shells were crashing into the houses and sweeping down the
thoroughfare. There was partial safety in the cross streets, where they
were lined with houses on both sides, although occasionally a shell
would play old gooseberry among the tiles, and make one think of Fleet
Street chimney-pots in a gale of wind. But there was a space on the
road to the railway station, whither I was walking, where there were
no houses, and this had to be traversed before the road, turning with
a sweep towards the railway station, could be reached. The townspeople
were banked in masses at either verge of this _via dolorosa_, and
now and then a small boy ran the gauntlet. A burgher tried it, and
got a chassepot bullet through the fleshiest part of a very goodly
corporation.
My companion and myself got through in safety, and then were in a kind
of triangle, off which goes the road to the station on a little rising
ground, another road parallel to the frontier, and yet another across
the bridge. The base of this triangle is formed by the Hotel Hagen, in
which we sought refuge on finding that the railway station had been
selected as the spot where the Germans were to make a final stand with
the artillery which they had brought up from the bivouac. In the lee
of this Hotel Hagen were collected several detachments of infantry.
Others held the bridge over the Saar, that is to say, they occupied the
houses commanding it. A bee-line, drawn from the cannon on the Exercise
Platz to the cannon on the esplanade in front of the railway station
would pass over the Hotel Hagen, and also over the bridge. The French
were shelling the houses on the bridge; they were shelling the troops
in the triangle in front of the hotel; they were replying with shells
to the German shells from the railway station. Thus the Hotel Hagen
was rather warm quarters. There was this additional complication,—that
exit in any direction whatever seemed to involve more risk than staying
still; so we stayed still, my companion and I. We found three or four
more Englishmen there, some ladies, and a heterogeneous collection of
_Zimmermädchen_ and _Stallknechts_. The landlord of the Hagen was the
coolest customer I have ever met. His house was being knocked about his
ears, glass and crockery smashing in all directions. This exemplary
Boniface asked me coolly, under these circumstances, for four groschen,
the price of a bottle of seltzer-water that I had forgotten to pay for
the night before. He gave me change for a thaler with the profoundest
phlegm, and then grumbled that his _table d’hôte_ had been bedevilled
for the day. Bedevilled it certainly was,—at least that was the fate of
the dinner. A shell had burst right in the big square stove on which
is done all the cooking of a German hotel. Potatoes bespattered the
roof, and gravy flowed on the floor. Some of the pans yet simmered on
fragments left of the stove; others were made pancakes of against the
walls. The landlady and her maidens went off into hysterics, and we
had to carry them into the cellar under the back yard, a shell bursting
in that enclosure as we carried them down. The staircase leading to the
first floor was shattered, and communication cut off. The fronts of the
houses on the opposite side of the triangle were riddled, as indeed was
the Hotel Hagen. We here heard for the first time the mitrailleuses
at work. They plied from the Exercise Platz down on the bridge, and
the bullets spattered very closely together along the narrow track.
The report was very curious and distinctive. It sounded more like the
tearing sound of one of those diabolical contrivances which silly
people were wont to use at Greenwich Fair, and which gave one a lively
sensation of his coat being torn down the back. Any one who is too
young to remember this pleasing noise may form some conception of the
report of the mitrailleuse by listening to a police-rattle. It is
unquestionable that the mitrailleuse fire swept the bridge thoroughly;
nothing could live where its hail fell. Then the smoke began to rise
where the shells had set fire to the wood-work. A building in front,
one on the flank, and another in the rear of us, were all blazing. The
troops under our lee scuttled off under the shelter of a wall to the
railway station, and so out into the open country beyond, several of
them falling in the movement. Others took their places, coming in from
St. Arnual, and later those evacuating the town and falling back from
the bridges; and they, too, took the same course, and also suffered
more or less. All the while the German artillery from the station were
firing directly over our heads, replying to the French fire on the
heights, while the French continued to pour shells back in return.
Then the cry arose that the French had descended the slope and were
actually in Saarbrück. This was confirmed from the fact that the
German guns ceased firing, and it seemed that they were drawing off.
Clearly we were left behind. We were, it is true, in the rear of
the force to which we were attached; a safe position—but only in an
advance. It appeared certain that all St. Johann, including the railway
station, would be in the hands of the French in an hour or two. Four
Englishmen in the Hotel Hagen, acting under the advice of a German
correspondent of remarkable equanimity, concluded to wait the course
of events, in the hope that if St. Johann were taken by the French
to-day, it would be retaken by the Prussians to-morrow. The certainty
of this was not quite apparent, and I thought it my duty, looking to
the enjoyment of postal facilities, therefore, to get out of the place
with all convenient speed. We left the Englishmen playing whist in the
breakfast-room, and we—that is, an Austrian friend and myself—quitted
the rickety shelter of the hotel, and made a run direct for the sheds
near the railway station. To do this we had to cross the line of fire,
and that, too, where the shells were bursting thickest. There was no
help for it, for there was no other road. We ran—I own it. I think I
ran faster than ever I did in my life. My friend was hit on the calf
of the leg by a stone thrown up by a bursting shell, but not lamed; I
was not touched. Once at the sheds, we were safe. Traversing a deep
rocky cutting, across which the shells still flew, we emerged into the
back country, and followed first the railway and then the high road to
a village named Duttweiler, about five English miles behind Saarbrück.
On our way we saw numerous straggling soldiers, who did not know what
had happened to their regiment. They were all making for the rear. We
also passed a squadron of Uhlans drawn up on the road, and commanded
by a reserve officer, who gave me his card, from which I learned that
he was a Heidelberg professor. After our arrival at Duttweiler most
of the Uhlans and a large proportion of the infantry passed through
the village on their way to the rear. They reported that Lebach was
the rendezvous, a place some fifteen English miles back from Saarbrück
in the Trèves direction. Small detachments had been left to watch
the French and keep up the communications. The French foreposts had
occupied Saarbrück and held the bridges, but no force had crossed into
St. Johann.
It has been the fashion on all sides to make very merry over this
“military promenade” of the 2nd August. No doubt, in the light shed
upon the affair by our after-knowledge, we are entitled to set it down
as something between a spectacle and a farce. But, at the time, nobody
had either daring or data for suspecting that France had neither armies
nor generals; and, given belongings that one is entitled to assume
when a reputedly sane nation deliberately declares war, this affair of
Saarbrück was undoubtedly the winning of the first trick of the game.
German strategists have, naturally enough, made their own uses of a
fiasco which was solely due to French unpreparedness and irresolution.
It has been the fashion to argue that Saarbrück was designedly left
as it was, to delude the French leaders into a belief of German
unpreparedness, and to induce them to concentrate their forces, with
the design of incursion, at an obviously weak point, upon what seemed
an eligible track into the heart of Prussia; while in reality, had they
obeyed the lure, and ventured inland from Saarbrück, they would have
found the road barred, and the forests swarming with legions in spiked
helmets. But this _ex post facto_ special pleading would have been
swept to the winds, if the French army had been but reasonably fit,
and its commanders reasonably competent and enterprising. The fact is,
that neither on the 2nd of August, nor for several days after, were the
Germans ready to defend their frontier, much less to invade France,
had they been attacked or resisted in the manner the precedents of
France gave one the title to count on. Saarbrück was held for days “on
the bounce,” with a sublime audacity that could only have succeeded so
long, first, because the French were not ready for offensive action,
and, secondly, because their means of obtaining information were so
contemptible that they did not earlier come at the knowledge of the
weakness of the force opposed to them. No doubt the German commanders
had means whereby they ascertained the existence of both of these
conditions, and possibly presumed on this knowledge to make their
concentrations more leisurely and confidently than they would otherwise
have done; but that a grave risk was actually encountered was obvious
to any one on the spot. It has been stated that the woods in the rear
of Saarbrück swarmed with troops, which could have successfully met
an attempt of the French to penetrate further into the interior. The
truth is that on the night of the action there was no force nearer
Saarbrück than Neunkirchen, save scattered detachments of the infantry
and cavalry which had evacuated Saarbrück, and a couple of squadrons of
cuirassiers holding the roads as éclaireurs. Supports did exist further
in the rear, but scattered abroad over the face of the country, as
they pursued different lines of march, with Saarbrück as the point of
convergence. Had a French army of invasion pushed on through Saarbrück
on the 2nd, and marched rapidly into the interior, it would not have
been possible to concentrate those scattered regiments at any given
point across the hostile line of march; and my firm conviction is that
a Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having had to fight a
pitched battle.
It is needless to multiply evidence that it was not for strategical
purposes that the Germans permitted this occupation of Saarbrück, the
barrenness of which must surely have surprised themselves. There was
not an officer within ten miles of Saarbrück who, for at least two
days after the affair, did not expect to hear from hour to hour that
the heads of the French columns were showing on the roads leading
into the interior. Inside that radius, during those two days, hardly
a reinforcement was pushed forward, simply because reinforcements
were not as yet available. On the 3rd, a working party of engineers
cut the railway below Duttweiler, that the enemy, in his expected
advance, might not be able to avail himself of the iron road. Strange
strategy, truly, to allow, if it could be prevented, the shelling of
a German town, to expose a couple of battalions to the onslaught of
a _corps d’armée_ as the gallant fellows, construing their orders to
“retire fighting” after their own hot and angry fashion, contested with
reckless fury every inch of the ground! Strange strategy, truly, to
involve that town in the all but certainty of a second shelling before
it could be retaken, and of set purpose to let the enemy get foothold
on a position of such dominance as the Bellevue height, commanding all
the area that must be traversed by a force aiming at its recapture! No,
the French had a chance, and a great chance, on this 2nd of August; and
that they did not take advantage of it is not to be ascribed to any
acts of their adversaries, but to their own inconceivable unreadiness,
and to the imbecile inaction of their leaders, assignable to ignorance,
treachery, divided councils, an organisation that was chaos, and an
Intendance that was rotten to its remotest ramification.
Criticism of the actual defence made would be absurd. The men fought
with desperate valour, and were as cool under fire as if they had been
at their dinner. One company of the Hohenzollerns bore the full fire
of two French regiments for twenty minutes, and then only retired on
receiving an order to do so. They were severely cut up, as a matter of
course. Their captain was killed and a lieutenant wounded. It is hardly
to the discredit of the little force that they allowed themselves to be
surprised, as they unquestionably were. There were hardly men enough
for sentries all along the line, to say nothing of actual defence. A
field telegraph wire along the height from Ottenhausen to St. Arnual,
and extending down into the town and the railway station, would have
been an important aid.
Consequent upon the German evacuation of Saarbrück, Duttweiler became
a curious menagerie. The Hôtel Till, the only hostelrie in the little
place, is a curious, rambling erection, rather unpromising looked at
from the street, but improving on more intimate acquaintance, and
of the most indiarubber-like capacity. There is wing after wing of
bedrooms, great bare rooms with benches, tables, and old pictures,
devoted to what use it is impossible to guess, long cavernous passages,
and a staircase you might drive a coach and six up and down. How a
place of the size comes to be located in such a village I cannot tell,
but it was found a very ark of refuge for the foreign waifs and strays
that had been driven out of Saarbrück. My friend and myself were the
first arrivals. Then came a professor in a German university, an
Englishman, whom I had last seen coolly sauntering through the fire
in rear of a company of German infantry, and who, when he had tired
of this amusement, had struck out for himself in search of a bed,
and instinctively made tracks hither. He was followed by a waggon
containing a miscellaneous load. It contained the four Englishmen whom
we had left over their game of whist, a German correspondent, and two
ladies, one of whom had been a Sister of Mercy in the campaign of 1866,
and the other had come to Saarbrück from Bohemia, on purpose to be
married to a Prussian feldwebel. He was on active duty, but a special
dispensation had been obtained, and the fräulein was to have been
wedded on the Tuesday forenoon. The ceremony was to have taken place
in the Hôtel Hagen, but the French shells postponed its performance.
The officer went one way with his regiment, the lady came the other to
be out of reach of the French. They were hardly seated when there came
in an officer of the American army, who had seen the fun out and had
then strolled out here. Presently arrived a couple of British officers
in mufti, an English student from Bonn, an undergraduate of Oxford
who had broken off a reading tour to come and see a bit of fighting,
and a real live swell, with a fearful and wonderful coat, adorned
with a girdle and several dozen pockets, with an eye-glass and long
whiskers, a dog that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that
had not been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He—aw—had
been going eastward somewhere to—aw—Constantinople or St. Petersburg,
or—aw—somewhere, when he heard of something likely to be stirring at
Saarbrück—and had come down to view its aspect through his eye-glass.
The big hotel swallowed us all up somehow, and we assimilated into
quite a happy family, feeding together, and looked upon with eyes of
good-humoured wonderment by the honest villagers of Duttweiler.
With the only information at our command, to the effect that Lebach—far
in the rear—was head-quarters for an army of advance as well as the
little army of retreat, the position in Duttweiler seemed as good as
any, and we accordingly did not quit it. Little worthy of chronicling
occurred. In the forenoon of the 3rd a French soldier, who had been
brought in a prisoner, took it into his head to make a frantic effort
to escape. He got his hand cut off to begin with, and still this did
not conquer his repugnance to being a prisoner of war; but a couple
of pistol-shots did this very effectually. A little later there was a
grand chevy after spies. One was shot down in the rear of the Hôtel
Till, and two more were captured in a wood above the town. A villager
was torn from his home and his weeping wife. He was a Frenchman born,
but a naturalised Prussian; he had, however, been playing the traitor
to his adopted country by sending the French information.
In the evening of the 3rd a few of us bombarded-out vagrants walked
down till we gained a prominent eminence almost overhanging the valley
of the Saar, and from this we had an excellent view of the French
dispositions. The sight which we saw surprised us. Away on our right
front, on the shoulder of the slope by Stiring, was a large camp with
artillery parked close to it. There were tents on the Exercise Platz on
the Bellevue heights, with a battery of guns looking out to the right.
Far away over the Bellevue, on the crown of the height from which I
have described the French as streaming down into the valley lying
between it and the Bellevue height, was a great camp of infantry,
occupied obviously by several brigades. What lay in the valley we could
not tell, but it was hardly likely that it did not serve to conceal
a large force. On the slope above St. Arnual was another camp, but
comparatively a small one. For all this we were not unprepared, but
we were certainly not prepared for what we saw far away to the left
in the direction of Saarguemines. A good field-glass clearly made out
that on a broad plateau that must have been beyond Saarguemines, for
it was certainly distant fifteen miles, there lay extended a vast camp
that could not have been occupied by less than a division. Setting this
aside, it may be taken as a fair estimate that not less than 15,000
French troops were within the range of our vision. As I have said, what
the valley concealed we had no means of knowing. It might have been
empty; it might have held other 15,000 men.
From this coign of vantage it was more apparent than ever what
defensive advantages the vicinity of Saarbrück might have afforded had
they been utilised. The semicircular piece of table-land at our feet
almost suggested itself as a platform for heavy guns, the fire of which
might have altered the issue by playing on the heights by gaining which
the French gained the town. All that was wanted as the complement was
the cutting down of the belts of trees which encircle the Exercise
Platz. Had the fire from guns placed here not succeeded in its object,
and had the French, having occupied Saarbrück and St. Johann, made
longer maintenance of the table-land position untenable, both by the
road and by the railway were admirable facilities for withdrawal, while
the wooded slopes in rear of the table-land might have been held for
ever by a few regiments of riflemen well supplied with ammunition. Of
course the absence alike of artillery and of riflemen rendered any such
disposition an impossibility, and the observation forced from us was
that if the Prussians should have to exert themselves vigorously to
retake Saarbrück, they might easily have saved themselves the trouble
and the cost by never having allowed the French to take the place at
all.
One important effect the capture, even if temporary, should have
had. The railway from Trèves to Neunkirchen, and thence either to
Bingerbrück or through the Pfalz by Homburg and Kaiserslautern, forming
a connection with the Baden system, passes through Saarbrück, or rather
through St. Johann. As a line skirting the frontier, it was of much
the same value to Germany as was to France the Saarguemines-Hagenau
line, which Lieutenant von Voight had cut a few days previously. It
seemed incomprehensible that if the French were to be driven out of
Saarbrück, they should go without cutting this communication. Yet not
only did they do so, but they left intact the great viaduct by which
the line leading from Saarbrück to Metz crosses the Saar, and so did
the Germans a better turn than if they had evacuated the Spicheren
without a fight.
On the 4th there was a strange pause in the military operations, and
some of us dwellers in the Hôtel Till took advantage of the lull to
pay a visit to Saarbrück. The wise man who said in his heart that all
men are liars might have lived in our neighbourhood. One hour the
story was that the French had evacuated Saarbrück and were in retreat,
the next that they were in full march inland, and that we should do
well to pack up our kits and be off. Great formalities were reported
as requisite to enable us so much as to essay the task of reaching
Saarbrück. We had to leave behind our cards, our authorisations and our
money, in case of falling into the hands of the French, and being both
made prisoners of war and robbed. All that we were to take were our
passports. Then we had to visit the burgomaster and obtain from him his
written sanction—with the official seal, of course—vouching for us as
being harmless and “unsuspicious” individuals. The worthy burgomaster
granted this readily, and we left him with thanks, fighting our way out
from his door through a bevy of women whose husbands had been drawn for
the Landwehr, and who were clamouring for some means of earning their
bread. We had not gone a quarter of a mile when we came on a halted
detachment of cuirassiers, whose commanding officer gave us a voucher
to carry me through his outposts, and told us he supposed we should
have to enter St. Johann under a flag of truce. To our surprise we
found not a Frenchman in all St. Johann. I went to my old hotel, where
I found interim repairs already executed, and everything in its usual
condition. Occasionally there were little squalls of firing between the
French from above Saarbrück and the Germans, who, in scattered parties,
were in St. Johann; but the townsfolk had become familiarised to the
sound of the shots, and never so much as troubled to turn their heads.
Nevertheless, in these occasional trivial affairs lives were being lost
and plucky things were being done. Just as we came in two of the Black
Hussars made a dash to cross the old bridge into Saarbrück, not knowing
whether there were Frenchmen over the way or not. A French piquet was
in the Schloss Platz, and a few of the men under a sous-officier, ran
down the slope to the bridge head to have a crack at the hussars.
When these saw the red legs coming, they went about and rode back,
chased on to the bridge by the latter. One of the hussars’ horses fell
and threw its rider. As he lay prostrate the French sous-officier
sprang forward, his sword upraised to strike the hussar as he rose.
The gallant horseman, however, was on his legs with one bound, with
another quick movement he levelled his slung carbine, drew the trigger,
and the sous-officier was a dead man. A couple of Frenchmen sprang
forward to avenge the fate of their officer; but meanwhile from the
St. Johann side a couple of German infantrymen had covered them, and
as these two fired one Frenchman fell. This affair angered the French,
who maintained for some twenty minutes a spattering fire at everything
living that showed, but without effect.
We were again led to believe in St. Johann that if we wished to get
across into Saarbrück it would be necessary to appear with a flag of
truce, and forward to the French officer in command there a written
request for permission. As we walked on one of us had a walking-stick
and pockethandkerchief all ready. But we got on the new bridge, and no
French sentry was visible; we crossed it, and never a Frenchman was to
be seen. We reached the Platz and the post-office, and there was no
more appearance of French troops than there is in the neighbourhood
of the Horse Guards at guard mounting. I had been told that General
Frossard was living at the Post Hotel. The people there laughed in my
face when I asked the question. We traversed several streets before
encountering any Frenchmen, but at length in a back street, we came
upon a batch of the red-legged, blue-coated gentry. Harmless enough
they looked, as they came out of a baker’s shop with the long loaves
under their arms, grinning from ear to ear. A _gasthaus_ was full of
them, sitting drinking Rhine-wine and water. I went in and sat down
as a listener. The men by their dialect were chiefly from Alsace and
Lorraine, districts in which there is a very large German admixture.
Their conversation was _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, save and
except politics, national or international. The townspeople confidently
alleged that these Alsace and Lorraine men were with Germany at heart,
but they were not so sanguine as to this after Spicheren.
After keeping the Frenchmen company for a while we paid a visit to the
Saarbrück hospitals. There were very few men desperately wounded. The
horsemen had been chiefly hurt about the legs, the infantry soldiers
about the arms or through the shoulder-parts which would be likely
to be exposed by a man taking a tree as his cover. The hospital
arrangements were on the whole very good, with one exception. The
windows were all shut, and the rooms in consequence smelt close and
stuffy, and the atmosphere was impregnated with sour tobacco smoke. Why
a free circulation of air should not have been insisted on was the more
remarkable, since the treatment in almost every case was the use of
ice. With few men in a ward and clean recent wounds, ventilation is not
so great an essential; but it struck me, were the wards crowded in hot
weather by men with sloughing wounds hospital gangrene would inevitably
arise. The long corridor in Scutari hospital would have been a
pestilential place, but for Miss Nightingale’s insistance on the freest
ventilation. I did not observe that any disinfecting fluid was used in
the Saarbrück hospitals. It was here that I first saw men wounded by
the chassepot, and one could not fail to remark what a beautiful wound
that firearm makes. It was reported after Mentana that a chassepot
bullet made but a small orifice on entering, but that from its gyration
it scooped at its exit a trumpet-like mouth. But here I saw stripped
the wound of a man who had been shot through the shoulder, and it was
impossible for a non-scientific man to tell whether the bullet had
struck in front or rear. The people of Saarbrück were behaving to
the wounded with great devotion. Several of the citizens had wounded
soldiers in their houses, whom they preferred keeping there to sending
them to the hospitals.
“Rümschöttel,” mayor of St. Johann, was a good German, and a wise and
sagacious man. We found placarded at every street-corner the following
intimation from him:—
“Looking to the interests of our town, I feel called upon to request my
fellow-citizens to avoid laying violent hands upon any French soldiers,
but to leave such duty to our troops. It is also the duty of every
well-behaved citizen to endeavour by all means in his power to prevent
any such occurrence.” Placards of a similar tenor, but uniformly
couched in less simple and plain language, one got familiar enough
afterwards in the course of this war; but never more was there occasion
for the mayor of a German town to sign such a document. The unpleasant
but necessary duty ever fell by the force of events to the lot of a
French functionary. I am not without suspicions that Rümschöttel’s sage
counsels were not taken in all cases, for the townspeople had their
backs considerably up, especially the women, who fiercely resented the
somewhat free manners of the French soldiers. But if the civilians were
commanded to hold their hands, the troops to whom the mayor grimly
alluded were displaying remarkable sagacity and alertness in “cutting
out” any straggling Frenchmen. As we came into the town, we had met
several prisoners being escorted into the country. General Frossard,
on the evening of the attack, had sent for the mayor, and told him
that his orders were very strict against straggling and marauding,
and that if any cases occurred the citizens were to take the numbers
displayed on the caps of the men so committing themselves, and report
the same, when the fellows would be severely punished. On the whole,
the Frenchmen were reported as behaving themselves pretty well, and
paying honestly enough in most cases. A brewery had, however, been laid
violent hands on, and between what was drunk and what was let run, the
brewer had lost beer to the value of some 3,000 thalers. It must not be
imagined that although the French were not in occupation of St. Johann,
it was not quite as much at their disposal as if they had.
In the early morning of the 5th, there was a considerable cannonading
from the heights held by the French above Grosbliffersdorff, and
simultaneously came a sudden alarm at Duttweiler, that the French
cavalry were advancing in force from St. Johann, driving in the German
cuirassier piquets as they came. A dropping fire of small arms in
the distance was audible, and the road became alive with additional
patrols, but in an hour all was silent again, and we never got to know
whether there really was anything in the demonstration.
On Friday morning, anxious to obtain a general authorisation from
General von Stülpnagel, of the 5th Division, who was reported to
be in command at Neunkirchen and the vicinity, I went by waggon to
Neunkirchen for this purpose. Along the route there was no great number
of troops visible; indeed, with the exception of stray patrols, we
might have been miles distant from the war. But Neunkirchen
“Showed another sight.”
All around were battalions of foot regiments and
regiments of cavalry, batteries of foot and of horse artillery, fields
full of cattle waiting for the military butcher, parks of forage
waggons, lanes of bread carts, masses of ambulance waggons, and all the
_impedimenta_ of a great army contemplating a sustained and prolonged
advance. Troops were streaming into the place from all directions,
notably horse artillery. I watched the entrance of three batteries of
this arm of the service, and I confess I was disappointed by their
appearance, remembering the dash and carriage of our English horse
artillery. The men seemed to want vivacity, their uniforms were plain,
the horses were inclined to be soporific, and altogether there appeared
to be a want of smartness about them compared with our own Royal Horse
Artillery. It remained to be proved, as it was the next day, how truly
serviceable were the plain-looking men and horses.
Having obtained my authorisation with a courtesy on the part of the
Prussian staff such as I have almost invariably met with from that
body, I retired quietly to my quarters, with the intention of enjoying
a good night’s rest, from which, for two or three nights before, I had
been debarred. A staff officer occupying the same quarters was good
enough to furnish me with some details of the positions occupied by
the first and second Armies, which sufficed to indicate very clearly
that an invasion of France was imminent. The 1st Army, consisting of
the 7th and 8th Corps, was advancing on the Saar, through the southern
extremity of the Lower Rhine Province, mainly in a section of country
having for its western boundary a line drawn northward from Saarlouis,
for its eastern the frontier of the Pfalz. The 7th Corps (Zastrow)
had the right wing, the left consisted of von Göben’s 8th Corps. The
1st Corps (Manteuffel), which was also to form part of the 1st Army,
had not yet caught up with the advance. He had not particulars as to
the dispositions of the 1st Army during the night between the 5th and
6th of August, but those I afterwards obtained as follows:—Zastrow
had his head-quarters in Lebach, and was to march next morning (the
7th) to Dilsburg. The right division of the 7th Corps, the 13th
(Glümer) bivouacked in and around Puttlingen, feeling away further
right toward Derlen and Knausholz. This was the right flank of the
1st Army. Glümer’s orders were to advance on the 6th to the Saar at
Völklingen and Rockerkausen. Kamecke, with his division (the 14th),
spent the night in the vicinity of Guchenbach, with his advanced troops
close up on Saarbrück. The bulk of the division was not timed to
reach the frontier before the 7th. The 8th Corps stood still further
back. The halting place on the 6th for its leading division, the 16th
(Barneckow), had been fixed at Fischbach, and the 15th (Weltzien),
still further in the rear, had its billet for Holz. Thus far as regards
the 1st Army. The 2nd Army, starting from its rendezvous at Mayence,
was swarming down all over the Pfalz. Lieutenant-General Alvensleben
had the right flank of it with the 3rd Corps,[1] and it with the 5th
Cavalry Division (Rheinbaben), which was employed in covering the right
flank and the front, was the only part of Prince Frederick Charles’
command engaged in the fight of Spicheren. As regards its dispositions,
my staff officer, since he belonged to one of its divisions, could
naturally speak with greater exactitude. He believed Rheinbaben’s
horsemen were already in Saarbrück, and they were permeating all the
country intervening between that town and Alvensleben’s infantry,
while they were also covering the left front of the 1st Army. This
disposition brought Rheinbaben _en rapport_ with Kamecke, and it will
presently appear to what effect the dashing cavalry officer availed
himself of his knowledge of that general’s relative proximity. For the
rest, the 5th Division, now lying in Neunkirchen, had for its morrow’s
itinerary a route that would bring it to Duttweiler and Rentrisch,
both villages, about five miles to the north of Saarbrück, and it was
to be temporarily succeeded in its occupation of Neunkirchen by the
6th Division (Buddenbrock)—the next link in the great chain cable that
was to be warped out of the Pfalz over the frontier into Frankreich.
But Stülpnagel, although himself spending the night in Neunkirchen,
had already projected his antennæ on the road he was to travel on the
morrow—not alone such feelers as the stout squadrons of Rheinbaben,
but also the 9th Infantry Brigade, commanded by the gallant Döring.
That brigade had its bivouac for the night on the slopes to the south
of Duttweiler, while at least one regiment of the 10th Brigade (the
52nd) was forward also on the southern road, with its night halt in
St. Ingbert. Every disposition indicated the proximity of a grand and
methodical concentration in the Saar valley, with Saarbrück for its
centre; but there was an absence of urgency in the arrangements that
certainly gave no earnest of belief in the imminence of a battle.
I make no apology for interpolating here the following description of
the battle of Spicheren furnished to me by a Prussian gentleman who
enjoyed exceptional advantages both for seeing the incidents of the
fight and for obtaining accurate information as to its details. He
had been educated as a staff officer, and had served in that capacity
in the war of ’66; and having temporarily quitted the military
profession, had hurried down to Saarbrück with intent to join, at his
own charges, some cavalry regiment in which there might be a vacancy
for an officer. When Spicheren was fought he had not yet been posted
to any appointment, and was therefore free to devote himself wholly
to observation, while he could ask questions and go unchallenged to
positions not to be thought of by persons without his advantages. I
have taken pains to test his facts, and being fully impressed with
their accuracy, have used no freedom with them, although I have
ventured to take some little liberty in rendering his language.
“In the early morning of the 6th, about four o’clock, I was aroused by
the bugle blast, and an hour after came the quick march of soldiers
on their way to the front. A couple of regiments passed towards the
railway station; another regiment started along the high road. Among
the troops there was no confusion, but certainly no want of alacrity.
A visit to the railway station showed me that, with a couple of
battalions in waiting, and no train expected other than indefinitely,
the railway afforded a very precarious means of transit, so I returned
and got a place in a waggon, in which, after breakfast, I started for
Saarbrück by the southern road. Presently we passed the infantry,
striding along manfully, and I had not gone six miles when I heard in
the distance the rattling sound in the still morning air, which no man
who has ever heard it can mistake for anything else than the noise
of moving artillery. By this time I was through St. Ingbert, where
the 52nd were halting with stacked arms, and soon after, at a turn
of the road, our waggon was overtaken by two batteries of artillery,
coming along at a swinging canter. The driving boy entered into the
spirit of the thing, and I offered him double fare if he would only
keep up with the horse artillery. He tried it right manfully, but the
waggon was clumsy, and so was the harness; and in the ascent, at the
slope leading to Scheidt, he brought his team to a standstill and
struck. Spite of his remonstrances, I got the off horse out of his
harness, and, mounting the animal bare-backed, set off in pursuit of
the artillery. I overtook them a little beyond Scheidt, where they had
halted for a few minutes to give the horses their wind, and found that
they belonged to Stülpnagel’s division, and that they had been making
haste to overtake infantry that was in their front. Hurrying on (for by
this time it was nearly eleven o’clock) I overtook, just as the Saar
valley at St. Arnual opened up, the tail of a part of Döring’s brigade,
which that officer had brought forward on a reconnaissance. The head
of the column was already engaged. Looking over the meadow toward St.
Arnual, I could see how the ditches and hedges athwart it were lined
sparsely with very energetic skirmishers. The French had a battery
outside the village, sweeping the crossing of the stream, and the guns
were playing on the road by which Döring’s men were debouching into the
open. His skirmishers, by the heady way they pressed forward, seemed
eager by themselves to carry St. Arnual, and turn by the manœuvre what
was evidently the point on which rested the left flank of the French.
Away on the right, Saarbrück seemed the centre of a pandemonium. On
the Exercise Platz shells were bursting, and it seemed as if batteries
were in action on the height; but this, as it turned out, was not the
case. All up the slope leading from the town towards the Exercise Platz
were heard the crack and seen the smoke-puff of the needle-gun, as the
German infantrymen pressed on to the summit. But in our own immediate
front we had quite enough to engage our attention. Stülpnagel’s
artillerymen had unlimbered, and were blazing into St. Arnual and the
French. Suddenly the latter gave ground. Their guns limbered up, and
their infantry melted away backward into the wood. Certainly it was not
wholly the German fire that caused this sudden retreat; some order must
have come from head-quarters. No matter what was the cause of it, the
German horse artillery were in motion again like a flash of lightning.
Through the river dashed the guns, sending up the spray in jets, on to
the turf with a strain and a bound, and then with a loosened rein into
St. Arnual! Here there was another brief stand, then another limber
up, and the horse artillery at a sweeping gallop passed round the St.
Arnual bluff out of my sight, whether into the valley beyond or to
climb the ‘Winterberg’ I could not tell.
“For my part, I rode into Saarbrück on my bare-backed steed, which I
handed over to the ‘stallknecht’ of the Reinischer Hof, in St. Johann,
to be claimed by his owner. Upon the railway-station esplanade I found,
in the persons of one or two dead soldiers, the evidence that the
battle had extended thus far. On the bridges joining St. Johann and
Saarbrück lay others, and the townsfolk were attending to the wounded.
At the head of the old bridge stood a French gun, a trophy, so far,
of conquest. The steep slope up to the Exercise Platz had evidently
not been taken without some fighting, although it had been held only
by some straggling outposts of Frossard’s rear-guard belonging to the
Division Vergé. The French had obviously not been idle during the
days in which they had occupied the heights overlooking Saarbrück. A
continuous line of entrenchment had been thrown up across the crest,
with earthworks of more importance for stronger infantry detachments
at intervals. But it was evident that no serious attempt had been
made to hold this hither line. Indeed, as I learned in Saarbrück, the
brigade or division (whichever it was) that had held the heights and
plateau behind it had fallen back everywhere on the previous night
but one. On the 5th Rheinbaben’s patrols, pushing forward after their
manner, had discovered how feebly the Exercise Platz was held, and
early on the morning of the fight their explorations had not only
satisfied their leader that it had been almost wholly deserted under
cover of the darkness, but had impressed him with the conviction that
Frossard was beginning a retrograde movement, which should include the
abandonment of the yet more advantageous position on the Spicheren Berg
and the elevated ground about Stiring with the entrenched position
across the valley, stretching like a curtain between the two strong
flank-positions.” Whether Rheinbaben was not too sanguine, or at all
events premature in this conclusion, is a question that doubtless
would have occasioned more controversy if the issue of the fight
that ensued mainly upon it had been different. “He lost no time in
dispatching the intelligence to General Kamecke, who, as commanding
the division nearest to the scene of action, at once took upon himself
the responsibility of ordering an attack on what it appears certain
he considered was but the enemy’s rear-guard. He sent back notice
of his intention to Zastrow, altering by the tidings the leisurely
character of that general’s advance on Dilsburg. Kamecke himself, with
characteristic impetuosity, galloped on to overtake his leading brigade
(the 28th), which had got close to Saarbrück, when he caught up with
it. Without losing a moment, Kamecke pushed Rheinbaben’s horsemen up
the slopes to the Exercise Platz, covering the intervals between the
roads with skirmishers, thrown out from the heads of his infantry
columns, while some of his artillery unlimbered on the St. Johann
side of the stream, and plied the plateau of the Exercise Platz with
shell-fire until the advance of the cavalry and infantry compelled a
cessation. It was while this was going on that Döring’s reconnaissance
reached the valley opposite to St. Arnual. I afterwards learnt that he
sent the battalions composing it down the river to support Kamecke’s
direct attack.
“As I passed through Saarbrück, and took my way up the winding road
to the Exercise Platz, it was already past eleven. Woyna’s infantry
brigade (the 28th) and Rheinbaben’s cavalry were already over the ridge
and striking steadily down into the valley intervening between it and
the Spicheren Berg and the French position. Hurried movements, executed
by large bodies of men, were visible through the glass all along the
latter. Streams of soldiers were pouring over the horizon, and rushing
down to line the entrenched edge of the bastion-like Spicheren. On
the little quarterdeck-like plateau, just behind, the batteries had
already got into position, and the shells were dropping fast among
the Woynas and Rheinbabens as they pushed forward into the valley.
Other batteries had opened fire also from a little eminence to the
French left of Stiring. These did not have it all their own way. Four
batteries Kamecke had already got into action—three aligned with the
trees on the Forbach margin of the Exercise Platz, one on the other
side of the Saarbrück-Forbach road. The fire of these was concentrated
on the Spicheren Berg, while already down in the valley one heard the
rattle of the musketry fire, and now and then came the sharp ping of a
chassepot bullet.
“At the mouth of the scooped-out cross-road where it joins the main
road opposite the Bellevue beerhouse, sat Kamecke on horseback, not
quite so cool, perhaps, as the circumstances demanded. With abrupt
gestures and jerky messages he was hurrying up his division to the
attack. The long columns strained up the steep hill in extra quick
time, the men puffing and blowing as the top was gained, and as the
battalions marched down the further slope and took ground right and
left of the main road across the valley. Here the young soldiers got
their baptism of fire, and the veterans of ’66 had recollections
freshened that might have faded into dimness as the years of peace had
rolled over their heads. For now, not alone over their heads, but into
their ranks, hurtled the angry shells, the jets of white smoke and the
temporary disruption of the formation showing ever and anon where one
had burst. The leading battalions lay down while the deployment was in
progress, but still the shells spared them not. Kamecke’s artillery
as it came up in detachments took ground right and left, some of it
on the height, some batteries rattling down the road and opening fire
on the slope at shorter range. One or two batteries were pushed out
to the right hand corner of the Exercise Platz to give reply to the
French batteries that were in so energetic action on the knoll flanking
Stiring. But artillery, infantry, and cavalry—for all were now within
range of vision from the corner of the Exercise Platz overhanging the
steep road—made up what seemed full too weak a force to cope with what
was before it; nor was there any indications of the speedy advent of
supports.
“Presently there was a move down in the valley. The Woynas (28th
Brigade) were heading away to the German right front to engage the
French left resting on Stiring. The gallant von Francois, one of a
race of soldiers, himself that day to meet a soldier’s death, led his
stout Westphalians of the 27th brigade direct on that abrupt mountain
mass that frowned out upon the plain, its summit already marked by the
fringe of white smoke from the chassepots of the Frenchmen lining the
entrenchment. There were French skirmishers in the bottom of the valley
and on the little foothold places on the precipitous incline. On the
level the Westphalians sent these back as if they too had been smoke.
But it was no fair stand-up fight man to man. From the top of the Berg
chassepot, mitrailleuse, field-gun concentrated on the on-marching
battalions their powers of destruction. With a steady, rather slow,
step they pressed onward constantly, leaving behind them on the plain
a terrible proportion of their number. The slowness of the pace was
characteristic.
“The German is a man of method and of stubborn pith. Under this
death-hail the dressing seemed as systematic as on the parade at
Düsseldorf, the touch of man to man as accurate. Ever as a shell
crashed through a company, or the mitrailleuse opened a lane and
strewed it with dead and wounded, the men flanking the gap closed in
with a grim coolness which impressed one with the conviction that men
who could act so could not be beaten. When the foot of the Berg was
reached, the pace quickened and the formation broke. It was now like
the forlorn hope of a besieging army storming a breach rashly reported
practicable. Men scrambled upwards and forwards anyhow. The officers
threw themselves from their horses, and took perforce to climbing on
foot. Now the leader on a rugged pathway would go down, and, as he
rolled backward, he would tumble his followers with him in pell-mell
confusion. Officers were seen throwing forward their swords, men their
needle-guns, and clambering up after their weapons on their hands and
knees. There were little protected liebys here and there, and under
these shelters the men packed as you may have seen sheep huddle before
a high wind with a snow-drift borne on it. Thither crept, too, the
wounded out of the fire that spared them when wounded no more than when
they had been hale fighting men. Then when the sound men had caught
their wind again, they would dash out, and make another convulsive
scramble upward, ever upward. On the brink you might see the Frenchmen
bending over the lip of the crest to get more purchase with their
downward aim. A mitrailleuse was balanced on the edge by men clinging
to the wheels and the trail, while its honeycomb-like muzzle went down,
pointing among the stragglers, its butt end high in air. Kamecke had
asked men to do an impossibility. There are parts of the Spicheren,
notably that part just on the left of the extreme bluff nearest
Saarbrück, which are not to be surmounted without scaling ladders. Von
Francois’s men were brought to a standstill. There was no alternative
but to fall back. Fortunately there was no necessity for a retreat
right athwart the valley. Out of its centre there rise several low
detached mamelons not of sufficient elevation to give any dominance as
against artillery on the Spicheren Berg, but affording better positions
for batteries than the plain itself, and furnishing cover behind which
troops might enjoy at least a partial protection. Two of these bear the
names respectively of the Galgenberg (Gallows-hill) and the Folster
Höhe, while behind the latter is some broken ground, with a house or
two and some water, the spot bearing the name of the Drathzug. On to
these two little eminences the artillery of Kamecke’s division had been
hurried forward to attempt some support and distraction for Francois’s
brigade, and when the latter had to cease its bootless efforts to carry
the Spicheren, it fell back to reorganise itself behind the knolls
on which the gunners, themselves suffering severely, were plying the
enemy with shrapnel-shells. Kamecke’s cavalry had drawn forward in
the valley, behind the shelter afforded by the Gallows-hill and the
Drathzug, strengthened by two regiments of hussars from Rheinbaben’s
cavalry division. As the 27th Brigade drew back sulkily, the French
skirmishers dashed down from the plateau, eager to hang on the skirts
of the retreating Westphalians. There are two steep country roads that
get down from the summit into the valley by a series of slants and
zigzags, and these were extensively utilised by the French skirmishers,
who pushed down even into the valley taking advantage of what cover was
available, as ever and anon Francois’s men turned savagely at bay. But
the skirmishers’ _bon quatre d’heure_ was very short. From behind the
Gallows-hill dashed out right and left the keen-sabred troopers of the
11th and 13th Hussars. Galloping through and round their friends, they
were on the Frenchmen like a thunderbolt, and the tirailleur-nimbleness
of the plucky little Frenchmen availed but little not a few of them. So
hot was the fury of the Hussars that they recklessly charged the Berg
that had broken the hearts of the infantrymen. They were not long in
discovering that their riding-school lessons did not include practice
in crag-climbing, and they went back wiser men than before; while to
some it was not vouchsafed to apply the experience in after-life. But
the sections which formed themselves on the more westerly road up the
heights saw before them a track which looked practicable. With mad
valour the blue troopers dashed on and up, strewing the road with
living débris as they advanced. How near the summit one at least of
them must have got I never knew till next day, when I saw a dead hussar
and a dead horse tumbled over into a ravine three-fourths of the way
up. I saw them ride up. I never saw any of them ride back.
“While the 27th Brigade was re-forming under cover of the guns, Woyna,
with the 28th Brigade, having struck away to the left by the Folster
Höhe, was steadily fighting his way up toward Stiring, on which the
French left flank leant apparently in considerable strength. His
troops had fair cover in the broken woodland on either side of the
railway and the mill-dams, while the railway cutting, deep as it is in
places, and not straight for a long enough distance to be raked, also
afforded opportune protection. He had, however, to fight every step of
the ground, amid a terrific shell-fire that set alight to a terrace
of workmen’s houses on the western side of the railway, that seemed
to have been temporarily occupied by the German troops. But Woyna’s
progress was terribly slow, and the French fire never slackened.” What
his losses were, the journeyer on the railway may yet form a vague
conception as he looks out upon the numerous green hillocks in the
forest glades or the little clearings. There is a little signal-house
on the railway that must have been the focus of a fearful fire. No
shells had struck it, but when I saw it the day but one after the
battle I could not find a space the size of this page which did not
show the easily-read print of the impact of a bullet.
“Von Francois’s men were not convinced by the lesson they had received
as to the inaccessibility of the Spicheren Berg. They must have one
more useless essay at the impossible. I do not know whether Kamecke
gave the order or not, but the diminished companies came out yet again
to the open, and once more breasted the lower slopes of the hill.
By this time the fire of the division’s artillery, plied as it was
unremittingly, had made the edge of the Berg a very hot place, and the
Westphalians were hardly so much torn as they had been on their first
attempt. But the French general must have recognised how fatal to him
would be their success. They must be repulsed _coûte qui coûte_. So the
Frenchmen, standing in the shell-fire, again lined their intrenchment,
and leaning over, rained death upon the struggling bearers of the
needle-guns. Some of von Francois’s men staggered up through the storm,
till they reached the shelter of a rock which, overhanging, supports a
section of the verge of the sloping plateau above; and there, powerless
to go further, and objecting to go back, they cowered in comparative
safety, so close under their enemies that they might almost have
grasped the muzzles of the chassepots. Von Francois himself was down,
a fearful proportion of his officers had fallen, and the brigade had
to own itself foiled, and give up what it seemed to have set its heart
upon to achieve. But it went no more back behind the guns. These forced
the French to hold their hands greatly, and the German infantry men,
with a bulldog-like stubbornness, lay down among the furrows and by the
hedgerows along the foot of the Berg. If they could not carry it, at
least they would not leave it.
“It was now close on three o’clock, and Kamecke must surely, after the
example of one greater than he, have been looking often and often at
his watch, and muttering that would to God night or Zastrow would come.
But there were succours nigher at hand than any Zastrow could bring.
As it came toward its halting ground at Fischbach, the cannon-thunder
came wafted on the wind to Barneckow’s division. Von Göben was on
in advance of his corps; von Göben, to whom the _Kanonendonner_ was
ever sweet music. There was no halt for the 16th Division this long
summer day. By two the mazed people of Saarbrück saw with joy their
old friends of the 40th, as the staunch Hohenzollerns hurried over the
bridge to get on to the heights where they had already tasted blood.
Von Göben rode on to the Exercise Platz, and took in the situation at
a glance. It was truly a critical one. The 40th he sent straight out
into the plain, to support the broken left flank of the 27th Brigade,
and rode on himself to the Gallows-hill to take the command out of
Kamecke’s hands in virtue of his superior rank. The 40th Regiment
was as yet all that the 8th Army Corps had to say for itself, if we
except von Göben: but other troops than Barneckow’s division had heard
the cannon-thunder. By half-past two there was streaming round the
shoulder the mass of Döring’s brigade, the 9th, of the 5th Division
(Stülpnagel), summoned from its bivouac by Duttweiler when its general
had found that his reconnaissance was the road to a battle. It had
already done some fighting about St. Arnual, and had established the
fact that the right flank of the French was now in the forest of
Spicheren, which clothes the somewhat less abrupt slopes from the
precipitous part of the Berg eastward in the direction of Berbach.
As Döring advanced, he fell into position on the left of the 40th
Regiment, with his front looking into the dark forest that rose before
him. Other advance regiments of the 5th Division presently reached
him, and the aid, no great thing as it was, looking at the work to be
done, gave relief to the 14th Division, engaged as it had been right
up to the hilt. The attack on the Berg was renewed but in part, the
40th undertaking the less precipitous section lying next the wood of
Spicheren, while Döring’s regiments, under cover of a fire from part of
the artillery of the 3rd Corps, which had just come up, went straight
at the forest itself. The 40th had traditions of storming prowess. It
had shown the way over the fortifications of Düppel; but the Spicheren
Berg was harder than had been Düppel. What fighting it was to be sure,
all along from the nose of the bluff eastward to the right verge of the
wood! Three times did the Germans charge the hill and the wood—scarcely
less a hill; three times did the French, fighting with a stubborn fury
that was of the undegenerate days, hurl them back with a withering fire
right in their teeth almost at arm’s length. For two stricken hours
was the result dubious. But at five Alvensleben came on the ground
with fresh supports belonging to the 3rd Corps, and one more attack
was joined. Steadily climbed on the 40th up the steep green slopes.
Döring’s men were over the trench on the edge of the wood and in among
the trees. There is something horrible in the suspense of a fight in
a wood. You see little or nothing; there is an occasional flash, and
in the casual openings glimpses of troops swaying and heaving, like
sea-waves in the chasm of a cavern; then there is an interval with
nothing visible but the calm green tree-tops, which mock you when
you know that hell is raging below them; and the hell is continually
dropping its red-hot coals through the bars of the furnace, in the
shape of wounded men who come staggering out from behind the trunks,
halting often as they come. How is it to go? Are the blue-coated men
you saw go in to be vomited forth again the way they went, with the
red-breeched men hot and triumphant on their flanks, plying the devil’s
pitchfork to hoise them wherewithal outside? or has this Spicheren hell
a thoroughfare through it, and are the blue-coated men, having battled
through the furnace, to reach the grill on the further side, and draw
breaths of cooler air there? The white smoke surges up fitfully through
the dark-green boughs of the fir-trees; still the wounded men stagger
out, and still the issue is uncertain.
“But if we could not penetrate the secrets of the wood, we might, at
all events, watch the course of the Hohenzollerns on its flank. Slowly,
and evidently with arduous effort and terrible loss, they pushed on
their dogged way. At length they were over the worst in the point of
climbing, and into the worst in point of musketry fire, as they reached
a kind of natural glacis before the French entrenchment. Watching them
through the glass, one seemed to see the men straightening themselves
up and pulling themselves together; then, as it seemed, with one great
effort of their muscular loins and hips, they shot forward on to the
top of the earth-bank. For one moment it was as if they hung here,
and then fell forward, lurching down as it were on the Frenchmen who
lined the trench. They say there was no actual bayonet fighting; from
behind, it certainly looked as if for a couple of minutes there was a
hand-to-hand fight; on the near side the dogged, weighty mass of the
men in spiked helmets, leaning forward with a terrible _vis inertiæ_;
on the further, a seething, bobbing, gyrating, frantic throng of
marionnette-like men in red breeches. The spiked helmets seemed with
their sheer weight and irresistible pressure to drive back the red
breeches as a masterful wave sweeps the foam before it; and when the
berg was won, the wood was won also. Döring’s Brandenburgers were not
to be flouted by the Hohenzollerns. The wood was theirs, and cleared of
French as the latter became aligned with its edge on its western flank.
We saw little more for the time of the fight here, but the din that
came back to us proved that all was not over on the upland when the
Spicheren wood had been taken.
“As we learned afterwards, the French again and again charged the
wood with fury, and even once or twice penetrated into it. The
Hohenzollerns, dreading lest with the impetuosity of the rush they
should be swept bodily back off the plateau, had to seek something
at once of ground-anchorage and of cover among the trees. It was
impossible for infantry alone to make its way upward and onward on
the plateau. The call was for artillery, and artillery came. Two
batteries of Stülpnagel’s division, that had been firing from before
the Winterberg before the duel in the dark began in the wood, limbered
up, and made for the rough winding track by the edge of the wood. The
drivers were resolute, and the horses were strong. In ten minutes
the gunners were at “action front” in the very faces of the French
infantry, who had no alternative but to give way, for they had been
deserted by their artillery; so, fighting desperately as they went,
they fell slowly back, and the Germans pressed on, gradually making the
plateau their own. So the French right wing was turned, and the battle
of Spicheren virtually won.
“Certainly on the German right there seemed little indication that
such a result had been achieved. Zastrow, with part of the reserve
artillery of his corps, had come over by the railway bridge on to the
battle-field at half-past four, superseding in his turn Von Göben in
right of seniority. Zastrow had been trying strategical experiments
with his 13th division (Glümer), which was out of the hunt, away
by Völklingen, marching along, as we afterwards learnt, in blessed
unconsciousness of what was going on so near it, the wind setting the
other way, till an aide-de-camp from Zastrow, who reached Glümer about
five o’clock, gave him a new direction and a stimulus to speed. But
Zastrow had not at hand available troops of his own corps. The quiet
and prompt Alvensleben (who was also already in the field) had got up
nearly the whole of Stülpnagel’s division, and there were regiments
available to participate in offensive action on the right, as well as
to carry the Spicheren wood on the left. All the afternoon Woyna had
been fighting doggedly forward till he had edged the French out of
Stiring, and well across the valley from their entrenchments behind
the iron-works of Stiring Wendel, on to the Kreuzbach, which may be
called roughly a prolongation of the Spicheren-berg toward Forbach.
Zastrow sent on a brigade of infantry and some artillery to attack this
strong position; but the French, whose left had been strengthened by a
division of Bazaine’s corps, anticipated the offensive, coming down in
great force into the valley, no doubt with a design to cover Forbach at
least for a time. The German artillery, which was now in strong force
about the railway, played terrible havoc with this effort on the part
of the French, who, however, persevered with a tenacity that seemed to
partake of despair. At length Stülpnagel’s infantry were sent forward
to precipitate the action, and this they did, by driving the French up
the Kreuzbach, and storming it on their heels. This movement turned the
French left on its part, so that while they were being hustled backward
over the plateau on the right, they were being all the more shoved on
to it from the Kreuzbach toward Spicheren and Alsting from the left.
The confusion of the cross streams must have been immense, especially
as the roads along which retreat alone was possible were by no means
either good or plentiful. While Frossard held Forbach he had the key
to the main _chaussée_ to Metz; but Zastrow’s strategetical experiment
turned up a trump in the twilight. Glümer’s division (the 13th),
bearing round from Völklingen by Ludweiler and Rosseln, came down
upon Forbach from a due westerly direction, and frightened the French
out of it with hardly any fighting.” The other divisions had got all
the mauling; Glümer’s had had the furthest marching, and now came in
for the heaviest loot; for the French evacuated Forbach in hot haste,
and, after an absurd attempt to wreck the station and its multifarious
contents by sending an engine to run amuck down a siding and on to the
station, left everything as it stood, from scents and _bonbons_ to
flour and munitions of war.
“There was in the dusk a kind of miscellaneous fighting all across the
plateau, about the villages of Spicheren, Alsting, and Etzling. The
French seemed never to know when they were beaten. Although regimental
formation had become for the most part shattered in the mass which
acted as the rear guard, detachments and groups fought passionately.
It seemed as if the fight was to last all night. It became impossible
in the dusk to distinguish between friend and foe. The French were
reported to have sustained serious injury through a blunder of this
kind, in which countrymen slew countrymen. The Prussians adopted the
expedient of shouting “Hurrah Preussen!” and the hoarse, deep-throated
cry ever and anon came backward from out the din, the smoke, and the
fire-flashes with a strange weird effect. At length these detachments
and groups either fell back or went down till the front was tolerably
clear of Frenchmen. Then their artillery struck in for the last word.
It had been got into position about Kerbach to cover the retreat on
Puttelange, and was well and staunchly served to the last. The Germans
with some little over-confidence, pressed it rather too closely,
and then the French infantry yet once more showed how it carried a
sting in its tail.” It must have been a ragged array that resumed the
offensive thus in the darkness, but there is no doubt of the fact that
a determined front after a fashion was shown. Yet there might have been
some attempt at a pursuit, but that all the German army, with perhaps
the exception of Rheinbaben’s cavalry division, was jaded with long
marching and fighting. So beyond Kerbach, Frossard was let pursue in
peace his disorganised and disorderly retreat. They had left of their
goods and chattels in Spicheren, as well as in Forbach. “The firing had
not wholly died away till after nine o’clock. As I walked back over
the plateau, down the steep, across the valley, and on to the Exercise
Platz, I had constantly to pick my way very carefully. It is a dismal
sensation to stumble over a dead man. It is even a greater shock to
force unwittingly a groan of pain from a poor wounded wretch lying
helpless in his blood, waiting for the succour that, come how soon it
may, is ever over-tardy. How many, both of dead and of wounded, flecked
the brown surface of the heights I could then form no estimate; I only
knew this, that the number of both was very great. Spiked helmets and
red breeches blended together as closely as if they had been bosom
friends all their lives. The hospital corps with their ambulances were
swiftly picking up the wounded and carrying them off to be tended.
Their organisation seemed excellent. More than once I saw in the pale
ray of a moonbeam a female form swathed in black, with the white patch
and the cross on the breast, bending over a prostrate form, or flitting
ghostlike in the van of an ambulance party.” God bless the Sisters of
Mercy in a night like this, say I, whether they are Roman Catholic or
whether they be Protestant. Christianity on a battle-field can well
afford to sink sectarianism. There were days and nights of bloodshed
to come, when no Saarbrück convent should be close by to send out its
courageous sisterhood on to the brink of the _Schlachtfeld_.
The Germans had, in all, engaged about 40,000 men, including the
division Glümer, and probably Frossard, even with the reinforcement
from Bazaine, was not so strong by some 12,000. Deducting Glümer’s
division, which, although it came under fire, and therefore, strictly
speaking, must reckon as being in the field, took no real part in the
action, the hostile forces were about equally matched in point of
numbers. It is no exaggeration to say that its position represented to
the French army a value equivalent to another army of equal strength.
The German loss was terrible—over 4,300 men killed and wounded. Nearly
all the loss fell on the 14th division, only a portion of the 5th
division, and the 40th Regiment. Probably the whole loss falls to be
apportioned on a force under 20,000 men, and this would bring out the
loss as one in five—an exceptionally heavy per-centage. The loss in
officers was by far too heavy on the German side. The French left 2,000
unwounded prisoners in German hands.
The battle of Spicheren was won solely by the stubborn valour of the
German soldiers, and by the cannon-thunder. The record of it contains
no evidence of the influence of a master-mind over its dispositions and
results. General Kamecke was probably justified in his effort to make
a snap-shot for a victory, but certainly he had no right to engage
himself so closely and generally as he did, until he had far better
assurance than he had that he might reckon on supports when the time
should come for him to want them. He might have secured his end, at
far less expenditure of human life, by using his division discreetly
to keep the French in play on both flanks, instead of abusing it as
he did by an effort for the direct storm of such a position as the
Spicheren-berg. It does not appear that he had any cognizance of
Stülpnagel’s ability to come to his support in the opportune moment,
or, indeed, that he communicated at all with Alvensleben’s corps.
What succour he derived from this source—and how invaluable was that
succour, the preceding details have demonstrated—came to him from the
fortunate circumstance that Döring’s reconnaissance in the morning put
that officer on the _qui vive_, and from the accident that the wind set
in such a direction as to carry the sound of the cannonade into the
back country. The responsibility of the day’s work, in so far as it
was disastrous, rests with Kamecke; and there seems every probability
that had the first army—the support which was all that he appears
or, indeed, was entitled to have calculated on—constituted the whole
available force, the marker in the war-game would have had to score a
victory for the German arms between Saarbrück and Forbach on the 6th
of August. That Kamecke was not defeated before supports came up, was
owing solely to the stoutness of his Westphalians; and that victory
was ultimately achieved was owing to the fact that Stülpnagel and
Alvensleben were prompter than was Grouchy in marching on the sound of
the cannon. All’s well that ends well. The victory had an immense moral
effect. It must have been in the light of the experience furnished
them at Spicheren that the French huddled backward under the shells
of the forts of Metz, without attempting to utilise the many tempting
positions for a stand which the configuration of the ground afforded
them by the way. General Steinmetz has been erroneously blamed for the
waste of life at Spicheren. The fact is that the gallant old soldier
was responsible for nothing on the 6th of August, unless it might be
for the circumstance that he did not happen to be nearer the front. He
did not get into Saarbrück until the evening.
I walked out on the battle-field on Sunday afternoon. All up the steep
which rose out of the valley all the way from over against the Exercise
Platz to near Forbach, a distance of some four miles, the dead of the
German army lay thickly. At the bottom of the steepest place there was
quite a fringe of butchery that had rolled downward in obedience to
the law of gravitation, a grim alluvial deposit made by the torrent
of shot. On the little level shoulders of the steep graves were being
made, into which the burial-parties were huddling
“Friend and foe,
In one red burial blent.”
Some of the ravines leading on to the height, where it is indented by
the bay between the Spicheren-berg and the Kreuzberg, had been the
scenes of desperate fighting. In a little gully just at the top of one
of these I found a dozen Prussians lying dead, piled one above another
in inextricable confusion. Elsewhere they lay as thick. Inside the
intrenchments it was the turn of the Frenchmen to be found dead in the
greatest numbers. The ditch itself was full of them. For several yards
inside the intrenchments it was impossible to step without treading on
dead humanity. The fight had been equally deadly all over the plateau,
where the corn and grass were trodden into the brick-like ground that
was yet in places soft and soppy with blood.
Saarbrück, which had chafed mightily under the presence of the
Frenchmen on the heights above them and occasionally in their midst, no
sooner saw victorious Germans on the Exercise Platz than it broke out
into a spasmodic eruption of flags symbolical of victory, and generally
went half crazy with joy. But there was real work for Saarbrück to do
in manifestation of its national and indeed human sympathies, and the
flags and phlegmatic caperings were only a preliminary outburst. The
wounded were to be removed from off the battle-field, as the tide of
war surged forward and left its _débris_ behind. Right energetically
did Saarbrück rise to the occasion. I do not believe there was a man or
a woman or a boy or a girl in all the town who did not help to carry
wounded soldiers off the field. The medical arrangements were decidedly
defective. No such sudden call on the services of the department had
been anticipated, and the staff both of bearers and of surgeons was far
from strong enough, nor was there enough of hospital accommodation. The
first and the last wants Saarbrück did its best to supply. Into every
room of every house, into every shed and outbuilding, were carried
wounded men. My hotel was full of them, from the _salle à manger_
to the fortress in which Boots cleaned his knives and brushed the
clothes. Fifteen poor fellows lay all night on straw in an outhouse
without medical aid. In the morning three of them were dead. On Sunday
began the transport by railway into the interior of such as could be
moved, this being a wise provision for keeping the frontier hospitals
available for the wounded in future actions; 2,000 were so sent away
on the Sunday and Monday, both Prussian and French, their destinations
being the large towns all along the Rhine. As I left Saarbrück the
procession to the station was unbroken of litters and hand-ambulances,
of pale men with arms in slings, or limping, supported by a couple of
sympathisers. One I saw pass in a wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER III.
COURCELLES, SPICHEREN, AND GRAVELOTTE.
If one lingered long in Saarbrück, it became apparent, so rapid was
the advance, that he might find himself out of the hunt altogether.
Indeed, when I quitted Saarbrück on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 9th
of August, I was already in the rear of most of the army of Steinmetz,
and behind, likewise, no small proportion of the vast host of Prince
Frederick Charles. Instead of tramping to Forbach by the road, I took a
final walk over the scene of the battle-field of the Saturday.
By Monday at mid-day all the wounded had been removed and most of the
dead buried. The whole of the ground was thickly dotted over with
graves. The burial-parties had been pious in those their ministrations
to the dead. Few of the mounds but were surmounted with a rude cross,
made of a couple of sticks lashed together with a buckle strap. Others
were more elaborate, the cross board being flat and having inscribed
upon it the number interred, their rank and regiment. Already the
townspeople had decorated some of the graves with shrubs and flowers,
but most of the decorations consisted of bayonets and swords stuck in
the soil—tokens that soldiers lay below. Friend and foe slept at peace
with each other in one grave. The inscription over one of the largest
on the first Spicheren height I thought worth copying:—
“Hier ruhen in Gott
29 Preussen und 69 Franzosen.”
I walked some distance before I came to an unburied body, but in the
little clefts and gulleys leading up to the second Spicheren height
they still lay quite thick. There was no difficulty in discovering
their vicinity. The corpse of a man slain in battle does not lie
for three days exposed to the air and sun without lapsing into
decomposition, and some of the bodies were horrible sights. Some
could hardly have been known for human—so black and turgid were the
features. The deaths had chiefly been from rifle bullets. Most of the
Germans bore their death-wounds in their faces and heads, received
as they stormed the terrible ascent; the Frenchmen—those who had not
perished by the bayonet—were for the most part shot through the body,
or had their legs shattered. One scene I never can forget. By the
foot of a tree lay two dead German soldiers. It seemed as if they had
been removed thither either during or after the fight, while as yet
only wounded. Beside them were two pannikins half full of water, and
a piece of bread. One, quite a lad, lay in a crouching attitude, his
head bent downwards toward the tree. He had been shot through the
head, and the blood had streamed on to his handkerchief and the open
pocket-book in front of him. One hand grasped that of his dead comrade,
in the other was an envelope. The letter it contained may have blown
away, or the lad, in his last agony, may have thrust it in his breast;
but the envelope itself was eloquent enough. It was addressed in a
female handwriting, and bore the postmark of a little village away
near the shores of the Baltic. The writer—mother or sweetheart, I know
not—evidently had been the last thought of the lad. Will she come to
weep over his grave among the clay-stone crags of the Spicheren? Will
he, indeed, have a grave at all? The place was a lonely one, and the
straggling cowherd may, months after, have chanced upon a couple of
skeletons with arms and belts on the bones.
What a distance over the height had stretched the battle, I never
realised until this night. Three miles away from the first bluff of
the Spicheren-berg, I found dead French soldiers lying between the
drills of a potato-field. And then in the growing darkness I lost my
way, and had to plunge through a dense wood growing on a steep slope.
There was no road, but I scrambled downward with tolerable freedom,
till I stumbled over something and fell at full length. As I stretched
forth my hand to raise myself it touched the face of a corpse, cold and
clammy with the death-sweat. In the dark solitude of the wood such
a contact, unpleasant at any time, was horrible, and made my blood
run cold. It seemed as if everywhere I turned my feet met prostrate
corpses. I struck a light, and by its dim rays found myself in the
centre of a knot of some half-dozen dead French soldiers. Whether
they had been slain simultaneously by the bursting of a shell, or had
scrambled into the wood wounded, and died here in each other’s company,
I know not; I only know that I shuddered at the situation in which I
found myself, and then it struck me that one of them moved. Could he be
still alive? No, it was but imagination on my part. They were all dead,
and sadly wanted burial. Very daintily did I pick my steps down the
rest of the wooded slope, but, getting on a rough footpath, I chanced
on no more corpses. But I slept very little that night, and when I did
I continually dreamed of the group of dead Frenchmen. The indescribable
taint of the unburied dead lingered in my nostrils for hours after.
Forbach consists mainly of one chief street, which is rather narrow. A
horse falling, in a carriage, would block it up. Somehow German horses
do not fall. I watched the constant stream pouring through this narrow
street for half a day, and never observed a block, not even a check,
for more than five minutes at a time. I do not know what sort of a
place Forbach may be in ordinary times—probably a prosperous commercial
town; with me it will ever be associated with semi-starvation and a
narrow escape from sleeping in the gutter. In the house of a man who
had been named to me in Saarbrück I had secured, as it seemed, quarters
of a sort. From these a “Graf” somebody turned me out in order to let
in twelve soldiers. I could not in decency object, seeing that the men
had not been inside a house for eight days, and if I had it would not
have mattered. My aliment for the succeeding twenty-four hours was a
glass of liqueur and half a cigar. I spent the night among straw in
an outhouse, and was thankful that I had not to take a pitch in the
gutter. The soldiers had eaten up everything, drunken up everything,
smoked up everything. The people were half starving; but as they
starved they rejoiced, for they had charged the soldiers war prices.
The commissariat arrangements had hardly yet got into order, but it was
plain that even when that should have been the case, the consumption of
everything available on the part of the troops would continue. Soldiers
on the march are always hungry and thirsty. I wish they had left a
little tobacco for an outsider though; it is easier to starve when
one’s pipe is full.
I was the witness of a little incident in Forbach which tends to
illustrate the Prussian thoroughness that is so great a key to
success. Strolling down to the railway station to inquire as to the
probabilities of a _Militärzug_, I found a divisional general sitting
placidly outside the station entrance, a table by his side and a
bottle of wine on it, which he and the Mayor of Forbach were leisurely
drinking as they smoked their cigars. Now the divisional general of
an English army in the field would have been surrounded by a cordon
of orderlies, and have formed the centre of a glittering staff. It
would not have been permitted to a mortal of common clay to look upon
his glory. This old gentleman—his name I have forgotten—sat drinking
his wine without a solitary orderly in waiting, much less a staff
officer. The privates and corporals of working parties were passing
out and in, clearing the station of French _débris_, and the jolly old
fellow now and again exchanged a word with them as they came within
hail. Presently there was brought unto him a deputation of the bakers
of Forbach, whose attendance he had ordered. Quoth the general to
the bakers—“My men are temporarily short of bread; you must each by
to-morrow morning turn out so many loaves. You will be paid thirty
francs for one hundred loaves, and I shall take no excuse.”
You should have heard the Forbach bakers jabber! The great
“lord-general” was robbing them outright. They would rather give the
bread for nothing. They had wives and children, and rents to pay.
Would his Excellency ruin them? And so on. As they stood in the rain
gesticulating, they presented a curious contrast to the grizzly German,
in his waterproof, calmly smoking and sipping his wine as if he heard
not the din of the terribly fluent bakers. At last they chattered
themselves fairly out of breath, and then the old man turned to them
with a smile, as if he just remembered their presence. “Go away, my
good fellows,” said he, “and hold your tongues. I can get good loaves
in Deutsch-land, three for a franc, and I give no Frenchman any more.”
And the bakers went away in a perfect torrent of “_sacres_,” but for
all that to get their ovens in order to do the behests of the laconic
old chief. There was no trusting to bungling commissaries here—fellows
whom the Duke of Wellington was wont to couple with correspondents in
his anxiety to hang. The general knew that an army must be fed, if it
is to march and to fight, and he personally saw to the purveyance.
The good folks of Forbach had for the most part remained at home to
receive the Prussian troops, but they did not seem any the more for
this to love Prussia. They were French to the backbone, but not French
of the Napoleonic pattern. They made no secret of their readiness to
cry “_Vive la République_” when the time should come; and I may note
that the great majority of the French prisoners to whom I spoke, while
staunch for France, had no fondness for the Emperor of the French,
but openly avowed their preference for a Republic. The Forbach people
gave out as the reason why the French army had without resistance been
retired on Metz, that the troops had manifested a discontent which
made the Emperor fear to trust them in action.
An allusion to French prisoners of war calls to mind one of the basest
calumnies against German humanity that ever malignity invented. It
was stated in French journals that both German soldiers and German
civilians were cruel and abusive to French prisoners. Never was there
a grosser lie. Indeed Germany might be well content to rest her
reputation on the testimony of the prisoners themselves. I have seen
the people at the railway stations tender the wine-can to the prisoners
before the escort. If the escort were served first, I have seen the
soldiers composing it pass the pannikin to their charge before drinking
themselves. I have seen French wounded carried off the field in regular
routine with Germans, and getting their turn of the doctor with
religious exactitude. The people of Saarbrück, when they threw open
their homes, did not care whether they admitted the wearer of a spiked
helmet or of a pair of red breeches. And once I saw a German escort
march a French sergeant by a circuitous route round a village, that he
might not form an object of attention on the part of the village boys.
This was an act of delicate consideration which of itself would refute
the calumnious and unfounded statements to which I have referred, and
which did not a little wound the feelings of German chivalry.
From Forbach the next stage was St. Avold, to reach which on the
afternoon of Thursday the 11th of August involved a walk of some ten
miles in the rain, commenced without breakfast and concluded in the
most utterly blank prospect of anything to eat, or of any place wherein
to sleep. Forbach seemed as full as any town could possibly be, but
Forbach was not a patch on St. Avold. All the staff were there, and
there, too, was half the army. I had casually heard of a dish of
liver down a bye-street, and fondly hoped it would be mine. It was
taken by stouthrief and hamesucken from under my nose by a masterful
German sergeant of Uhlans, who swore by all the deities of the Saxon
Switzerland, from which locality he derived his existence, that he
would send a “kugel” through the man that interfered between him and
the liver. Empty as I was, I was not eager to have the vacuum filled
up by “kugels,” and I let him have it with a reluctant sigh. The food
and locomotion question, by the way, demands a word or two. In those
early days of the war I nourished a pet theory that the best way to
do the work on which I was engaged was to be “at large” in the army
in preference to being attached to any head-quarters, to carry one’s
belongings on his back, and do one’s locomotion on one’s own feet.
Beyond question there is a great charm to a strong healthy man in
pursuing this system. If you get a bed in a house, good and well; if
not, steer for the nearest camp fire, and you are generally sure of
a dip into the kettle and a hunk, savoury if tough, of the mature cow
which you saw sedately walking behind a baggage-cart in the morning.
If you tire, you can jump on the first waggon that passes; if you see
an eminence whence you think there is a view, you can climb it—and
you will not count the toil wasted among such scenery as one may see
among the vine slopes;—if it rains you get wet; but then when it fairs,
and the sun comes out, you get dry again. If there is fighting in the
wind, you need not be farther behind than the troops that come up at
the double; in short, you are your own master, free to come and to go,
without the everlasting incubus of impedimenta and belongings on your
mind. But the plan has disadvantages which experience teaches more than
outweigh the pleasures. The information which reaches an unattached
man is scanty and often inaccurate; a day comes when a gallop is worth
anything, and then you miss a horse, and swear to forego gipsying.
Just at dusk on the 11th I strolled up the market-place of St. Avoid,
opposite to the Post. At an open window, looking down on the busy
throng of his soldiers, sat King Wilhelm. The old man was alone;
his chin was in his hand, and one could read in the abstraction of
his glance that his thoughts were far away. Next morning I saw him
under a different guise. For two hours and more he stood in the
market-place, close to the road that bisects in its midst. By his
side was Von Moltke—gaunt, thin, shaggy, wiry. Close behind stood
Bismarck, seemingly as ready to fight as to make a fool of Benedetti
in diplomacy. A few general officers stood around, but there was no
semblance of a staff, nor anything like a guard or escort. The Father
of his people is a homely man. Interspersed among the generals were
the gamins of St. Avold, staring up with eyes of wonder at “_le Roi
Prussien_.” A private soldier, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a loaf
in his hand, all but floured his Majesty’s elbow, and others stood
around, forming a close circle behind the generals. But if King William
was homely in his immediate surroundings, those who stood by him were
spectators with him of a sight that well might make his cheek flush
with pride and emotion. For during the two hours that the King stood on
this market place there ceased not to stream past him the army of which
he is the chief. Now it was a regiment of white-coated, steel-breasted
cuirassiers that came on stately, the ground shaking under the tramp
of the great horses as the air vibrated to the sound of the mighty
cheer from the deep-chested men. Then a regiment of infantry, three
battalions strong, each with its band playing at its head, the men
marching eight abreast, and already seasoned by the march and the
bivouac, looking fit to do anything and go anywhere. The cheering
of the passing troops was always hearty, but it rose to a shout of
proud joy as the regiments came by with ranks already thinned by the
desperate storm of Spicheren, and when the King with a wave of his
hand saluted them with the cheery, “Morgen, Knappe Jungens!” Hussars,
Uhlans, horse artillery, diversified the dense masses of infantry, and
so thoroughly serviceable did all appear in every respect, that it
would be invidious to comment in particular on the appearance of any.
With all the field-officers the King shook hands and exchanged a few
words, but he seemed best pleased to look into the enthusiastic faces
of the men—his “Kinder”—as they passed. King as he is, he is none the
less the soldier. It amused me greatly to hear him reprove a man for
being out of step, and another for having his zund-nadelgewehr on the
wrong shoulder. No one would have imagined that the upright form and
square shoulders carried the load of seventy-three winters.
It is impossible to imagine an army travelling with greater swiftness,
and leaving fewer traces behind it, than the Prussian army invading
France. The reserve was in Forbach; the army in St. Avold and beyond.
For miles between the two places the road I traversed was as clear as
in the quiet days of peace. The wave of war had passed, and hardly
left a trace behind. The crops were unharmed in the fields on either
side of the road, save in the spots where there had been bivouacs on
the previous night; not a soldier or a mark of warfare was visible.
Between Saarbrück and St. Avold I saw only two dead horses by the
wayside, notwithstanding that some of the waggons had journeyed from
near Berlin. If any men had fallen out footsore they must have been
brought on somehow, for there were no stragglers. The stores were all
close up, and the commissariat now in full working. It was a great
catch for the Prussians to have captured at the Forbach station some
two million thalers worth of French stores, of which a depot had been
formed there.
Our tramp of the 12th was to Marange, a squalid village to the northern
front of Falquemont, near which the King had his head-quarters for
several days. We were pushing on after Steinmetz, knowing something of
the dash and daring of that seasoned old warrior. Everybody was asking
what could have become of the French army, thirty thousand men of
which passed through Marange in headlong retreat the day but one after
the battle of Spicheren. It was noted that there was hardly a foot of
ground between St. Avold and Marange that might not have been held to
advantage against an invader. St. Avold itself stands in the throat
of a gullet. On the Metz side of it the valley opens out into a fine
plain with a large château on a mamelon in its centre, a noble key to a
splendid position, and behind, shutting in the valley from the French
side, swells a great sloping ridge from the summit of which artillery
might have operated with overwhelming advantage. Between Marange and
Bionville another great hog-backed swell, the _beau ideal_ of a battle
position for the resistance of invasion; but it was crowned by Prussian
bivouacs, and the French,—well, when you asked anybody in authority
where they were, he would give a laugh and a little nod, and ask you
for a light for his cigar.
From a hut in Marange to a château in Bazoncourt, a village a little
behind Courcelles, and on the northern side of the little river Nied,
was our experience of the 13th. Here Bazaine had had his head-quarters
for a day or two, when he was sent forward with the 3rd French corps
to attempt the rallying of the fugitives from Spicheren. By this time,
the 13th, we had gained one of the central divisions of Steinmetz’s
army, and that commander himself was expected to occupy rooms for the
night in the château of Bazoncourt, where meanwhile the officers of a
dragoon regiment had located themselves. This château, the property of
a certain Baron de Courtier, was a fine specimen of a French country
house. The reception rooms were fitted up with great splendour in the
Louis Quatorze style. They had been left just as they were occupied
by the family, and the half-finished sketches and dainty needle-work
of the young ladies were lying about just as they had been dropped
when the route came for the retreat to Metz. Upstairs were long
corridors, off which opened any quantity of bed rooms, all left in
trim order, and between the snowy sheets of which dragoon officers,
weary from frequent bivouacs, had stretched their weary frames the
previous night. Bric-à-brac clocks, bijouterie, and all manner of
tasteful nick-nacks adorned the pretty chambers; in one hung a watch,
which its owner had left behind in his or her hurry. The corridors were
hung with old family pictures, portraits of men in armour, gaunt and
sinewy with the training that won them renown in the tournament—with
chevaliers with elaborately curled hair hanging over their shoulders,
ruffles and frills of Valenciennes lace, court swords, and jewelled
snuff-boxes. And the gallery of female portraits was equally rich,
from the straight-robed lady of the old regime to the luscious dame,
all powder and patches, of Louis the Great, and the sprightly damsel
of the Regency. The library door stood open, and a volume of Thomas
Carlyle’s “Life of Cromwell” lay open side by side with a French
translation of one of James’s novels. I wrote a letter at a desk at
a window in the corridor, in the interior of which I found a family
album, a bundle of maps and guide-books—the relics of a family tour
through Switzerland,—and a quantity of exercises in English, presumably
by the young ladies, corrected by the pencil of the governess. At the
rear of the château was a beautiful garden, adorned with flowering
annuals, trailing sprays of fuchsias, and greener grass than I had
hitherto ever seen in France; and in pretty retreats were rustic seats
and fantastic tables.
When the Baron and his family ran away—a very foolish thing for them
to do by the way, for they would have received no annoyance—they had
the civility to leave behind them a neat assortment of the ugliest
old cook-women it has ever been my lot to see, who did their best to
provide for the wants of all comers. The Baron owned all the fertile
and warm vineyards that slope upward from the village, and he housed
the vintages underneath his château and the esplanade behind it. I
found that the quartermaster of the dragoons had administered to the
keys of the cellars, from the stores of which he doled forth bottles on
properly vouched application. To my solicitation he replied by a bottle
of white wine and a bottle of red wine, along with which my companion
and myself retired to a shady arbour, and cordially drank the health of
the Baron and all his house. He could not have been a bad man, his wine
was so good.
At Bazoncourt were within twelve miles of Metz. The 12th Regiment of
Dragoons had scouted the same morning to within sight of Forts St.
Julien and Queleu, and had left videttes to observe the doings in the
vicinity. The universal belief was that the French were in position to
defend the passage of the Moselle between Metz and Pont-à-Mousson. The
centre of their position was set down as being somewhere about Noveant,
nearly midway between Pont-à-Mousson and Metz. Steinmetz on the right,
Prince Frederick Charles was in the centre, and his head-quarters on
the 13th were at Nomeny, considerably to the south of us. The Crown
Prince, pushing on from Wörth, was on the extreme left, and rather in
the rear, heading right on Nancy. It was expected that there would be
a gradual concentration of the widely opened-out front, consequent
upon exact knowledge of the French dispositions, and of the locality
in which they might have made up their mind to offer battle. The
soldiers of Steinmetz were thoroughly confident of victory. They had
respected—and perhaps half feared—the French till they tested their
calibre on the heights of Spicheren. Since then they made somewhat
light of them; and as they penetrated farther and farther into the
French territory, asked each other with raised eyebrows, whether a
French host could have penetrated thus far into Rhineland without
fertilizing the vineyards with its blood.
We missed seeing the battle of Courcelles, baulked by that
over-eagerness which so often defeats itself. In the absence of good
staff information, and judging solely, therefore, from regimental
gossip, which it may be taken as an axiom is never reliable, we came
to the conclusion that the impending battle must be fought more to
the south. Early on the morning of the 14th—oh, that we had been
less impatient!—my companion and myself, having determined to make
towards the centre of the army of advance, quitted Bazoncourt in a
south-westerly direction, and walked across the front, keeping at first
as close as possible in the track of a party of dragoons, which the
day before had marched from Bazoncourt toward Nomeny. Guided only by
a rough chart, and destitute of a compass, we found ourselves in what
may be called the debateable land between the German advance and the
Moselle, to the south of Metz. So long as we were in the track of the
dragoons we passed through the frequent villages without molestation,
and, indeed, experienced a certain grumpy civility; but when we got
into the terra incognita beyond, black looks everywhere met us from the
French villagers. Towards midday, getting hungry, we asked a patriarch
in a village through which we passed if he could put us in the way of
getting any food. Rather sulkily he asked us in, and gave us some sour
bread and hard-boiled eggs. As we were consuming this fare he left us,
and only returned in order to obtain payment. When we recrossed his
threshold we found waiting for us what I suppose was the able-bodied
adult population of the village, consisting of about half-a-dozen young
men and two hobbedehoys. One of them, acting as spokesman, inquired our
business, muttering charges of our being Prussians and spies. I tried
hard to explain to them that we were in the extremest sense of the word
non-combatants, showing them a tiny penknife as the most lethal weapon
I carried; but they continued to crowd around us threateningly, and
I thought for sure every minute they would close. We edged towards a
wall, so as to have them only on one side, and then my companion giving
the word suddenly altered his tone, and peremptorily ordered them to
clear the road. One hulking fellow would not give back, whereupon my
friend let fly a straight right-hander from the shoulder that knocked
the Frenchman backward into his patrimonial dunghill. The thoroughness
and rapidity of the act seemed to dumbfounder his comrades, and we were
out of the village before they recovered themselves.
Reaching the village of St. Jure we once more fell in with the spiked
helmets, and remained there for the night. In the still night watches
we heard the distant din of the artillery fire with which the battle of
Courcelles was concluded, and in the morning came scrappy tidings of
the bloody victory.
Although I was not a spectator of the battle of Courcelles (or Borny,
as the French and indeed some of the Germans call it), I may give a
brief sketch of the character of the operations. The German leaders
had reason for believing, what we afterwards know was the case, that
Bazaine, who had got the command of the French “Army of the Rhine,”
was proceeding to attempt the withdrawal of his army from Metz, with
intent to retire upon Châlons and form a defensive junction with
MacMahon. Weighing him in their own scales, it seemed clear that if he
were to put this design into practice with energy and promptitude, he
must gain such a start as would frustrate the intended strategetical
movement on the part of Prince Frederick of swinging round by the
south on the ground beyond the Moselle, and blocking Bazaine’s paths
of retreat. This was to be baulked at any cost, and the sluggishness
of the French general gave Steinmetz an opportunity of which he was
not slow to avail himself. There seems no reason to doubt that Bazaine
might have marched clean away, if he had but realised the urgency of
the necessity, without troubling himself about a strong rear-guard,
when he had such a fortress as Metz to cover his retreat. In truth,
Bazaine does not seem to have left the corps of Decaën, Ladmirault, and
Frossard in the camps where Steinmetz found them, out of any solicitude
for the safety of his rear, but simply because he had let his front
get clogged in the passage of the Moselle, and was not impressed with
the necessity of clearing his feet and getting away quickly from what
afterwards proved his prison-house. The fact that on the 14th he fought
when he need not, and indeed ought not, is strong proof that he did not
realise his position. Had he done so, it would appear that his policy
was, instead of trying to hold the line by Nouilly, Montoy, Colombey,
and Mercy le Haut, to get his three corps back under the shelter of
the forts of Metz, bustle them over the river and set them to keep the
passage of the stream on the south of Metz. Steinmetz could have taken
nothing by boring that bullet-head of his against Fort St. Julien or
Fort Queleu. His direct march would have been arrested by the stone and
iron in his path, and he must have diverged either north or south. The
northern route would have been too circuitous, and have disconnected
him too far from Prince Frederick Charles; if he had chosen the
southward, he would have had to fight for the crossing with Bazaine’s
rear-guard, while the mass of the army of the latter, escaping the
too tardy grapple of Prince Frederick Charles, would have been far
on the road toward Macmahon. But everything seemed to work together
for the advantage of the German arms. The three rearward French corps
Steinmetz found in their camps; he asked them to give them battle
that so he might gain time for Prince Frederick Charles, and with
chivalrously blind simplicity they complied. They occupied the line of
villages I have named, covering Metz to the eastward, when Steinmetz’s
reconnaissance beat up their quarters. The position, with which I had
occasion afterwards to become familiar, presents many advantageous
features, but is faulty in a military sense by reason of the abundance
of cover for an approaching enemy, and of the number of excellent
roads at his service for bringing up his forces in parallel columns.
The French front and flanks were studiedly covered with numerous
rifle-pits and trenches. Steinmetz’s attack did not begin till shortly
before four o’clock in the afternoon. It was initiated by the 1st
division (Bentheim) belonging to the 1st Army Corps, which had joined
Steinmetz since Spicheren; and by the 26th brigade (von der Goltz) of
Glümer’s division (the 13th) belonging to the 7th Army Corps. There
were strong supports belonging to the 1st and 7th corps behind, about
Pange, Domangeville, and Frontigny. The 26th brigade began the attack
on Colombey, while Bentheim’s men farther to the north pressed up the
Saarbrück-Metz chaussée, deploying when at the hamlet of St. Agnan on
the vineyards toward Flanville against Montoy and the ravine of La
Planchette. The French were so strong on the slopes and in the woods
about their position that the German infantry could make no headway,
and lost heavily, experiencing, too, now for the first time a foretaste
of the idiosyncracies of French fortress guns. Infantry supports came
up, but the Colombey-Montoy position was defended with great obstinacy
and could not be forced. After the infantry had been engaged without
effect for some hours, the horse artillery were galloped up and came
into action on the plateau near Noisseville, close to the brewery,
with which the siege of Metz made us so familiar, and looking down
upon Montoy from the north-east. There were no fewer than fourteen
batteries in position between Noisseville and Flanville, and before
the fire from eighty-four cannon the French began to break and give
ground. Then the infantry of Bentheim and von der Goltz took advantage
of the opportunity, but encountered a warm resistance, and had to fight
for every fragment of ground they gained, losing, of course, very
heavily. At seven o’clock further supports came up; Pritzelwitz with
his fresh 2nd division eager to back up his countrymen of Bentheim’s
division, and Kamecke with his 14th division, weakened already by the
fight of Spicheren, but ready as it had been then to be in the thick of
it. Thus the 1st and 7th corps were complete, and drove the French in
toward Borny, Vantoux, and Mey. The French right at Mercy le Haut was
crushed through an instrumentality that owed its presence to the fact
that artillery fire makes a noise. Had air-guns been in use instead or
fulminating powder, von Wrangel, marching his 18th division leisurely
toward the Moselle, in the southern rear of the battle-field, would
not have heard the cannon thunder. His division, forming part of the
9th Army Corps (Manstein), had only crossed the frontier a day or
two before, and it belonged to the army of Prince Frederick Charles.
But the cannon thunder intuitively turned Wrangel to the right, and
about seven o’clock he turned up at Mercy le Haut, and set about
throwing back the French right wing. Just before dark the French of
Ladmirault’s corps made a strong rally, attacking Wrangel vigorously
by Grigy, while they staggered Bentheim on the north and even made him
temporarily give ground in the direction of Noisseville and Servigny.
But the attempt only caused further bloodshed. The Germans braced
themselves up, fresh supports came, and after a fight which lasted long
after dark, the proximity of the forts alone compelled the Germans to
desist from driving the French farther. As it was, perhaps they came
too close to the inanimate defences. There are German graves of the
14th August nearer to Queleu and les Bottes than prudence would seem to
warrant; but men flushed with victory are not always wise. The German
loss was between 2000 and 3000, and over 4000 wounded French prisoners
were taken.
Soon after leaving St. Jure in the morning, we encountered a large
body of German troops in full advance toward the Moselle. Accompanying
it was the head-quarter staff of General von Alvensleben, from some
members of which we learned that the Moselle bank was undefended by
the French, and that the Third Army Corps, of which von Alvensleben
had the command, was marching straight on Pagny to pontoon the stream
near that point, and, crossing, strive to catch up with the left flank
of Bazaine, who had that day quitted Metz on his march towards Verdun.
Receiving permission to accompany the advance, we therefore went on to
a village called Seligny, where the staff located itself in a handsome
château with charming grounds surrounding it, and the troops bivouacked
in the neighbourhood. At first it seemed as if the halt was but for
a few hours during the heat of the day, and that the march would be
resumed in the afternoon; but other troops continued to arrive, and
then we were given to understand that there was to be a halt in Seligny
for the night. We knew that troops had already crossed the Moselle
at Pont-à-Mousson, which is about midway between Metz and Nancy, and
the idea of being kept pottering behind was very disagreeable. So we
parted company from General von Alvensleben and his staff, and made
rapid tracks for Pont-à-Mousson. In an intermediate valley we passed
through a large bivouac, chiefly of artillery and medical staff. Then
we climbed a long vineclad ascent, and on reaching its summit there
lay stretched at our feet the beautiful valley of the Moselle, with
the broad stream in its bosom, and the white chateaux on the farther
slope, glancing brightly from the rich green ground of the vineyards.
On the left the grim old ruin of the Castle of Mousson frowned from the
top of its precipitous rock—a gaunt skeleton of ancient war, looking
down upon modern war. Under its shelter lay the town of Pont-à-Mousson,
developing itself from the distance where we stood chiefly in church
spires and barrack roofs, and along the valley directly below us
ran the broad chaussée from Metz to Nancy. We found Pont-à-Mousson
crammed with German soldiers. It occupies both sides of the river,
connected by the quaint old bridge, which in ancient times was one
of the keys by which France was wont to unlock the door that opened
up the passage through Lorraine into Germany. Over the river and we
were in France proper—no longer in German Lorraine, which every true
Frenchman considers but a bastard Frankland. The triangular Place we
found packed full of troops of all arms. There runs round it a piazza,
such as we may see in Covent Garden, and this piazza was bedded with
straw, and formed one vast couch for I cannot tell how many soldiers.
Prince Frederick Carl had been in Pont-à-Mousson the night before,
but had already gone forward. The Pont-à-Mousson people were very
sombre, yet they kept their shops open and did their best to reap a
good harvest, accepting German money as if it had been their currency
from time immemorial. The first intimation they had that things were
not prospering with France had been in the shape of a vast train of
hospital-carts laden with wounded, which passed through the town on
the 11th. The poor wounded were in a fearful state, many of them
were weeping, and all utterly despondent and prostrated. Next day a
detachment of about forty Prussian Uhlans had galloped into the valley
and begun to tear up the railway between Metz and Nancy, and to cut the
telegraph. An official wired their presence to Metz, and brought a
squadron of the Chasseurs d’Afrique on their grey Arab stallions down
from Metz at the gallop. They did the distance—about fifteen miles—at
hunting pace, surrounded the Uhlans while engrossed at their work, and
potted the lot with neatness and dexterity, being on their way back to
Metz with their prisoners in less than half an hour. This was a very
clever little exploit. Next day the Prussians had come in force and
occupied the bridge, encountering no opposition. Since then the stream
of arrivals had been constant. The little specimen which we experienced
of the malevolence of the French civilians had, it appeared, been by
no means isolated. We heard of a patrol, consisting of three men and
a sergeant, who had been set upon by the inhabitants of a village on
the French side of the Moselle, armed with pitchforks, and headed
by the _curé_. They were all killed. The murderers were taken by
another patrol, brought into Pont-à-Mousson, tried by a drum-head
court-martial, and were lying under sentence of death. Another case was
reported where two dragoons were poisoned in the quarters which they
occupied in an outlying village.
Late the same afternoon, the 15th, my companion and myself quitted
Pont-à-Mousson, and took the line of advance so well marked by a
continuous stream of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and military
train. We had been unable to obtain definite information as to the
proposed scheme of action. But Frederick Charles himself, that
hot-blooded man of war, had hours ago galloped out of the market-place
of Pont-à-Mousson; and his was always a good line to follow; for sure
as where the carcass is there the vultures are gathered together, so
wherever there is the smell of powder burnt in wrath the Red Prince
is not far off. When we reached the top of the heights fringing the
western side of the valley of the Moselle, we found that the line of
advance taken was not by the straight road that leads by Commercy to
Bar-le-Duc, at which point the Marne comes nearest to the Moselle, but
that it slanted away in a north-westerly direction in the direction,
as it seemed, of Verdun, traversing a country consisting of alternate
abrupt but inconsiderable elevations and narrow but not very deep
valleys. As to the reason for this seeming detour from the straight
clutch at the throat of Paris, it became obvious by-and-by. We passed
several small villages, around which were great bivouacs; and about
nine o’clock in the evening we reached the moderate-sized but very
poverty-stricken town of Thiaucourt. It was teeming with troops.
Entering a wine-shop close to a bridge at the end of the town nearest
Pont-à-Mousson, we made some inquiries of the officers we found there
as to the distance which the advance was ahead, and as to what was
known of the French movements. They were fresh arrivals, and could tell
us nothing except that they believed we must be close to the limit of
the advance, for that the head-quarters of the leading division of the
10th Corps were in the town. As we were both fair walkers and the night
was beautiful, and as Thiaucourt did not seem to offer many inducements
in the way of accommodation, we determined to cover another five miles
to the front, if we could get so far, before seeking the neighbourhood
of a friendly camp-fire. So we started merrily up the crowded, narrow,
and steep street of Thiaucourt. Not far from the top we came upon a
few hand ambulances on which wounded men lay stretched. This indicated
fighting no great distance off, for the blood on their bandages was
still moist and fresh. Although we heard no firing, we made sure a
night attack was in progress somewhere, and, by pressing on, that we
should be able to see something of it. Just as we got to the top we
passed a group of officers in earnest conversation, several of whom
wore the provost-marshal or field-gendarmerie uniform. One of these
abruptly and loudly challenged us, and demanded to know who we were. In
reply to our explanations he only waxed wroth.
“Correspondents!” roared the angry man, “donner wetter, correspondents
indeed! We want no correspondents here. Not a step farther do you go,
and if I can do anything you will be sent back at once.”
The man was too angry to be remonstrated with. Something before our
rencontre with him had evidently disturbed his equanimity, and we were
getting the benefit of his being out of temper. He confiscated our
papers remorselessly, and as good as told us to go to the devil—at
all events till the morning. Considerably chap-fallen, we were slowly
retracing our steps, with the intention of finding quarters somewhere,
when we were again abruptly challenged by a still angrier man than
the first. I fancy he had been sent after us by challenger No. 1.
Anyhow, he did not wait for any explanation. We were coming from the
direction of the French, and so—the sentence was concluded by a word of
command to a party which was following, and we heard the nasty click
of the bayonets as they were fixed and sent home in the socket. Our
escort brought us to a large house which was the mairie of the town,
and taking us upstairs left us in the dark in a huge room, with a
sentry standing over us. It seemed as if our apprehension had excited
some interest, for officers often came to the door and peered in upon
us through the gloom, but not one brought us tidings of release.
Presently there came a trampling of feet on the staircase, officers
rushed into the room with lights in advance of some stretchers, on
which were wounded men, and we were informed that we were to be
removed. We had hoped in our simplicity that we were pretty nearly in
as bad case as might be, but we were to find out how rash was this
conclusion. We were hurried across a passage, a door was opened, and
we were thrust into a dark room, the floor of which was littered by
prostrate Frenchmen. They were all civilians, who had been arrested
on suspicion of being spies. The French idiosyncrasy does not develop
itself in the direction of free ventilation, and our companions were
singularly odoriferous, even for Frenchmen of the lower orders; it may
be imagined, therefore, how abominably the place stank. We remonstrated
energetically against being herded with spies, but the only indulgence
we could obtain was in the shape of two chairs, whereas our companions
had to sit on the floor,—at least I judged so, for it was too dark to
see them. The room we were in was the Salle de Justice, and the table
of the right worshipful mayor, and another one, which, I presume,
was used by the Mr. Oke of Thiaucourt, stood on a dais inside a low
railing. We took possession of this little platform, got a window open,
sat down opposite to each other in our chairs, and simultaneously
burst into a roar of laughter at the whimsicality of our position.
But laughing, although pleasant exercise for the facial muscles, is
not filling, viewed as a supper dish, and we had not eaten since
midday. There was no prospect of release, and as little of anything
to eat, so the next best thing was to sleep. My companion took the
two chairs. I threw my knapsack on the boards as a pillow, pulled the
baize covers off the tables, spread one of them below me, dragged the
other over me, and we went to sleep. About midnight we were awakened
and brought forth from our den. For my part I wished they had left us
alone till morning, for the bitterness of death was past, and I was
very comfortable between the mayor’s table-covers. We were liberated,
told to find quarters for the night if we could—the gendarme grinned a
saturnine grin as he told us this—and instructed to call for our papers
in the morning, when we should learn what had been determined anent
us. At this untoward crisis an ancient Frenchman presented himself,
and in reply to our question said he could accommodate us with a bed.
I am bound to say that he fulfilled his promise. He did more. He gave
us a bottle of vinegar which he called wine. His habitation was a
single large room, with three or four mattresses strewed about the
floor miscellaneously. On one of them I threw myself, my companion took
another, and the old Frenchman set up a melodious snore on a third.
In about an hour I awoke. Two cats were on my chest. I was positively
overrun with vermin. On occasion I can manage to retain composure under
the assaults of the small, lively, and saltatory species of animalculæ,
but when it comes to an army of miscreants bearing the conventional
name in England of a great ducal family, I am compelled to draw the
line; so I got up and strolled out into the bright fresh dawn. Troops
had been streaming through Thiaucourt all night, and they still came
as if there were no end to them.
Early in the morning our friend the chief of the gendarmes returned
us our “legitimations,” explaining that they were good only for
Stülpnagel’s division, not for the whole army of Prince Frederick
Charles, and enjoining us strictly to return with all speed to
Pont-à-Mousson, adding the cheerful observation that if he came across
us again he would have us sent over the frontier under escort. We did
indeed return to Pont-à-Mousson but having procured more comprehensive
“legitimations” started off with all speed for Gorze.
In Gorze on Tuesday night nobody thought of bed. The hale were hurrying
to the front; the doctors, the medical volunteers, and the sisters
of mercy were tending the wounded everywhere. Every room was full,
straw was shaken down in the streets by the sides of the houses, and
wounded laid upon it. A huge convent, like one of those mills you see
in Lancashire and Yorkshire, was packed full to its uttermost recess;
from every window streamed a blaze of light. The whole town had a
weird, lurid aspect. Candles were being burnt on the window-sills to
light the troops on to the battle-field and the wounded off it; a babel
of tongues raged in its narrow streets; it was impossible to avoid the
feeling of nervousness such as one experiences when the air is charged
with electricity just before a thunder-storm.
My companion and myself devoted ourselves to tend the wounded in one
wing of a large hotel. They lay much as they had been brought in;
their wounds had been bandaged in the field, and their time had not
yet come for a second visit from the doctor. Three lay stretched on a
billiard-table; the blood accumulated in the bed of the table till it
began to ooze through the boards and drip on to the floor. Of nine in
one small room, to whom we last gave water at midnight, three were dead
by five in the morning. We left the poor fellows at six; two sisters of
mercy had undertaken them by that time.
A great battle had been fought, perhaps the most stubborn fight of
all this bloody campaign. Of 80,000 Germans engaged 18,000 were _hors
de combat_, a proportion unequalled in modern European warfare. And
it had been scarcely a victory for the German armies; it had been
only not a defeat and a contribution toward the victory which it
was hoped would follow. Vionville was no battle the plan of which
was sedulously devised beforehand; there was no making of skilful
dispositions with a keen eye to contingencies. It was simply a furious
fight into which regiments, brigades, and divisions precipitated
themselves as they came up, sure that they could not do wrong if they
could but find an enemy and fasten upon him. Nor was an enemy hard to
find or easy to cope with. You will not find a German who fought at
Vionville but will frankly acknowledge that. He owns to you, with a
shudder of recollection, how even was the balance for hours, and how
his countrymen thought not of turning it in their favour, but would
have been glad of the assurance that the beam would not kick the
other way. In so far as Vionville was decided at all, it decided the
relative staying power of French and German soldiers. There was no
question about the fighting, there was not a hair’s breadth to choose
between them there; but who could fight the longer, that was what
Vionville tested. And Vionville, like Waterloo, gave men the belief
that the side which did not lose could fight for ever if need were.
If further proof were wanting that Bazaine had no comprehension how
gravely his situation was compromised, it is to be found in the fact
that he could not have scouted the ravine of Gorze or the region to
the south of it. If he had done so on the 15th he would have found
it swarming with the ever-vigilant cavalry of Rheinbaben’s division,
which actually on the night of the 15th had indeed as good as turned
his front, for it bivouacked at Xonville, some distance on the
south-west of Mars la Tour. In utter blindness Bazaine blundered out
of Metz in the course of the 15th, and composedly halted for the night
when he had got about nine miles on his road. It becomes necessary
to give a brief topographical sketch of the locality to aid in the
understanding of the events of the next three days. The terrain to
the west of Metz is rolling, broken in places with ravines, studded
with forests, interspersed with open fields, numerous villages,
and frequent farm-houses. It is intersected by three roads leading
westward. Of these the most northerly quits Metz by Woippy, and strikes
away by St. Privat la Montagne and St. Marie au Chênes to Brie and
the valley of the Meuse. The central and southern roads are one as
far as the village of Gravelotte, where the former one goes away in a
north-westerly direction to Conflans and Estain. The most southerly of
the three goes on due west toward Verdun, threading on it successively
the villages of Rezonville, Vionville, and Mars la Tour. This is the
most direct road to Verdun, but there is no want of cross-roads to
facilitate access thereto by the others, and the way by the central
road is little less direct than that by the southern. Before reaching
Gravelotte the conjunct chaussée, after coming out of the valley of the
Moselle by Longeau and Roserieulles, crosses the table-land surface of
a rounded ridge, known as the plateau of St. Hubert, and turning sharp
at the Point du Jour, plunges down into an abrupt and narrow ravine
with closely-wooded banks, and in whose bed runs the little stream of
the Mance. This ravine is prolonged less markedly further north, and
may be said to partition off the plateau of St. Hubert from that of
Gravelotte. The latter is a model battle-plain of the old pattern, when
it was a large army that had a frontage of a mile and a half. From the
brink of the ravine it rolls backward in undulating downs at least as
far as Mars-la-Tour, bare of trees or obstructions right and left of
the chaussée, which runs along its centre, for a breadth varying from
two miles to a mile and a half. It is flanked on the north by scattered
patches of forest, on the south by a continuous forest under various
names, which clothes the rugged slopes of the ravine of Gorze, and
crops up upon the plain, in places encroaching not a little distance on
the plateau. Reckoning from Metz, the first forest bears the name of
the Bois de Vaux. It clothes the Moselle-ward slopes of the plateau of
St. Hubert, and terminates in the ravine of Gravelotte. On the opposite
side of this ravine begins the Bois des Ognons, which intrudes on to
the plateau to the south and south-west of Gravelotte, and stretches
westerly to a little stream that comes down into the ravine of Gorze
nearly south of Rezonville. Farther westward on the slope is the
Bois de Vionville, and north of it, in the direction of Rezonville,
the Bois de St. Arnould. On the plain to the south of the chaussée,
between Rezonville and Vionville, is the hamlet of Flavigny; farther
west, and also south of the chaussée, are the villages of Tronville
and Puxieux. Northward of Vionville, in the triangle between the
central and southern chaussées, are the villages of Bruville and St.
Marcel. Farther north still, on the central chaussée, is the village of
Doncourt.
Bazaine on the 15th had marched by both the central and the southern
chaussées. For the night the corps of Le Bœuf, of Ladmirault, and of
the Imperial Guards had their camps, the first on the central chaussée
about Jarny, the second in Doncourt, and the third in St. Marcel. The
corps of Canrobert and of Frossard, taking the southern road, had
halted in Rezonville, Vionville, Flavigny, and Tronville, with advanced
guards westward as far as Mars-la-Tour.
After all his efforts, as it seems, the French had the heels of Prince
Frederick Charles. It appears certain that the German leaders had made
their calculations on the basis of a battle to take place on the 17th,
and there were indications that such was expected to be joined farther
to the westward than the terrain on which the battles of Vionville
and Gravelotte were fought. Why, else, had the 19th Division, the
first over the Moselle been sent on the 15th so far away due west as
Thiaucourt, seeing that, in the actual event, they had to sweep round
on the enemy with a circuit surely unnecessarily large? Of the rest
of the army nothing had crossed the Moselle on the night of the 15th
save the 3rd Army Corps. Had I but been patient, and not mistaken
Alvensleben’s halt at Seligny for a night bivouac, I should have been
in the front of the fray. For at nightfall Stülpnagel had put his
division (the 6th) in motion, had crossed the Moselle, and by three in
the morning stacked arms again with his advance guard at Onville on
the south of Gorze. Note, that he also was heading due west, as if to
march farther in that direction before the time should come for him to
swing round on the enemy. Buddenbrock’s 5th Division, with the Duke
of Mecklenburg-Schwerin’s 6th Cavalry Division, the force destined to
open the ball on the 16th, had not crossed the Moselle till the early
morning of that day.
The German cavalry never sleep. Probing about the front and flanks of
the advance, the horsemen, under cover of the night, had discovered
where Bazaine’s left flank lay in fancied security about the terrain
villages, and the information went to the rear, we may depend, with all
the speed that zealous men and stout horses could compass. Alvensleben
got the tidings first, and by 5 o’clock Buddenbrock was over the
Moselle and hurrying toward Vionville by the Gorze road. Stülpnagel,
too, had his bearings given him, and he also was heading now northward.
But they were not to draw the first blood. “Boots and saddles” had
sounded early that morning in Rheinbaben’s cavalry bivouac in Xonville,
and his squadrons riding northward had found the French outposts in
Mars-la-Tour, and had engaged in a skirmish with them. What he saw
there sufficed to convince him that time was precious. He sent word
to Alvensleben of the urgency, and taking up his position to block
the road while he could, held himself at Alvensleben’s orders. There
were other cavalry men already on the field by 8 o’clock. The Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin had trotted his division forward, and was already
driving in the French foreposts from the wooded alleys of the Bois de
Vionville when Buddenbrock climbed on to the plateau at nine and saw
Flavigny and the enemy before him. But he was yet on the French left,
even when he reached Tronville, and his place was on the chaussée to
block the French from utilising it. His artillery came into action
on the brow of a swell at Tronville, while the infantry got into
formation with their faces now looking toward Metz. Then Alvensleben
bade them go at the villages, and they went. What sort of fighting
had been done before Flavigny and Vionville were carried, was only
to be realised by those who saw the vicinity before the corpses were
buried. One uses weak words when he writes that the potato gardens of
Flanville were strewed with French and German dead. There were places
where the corpses were piled one upon another till the earth could
not be discerned for the number of her children that cumbered her
bosom there in death. But carried at length were the villages, and now
for the moment there was the strange spectacle of a single weakened
division of Germans standing up alone on the plain against the whole
French array. But not for long. The reserve artillery of the 3rd Corps
rattled up from the Gorze ravine, and taking ground on the south-east
of Flavigny, began pounding into Rezonville. Then trusty Stülpnagel
made his proximity known, as his men, breasting the steep leading up
from Gorze into the wood of Vionville, found enemies in there, and
essayed to drive them out by the fire of the needle-guns. It was the
wood of Spicheren over again. The French in Rezonville had awoke, and
sent southward in the Bois a strong body of infantry, who occupied a
position both commanding and important; commanding in that it was one
of the chief keys to the plateau out of the ravine of Gorze, specially
important in so far as that while it was held Buddenbrock was isolated
and cut off from all supports, unless by a circuitous route. Stülpnagel
had to leave right many a good man on the slope on the narrow forest
road and in the scrub before he had tumbled the Frenchmen first out of
the wood of Vionville, and then out of the wood of St. Arnould, and was
free to place himself with his right flank with its back on the latter,
his left touching and aligning with Buddenbrock’s right in Flavigny.
Stülpnagel had picked up by the way and brought on with him two errant
battalions of the 10th Corps, under the command of Colonel Lyncker,
which at a later period of the fight made themselves not a little
useful.
It was neither a very brilliant position nor a very brilliant prospect.
Here stood a single Army Corps, slantingly athwart the plain, its right
clinging to the wood of St. Arnould, its left away in a north-easterly
direction, grappled upon Vionville as on a sheet anchor; for was not
Vionville the foothold it had achieved on the great Verdun chaussée?
Against this left, clung to so limpetlike, and against the whole
attenuated line aslant of the plain, the French projected themselves
with excessive fury over and over again. The hours passed, and still
there came no assistance. Vionville had been carried before eleven,
and now it was past one. It had been found necessary to interpose the
cavalry as a buffer between the French and the exhausted infantry
men. Rheinbaben, if there were terrible odds before him, saw also
before him the sight so dear to a cavalry soldier, a noble stretch of
charging ground. He was not slow to make the most of it. Again and
again his horsemen dashed themselves against the French masses. Once
they galloped so far that men said afterwards they had got to sabring
the mitrailleuse gunners that plied their work on the chaussée before
Rezonville. It was the sight of the war to have seen those cavalry
charges on the day of Vionville—work of which this I now write of was
but a mere episode, gallant and useful as it was. Necessity has no
law, but the general must be in sore case indeed who is forced to dash
cavalry again and again into the faces of serried files of infantry men
handling a weapon like the chassepot. Who shall wonder that when the
drafts were sent for to fill up the gaps in Rheinbaben’s squadrons,
a thrill ran through the _landleute_ of the districts whence it is
recruited, when the footing up of the requisition came to be known. But
minutes were precious, and the devoted horsemen threw their lives away
to gain them.
The most sustained and furious French attack that had yet been made,
had been withstood with growing difficulty shortly before two o’clock,
when Alvensleben became cognisant of a new and fearfully ominous
complication. There were symptoms that he was about to be outflanked
on his left. Hitherto he had been fighting only the corps of Canrobert
and Frossard. But now came intelligence that the Imperial Guards were
stirring in their bivouac in St. Marcel, and that the corps of Le Bœuf
and Ladmirault were already on the heights of Druville, having marched
southward from their encampments on the central chaussée about Jarny
and Doncourt. Had they come thundering down on his left Alvensleben
must have felt that all was over. The greater danger had to be met at
the risk of the less. Hard as the struggle had been to maintain the
continuity of the original line, it was necessary now to attenuate
it still more. Buddenbrock was ordered to take ground farther to the
north, and whereas till now his left flank had been on Vionville, it
was now to hold his left flank, while with his right he did what he
might to stay the avalanche threatening from the northward. It was
well for him that at this pinch supports, fresh if scanty, came to
his hand. The mass of the leading division of the 10th Corps, the
19th (Schwarzkoppen), marching from Thiaucourt in the early morning,
had its direction given it on St. Hilaire, far away to the west of
Mars-la-Tour. But one brigade of it, the 37th (Leymann), diminished to
four battalions by the abstraction of Lyncker’s two battalions which
Stülpnagel had already whipped up as he came to the battle-field, had
fortunately a less circuitous route chalked out for it. Its point was
Chambley, to act in support of Rheinbaben, and it came very opportunely
to Buddenbrock’s hand in the emergency in which he now found himself.
Into the forest north of Vionville he had already plunged the 24th
Regiment, and now he was able to strengthen this slender force with
Leymann’s battalions. The forest fighting was desperate and long, but
the Germans managed to hold their ground till more assistance came
in the shape, first of the reserve artillery of the 10th Corps which
went into action at once, followed about four o’clock by the bulk of
Schwarzkoffen’s division. Soon after came hurrying up the 20th Division
(Kraatz-Koschlau) which had followed the 19th from Pont-à-Mousson
to Thiaucourt, but instead of making the circuit by St. Hilaire had
struck straight from Thiaucourt to the battle-field by Chambley.
These reinforcements enabled head to be made against the attacks from
the north, and baulked for the time Le Bœuf’s flanking movement.
Kraatz-Koschlau could even spare some three battalions to strengthen
Stülpnagel, who was staunchly holding his own on the right flank.
But to follow the incidents of the northern attack I have somewhat
anticipated the events about what was now the German centre, the
vicinity of the great southern chaussée. Of its weakness in infantry
the French took ready advantage. An old Roman road runs nearly parallel
to the chaussée some distance northward of it, and utilising it the
French had got into position near it about midway between St. Marcel
and Vionville, a large force of artillery. These batteries were doubly
hurtful. They enfiladed the struggling infantrymen in the wood to the
west, trying to stay the progress of Le Bœuf, and they fired southwards
upon the German batteries by Vionville, which were embarrassed in
replying to them because of the urgency of the requirement for
their firing eastward toward Rezonville to keep in check the French
infantry which was threatening the German centre. Becoming audacious
in discernment of the double advantage of their position, the French
got up more guns to the southward of those near the Roman road, till
at length there was a convex formation of batteries stretching down
on to the grassy swell on the north-west of Rezonville. By what
agency soever, it behoved Alvensleben to interfere with the ruinous
practice these were making on his centre, and at least to check their
progress, for in very truth, backed and flanked by infantry, they were
echeloning an advance right into his centre, making as if to cut him in
two. He had no infantry wherewith to arrest this movement, so ominous
of evil: his artillery was overmatched. There was nothing for it but
to save his continuity at the cost of his cavalry. While the horsemen
were sacrificing themselves, supports might come up to strengthen the
centre; at all events time would be gained, and time in such a strait
was everything. His Nolan galloped to Bredow, the commander of the 12th
Cavalry Brigade, and bade that officer to charge the batteries in his
front. Our own Light Brigade accepted not more cheerfully a kindred
task than did Bredow’s dashing horsemen. Surely it is beseeming to
name the regiments to whom fell this forlorn hope of cavalry service.
They were the 7th Cuirassiers, the 16th Uhlans, the 13th Dragoons. Up
the gentle slope galloped gaily on Bredow’s devoted kinder, the French
batteries belching death into their faces, the French infantry, from
the intervals between the guns and the batteries, pouring into them a
hail-storm of chassepot bullets. Full many were the graves that had to
be dug on that grassy slope afterwards; but the brigade, what of it
was left, was among the guns and sabring the artillerymen before the
latter, standing up to their work to the last, had time to seek safety
in flight. Aye, and they were not content with carrying the battery,
but, riding through them, went straight at the infantry beyond. On
a house in Le Bourget, when retaken by the Guards, there was noticed
the inscription,—“Prussians, you shall never see your wives more.” The
legend might have been borne on the banners of those French columns
against which Bredow’s brigade was dauntlessly charging. “Nobly they
rode and well,” but the bullet-storm in their teeth was too strong for
them. They had to turn their backs upon it and ride back whence they
had come, such of them as had stood up against it. It was the smaller
half of the brigade that formed line again in the old position by
Vionville.
This sacrifice, however, gave at least a temporary check to the
pressure on Alvensleben’s centre; but still a fresh access of danger
had developed itself on his left. Pressed by the French Guards from
St. Marcel, the soldiers of Kraatz-Koschlau, Schwarzkoffen, and
Lyncker, who were prolonging the German left flank to the northward
of Buddenbrock, had to turn their faces eastward, and fight as best
they might against the repeated attacks made from that point of the
compass. Meanwhile Le Bœuf, on the slopes of Bruville and extending
farther west, was positioned right athwart their extreme left flank,
and although he had been checked for a time, was now taking advantage
of the engrossment caused to the Germans by the attacks from the east,
not only to renew his from the north, but to deploy in a westerly
direction, so as practically to sweep the German rear. To have
suffered this evolution would have been destruction. Kraatz-Koschlau
and Schwarzkoffen were up to the hilt already: to no man is it given,
physically, to face two ways at once, and their faces were already set
fast to the east. Cavalry, yet again cavalry, had to be resorted to.
Who shall say, after Vionville, that more cavalry than is needed for
outpost and despatch duties is a needless adjunct to a modern army? But
for its strength in this arm, the night of the 16th of August would
have closed upon the German army hurled back defeated into the ravine
of Gorze. True, the cavalry was mercilessly used, if indeed abused is
not the more appropriate word; but the crucial urgency of the exigency
gave cavalry an opportunity to vindicate the perpetuation of its higher
attributes as an arm of war in the face of the altered conditions of
modern warfare. The general would be a reckless maniac who should teach
himself to lean on his cavalry as an everyday and matter-of-course
appliance for such purposes as those to which cavalry was put at
Vionville; but the knowledge, based on what happened at Vionville,
cannot harm him, that if he has a good and strong cavalry force, he has
a reserve-buckler on which he may rely in the hour of need to postpone
or avert an otherwise inevitable reverse.
Wedell’s cavalry brigade from the 10th Corps was sent against Le Bœuf
to charge the heights of Bruville, and case the pressure on the left
flank. It had a foretaste of what was in store for it when, as they
passed Mars-la-Tour, the village shot up into lurid flames kindled by
the French shells. French shells tore through its ranks as they rode up
the open; French shells crashed into it when the inevitable halt and
dislocation took place as the broken ground was reached. The brigade
was the focus of a converging fire from the north and from the east.
The chassepots and the mitrailleuses opened upon it as the horsemen
struggled through the rocky underbrush that kept them at a walking
pace, and made a mockery of formation. Can an infantry regiment, in
full marching order, swim out to an iron-clad in the offing and carry
her by boarding? The task is hardly less impossible than was that which
the Wedells failed to accomplish. They came back “aus bruchstücken”
(in fragments), to quote the graphic words of an actor, and retrieved
their formation behind the reserve artillery of the 10th Corps, which
had come into action a little to the east of Mars-la-Tour. Flushed by
the repulse of the cavalry, Le Bœuf’s infantry assumed the offensive
with greater audacity. Coming down due south with an extended front
on Mars-la-Tour, the infantry stretched as far west as the farm of
Greyères, while still farther west, near to Ville-sur-Iron, there rode
five regiments of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, the pick and
pride of the French army, in whose long, straight rapiers was vested
the guardianship of its right flank. This advance made untenable the
position of Schwarzkoffen’s regiments on the German left wing north of
the chaussée. Already they had been assailed in front and on the flank;
now there were troops actually in their rear marching along their
backs. Voights-Rechts sent orders to Schwarzkoffen to extricate himself
from a position so impracticable, and the manœuvre had to be effected
by the co-operation yet again of cavalry. With Schwarzkoffen’s 19th
Division had come from Thiaucourt the Dragoon brigade of the Prussian
Guards, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Dragoon Guards. They formed
close columns of squadrons due north of the burning Mars-la-Tour,
their faces northward toward Le Bœuf’s infantry. Aligning with them on
their left, and facing the cavalry of the French Imperial Guard, was
Warby’s brigade of the Division Rheinbaben; the 4th Cuirassiers, the
13th Uhlans, and the 19th Dragoons, strengthened by the 10th Hussars
from Rheinbaben’s other brigade, and by such of Bredow’s 13th Hussars
as the French shells and chassepot bullets had left fit for another
charge. The Guards, whose charging ground was farther west than the
broken country which had brought Wedell’s brigade to grief, had a
good stretch of fair swelling downs before them. Warby could not have
wished a happier land whereon to test the question of superiority
between German line cavalry and the picked horsemen of the French
Imperial Guard. The Guards rode straight at Le Bœuf: one may be
right sure there was no swerve in the gallop that brought Warby’s men
sword-point to sword-point with the French cavalry. Methodists are fond
of propounding it as an axiom that a single charge is all that can be
got out of cavalry in one day. Why, here were these troopers of the
Prussian Guards dashing themselves again and again on the bayonets of
Le Bœuf’s masses, now recoiling before the gusts of chassepot firing,
now rallying and charging in again as if each man had as many lives as
there were pistol cartridges in his pouch, and he was determined to
expend the ammunition of vitality. So long as martialism lives in the
Fatherland, so long will this deed of _derring-do_ on the part of the
Prussian Dragoon Guards be cherished as one of the proudest memories
of a campaign very fertile in such memories. As for Warby’s brigade,
it had work to its liking. Men can project from rapier blades no pale
death in the shape of chassepot bullets. A cavalry fight is horse to
horse, man to man, sword to sword; weight, valour, and skill give
their owners something to show for their gifts. Long, confusing, and
stubborn was the _mêlée_. One who looked on it from Mars-la-Tour told
me that the simile which occurred to him as he watched was chaos in a
state of fermentation. The fermenting chaos in time resolved itself
into its constituent elements. One constituent element was galloping
to the rear, the other was chasing it furiously; and the process of
fermentation had precipitated an abundance of lees, which cumbered the
ground whereon the chemical phenomenon had developed itself.
The diversion caused by these efforts of the cavalry enabled
Schwarzkoffen to extricate himself from his critical position, and he
retired till he had his back on the chaussée between Vionville and
Mars-la-Tour, with strong artillery in his rear. Penetration further
northward on the part of the German left wing was abandoned for the
time, and the defensive strictly adhered to. To conclude the narrative
as regards the left wing it may be stated, that soon after six o’clock
Le Bœuf and Canrobert’s corps, who had been comparatively quiescent
since the retrograde movement of the Germans, reassumed the offensive
in strong force. After some tough fighting this attack was repulsed,
and then Kraatz-Koschlaw and Buddenbrock, keen to utilise their
opportunities, followed up the retreating Frenchmen and gained some new
ground in the direction of St. Marcel and Bruville.
Stülpnagel’s less eventful experiences on the German right must now be
briefly alluded to. Owing to the French having chiefly concentrated
themselves on the effort to break the centre and turn the left of
their opponents, he was not exposed to very fierce assaults, and those
which came against him he sturdily repulsed. But toward five o’clock
it appeared to have struck Bazaine that he was permitting too great
quietude to the German right. He sent out to the south a large portion
of his reserve, consisting of the Infantry of the Guard, who, occupying
the Bois des Ognons, came through the Bois de St. Arnould, and made a
demonstration against Stülpnagel’s right flank, which rested on that
wood. But the cannon had not been thundering all day for nothing.
Barneckow, with his 8th Division, had been at Frontigny, on the other
side of the Moselle, at midday. By five o’clock his leading infantry
brigade, and some batteries of his cavalry, were already in action. The
latter came to strengthen Stülpnagel. By the orders of Prince Frederick
Charles, who had reached the field at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,
the Brigade Rex, which was Barneckow’s foremost contingent, came up
the steep and plunged northward through the woods of Vionville and
St. Arnould, with intent to take in flank the French Guard infantry,
who were troubling Stülpnagel, and having thrown them back, make a
demonstration against Vionville. This manœuvre was supported by the
49th Brigade, from the Hessian Division, under the command of Prince
Louis of Hesse, the husband of our Princess Alice. It belonged to the
9th Corps, and had been sent on by General Manstein from Pont-à-Mousson
at midday, in accordance with instructions from Prince Frederick
Charles. The Hessians struck up from Gorze through the Bois des Chevaux
into the Bois des Ognons, co-operating on the right with the Brigade
Rex. Neither brigade was able to do much in the dense woods, now still
further obscured by the growing darkness. The Brigade Rex did succeed
in clearing the wood of St. Arnould, but could effect no demonstration
in the open against Rezonville; the Hessians did not succeed in driving
the French out of the Bois des Ognons on the right. While they were
fagging and fighting in the twilight, a furious French cannonade broke
out on the north, directed against the German right wing, under cover
of which it was apparent that the French were falling back over St.
Marcel and Druville, as was conjectured, to place themselves on the
central chaussée, in final abandonment of the design of cutting their
way through the obstacle on the southern. So far as was consistent
with prudence, Rheinbaben’s ever-handy cavalry strove to hamper their
movement, and succeeded in cutting off some French prisoners in
Rezonville. By nine o’clock the bloody battle-field was no longer vexed
by shot or shell. The fighting men bivouacked in the tracks in which
they had fought; the Krankenträger and ambulance people saw before them
a task so stupendous that they might well stand aghast. It was with the
wounded of Vionville that Gorze was ghastly on the night of the 16th of
August.
I have said that there was no sleep for anyone in Gorze on the night
of the 16th of August. All who were not otherwise engaged were busy
among the wounded. But while the wounded groaned the leaders and the
staff had to work, organise, direct; for the victory was not won yet
by a great way. There was little access for outsiders to the busy
bureau of Prince Frederick Charles; yet I got a glimpse of it through
circumstances beyond my own control. While I was striving to soothe
into an approximation of coherency the landlady of the hotel, who
alternated between hysterics and vituperation of her species generally,
a couple of field-policemen took it into their honest heads to regard
me as a suspicious person, and forthwith conducted me to the bureau.
While justifying myself, a process which was not so difficult as it
had been the night before, I saw six orderly dragoons dispatched in
as many minutes in as many different directions. There was no staff
officer with leisure or inclination to enlighten a vagrant as to the
dispositions in progress, but this much I gathered that there was
urgent hurry for the bringing forward of every available man. What I
learned then must be supplemented by later information.
It seemed a foregone conclusion among the Germans that they were in
no case to resume hostilities on the 17th; nor did there seem much
apprehension that the French could take the initiative. By the morning
of the 17th there was every appearance that they had given up all hope
of opening up the southern road, and had indeed drawn back materially
from the position on the central road which they had held on the
morning of the 16th. It was not, however, blocked to them save by
detachments of German cavalry which patrolled it as far as Estain. The
German forepost line established after the fight of the day before,
extended from Ville-sur-Iron, north-west of Mars-la-Tour, in a slanting
south-easterly direction across the plateau till it struck the head
of the Bois de St. Arnould due south of Rezonville. The chain crossed
the southern chaussée between Vionville and Rezonville, a circumstance
showing how little ground the Germans had gained since the previous
morning. All through the night and during the early part of the 17th,
the several Army Corps were marching up and falling into the places
arranged for them in the council of war, and in the bureau over-night.
There was wonderfully little fuss and no confusion. Spicheren and
Vionville had been battles of occasion, joined without premeditation
or indeed expectation, and fought out as best they might, in what
manner and with what material was most available in the exigency. The
battle of the morrow was to be of another sort—one of the old formal
set battles, in which generals were to play with divisions and Army
Corps as with chessmen, were to elaborate combinations, to strike
preconcerted blows, to put forth their genius, science, experience,
and skill to gain the result they wished for. Not that the campaign
had not earlier been fertile in evidences of the possession of these
attributes by the men who directed the steps of the German armies. A
master-mind shone in every detail of the plan, of which the battles
of Spicheren and Vionville, occurring when they did, were incidental
excrescences, springing out of the pressure of a modification in the
circumstances.
Bazaine, crippled as he was by the action of the 16th, could not,
even supposing him tardily awakened to the danger of his position,
have made an attempt at extricating himself on the 17th. Drawn back
into a commanding position, with his right wing on Roncourt and
above the precipitous ravines of St. Privat-la-Montagne, his centre
on Amanvilliers, La Folie, and Leipsic, and his right on a natural
fortress, the plateau of St. Hubert, with Moscow on the right of it,
and Point du Jour on the left, and inclining backward over the ridge
to the left rear at Rozerieulles and Jussy, he held a position of
surpassing strength in itself, and wherein he was not actually debarred
from getting on to the central road by Verneville and Doncourt, while
with his right he kept open the northern road, emerging as it did from
his position at St. Privat. Had he elected he might have marched by
it on the 18th, and had a fair start of the Germans, whose nearest
point before they moved on that morning was several miles south of the
northern chaussée; but had he been ever so nimble he would have run
a fearful risk of being taken in flank, and in the best event would
inevitably have had his foes thundering on his rear by nightfall.
Let those who blame him confine their strictures to his unaccountable
sluggishness before the 16th. Let those who in cold blood urge that,
_coûte qui coûte_, he should have cut his way through the Germans on
that day, remember that in trying to do so he had exhausted all his
available reserves, except a portion of Ladmirault’s Corps. It was not
in the nature of things that he could have moved before midnight of
the 17th, and by that time the track he must have taken was scoured
by German patrols quick to send back the tidings of his movement to
the plateau of Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, by that time packed with
German Army Corps which had not suffered as had he the day before. No,
Bazaine was fairly out-generalled and out-manœuvred, and he accepted
the inevitable, greatly as it was his own fault, with conduct and skill
that to my thinking go some way toward redeeming his earlier mistakes.
I have used the word inevitable, but there was one chance open to him,
although a hazardous one, if he had been a man of prompt action. The
Thionville road leading into the valley of the Meuse at Longuion was
yet free from Prince Frederick Charles’s éclaireurs. By leaving one of
his corps d’armée in position about Amanvilliers and St. Privat with
orders to hold its ground as long as possible, and make a demonstration
as if with intent to use the northern road by Brie, falling back under
the guns of Plappeville when it could keep up the delusion no longer,
he would probably have gained a day’s start before the Germans would
have found out that his whole army was not still standing before them.
But the risks of such an attempt are apparent when it is noticed that
Prince Frederick Charles, had he been beguiled into spending the whole
of the 18th fighting with a single French army corps, would on the 19th
have still by the Brie road have been equidistant from Longuion with
Bazaine on his more circuitous route, supposing that the latter had
made all possible use of his start. If we consider that Bazaine, not
so much by his own fault as by the rottenness of the French system, or
rather want of system, of obtaining intelligence, had no conception
of the strength opposed to him, but on the contrary believed that on
the 16th he had fought all the German troops that were available for
the 18th, an additional reason is found for the line of action on
which he determined, nor is there any occasion to inquire into the
truth of the allegation that he felt himself not justified in quitting
Metz in its then condition of imperfect defence. Abuse him for what
we may, we cannot deny him the selection of a fine position on which
to stand the impact of an attack in force. Its natural strength was
worth to him at least an additional Army Corps. And he had strengthened
the fortress with judicious outworks in the shape of strongly-held
and carefully-fortified posts at St. Marie-aux-Chênes, Vernéville,
Gravelotte, and in the Bois des Vaux. His whole front was studded with
rifle-pits.[2]
Von Moltke and Prince Frederick Charles had imperfect knowledge of the
dispositions just detailed. They could not assure themselves whether
Bazaine had elected to stand and fight upon his ridges, or whether he
would not rather dash out upon the northern road, offering battle as
he came. It was necessary, therefore, to make dispositions to meet
both contingencies; and since the latter contingency was the likelier,
and, if it occurred, demanded the prompter dealing with, it behoved
the German leaders to commence the game with special reference to that
eventuality. The southern road was first of all to be securely blocked.
That task was assigned to the 7th and 8th Corps of the 1st Army, the
former lying in the western portion of the Bois de Vaux and the
eastern portion of the Bois des Ognons, standing in fine due south from
Gravelotte; the latter, touching the left of the 7th Corps, occupied
the western part of the Bois des Ognons, the Bois de St. Arnould, and
the Bois de Vionville. It stood south of Rezonville. Besides caring
for the southern road, and occupying a useful position in view of a
necessity on the part of the enemy for falling back on Metz, these two
corps served as a kind of stationary anchor for the 2nd Army to sway
from, or perhaps it would be a better illustration were I to liken
them to the fixed pivot on which it was to swing round should events
justify the movement. The 2nd Army had its front in a north-easterly
direction, parallel with the line of the northern road, which was
its first objective point, having relation to the contingency that
Bazaine would attempt to march off thereby. This front was composed of,
reckoning from right to left, first, the 9th Army Corps, which touched
von Göben’s left, and with the direction given it on Caulre farm;
second, the Guards, direction Doncourt; third, the 12th Army Corps
(Royal Saxons), direction Jarny. The second line was composed of the
troops that had been so severely mauled on the 16th, viz., the 3rd and
10th Corps. The 4th Corps was on its way toward Toul; the 2nd Corps was
not up, having only quitted Pont-à-Mousson early on the morning of the
battle.
King Wilhelm had been on the field on the forenoon of the 17th, and
before returning to Pont-à-Mousson, he had issued his formal orders
for the morrow. Wellington himself could not have been more laconic
or less devout. “The 2nd Army,” so wrote Moltke in his master’s name,
“will, early in the morning, at 5 o’clock, commence operations and
advance in échelon between Ville-sur-Iron and Rezonville. The 8th
Army Corps will co-operate in this movement with the 2nd Army on its
right. The 7th Army Corps will at first have the duty of covering
the movement of the 2nd Army against any demonstrations on the part
of the enemy from the side of Metz. The King’s further orders will
depend on the action taken by the enemy. Communications for his Majesty
will next find him on the height south of Flavigny.” Prince Frederick
Charles, quitting Gorze, quartered himself for the night between the
17th and 18th in Buxières. He was stirring early. What a subject for
a painter that morning gathering of the leaders of army corps by the
poplar-trees between Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, with the Red Prince
in their midst, brusque, curt, and emphatic! Around the group, conning
over a new slaughter, lay the ghastly evidences of a past. Mild-eyed,
handsome-faced Prince of Saxony; puffy, phlegmatic, _gros_ August
of Würtemburg; Alvensleben the aristocrat, with his thin clear-cut
features and bright hawk eye; Voights-Rhetz, with the shrewd, keen
look of a lowland Scot; Manstein, grim, grey, and determined; Göben,
of the massive head and thoughtful brow; these stand, in a roughly
defined circle, with their horses’ heads turned inward; and there
addresses them in a few short crisp sentences, the tall square man on
the powerful bay; he lets his hand drop on his thigh with an audible
thud, for he is very heavy-handed in every sense, this stalwart man
with the massive hair-clad jaw, the strong wide mouth, cruel in its set
resoluteness when the features are at rest, the well-opened piercing
eye under the splendid forehead, which, broad, square, and knotted
above the eyebrows, soars inexplicably away into calm benevolence. A
man this, in the tight red tunic, cast surely by nature in her special
mould for a great military leader. You might think with yourself, as
you looked at him, that you could not fancy him as a friend; look
again, and I dare swear you will fancy him far less as an enemy. Nor is
the Red Prince without friends, warm and jealous; if the women in the
French villages use his name as the Scotch peasants of old did the name
of the Black Douglas, to hush their babes wherewithal into awe-stricken
silence, his army would die for him to the last man, and I have seen a
pretty picture of bonny children climbing in loving trustfulness about
the knees of the heavy-browed and heavy-handed man. He does not detain
his generals long under the poplar-trees. One of them afterwards gave
me his laconic parting words, “Your duty is to march forward, find the
enemy, prevent his escape, and fight him wherever you find him.” And
Alvensleben the pious added in his quiet tones, “In the name of God,”
as the generals wheeled their horses outwards, and the little council
scattered.
Modern battle-fields are not like cockpits. Were that a real battle
which is ordinarily fought on Easter Monday on the Brighton Downs,
the spectators, who squat and lunch placidly on the Red-hill, would
find that commanding elevation very hot quarters. Generals, with the
perversity of human nature, do not make the convenience of spectators
the primary consideration in their dispositions, nor has any means yet
been discovered to enable the spectators to circumvent the inattention
to their convenience on the part of the military authorities, by being
in more than one place at the same time. The science of expeditious
and comprehensive war intelligence is still in its infancy. If the
millennium does not intervene through the zealous efforts of the
Peace Society, we may anticipate gigantic strides in this department
of catering for the avidity of the public, culminating perhaps in
opposition-balloons with a war correspondent in each hanging in
the air over the centre of the battle-field, and having a “special
wire,” per favour of Mr. Scudamore, leading direct into each Foreign
Editor’s room. But such appliances are for posterity. In the late
war, especially towards its commencement, the civilian spectator who
was not fortunate enough to be attached to a head-quarter staff (and
there were only three, I believe, to whom this well-deserved favour
was accorded) had to be thankful for very small mercies indeed. I
thought myself extremely lucky in not being interfered with when I
took up what seemed an eligible position at the edge of the wood of
St. Arnould, to the south of Rezonville. The forest land here throws
itself up into a little elevation, affording some command of the
rolling plateau to the north-eastward, with Gravelotte on its bosom,
the ridge of St. Hubert and Point du Jour beyond, and away to the north
on the horizon the bushy uplands of Vernéville, with the church spire
showing above the trees; yet here, as it was not difficult to discern
even at the time, and far more easy afterwards from sad _indiciæ_, it
was possible to witness only one phase of the battle, and that neither
the most critical nor the most decisive. I propose to narrate first
the occurrences of which I was the eye-witness here on the southern
edge of the field, and, having done so, to give then a short account
of the more northern operations, from the official documents and other
information I received afterwards from the Saxons and Guards, to whose
share fell so much of the heavy fighting on the German left and left
centre.
By half-past ten o’clock the 9th Corps was no longer visible on the
plateau about Vionville. It had gone off on its northern march, and
its place was occupied by the 3rd Corps, which swarmed all over the
gentle swells and depressions. On the breast of the higher ground
south of Flavigny there was a stationary group with led horses and
mounted escort behind, the dead of the 16th flecking the ground all
around. Orderlies and aides-de-camp galloped furiously from all points
to this stationary group—galloped furiously from it north, east, and
south. For here was the King; and here was von Moltke, with all the
ends of that seemingly-tangled skein gathered inside that marvellous
brain of his, behind the downcast inscrutable eyes. The 8th Corps, on
the fringe of which I stood, was showing itself out of the wood, and
feeling its way with no great decision apparently on to Rezonville,
whence ran the straight chaussée eastward into Gravelotte, the
southern outwork of the French front. There was little or no firing.
Now and then came a shell from the French batteries about Gravelotte,
tentatively as it seemed, to experiment as to the range, but the rare
reports only served to accentuate the lurid lull before the breaking
of the storm. The clouds presently clashed together, and the thunder
rattled out, coming down clear and booming on the wind from the
bosky coverts and the church spire of Vernéville. Nothing was to be
seen save the bursting of an occasional shell on the slope, but the
bickering volleys of musketry, giving the treble to the deep bass of
the artillery, told in language that could not be misinterpreted how a
hot and close fight must be going on out of our sight to the north. It
was about half-past eleven when the air first began to throb with this
din. Now it became apparent why the 8th Corps had been cropping out on
the plateau toward Rezonville. By mid-day the heads of the columns of
Weltzien’s division (the 15th) were pushing on north-easterly towards
Malmaison and the Bois de Genivaux, to take up the alignment with the
fighting further north. Barneckow’s division (the 16th), on the right
of the 15th, was pushing across the plain toward Gravelotte, in dense
broad columns, already half-deployed into line. Now we in the south
became familiar with artillery fire through another sense than that of
hearing. The German batteries went to action from Bagnieux southward
to the edge of the Bois des Ognons, pouring their fire into Malmaison,
the wood of Genivaux, and the village of Gravelotte. Nor were the
French slow to reply. It seemed as if the wood were one huge crater,
which incessantly vomited projectiles that tore through the air and
burst in the German ranks, strewing the plain with fallen men who were
left behind unheeded as the columns pressed ever on. Gravelotte, too,
was girt about with its zone of cannon and mitrailleuses, plied with
assiduous industry by gunners who must have known what of advantage
to the cause of France rested in their successful maintenance of the
advanced position. The cannonade for long was a drawn struggle, neither
side gaining much material advantage. But the slaughter of it was
terrible, and the Germans out in the open must have lost the most
heavily. How or when Gravelotte was at length taken I could not tell.
There was a gradual collapse in the French artillery fire, a ragged
deployment of their infantrymen in front of the village, a rush of
Barneckow’s men at the double, and a hellish mêlée of fighting that
seemed as if it would last for ever. On the deadly furnace of battle
the Germans perpetually piled fresh fuel. The Bois des Ognons emptied
itself on to the plain into a fearful plunging fire from the French
batteries on the heights of Point du Jour. The regiments struggled on
through it to precipitate themselves on Gravelotte; yet so fearful was
the shell-storm that beat on the plain to the south of Gravelotte,
between it and the woods, that the Germans had to swerve out from under
it somewhat, making a circuit so as to fall upon the village from the
west instead of the south. These were von Zastrow’s soldiers of the 7th
Corps. The Barneckows—whether it was they or the former who carried the
village I know not—had slanted away further to the north-east toward
the Bois de Genivaux, roughly aligning on its right with Weltzien’s
division. The French made a desperate stand in the wood, while by this
time their batteries at the Point du Jour were firing furiously into
Gravelotte—indication that it was no longer in French hands. I was told
afterwards that the hither edge of the Bois des Genivaux was carried by
von Göben’s soldiers at the point of the bayonet, and that they had to
push the French out of the wood by sheer bodily weight. Thus much was
not apparent from my position, although I had improved it by coming up
nearer the front; but there was no difficulty in discerning that the
fighting was desperate and protracted. All the while the din was to be
heard from the north out of the range of vision, but it seemed as if it
were now further back, whence the hope became common that the Germans
were faring somewhat better in the north than fortune suffered them to
do in the south.
Yet in the south there were gleams presaging a victory to achieve
which much had yet to be done. Von Göben had seemingly gained the
wood, gaining thereby no respite from the persistent firing of the
batteries at St. Hubert and Point du Jour. Von Zastrow, with intent
as it appeared to give his friends of the 8th Corps some relief from
this, had clothed the neighbourhood of Gravelotte, as soon as it was
in German hands, with four batteries from Kamecke’s Division, but the
reply to them was so strenuous that it seemed surprising how they were
able to keep their ground, while the continuous explosion of shells in
and about the Bois des Genivaux gave evidence that the 8th were still
in purgatory. As it seemed in bitter chafing at their sufferings,
ever and anon fierce attempts were made to crush the causes of them.
Dimly and vaguely only could the movements be discerned from where
I stood, but large detachments must have burst out of the wood, and
pushing down into the dip where was the bed of the Mance, breasted the
opposite slope, and debouched against Moscow and St. Hubert. Through
the glass I could see the broken battalions as they clambered piecemeal
out of the hollow, and tumbling together into approximate formation
strove to push on up the gentler slope. Then there came heavier smoke
banks on their right flank above the batteries at Point du Jour; the
batteries of mitrailleuses at St. Hubert raged like wild cats right in
their faces; the French infantry men, in position between St. Hubert
and Moscow, fringed their ranks with spurting white smoke from their
chassepots. It seemed as if, while a portion of the German attack fell
back, the other moiety had lain down to get some cover and to bide the
spending of the storm. True they had lain down, those soldiers who
did not retreat; but it was not for them more to rear themselves into
dressed ranks. It was for them to lie deeper yet, when the time should
come, under the sod on which they were now prostrate. Effort after
effort met with a similar fate, and at length the bootless and costly
efforts were suspended. Von Zastrow had strengthened his artillery by
Gravelotte, till, as I afterwards learned, he had fifty-four guns in
position there, under whose pounding the French fire at Point du Jour
somewhat slackened, giving at length some relief to the 8th Corps in
the wood to the northward. Zastrow boldly pushed infantry forward
in support of his artillery, which to say the truth seemed to have
rather incautiously worked themselves out to the front, so as to be in
danger should the French essay a rapid and energetic push from Point
du Jour across the ravine. Not content with this, it was clear that
he had determined on beginning the offensive on his own account. This
act of Zastrow’s is the war incident of Gravelotte which has been most
canvassed and controverted. It unquestionably resulted in disaster. As
unquestionably it was done in the face of his positive orders to hold
his own, and act as the stationary pivot for the corps to north of him.
And it is certain, too, that Zastrow acted on his own responsibility
in what he did, and in virtue of a certain far from narrow discretion
which the German military policy allows to officers of any rank when
placed in a position of self-reliance. Zastrow, it appears, had
little to guide him as to the state of matters in the north. The wind
had shifted as some say, and blew away from him the sound of the
cannonade by Amanvilliers, Montigny, and Champenoise. As others have
it, there was an actual lull in the firing soon after three o’clock,
about the positions named. It is urged in favour of Zastrow that this
inaudibility of the northern cannonade, from whatever cause, gave him
some right to conclude that the French centre and right had been thrown
back, and that the strenuous defence on the left was all that was
between them and complete defeat. If these his premises had been sound,
there is no doubt that Zastrow’s conclusion, and the action he based
upon it, were eminently creditable to his generalship. Had the French
right and centre really been pushed back while the left maintained
its ground, it is plain that Bazaine would have proceeded at once
to strengthen the latter with the troops driven back on the former,
since he could afford to disregard the progress of the German left and
centre, sure ultimately to be brought up all standing on the great
rear-buttress before which the French fought—the fortress of Metz. This
in fact was what Bazaine did some hours afterwards when the Saxons
had turned his right and the Guards had smashed his centre. Zastrow,
arguing accordingly, as it seems, judged that it would be good strategy
to anticipate any such strengthening for the French left by attacking
it at once, and forcing it to participate in the retrograde movement to
which he had concluded the centre and right were abandoned. Nay more;
a decisive move on his part on the extreme French left might let him
get through to their rear communications, and once in possession of the
throat of the great chaussée about Jussy, he blocked the chief line of
French retreat, while the 8th Corps, relieved from terrible torment by
St. Hubert and the Point du Jour, might debouch from the wood on to
the plateau, and take its position in the final crushing of the French
front.
How Von Zastrow reasoned I do not know; but he acted as if he had
reasoned in the groove I have indicated. A sanguine man, he had not
counted the cost of success, even if he should gain it; he had not,
indeed, sufficiently studied the question whether success at all were
possible. He shot his bolt, a self-reliant and over-confident archer,
and he failed even to get the distance of the target. It was close
on four o’clock when the offensive movement became perceptible. From
beside Gravelotte one brigade (the 25th, of Glümer’s corps) streamed
down into the ravine inclining south-easterly, and the slackened French
fire at Point du Jour kindling up upon them as they moved. Kamecke’s
division, which was already astride of the ravine where it penetrates
the Bois de Vaux, contributed the 28th brigade, which could be seen
pressing up to debouch on to the plateau of St. Hubert, where the
skirting wood ceases nearly due south of Point du Jour. The French
seemed to catch at the significance of the movement instantaneously as
it was begun: their infantry, rushing to the left through the poplar
trees on the chaussée, formed across the southern plateau, so as to
flank as well as front the Germans when they should come staggering up
on to this new battle-field. More batteries were dashed hurriedly into
position and got into fire. Those previously there swung their trails
round to the north somewhat, and their muzzles thus looked the way the
German brigades were toiling upwards. High up as were the French, the
depth of the ravine afforded the Germans miserably little cover from
their fire. For the French gunners could almost see into its bed; and
although the inverse rise could not be reached by a direct fire, they
yet let fall upon it a plunging fire which, from the steepness of the
slope, was much more destructive than plunging fires for the most part
are. The loss must have been terrible in those ranks while they were
struggling on to the debouchment. At length the edge of the wood and
the lip of the ravine was gained. You could see groups and isolated
men straggling out into the open and falling into formation in that
momentary confusion which always attends such a reorganisation. Just
then cannon, mitrailleuse, infantry fire, as if by signal, burst into
one fell combination of outpour. Had the formation been an inanimate
structure, it must have been battered down by sheer weight of metal;
how much less then could it stand, made as it was of sentient men!
There were efforts to make head against it nevertheless; detached
rushes of rash men who were not to be convinced of the impossible till
overtaken by arguments which crushed conviction in, while they crushed
motion and life out. It was piteous to watch the efforts. I have seen
sheep swept away in a spate swirling down a Highland glen—watched their
struggles as they caught foothold on a scaur, where the rushing water
shallowed, to get out of the vortex on to the firm land on the bank
that seemed so absurdly close; how the water kelpie seized them again
as they strove, whipped them remorselessly off their legs, and sent
them down stream again battling impotently, as they span in the eddies,
or were hurried down the rapids. The sight recurred to my recollection
as I watched those soldiers struggling grimly for foothold on the edge
of that deadly plateau. They would not give it up. Ever as one attempt
was beaten back and crushed down, there were men pushing staunchly
on to make another. It seemed such a little way, such a very little
way, up to the poplar trees there and to victory; surely, with the
goal so nigh, it was not to be thought of that it should be pronounced
inaccessible. A thief might as well have tried to steal the Koh-i-Noor
from its case in the Exhibition, as these men have persisted in their
struggles to get to those poplar trees through the storm of iron and
lead, the serried ranks, the densely lined rifle-pits, which were its
protecting show-case. “_Mörderisch_” was how one that had looked into
the eye of the fire till it beat him down, described that fire to me
the same night—a quiet, unemotional, blood-depleted Feldwebel, who had
been brought into Rezonville that the _Stabsarzt_ might judge whether
it was worth while tinkering at a man who had six bullet-holes in him.
Von Zastrow’s heart must have bled as he watched his Kinder going down
by sections. I know not whether an order came that the brigades should
give up the useless persistence in courting annihilation, or whether
they drew back in realisation of the insanity of such persistence. They
did abandon it, and shrunk back off the plateau, lying down on the
inverse bank of the ravine, screened from the enemy’s direct fire, but
exposed to the plunging fire, and raked by French infantry detachments
that had pushed forward to the brink of the ravine, further northward,
opposite St. Hubert. The batteries whose duty it was to support the two
infantry brigades had to seek the plateau by the only route practicable
for wheels—the chaussée crossing the ravine by deep cuttings and steep
fall and rise. They got down, as it appeared, into the ravine. We saw
them wheel off into the road and clatter down the Gravelotte slope at
a trot. Behind them, at a swinging canter to overtake the guns, dashed
a noble regiment of Uhlans. How gallantly the horsemen rode on their
way to death! Artillery and cavalry disappeared into the ravine. Was it
bottomless, then, that they never came out? The French infantry fire
spurted out of the rifle-pits on the further brink; several batteries
of mitrailleuses, in regularly constructed emplacements, took to
grinding sedulously their cursed output; the cannon further back on
the Point du Jour made practice over the heads of the mitrailleuse men
and the sharpshooters, down into the bosom of the gorge. The German
artillerymen did, as it appeared, get into action, with the muzzles
of their pieces sticking up into the air, but guns were dismounted,
and the gun detachments had to be reinforced over and over again, from
the reserves in the rear by Gravelotte. As for the Uhlans, the morrow
furnished a chart of their doings—a chart on which the courses were
traced in by dead men and horses. They had striven to charge up the
inverse slope of the chaussée on to the plateau of St. Hubert, and
they had failed. Men and horses, not many,—it must have been a mad
forlorn hope of reckless men,—lay on the roadway in the gutters, just
on the brink of the plateau; there were none further, but very many
all the way behind. If ever horsemen were wantonly butchered by being
sent where it was staringly impossible they could have been of service
unless their horses had been winged, those Uhlans were. I believe that,
after losing nearly half their number, they were got down the narrow
bed of the Mance, somewhere behind the position where the two infantry
brigades were lying. They might as well have been in the moon.
Except an effort to cover with infantry-fire in some measure the
batteries in the ravine, by the sending forward a couple of battalions
of the infantry brigade that had been kept in reserve, an interim
paralysis was forced upon the 1st Army. The firing still continued,
both artillery and musketry, quickening now without apparent cause,
now falling away for a little into a dropping fire; but of offensive
movements on either side there were none. The game had seemingly ended
in a stale-mate. Von Zastrow had little or nothing in hand, for, as it
appeared, he had sent a brigade away on a fanciful excursion through
the Bois de Vaux with a wide circuit to come in from the south upon
Jussy and outflank the extreme French left; a rash project, which,
the direct attack having failed, whose success must surely have
been assumed in devising the flank march, ought to have resulted in
the annihilation of the detached brigade, if the French had been as
enterprising as they were stubborn. Von Göben was jammed in the Bois
des Genivaux so long as the French fire from Moscow, St. Hubert, and
the Point du Jour could sweep him off the onward path. The 1st Army was
clubbed. Von Zastrow’s intended _coup de grâce_ was arrested; in his
haste not to be too late he had raised his arm too soon, and had spent
himself prematurely.
The Germans invaded France with armies whose numbers it is easy
enough to utter glibly off the tongue, but whose magnitude it is very
difficult adequately to realise. How many Britons have ever seen
30,000 armed men in a mass? We go to an Easter Monday review, and
see some 26,000 men march past a saluting point, and come home in
the notion that we have been looking at an uncommonly large body of
troops. Let our Easter Monday Volunteer Army stand as an equivalent
to a German army corps. The former takes about an hour and a half to
defile past the commander. The Germans had fourteen of the latter
in France to make war wherewithal, besides Landwehr divisions, a
Würtemburger contingent, and fortress artillerymen, equal, on a
moderate estimate, to two army corps more. At our Brighton pace a
whole day, just twenty-four hours, would be consumed in the marching
past of this half-million of men. There are obvious advantages in
war-making when your numbers are so large that you do not require to
stand particular about the absence or presence of an odd army corps
or two, when you can comfortably leave one as a force of observation,
dispatch another on a distinct measure of precaution, and reckon with
tolerable confidence on yet a third dropping in to help you finish off
your work with the greater thoroughness. This was the happy condition
of the Germans at Gravelotte. If you care to join in the French cry,
“Over-matched by two to one!” the Germans grimly meet you with the
rejoinder, “Why be overmatched then? or, if you cannot help yourselves,
why fly in the face of all experience of war, and roar ‘À Berlin!’ at
the head of your scantier levies?” War is not a game like a school-boy
boxing-match, where the spirit of fair play insists that there shall
be some approximation to an even match between the two combatants.
And even the school-green instinct of fair play does not stand in
the way of allowing the stronger boy to put forth his whole strength
when the weaker boy denies his weakness and is the challenger. The
opportunely arriving German army corps on the 18th of August was the
2nd, whom Fransecki had marched without a halt from Pont-à-Mousson to
Buxières on the southern rear of Mars-la-Tour. There, as it seems, the
Pomeranians had cooked and eaten, and, as giants refreshed, had come
on to Rezonville, eager to have a share in the day’s amusement. Thence
the King sent them into Gravelotte, to help Zastrow to a solution of
the problem in which he had got mystified. It was a strange, grand
sight to watch these fresh and splendid soldiers marching on in a
stream that seemed endless. Nobody knew, within such ken as we had,
whence the wonderful windfall had come. Some swore it was the 5th
Corps from the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army, that there was General
von Kirschbach himself on the grey horse, and that the Crown Prince
was in colloquy with his father at Rezonville. Others had it that it
was the 4th Corps which had thus turned up promiscuously. But be it
what it might, sure it was it did not dally by the way. The leading
regiments formed in front of Gravelotte, others went north-easterly, so
as to touch von Göben’s flank in the Bois des Genivaux. By this time
it was seven o’clock, and the setting sun going down in blood,—blood
in the sky as on earth,—cast his ruddy rays slantingly on the lurid
smoke-banks that overhung the battle-field, and battled with the yet
redder-forked tongues of fire which were bursting out of the burning
farm-buildings of Malmaison, where the wounded Frenchmen were being
roasted alive in miserable helplessness. There was a general advance.
The Zastrows straightened themselves up in their layer in the ravine,
and once more essayed to get a grip of the ground on its brink.
Fransecki’s leading brigade took the chaussée and the easier dells of
the ravine towards the Bois des Genivaux. The 8th Corps pressed the
branches aside and sprang out of the wood into the open, heading for
Moscow. Behind, all along the rear of the grand movement in which some
60,000 men were concerned, the artillery of the three corps shelled
incessantly the French positions. The scene in the deepening twilight
was inexpressibly splendid—with a splendour, however, that was baleful,
and made the flesh creep and the blood turn. Right gallantly did the
French stand up against the huge living wave. Their army was fighting
not for the feeblest chance of victory: hardly any conceivable freak
of the captious goddess could have given it that. But it was fighting
for something yet more critical than victory,—for its very life; for
if the Point du Jour were carried by the Germans, then von Zastrow’s
aspirations would have tardily yet surely been accomplished. The
beaten centre and right would have had their line of retreat invaded;
the defeat would have become a chaotic slaughter till the broken and
bewildered battalions, barred from the chief line of retreat, had
huddled somehow close under the guns of Plappeville and St. Quentin.
The men who stood at Point du Jour, St. Hubert, and Moscow had it in
their keeping to avert this terrible fate—to break the fall, all too
dislocating already, of their brethren of the centre and right. Nobly
they did their devoir. In numbers they could have been but slender as
compared with their assailants; but they had a position, the merits
of which were worth many men, and they were worthy of the position.
The night fell, and still the bright streaks of flame shot westward
from the batteries at the Point du Jour, evidence that French guns and
gunners still stood there. Gradually the tongues of flames ceased to
shoot forth, gradually a hush, such a contrast to the din of the day
that it was almost painful, came over the bloody field. The dogs of war
were satiated; they had lapped blood till they might lap no more. And
still the Frenchmen stood by the Point du Jour, keeping at bay the foe
while their friends defiled into safety behind the screen thus sturdily
maintained for them. The 1st Army had fought well and squandered life
recklessly; but spite of the late reinforcements it had to submit to
the failure of its capital enterprise. The foreposts all but touched
each other through the watches of the night. Those of the Germans were
made specially strong, for the day’s work had taught the watch-setters
respect for those men on the crown of the height above them. And what
of them? One knew nothing till the morning broke, and then it was found
that the shattered churchyard-wall, and the smashed and half-burnt
wayside houses, the rifle-pits and the battery emplacements were
silent, save for the groaning of the wounded left behind, and empty,
save of those and of the dead who lay beside them. The French, having
held the position so long as it was of use, had abandoned it, and by
six o’clock Fransecki’s forepost men, creeping cautiously forward to
the crown of the ridge, saw before them the brown scarp of Fort St.
Quentin, with the beaten French host clinging round its base.
The wearied and powder-grimed Germans threw themselves down on the
field, and slept among the dead who littered it. Bivouac fires were
sparse, the men were too spent with hard fighting to care for food
or warmth. They were lighted to their slumbers by ghastly chamber
candlesticks; by the pillar of fire that yet towered heavenward from
the burning Malmaison, and by another fire that showed over the horizon
by Verneville. In the darkness between nine and ten, there burst out
the din of a furious cannonade to the north, and the tired soldiers who
had piled their arms were made to resume them. But soon this in its
turn died away, and the battle-field was left in peace.
Having now recounted what I personally saw of the battle of Gravelotte,
I proceed to give a brief narrative of the occurrences which were
not within the scope of my observation. The position of the several
corps of the 2nd Army has already been detailed. By seven the three
corps forming the 1st line were already on their north-easterly
march in gigantic echelon of army corps. Their advance in this line
was directed, as I have stated, to meet the expected contingency
that Bazaine would attempt the northernmost of the three westerly
routes toward Verdun. The German leaders had as yet no information
warranting them in concluding definitely that this design had been
abandoned, although indications pointed in that direction. These
indications became so marked towards ten o’clock that Prince Frederick
Charles judged it wise at least to arrest the march designed to meet
a contingency, the occurrence of which was improbable; he therefore
halted the Saxons, the flanking corps on the left, at Jarny, and the
Guards at Doncourt; the 9th Corps had some time previously reached
Caulre, and were halted there, cooking their breakfasts. It was not
long before the Prince obtained additional assurance that the French
were contemplating no advance move, but had elected to give him battle
on ground of their own choosing on the plateau of Amanvilliers,
and, as it appears, the King in his southerly position was early in
possession of intelligence which led him to form the same conclusion.
It would appear, however, that neither von Moltke nor Prince Frederick
Charles had any idea that the French right was prolonged so far to
the northward as it was; but on the contrary had the idea that their
right flank rested on the village of Amanvilliers. It was in the light
of this impression that the Saxons got the order to march on Batilly,
where they would be close to Bazaine’s path if he should tardily move
off by the Brie road, while in the absence of any such endeavour, their
course was thought open to make an easterly sweep, and take in flank
the supposed French right in Amanvilliers, while an attack was being
made on that position in front.
The latter attack was entrusted to the 9th Corps, supported by the
Guards. Manstein marched his men off from Caulre about half-past ten,
and headed direct on la Folie by Verneville. It was at the latter place
where he experienced the first resistance from the French holding it
as an outpost position, and as soon as he showed his columns beyond
it, began the furious cannonade, which to us in the south had been the
token that the battle was begun in earnest. He had to fight his way
hard after passing Verneville. To get at the French position he had
to march through the interval between the Bois de la Cusse and the
north end of the Bois des Genivaux. The end of this gap toward Metz is
closed in by Amanvilliers and Montigny-la-Grange; and here the French
were posted in great strength, and indeed took the offensive against
Manstein as he strove to deploy. He was not strong enough to make
much impression on the position. Part of his artillery he got forward
nearly as far as the farm of Champenoise, which was terribly mauled by
his shell-fire, and with a part of Wrangel’s division he occupied the
edge of the Bois de la Cusse fronting toward Amanvilliers, supporting
the infantry by several batteries. The Guards, in the meantime, had
in part received another direction, the result of Prince Frederick
Charles’ appreciation of the fact that the French right extended
further than he had at first reckoned upon. Von Pape marched his first
division over Jouaville to Habonville, on the north of the Bois de la
Cusse, while Budritski, whose first orders were to march his division
(the 1st) on Verneville to support Manstein, had his course presently
altered also upon Habonville. St. Privat was found strongly held by
the French, and as it would have made a gap in the German line had the
Guards gone so far north as to attack it, recourse was had to artillery
practice to drive the French out of it. From a position between St.
Ail and Habonville, Prince Hohenlohe, the General commanding the Guard
artillery, converged on St. Privat the steady fire of no fewer than
fourteen batteries of artillery, or, in other words, of 84 guns. Under
the personal orders of Prince Frederick Charles, who visited that part
of the scene of action between one and two, this pitiless fire was
persevered in for more than an hour, as a means of marking time till
the Saxons should come up on the left; and Prince Hohenlohe was able
gradually to improve the positions of his batteries directed against
St. Privat. But although the Saxons, pressing on from Jarny, were true
to time, it was found that there was other work for them still further
on the left. The French were in force also in St. Marie-au-Chênes,
and before the Saxons could co-operate with Prince August against St.
Privat, it was necessary to sweep this obstacle out of their path, and
also to ascertain exactly how far this French right, ever seemingly
elongating itself further and further, really did extend. Prince George
of Saxony with the 24th Division, supported by a brigade from von
Pape’s left, fell upon St. Marie, while Montbe, with the 24th Saxon
Division, swept round by Auboué and found that at length he was on the
right of the French flank, and had at last got their weather-gauge. It
was half-past three already when the Saxons (23rd Division) had carried
St. Marie, and were ready with the 24th, looking now straight at
Roncourt, to co-operate with the Guards in an attack on the formidable
position of St. Privat. Meanwhile Manstein with his 9th Corps was not
prospering. He had got a grip of the gap with Amanvilliers in its
throat, and of the two woods flanking that gap; but farther he might
not come. Amanvilliers was a position of great natural strength, and
the French had accumulated about it a force of artillery which fairly
coped even with the strong artillery that Manstein had brought into
opposition. Fifteen of his guns were dismounted or otherwise rendered
unserviceable by the French fire.
It was with difficulty that his infantry, by the Chantrenne Farm
and the north-east corner of the Bois des Genivaux, could maintain
themselves against the repeated and furious attacks of the French from
la Folie, raked as they were also by mitrailleuse and artillery fire
from Amanvilliers. On his right, the Hessians in the Bois de la Cusse
were lacerated by a persistent infantry and mitrailleuse fire from the
hamlet of Jerusalem, while the French artillery at St. Privat, firing
over Jerusalem, showered shells upon the wood; and, in short, so far
from being able to pursue the offensive, he had quite his work to hold
his own. But the advantage of practically unlimited reserves told in
his favour. The 3rd Army Corps had been marched on Verneville, and
halted there. Its artillery was available to support Manstein, and it
was used in this way, as also was a portion of its cavalry. Then the
Guards and the Saxons were perfecting their dispositions for storming
St. Privat, and that would relieve his pressure from the left. Already
before five the Guards were distracting the attention of the French
holders of Jerusalem. The Garde Schützen Regiment had spread itself
through the sparsely wooded Bois, and were scrambling forward through
the underbrush. Soon the whole of the 4th Brigade of the Guards was
marching on St. Privat from Habonville, and it was speedily followed by
the bulk of von Pape’s division from St. Privat. The Guards got near
St. Privat, but they could not get into it. It was held by the French
with inveterate stubbornness, and the natural strength of the position
backed their defensive efforts. Prince August of Würtemberg had to hold
his hand, and betake himself to artillery fire till assured of the
co-operation of the Saxons, who were marching southward from Roncourt.
The 10th Corps, too, was summoned close up in reserve, and, indeed, a
part of Kraatz-Koschlau’s division actually took part in the storm. At
half-past six the Guards, standing waiting on the south and west, heard
the music of the Saxon guns from the north, and then the von Papes got
the word to show of what metal were the Prussian Guards. They stormed
furiously into the place; as furiously came Montbe’s Saxons in from the
north. The double attack carried St. Privat; but after the Germans were
in it, the French refused to go out, and had to be turned out, fighting
desperately every step of the way, and causing terrible loss to their
assailants before the operation was accomplished. Thus the French had
their right flank turned, and were forced from the strong position
on which it had rested. They were rolled backward into the woods of
Jaumont and Saulny, but not utterly broken or completely disheartened.
For it seems unquestionable that Bazaine was able to march toward the
maintenance of his left-wing position at Point du Jour not only a
portion of the Imperial Guards who constituted his reserve, and of
whom he had made some, but hardly a sufficient, use during the day, but
also some of the troops who were engaged at St. Privat, and who were
moved under cover of the forced attack made on Manstein’s position from
Amanvilliers, just at nightfall.
How was it faring with Manstein while Prince August was relieving
him of one embarrassment by carrying St. Privat? He, too, had made
an offensive attempt on Amanvilliers simultaneously with von Pape’s
push at St. Privat, sending forward a brigade of the Hessians and a
part of Wrangel’s Division in combination with a detachment of the
Guards detailed from the right of that corps, the whole supported by
the artillery of the 3rd Corps. But even now Manstein could not get at
the heart of the French centre in Amanvilliers, Montigny, La Grange,
nor could his artillery get the dominance over that of the French.
Alvensleben with his 3rd Corps was close up, and prepared to back up
the labouring 9th Corps with the whole of Buddenbrock’s Division.
But Buddenbrock’s men were not to be used just then in an offensive
movement, for as they were coming the French took the initiative in
great force, and hurled large masses of infantry on the Bois des
Genivaux. It is a moot point whether the Imperial Guard participated in
this attack in any strength. Next day, behind la Folie, I saw several
dead Guardsmen, and after the capitulation of Metz an officer of the
corps told me that a whole brigade of the Guards had been in action
about Amanvilliers late in the day. If this was the case, it must
have suffered little in proportion to the line regiments engaged, for
the crop of corpses in Guard uniforms was comparatively very scanty.
This late effort on the part of the French, made in twilight that had
deepened into darkness before it was finally quelled, could scarcely
have had any other object than to mask the retirement of the beaten
right wing. It answered its purpose then not inefficiently, and there
seems no ground for concluding that the Germans succeeded at all that
night in carrying the position of Amanvilliers any more than the
southerly one at Point du Jour. But it must have been tenable only on
sufferance and by the favour of the darkness, and like Point du Jour
it was abandoned in the early morning. The Saxon cavalry, with dashing
enterprise, penetrated the northern forests the night of the battle
and cut the railway and telegraphic communications between Metz and
Thionville. By the following night the ring of Germans around Metz was
well defined.
The battle of Gravelotte was both positively and relatively less bloody
than that of Vionville. With more than double the number of troops
engaged on the former day as compared with the latter, the Germans
lost about 14,000 men; the French probably about the same number.
What force Bazaine had in the field is difficult to estimate. When he
surrendered, his strength, 173,000 men, was as surprising as it was
inexplicable on the estimates to which the Germans had access. It
seems impossible that he could have had fewer than 150,000 men at his
disposal on the 18th of August; and it seems equally impossible that a
man in possession of his senses, even without a scintilla of military
capacity, should not on such an occasion have mustered out to the last
man.
About noon on the 19th, I crossed over the ravine of Gravelotte, where
in the gutters of the chaussée the blood of the Uhlans stood in red
puddles, and pushed on past the ruins of the Auberge of St. Hubert and
up to Point du Jour. The burying parties had hardly begun their work,
the wounded were still lying on the slopes in great numbers. From the
sharp angle formed by the chaussée, where it turns sharp to the south
above St. Hubert, I went forward on the old Roman road over the flat.
The Germans had not lost a minute. Already they were reversing the
front of what the day before had been French battery emplacements and
rifle pits. The replis lay behind entrenchments shaded by boughs of
trees which the French had cut. And the French looked so strangely
near—seemingly just over the way. They were encamped in peace on the
slopes and the summit of Mont St. Quentin, the white _tentes d’abris_
clustering round the fortress, and the smiling villages on the slopes.
The scene was like a gigantic pic-nic or a gipsy camp, with the French
tents beyond, and the Germans lolling in their bowers. There was no
formal truce, but the peace was unbroken. Fort St. Quentin might have
shelled the plateau where lay the Germans—in the morning, indeed, it
had sent two shells into a group of mounted men standing before the
detached house at the sharp turn of the road; but it seemed as if this
had been merely a kind of formal protest against any supposition that
it was not solely of its own will and pleasure that the fortress was
quiet. The assertiveness was too emphatic to have been agreeable to the
two dragoons killed by one of the shells; but the Germans were quite
content to concede what they could not well have challenged, all the
more readily because St. Quentin rested satisfied with the somewhat
grim formality.
For a day or two immediately after Gravelotte there was a good deal
of confusion as regarded several matters in the army which lay on
the battle-field where so many gallant soldiers were yet without
graves. The commissariat arrangements were hardly equal to the strain
put upon them, while the great dearth of water, and the badness of
quality in what was to be found, combined with the already ripe taint
of putrefaction, the heat of the weather, and the revulsion from the
excitement of the battle, to stimulate disease among the soldiers. Men
who had to trust to the field-post for the transmission of letters, had
their tempers sorely tried. On the 19th I consigned a letter to a fussy
but civil functionary who was in charge of a field-post wagon a little
way in front of Rezonville, and who professed his expectancy to start
“_gleich_,” which experience had taught me was a very elastic word. I
found the field-post wagon was still stationary the following morning,
the civil and fussy gentleman cooking at a bivouac fire a diabolical
mess, consisting of fat bacon, onions, biscuits, minced something or
other (it might have been postage stamps), coffee-grounds, and rice,
while his horses placidly slept the sleep of the just as they stood
ready harnessed for the start, even as they had done on the previous
night. Again the courteous official professed his belief that he was
to start _gleich_, although he owned that he had not the remotest idea
what was his destination. In reply to my proposal to take my letter
away and give it to some other less indefinite field-post, he professed
his readiness to give it up, but advised me not to make bad worse. The
ultimate result was that the letter miscarried altogether, and it was
the case that letters which did arrive took longer time in reaching
England from Gravelotte and the vicinity about this period, than they
did from before Paris at a later period of the war.
On the morning of the 20th August I revisited the flat in front of the
hamlet of St. Hubert, on which were stationed the German outposts,
behind the entrenchments which they had been steadily working upon, and
from which, the day before, the French army was visible, lying on the
face of Mont St. Quentin, and around the villages of Scy, Lessy, and
Lorry. To my surprise the French had totally disappeared. On the Friday
the ground was white with their tents, around which swarmed the brisk
gentlemen in the red trousers. Now, on the Saturday, not a tent or a
pair of red trousers was visible. The surly fortification on the top
of Mont St. Quentin frowned across in its solitude, the church-spire
of Lorry smiled in the sunbeam that slanted across it, but the traces
of a great army had as completely disappeared as if the ground had
opened and swallowed up the host. I followed the concavity of the
German semicircular entrenchments round to the left through the corner
of the wood of Chatel, which extends under various names, but in one
continuity, as far as Saulny, which is nearly due north from Metz. The
Germans held the wood, and were entrenching its verge. Thus, within my
own observation, a German belt extended thus early around Metz, from
the Moselle at Moulins, in a sweep first to the west and then to the
north, till it reaches within a mile and a half of the Thionville road.
The troops which lined this belt consisted chiefly of Prince Frederick
Charles’s army. The completion of the ring was taken up by the army
of General von Steinmetz. His district, so to speak, began at the
Thionville road, and swept round the eastern semicircle of environment
to the Moselle below Metz. Of course a space of such a magnitude as
is here indicated could not in so short a time be invested with that
closeness which would have been the case had the siege been simply
that of a fortified town and citadel. But the investment was close
enough for this,—that the army which was inside could not hope to get
outside without fighting a pitched battle. Such a force as that of the
French lying in and around Metz was not like the garrison of a detached
fort, capable of an effort at cutting its way out by a sudden sortie.
It must, as it seemed, break the cordon in form, and with warning
sufficient to admit of a German concentration to oppose the endeavour.
In view of the long and weary inaction which the soldiers of the 1st
and 2nd Armies endured while summer waned into autumn, and autumn had
all but chilled into winter, it may not be uninteresting if I quote the
_ipsissima verba_ of a passage which I find in the notes which I made
on this 20th of August, as calculated to show how, even thus early,
circumstances rendered it possible to forecast the policy of the German
leaders.
“Hitherto the German army has taken the _rôle_ of aggression, and
the French army has stood solely on the defensive. On the part
of the Germans the aggressive tactics hitherto have been at once
politic and characteristic in a national sense. It was necessary as a
feature of the German programme that the French army of Metz should
be got “into chancery,” and that there should be some desperate and
decisive fighting, in which might be demonstrated the impossibility of
resistance to the fury and persistency of the German assaults. Both
these ends have been accomplished. The army of Metz is beleaguered
under its walls, the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles
grimly standing sentry over it. The steep of Gorze, the plains of
Vionville, of Rezonville, and of Gravelotte, the ravine beyond it,
and the plateau of St. Hubert, strewn as they are with German dead,
but left, nevertheless, in the rear of the unrelenting advance of the
German host, bear bloody but unquestionable testimony to the fury and
obstinacy of their attack. Thus the double purpose is attained. Now,
therefore, the German tactics undergo an alteration. The children of
the Fatherland will no longer spill their blood in attacks which would
be purposeless, and therefore wanton; they await in their turn the
assaults of the beleaguered French army. Sooner or later that assault
must come. Want of supplies must precipitate the assumption of the
offensive on the part of the French. But if they can manage to live
till Christmas on the traditional French wealth of resources in the way
of edible matter, it will not accord with German policy to attack them.
So long as they are surrounded as they are now, they are harmless; if
they would break the environment, and become again dangerous, they must
fight for the freedom. The German leaders will not court the affray.
Why should they, since their great object is the maintenance of the
blockade? But since this is their object, it may well be imagined how
they will resist any attempts to raise that blockade.” It afterwards
fell to my lot to be an eye-witness of the manner in which at least one
of those attempts was resisted.
And was this investment of Metz, then, with its result, to all
appearance, postponed indefinitely and uncertain, to be the end of
all the German forced marching after Spicheren; of the rapid push
across Lorraine; of the double battle above Gorze; of the German dead
whose corpses are fertilising the plains of Vionville and Gravelotte;
of the thousands of wounded who cumbered the towns and the villages
all the way in the rear to Cologne and Mannheim? No. While there was
another French army still in the field it was not for the Germans to
linger about the scenes of their victories, and take to Lord Russell’s
policy of “Rest and be thankful.” Prince Frederick Charles and General
Steinmetz were reckoned, together, capable of sitting on the brink of
the French well at Metz, and looking down on the French army in its
depths. The Crown Prince, his army rested and refreshed in la belle
Nancy, was already pushing westward, giving the contemptuous go-by to
the obdurate little Toul. Already we heard rumours that his cavalry
scouts were swarming in the valley of the Marne. About St. Marie,
Amanvilliers, the blood-stained St. Privat and the battered Jerusalem,
the picked soldiers of Germany—the army corps of the Guards, the Royal
Saxons with their lissome dash, and the slower-pulsed Saxon Province
men of the 4th Corps, were making haste to bury their dead, and were
girding up their lines, to form a new—a 4th—army under the command of
the Crown Prince of Saxony, and march westward and northward along the
river from which the army took the name under which it made itself
famous.
In a day or two the hotels of Pont-à-Mousson were to lose the custom
of the princes and counts who were on the royal staff, for the King
was to strike southward _viâ_ Commercy, and joining his son at Ligny,
accompany the 3rd Army in what seemed then was to be the straight, if
not the bloodless road to Paris. What had occurred before Metz was but
the first act of the tragedy, what should occur thenceforth in its
vicinity was in this Titanic drama only “secondary business;” the piece
was to be played on and out nearer and yet nearer to the torn heart of
France.
But enough of what then was the future. On Saturday the 20th I
traversed the whole of the battle-fields of Tuesday and Thursday, and
the outward and visible signs of slaughter more and more convinced me
that the fight of the former day had been unquestionably the fiercer
and the more hotly contested. Let me attempt to give some idea of what
may be termed the area of slaughter in the two days’ fight. Within a
space of about six miles in length by four in depth there was not a
space so large as Piccadilly Circus that did not bear some token that
one or more men had fallen upon it. Now the tokens were dead bodies,
sometimes straggling so that several yards intervened, sometimes so
close that you could hardly step without treading on the dead; again
they consisted of bloody coats, pieces of linen, helmets, cuirasses
with the tell-tale holes in them, knapsacks riddled by bullets, dead
horses all but blown into fragments by the bursting of shells. The
lines of demarcation between the German and the French dead were in
places drawn with almost mathematical accuracy. On one of the roads
leading up the steep slope out of Gorze I came on an outlying part
of the table-land where the Germans lay very thickly. It looked as
if they had advanced in a column along the road, for its margin was
quite bordered with the dead. Here it was where the column had come
up which an American of genius and fancy likened to a great anaconda,
pushing forward with long tortuous folds till a battery opened on its
hinder parts and amputated and all but destroyed its tail. Then I came
to the place where the column had struggled into deployment and had
got within the fatal 200 yards’ distance of the Frenchmen. The latter
lay far thicker then than the Germans had lain in the first space.
Burial parties were at work at this place, but seemed bewildered to
decide where to make a beginning. I advised one of the officers to
double-trench the ground all over, laying the dead along the hollow
of each successive trench, something like a celery bed; so many were
they that this market-gardening style of grave would have been, I
am convinced, the best plan for getting them out of sight; saving
transport to isolated grave-pits, and lessening the temptation to bury
too near to the surface, which is always strong with burial parties
who have excavated with labour a large pit, into which they are
anxious to crowd all the corpses in the neighbourhood, regardless of
the fact that the uppermost are so near the surface that the plough of
the next spring must uncover their remains. The surface of the little
churchyard of Gravelotte had been raised three feet all over in one
day. The church had been crowded with the most severely wounded in the
Thursday’s battle, and as the poor fellows died they had been carried
out into the churchyard. This with its loopholed wall had been the
scene of a desperate stand on the part of the French, and already had
more than its own share of corpses: so that, when I had seen it on the
Friday, the bodies, chiefly of Frenchmen, were lying two deep all over
its edge. The interior of the church was a sight I never can forget.
Most know the ornamental character of these Catholic churches on the
Continent, the meretriciously decorated altar, with the pictures, the
candles, and what not. The white altar-cloth was splashed with blood,
the floor was bedded all over with the wounded, and the atmosphere had
become tainted and malaria-laden. In the churchyard I had noticed the
little wooden memorials over the village dead, with the wreaths of
immortelles around them, sticking up through the stacks of dead. To-day
they were out of sight, covered with the earth that had been thrown
over all as the easiest and quickest method of a wholesale interment.
I have referred to the “fatal 200 yards” of the Germans. Always the
attacking force, as they had hitherto been, their fire was confessedly,
and in the nature of things, wilder than that of a body waiting
in a stationary position for them to come; and it was ever at the
long-range distances that the French did so great execution among them
with the chassepot. As to the question of the comparative accuracy
of the zund-nadelgewehr and the chassepot as weapons of precision at
long range, the Germans did not as yet appear inclined to express an
opinion, yet one might gather even thus early what a terrible respect
they had already learned for the weapon which they afterwards confessed
to be “pale death” itself. But when they got within the 200 yards,
and brought their needle-guns down to the point-blank range, then it
was that their fire was of the “fatal” character I allude to. French
prisoners with whom I spoke told with a shudder of the shower of
bullets from the needle-gun at and within this range, that fell upon
a column about the breasts and faces of the men, and against which
nothing could stand. It is only on such vantage grounds as the top of
the Spicheren or the edge of the ravine above the Gravelotte ravine
that the French stood up for any time against this fire of the Germans.
Before quitting the position before Metz, on Monday, the 22nd August,
I took a final walk along the foreposts on the Gravelotte side. The
entrenchments of the Germans were now nearly complete, and although
rough and ready, were very artistic in their formation. Sentries were
stationed on the brink of the valley lying between Mont St. Quentin
and the Chatel plateau, with strong piquets lying concealed in their
rear. From their position I could see with the glass into the mouths
of the heavy cannon of Fort St. Quentin, which looked strangely close.
Going along a little to the right, in the direction of the Moselle, I
was able to turn, so far as eyesight was concerned, the shoulder of
Mont St. Quentin, and lo! stretched out before me lay the beautiful
plain of Metz, with the river gleaming in the sunshine, the spires
and roofs of the town sparkling brightly, and the gloomy mass of Fort
Bellecroix—the finest work of Cormontaigne—grimly covering the right.
The German cordon, I was assured by a staff officer, was now completely
drawn round Metz, and Thionville was also invested. There was every
appearance that the armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz
had quietly settled themselves down in their position. Crimean men have
been wont to assert that the French were the best constructors of huts
in the world, but I question whether the Germans do not excel them. All
along these tablelands they had built themselves dainty little leafy
habitations out of the branches and bark of the poplar trees that line
the roads, and seemed as comfortable as if they were at home in their
cottages in the Fatherland. As I passed one of the regiments its band,
standing in a circle, was practising one of Mendelssohn’s masterpieces,
the men enjoying the strains _sub tegmine fagi_, while all around the
burying parties were engaged in burying not only their own but their
enemy’s dead out of their sight.
On returning to Pont-à-Mousson, from my first start to Thiaucourt, I
had determined to walk no longer, but at once to invest in a horse, if
one was to be procured in the town. This at first seemed doubtful, for
the Germans had made a very exhaustive levy, but ultimately I chanced
on a horse-dealer whose stud had not quite been swept away. He was one
of the most marvellously stolid men I have ever seen, half German, half
French; the blended blood seemed wholly to have stagnated in his veins.
Almost the only sign of animation he evinced was a wink, but then that
wink was remarkably expressive. I was fortunate. He had an admirable
horse in his stable, sure-footed, fast, easily kept, and in fact a
compendium of equine virtues. But—bother the buts, they always crop up
in such cases—this paragon of animals had one little drawback, he was
stone-blind. Now there sometimes are advantages connected with a blind
horse—that is, if he is a reasonable animal otherwise. He trusts his
rider and will go straightforward courageously, till the rein gives a
hint to turn to the right or the left. There is no fear of his shying,
because to him there are no objects of alarm. He commonly has good
action and a light mouth. In view of all this I directed the blind
horse to be saddled and brought forth. I mounted and set him a-going.
It is cruel to be hard on the misfortunes of a fellow-creature, but
this horse must have had a mental organisation as opaque as the pupils
of his eyeballs. Three steps in any one direction were enough for
him, then he tried another, and so continued this process, totally
insensible to any suggestions on the part of his rider. He ran his
nose against a house, and then he all but fell over a plough; finally,
in one of his tacks, he broke the glass of a general’s carriage, and
brought down a “Donner wetter” or two upon my head. Tired as I was
of walking, I became fully impressed with the fact that it would be
cheaper to walk ten miles than to ride the blind horse one, even if
such a feat were possible, and, dismounting, I led him back somewhat
ignobly to the stable. The horse-dealer winked solemnly, bestowed a
caress on the abominable brute, and expressed his astonishment that I
should not have found him all that could be desired. The excuse was,
that he had always been driven alongside of another beast, and the
deprivation of his companion had demoralised him. But I was bidden be
of good cheer, the horse-dealer was still assured that he would be
able to accommodate me. After a little delay another steed was brought
forth. He was “long and low”—the true Leicestershire desiderata.
The length was principally in the neck, which resembled that of an
ostrich; the lowness was in the back, which curved downward so that
his withers and rump stood up like two sharply-pronounced hills. His
colour was a dirty-white; he had capped hocks, a pair of most villanous
recently-broken knees, and a wicked backward cast in his eye that
said very little for his temper. His appearance was certainly not in
his favour, but remembering the adage never to trust to appearances,
and being assured he was a remarkable performer, I mounted and got him
under way. He went decently enough to the end of the street; but when a
battery of artillery came along the cross street at a trot he soon gave
me a sample of his remarkable performances. He declined to go forward
at any price, but instead he was open to kicking as freely as the heart
of man could desire. He kicked the battery into the direst confusion,
wriggling about here, there, and everywhere, continually elevating that
prominent rump of his, and struggling furiously to get his head down. I
thought I should have had to choose a favourable moment and dismount,
leaving him and the battery to settle it between themselves, but at
length I got his head homewards, and then he suddenly subsided, and
walked to his stable as if he had done something to be proud of.
The horse-dealer winked again as I returned a second time, and said he
had still another beast. The past experience was not of a character
to tempt further experiments, but I wanted a horse badly, and I knew
this was my last chance; so I told them to bring him out. He was a
very conscientious-looking quadruped, slightly monumental as to his
legs, but then he had a bold Roman nose, and a tail possessed of what
may be styled the Grecian bend of horsetails. My heart warmed to him
at once, for, like myself, he was an old dragoon. He had been cast
from a French cavalry regiment in some remote age, and had since been
engaged, judging by the collar marks, as a beast of burden. Well, I
started with this animal for a third trial, and to do him justice, his
conduct did not belie his conscientious aspect. He plodded forward
steadily at a kind of compound of a walk, a trot, and a canter; he
seemed to be walking with his fore legs, trotting with one of his
hind legs, and cantering with the other. The effect was novel, if not
wholly agreeable, and then he really got over the ground very fairly.
On the day of Gravelotte he carried me uncommonly well, his ancient
military training making him stand fire like an adjutant’s horse, which
is generally too depressed in spirits to manifest emotion at anything
short of an earthquake. I began to get very sweet on him, although
the scarcity of keep was a considerable inconvenience. There was but
little bother with him on the Thursday night. When I joined the bivouac
I fastened him to the end of a row of cuirassier horses that were
picketed close by, and the men gave him of their oats and hay. But they
went away next morning, the bivouac broke up, and fresh quarters had to
be sought. In one of the houses of the deserted village of Gravelotte I
found a room which was tenanted only by two sorely wounded men and an
hospital attendant. All the other houses were packed full of wounded,
and one was in luck in getting the use of a chair, and of the common
frying-pan in which to cook a piece of bacon bought from a marketender.
But there was no room for the horse, and if there had been, he would
not have been the best company for the wounded men. I tied him up
outside while I ate, wrote, and slept, and then late in the afternoon
it struck me that he must be thirsty. I rode the brute a circuit of
some five miles in search of water, and when I got back it was all but
dark. On entering the room I found one of the wounded men lying dead,
and the other removed along with the hospital man. It was not pleasant
to occupy the same room with the poor dead fellow, and luckily an empty
stable turned up next door with plenty of hay in the loft. Having fed
the horse copiously, I adjourned among the hay to sleep, and in the
morning I found my noble steed was gone! Perhaps he had broken the
fastening, and walked away of his own accord; perhaps a passing suttler
had stolen him. Anyhow he was clear away, leaving me as a memento the
saddle and bridle. These, which were of the nature of a white elephant,
I was glad to get rid of for a box of cigars, and fortunately my
comrade turned up from Pont-à-Mousson with a carriage horse, and driver
that by some inscrutable means he had discovered there unrequisitioned.
CHAPTER IV.
SEDAN: BEFORE AND AFTER.
Having made up our minds to quit the beleaguerment of Metz and strike
off in a southerly direction with intent to hit on the march of the
Crown Prince’s army, we started off rather vaguely on the 22nd of
August, and reached St. Mihiel, a small town on the Meuse, the same
night.
Now it seems hardly to be realised how difficult it was in the times
of which I am writing to get reliable information, or to guard against
being led away by some baseless rumour. I remember we lost the whole of
the 23rd by slanting away to the north-west as far as a village called
Fresnes, by reason of a circumstantial, but untrue story, to the effect
that a battle was imminent under the walls of Verdun. When we quitted
St. Mihiel for Bar-le-Duc on the morning of the 24th we could get no
certain information whether it was as yet safe to go to Bar-le-Duc.
We travelled with a column as far as Villotte, and then the troops
struck away to the north in the direction of Vaubenoit. In answer to
questions at Villotte, it was not to be learned that any German troops
had taken the road to Bar-le-Duc, which lies through that village.
There had been fighting, the villagers lyingly said, somewhere to the
south-west, and the road to Bar-le-Duc ran south-west. Going on upon
chance, we presently came into a deeply-wooded defile, extending for
several miles. Not a German was visible; indeed, nothing human was to
be seen. The place was calculated to make one nervous, especially when
one’s driver had a fixed belief that there was a Frenchman behind every
stump. He was a Luxemburger, and therefore theoretically a neutral, but
I think he sympathised with the _grande nation_.
Possibly no reader has ever practised the art of reconnoitring from an
open carriage, and I may describe the process. You cautiously advance
till you reach an angle; then you steal round it and halt, and sweep
the whole front and flanks with your binocular. Nothing suspicious
is visible, so you trot along the straight till you approach another
turn, when you repeat the cautious tactics. You get along at the rate
of about two miles and a half an hour. If you see anything suspicious,
such as the smoke of a camp fire, you cautiously retire your machine
and make a pedestrian reconnoissance. Of course, with all this caution,
we reached Vaires in perfect safety, and found it full of Bavarian
cavalry, who told me that their army was in great force in Bar-le-Duc
and ever so much farther forward. About two hours after we got into
Bar-le-Duc we saw the old King arrive in his open travelling carriage.
He had spent the previous night at Commercy. His quarters were in the
largest house in the town, the Banque de France, on one of the charming
Boulevards by which this very pretty town is surrounded. The Bavarians
were very proud at being permitted to find him his guard, and I confess
I pitied the two sentries on the door, who had to present arms on an
average of about four times a minute. A Bavarian regimental band played
in front of the Royal quarters in the early evening, and King Wilhelm
came out and placidly smoked his cigar on the balcony, listening to
the music. The townsfolk could not understand the quiet, homely way
in which the Royal state of the Prussian monarch is conducted. When
the French Emperor passed through on his way to Metz he, too, slept
at the Banque de France, but he was surrounded by a cordon of guards,
sentries, and police spies. The people made no secret of the fact that
they liked the Prussian way of doing business best. The hotel-keepers
remarked that they got their bills paid as if the generals were
tourists, whereas the French gave promises to pay when the war should
be over. During the day about thirty thousand men of the Crown Prince’s
army passed through the town—chiefly Bavarians. The light blue of the
Bavarian uniform does not wear well in point of looks—it gets soiled
in no time and then even the officers look seedy. The helmet, too,
is a creation of intensest ugliness. It has no split crow in gold
on the front, but the letter “L” for the King’s initial, and it is
surmounted by a ridgy tuft of upstanding bear’s-skin that looks like a
dolly. But the Bavarian soldiers, spite of an ugly uniform, were fine
fellows, and right serviceable-looking soldiers. The Crown Prince had
given them some notable lessons in marching, and they had thrown away
everything not essential, the very officers carrying their own kits in
knapsacks on their backs. There were no led horses with portmanteaus,
few pack waggons, and none of the impedimenta to which Prince Frederick
Charles’s army was somewhat addicted. The men did not seem very
uniform in size, and toward the tail of the regiment some of them ran
smaller than would be admitted in the German service. But they were
smart, clean-built fellows, with an elastic spring in their step, and
bright, keen eyes, and altogether had a fighting look about them; and
Weissemburg and Wörth were evidence that their actions corroborated
their looks. Their cavalry was smart enough, but not very brilliantly
mounted. The horses seemed more of the work-animal pattern than those
of the Prussian Dragoons or Uhlans, but looked good weight-carriers,
and had lost wonderfully little in flesh considering what had been
taken out of them.
What a grand old motto is _festina lente_! In the early morning of
the 25th, in full conviction that in two or three days the King and
the Crown Prince, according to the programme then current, would be
in Châlons, we started off thither, glad in the belief that we were
so well to the front. It was, I believe, in the forenoon of the 25th
that the change of tactics was arranged consequent on the discovery
of MacMahon’s movement to the north; thus, when the troops about
Bar-le-Duc were commencing that wonderful series of marches which
brought them on the right flank of the French in the valley of the
Meuse, we were jogging contentedly towards Vitry. In the worm-eaten
old fortress we found a couple of battalions, the place having been
abandoned by the Mobile garrison on the approach of the German troops,
the curious miscellaneous assortment of guns having been partly
pitched into the moat, partly left on the ramparts. The day after the
evacuation several hundreds of the garrison had been surrounded in
a wood by a comparative handful of Uhlans and made prisoners, after
firing a few harmless volleys. The garrison of Vitry and the troops
in the neighbourhood received orders on the 26th to march to the
northward; but no explanation of the reason accompanied those orders,
and nobody in Vitry had any knowledge as to the radical alteration in
the situation. The march to the north was regarded as simply a slight
diversion, and none doubted that MacMahon was falling back from the
camp of Châlons. The road to Châlons then seemed still the chief
thoroughfare for the advance of the German army, and off for Châlons we
set by the southern bank of the Marne. During the whole journey we saw
but one German—an officer driven in a gig by a peasant, and engaged in
noting the bridges and fords on the Marne. The timid country people,
anxious to sell their produce, continually begged of us to tell them
whether they could get into Vitry. We might have been in a land of
profound peace, so far away seemed everything warlike. When we reached
the iron gates where the municipals of Châlons collect the octroi dues,
it was matter of surprise that there stood no men in spiked helmets on
sentry there. On we drove into the town, through streets thronged with
people gossipping and gesticulating; and still never a German uniform
was visible. Relinquishing our intention of halting at a hotel, we
pushed right on, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, till we got
on the further boulevard, where a well-intentioned townsman stopped
us to say that if we went much further there were Germans still about
who were sure to requisition our vehicle. Thanking him for form sake
we pressed on till, some two miles outside of Châlons on the road to
Suippes, we overtook an officer and five men of the Black Hussars,
the last of the troops who had evacuated Châlons for the march to
the north. This party we accompanied to Suippes, where we were on
the extreme left flank of the German army. What boots it to narrate
the little good purpose to which, chasing the shadows thrown out by
defective information, we spent the days from the 27th to the 31st—how
we were carried prisoners by an over-zealous train officer to Turane,
where Prince Albrecht, commanding the cavalry covering the flank, blew
him up for his officiousness—how we tracked back toward St. Menehould
and then north to Vouziers, where we saw francs-tireurs shot, and
the villages burnt in which they had fired on the German patrols—how
on the 30th, passing through deserted camp after deserted camp of
MacMahon's army, we were within a short distance of the surprise of
Beamont without knowing it, and how at length in the afternoon we
came into Chemery by the southern road as the Crown Prince, with the
5th Army Corps, came down by the eastern from Stonne? Where the two
roads join at the end of the dismal village he halted, and regiment
after regiment, first of the 11th and then of the 5th Corps, marched
past him, dusty, fagged, but full of fight. Then there was a rattle of
wheels, and the carriages containing the King and his staff drove up,
and halted in the dusty road while Wilhelm dismounted, and stood by his
son till the last proviant waggon of the 5th Corps had filed past, and
till his uniform was so white with the dust that you might have taken
him for a venerable baker who had mounted a sword and a helmet. Then he
laid his hand on his son’s arm, and the pair walked slowly up a narrow
lane to the right between two gardens. For awhile father and son stood
talking earnestly, the senior with his hand on the other’s shoulder,
the younger holding an unfolded map in his hand and talking earnestly.
Then Von Moltke and Blumenthal were beckoned up out of the throng of
staff officers, and presently Von Roon and Podbielski. The open air
council of war lasted for nearly half an hour, and then the King left
Chemery at a brisk trot, crossed the valley to Malmy, and went off down
the further side of the canal to his head-quarters for the night at
Vendresse. In the lane between the gardens, as I afterwards learnt, it
was decided that the crushing blow should be dealt next day instead of
being postponed, as originally intended, till the 2nd of September.
It was entirely by chance that, unattached as we were to anything or
anybody, while posting letters in Vendresse about seven o’clock on the
morning of the 1st September, we heard that there was fighting going
on to the north, in the valley of the Meuse. The King had been out
of bed and away ever since the early morning—gone, one of the Royal
gendarmes sagely informed us, to visit the battle of the previous
day but one. Of course we started at once, found the road utterly
deserted, and, taking the wrong branch at the fork, came down into
the valley of the Meuse nearly as far west as Mezières, and for the
time at least out of view of the great battle that was raging as
we trotted rapidly forward. But the whole valley was resonant with
the din of battle. Away to our right we could hear the crash of the
artillery fire at Sedan. Over against Donchery, midway between Sedan
and Mezières, the blazing villages sent baleful flakes of flame up
into the bright sky. At Mezières itself the Würtembergers, from the
top of the heights between us and the town, were replying with shells
and musketry to the cannon from the bastions and the spiteful whirr of
the mitrailleuses from the glacis. As we came down into the valley we
passed through large French camps with the fires still burning. This
had evidently been the scene of a surprise. The men had left their
camp-kettles on the logs and their knapsacks in the lines; they seemed
to have hurriedly snatched their arms and made off, some indeed having
gone away without the preliminary ceremony of grasping their rifles.
Here and there, but at rare intervals, were strewn corpses of men and
horses, and the hospital flag was flying from several houses. Ere we
left the height we saw regiment after regiment of Würtembergers press
out of the village of Flize up on to the bluff which overhangs the
town, and stand there blazing away at something that seemingly lay
between them and the town, while the great guns of the fortress tried
in vain to dislodge them. Reaching Flize I found several regiments of
Würtembergers drawn up and in a high state of excitement by reason of
the easy manner in which they had driven the enemy close up under the
walls of Mezières. It had been a running skirmish for several miles in
length and breadth. The French on the previous night had broken down
a wooden suspension bridge crossing the Meuse close under the east of
Flize. The suspension cables were composed of strands of fine wire;
one of them only was cut, and the floor of the bridge had turned a
complete somersault over the still standing wire, lying upside down in
the bed of the river. The Würtembergers had, about midnight, thrown
a pontoon across in twenty-five minutes, and followed up the pursuit
on the northern river flat, while they continued to press the French
towards the town on the southern knolls and heights. About the time
we arrived the latter had been driven in a huddled mass on to the
exposed glacis of the fortress, and were struggling for entrance at
the gates. The Würtembergers from the heights, disregarding the feeble
and ill-directed fire from the guns that ought to have covered the
French retirement into the fortress, poured down volley after volley
of musketry into the chaotic mass lying below them. Then just as we
reached the height a battery opened fire with shells, and caught the
range of the entrance gate through the fortress wall at the first shot.
Two streams were meeting and battling at this entrance; the block was
complete, when a shell hurtled into its midst, and, exploding as it
fell, blew the densely-packed human mass, mangled and bleeding, in
all directions. This terrible fire of shells never ceased till the
Frenchmen were inside the great gate; and many there were that tried
to enter whom the bursting shells forbade not only to enter but to
live. The officer in command of the Würtembergers told us that he had
no intention of assailing the fortress itself till further orders,
and that he had complied with his instructions when he had chased the
French inside of it. The guns were roaring up the valley at Sedan, and
if we made haste we might yet be in time to see some fighting there. So
we went off rapidly towards Sedan along the great chaussée, and reached
a knoll behind the village of Frenois, which commands a view of the
whole valley, just in time to witness the last of a series of brilliant
cavalry charges made by the French Chasseurs d’Afrique, which went far
to annihilate that body of dashing horsemen.
Sedan, a fortress of considerable strength, with a moderate-sized
town, lies round the convex side of a northern bend of the Meuse. On
the south-east, toward Wadelincourt and Balan, there were considerable
artificially-caused inundations which materially added to the strength
of the place on that side. Further to the south-west, and on both sides
of the river, spreads out a considerable alluvial tract, probably at
one time a lake. Near the centre of the northern section of this is,
or rather was, the large village of Bazeilles. On the west side of the
town the configuration of the ground is more complicated. The river
quits the town in a north-westerly direction, leaving the suburb of
Torcy on the south, and presently trends away north-west by north for a
stretch over two miles. Doubling back with considerable abruptness it
comes back nearly due south a distance of about three miles, skirting
near the foot of this second stretch the grounds of the Chateau
Bellevue, and impinging rather abruptly on the high ground by the
village of Frenois, which diverts its course in a westerly direction
towards Donchery. By this loop a peninsula is enclosed, which a canal
across the isthmus converts wholly into an island—the island which for
several days formed the wretched prison of the captured French army.
At the angle where, on the side nearest Sedan, the canal leaves the
Meuse, stands the village of Glaire; nearer Sedan, on the south side
of the river, is the village of Torcy. On the southern side of Sedan a
range of more or less abrupt high ground quits the bank of the Meuse
above Wadelincourt (that is, on the south-eastern side of the town),
and sweeping round envelopes a plain of some size till it comes closer
to the river again at Frenois, after which it runs away parallel with
the Meuse till broken by the river Bar running down northward from the
low hills of the Argonne to join the Meuse not far from the village of
Dom-le-Mesnil. This range comprises several eminences of considerable
height: the loftiest is that just above the town of Donchery, on
the summit of which is the chateau of the same name,—the point from
which the Crown Prince directed operations on the day of the battle.
At ill-defined right angles from this range there runs out a lower
rounded spur, which gradually lessens in elevation as the river comes
to meet it at Frenois, and disappears altogether a few hundred yards
further north. On its northern shoulder is built the Chateau Bellevue,
which, from its moderate elevation, looks across the river and over
the plain to Donchery in one direction, and down upon Sedan on the
other, seeming from its position, as looked at from either place, to
stand considerably higher than it really does. On the north side of
the Meuse there is a range of high ground resembling in many points
that on the south. Commencing behind Sedan, the heights on the north
are less rugged and have their tops, as it were, shaved off, so as to
constitute a tableland sloping ever towards the river. Round the top of
the loop the heights come pretty close to the river, but they leave to
the west of it the considerable plain of Donchery, and their slopes are
easier, studded with villages and fields, alternated with woods. On the
Sedan side of the loop the belt of meadow-plain left is narrower, but
it attains a considerable width just opposite the village of Glaire.
Depressions rather than ravines serrate the high ground rectangularly,
one of these being close to the town of Sedan. Behind all rise the
forest-clad hills of the Ardennes, and the frontier is but a few miles
off among those.
The Germans had driven the French out of the country on the south
side of the Meuse, and the French lay along the northern bank. It
may be said either that they had no proper front, or that they had
three fronts. It was surely in some sense a front rather than a flank
position, the extended face shown to the Bavarians and Crown Prince of
Saxony’s army all the way from Bazeilles by Daigny back to Givonne. It
was a very deep flank, if it could be called a flank, on which the 5th
and 11th Corps fell on the west after their circuitous march to the
head of the loop. But the nominal front may be said to have stretched
along the river, with the fortress for its centre, whose fortifications
were manned, and in and about which was accumulated the French train
and other impedimenta.
Of the masses which fought so toughly with the Saxons and Bavarians
on the north-east and south-east of the town, or of the character of
the battle that raged all round that side, I can say nothing as an
eye-witness. But when I came in sight of the ground a large force of
French infantry, cavalry, and artillery held the broad, flattened
top of the bluff height next but one to the fortress on the westward
side of the town and the northern bank of the river. The great focus
of interest to me was this flattened bluff standing forward into
the valley, and bounded on the Sedan side as I have described, on
the Mezières side by a wider depression, which, rising gradually,
ultimately loses itself almost imperceptibly on the higher ground. This
depression forms a sort of bay, round which sweeps the high ground,
which then extends all the way westward as far as opposite Donchery,
more or less elevated, and crested everywhere by a dense wood. In the
very centre of this bay there rises an isolated knoll or mamelon,
nearly to an equal height with the high ground flanking the bay, and
affording a remarkable position for assailing with advantage the table
land on which stood the French; since, crowned with wood, it formed
admirable cover for any troops advancing from the west along the low
ground, who had full opportunity to make all their dispositions without
exposing so much as a helmet. And then, there was the choice either of
standing on the top of the mamelon and firing across, of going to the
left up the valley on to the height, or of debouching on to the low
river-flat to the right, and from there assailing the table land where
its slope was least abrupt, and where a road up its face was calculated
to afford material assistance to an attacking party. That the Germans
fully appreciated the strategical value of this mamelon became speedily
apparent.
In the small hours of the morning, the 11th and the 5th Army Corps,
which, after passing through Chemery, had pushed on to make their
bivouac between Dom and Donchery, had crossed the Meuse by two
pontoon bridges below their bivouac. The latter corps had struck up
at once right out of the valley to the edge of the forests cresting
the upper ground, and had then come left shoulders forward through the
upland farms and villages, having to fight their way smartly as they
progressed, and leaving a track of fire and smoke behind them. As we
came into the valley above Flize, the line of this advance was already
marked by those lurid insignia. The 11th Corps, on crossing the stream,
right inclined considerably sooner than the 5th, and kept on the lower
ground, while they bored on forward to round the top of the loop. Thus
those two corps were marching on the right flank of the French, or on
what I prefer to regard as having been its right face. Up till nine
o’clock the battle, in this direction at all events, had been confined
chiefly to artillery, but, soon after, the 5th Corps had got to close
quarters away on the further upland, and the left of the 11th Corps was
even sooner in the thick of it, nearer the river and adjacent to the
place where the depression in which stands the mamelon loses itself
on the upland. The French artillery first essayed in vain to stay the
resolute progress of the German troops. Then their cavalry charged
again and again—lancers, cuirassiers, and chasseurs-à-cheval—hurling
themselves on the ever-advancing columns, with a courage which all who
witnessed it unite in calling heroic. But the bayonets bore them back,
as bayonets, in the hands of resolute disciplined infantrymen, will
ever bear back horsemen, and then the two infantries came together, and
the engagement at this point became close and general.
While these things were being transacted on the upland, a manœuvre
was in progress for taking avail of the advantage which the isolated
mamelon rising out of the centre of the embayed depression, was
calculated to afford. There gradually massed behind it a large force
of infantry and several batteries of artillery, belonging, no doubt,
to the right division of the 11th Corps. More than one regiment and
battery occupied the summit, and fired across point blank, replying
with advantage to the direct cannon and mitrailleuse fire of the
French from opposite, by reason of their advantageous position among
the trees, while they also found opportunity to throw in a raking
fire upon the left shoulders of the French infantry engaged with the
Germans up at the head of the bay. A couple of regiments, under cover
of this fire, dashed up the bottom of the depression on to the table
land, and took the fighting Frenchmen on the flank, hurling them back,
and leaving their guns and mitrailleuses in a position from which they
had to retreat to prevent their own capture. The Germans then pressed
the French steadily backward across the table-land toward the ravine
on the side of Sedan, not without desperate fighting and heavy loss.
As they were being thus pushed back, the French flank came within the
range of two or three batteries of Bothmer’s Bavarian division, which
had from the first been stationed on the opposite side of the Meuse,
on a rising ground running out into the flat a little to the eastward
of the village of Frenois. But this was at long range, and did not do
all the execution which the leaders must have desiderated. Therefore,
from behind the mamelon in the bay, there issued to the right a German
infantry brigade of the 11th Corps and a battery of artillery. The
little force skirted the plain at the base of the high ground till it
came in a direct line with the fire of the Bavarian guns playing on the
height over their heads. There, in the meadow opposite, in and about
Floing they had a sharp brush with a regiment of French cuirassiers
of the Guard, who had been stationed in a hamlet on the verge of the
meadow. The cuirassiers, with their floating horsehair plumes and their
long, straight swords, charged home knee to knee like gallant soldiers
as they were; but we saw about half a dozen batches of white smoke,
and then a broken, straggling stream of horsemen hurriedly breasting
the steep by the terraced road that runs up it, leaving their track
chequered by fallen men and horses. The terraced road was then followed
by the battery, the brigade of infantry struggling up, regardless
of a path. The little force was wholly protected from the enemy’s
fire so long as it kept under the brow, and was further advantaged by
the Bavarian fire, which was whistling high over its head. That fire
stopped as the helmet spikes showed on to the table land, with the
battery flanking it, the whole looking straight into the right flank
of the Frenchmen retreating towards Sedan. The artillery began its
measured booming; the infantrymen plied the needle-gun. It seemed as
if the French retreat must become a rout. But there was still left
heart among the Frenchmen for an attempt to hurl at least this last
thorn in their side off the table land into the plain by the Meuse. At
a gallop through the ragged intervals in the confused masses of the
infantry came dashing the Chasseurs d’Afrique. The squadrons halted,
fronted, and then wheeled into line, at a pace and with a regularity
which would have done them credit in the Champ de Mars, and did them
double credit, executed as was the evolution under a warm fire. That
fire, as one could tell by the dying away of the smoke jets, ceased all
of a sudden, as if the trumpets which rang out the “Charge!” for the
Chasseurs had sounded also the “Cease firing!” for the German artillery
and infantry. Not a needle-gun gave fire as the splendid horsemen
crashed down the gentle slope with the velocity of an avalanche. I have
seen not a few cavalry charges, but I never saw a finer one, whether
from a spectator’s or an adjutant’s point of view, than this one of the
Chasseurs d’Afrique. It was destined to a sudden arrestment, and that
without the ceremony of the trumpets sounding the “Halt.” The horsemen
and the footmen might have seen the colour of each others’ moustaches
(to use Havelock’s favourite phrase), when along the line of the latter
there flashed out a sudden, simultaneous streak of fire. Like thunder
claps sounding over the din of a hurricane, rose the measured crash of
the battery guns, and the cloud of white smoke drifted away towards
the Chasseurs, enveloping them for the moment from one’s sight. When
it blew away, there was visible a line of bright uniforms and grey
horses struggling prostrate among the potato drills, or lying still in
death. Only a handful of all the gallant show of five minutes before
were galloping backward up the slope, leaving tokens at intervals of
their progress as they retreated. So thorough a destruction, by what
may be called a single volley probably the oldest soldier now alive
never witnessed. The cavalry blotted out, still the French infantry
found courage in despair for one last effort. It was to almost certain
death, and to absolutely certain defeat, that that straggling line
came on, irregularly firing as it pushed forward. Rushes of impotent
passion burst out from parts of the line; other parts only staggered
slowly forward, as if against a high wind. What came of the effort it
was hard to tell in the distracting medley, till the time came for
one to go on to the battle-field, after the combatants had quitted it.
Under the veil of white smoke the tattered line of infantrymen seemed
gradually to melt away, without having ever come to close quarters with
the enemy, who stood so solidly pouring his fire into its teeth; but
that some, both of the horsemen and the footmen, must have got somehow
to the brink of the slope, seemed evident from the fact that dead men
of both arms lay after the battle either on the road which slanted
up the steep, or huddled at its bottom, as if either their impetus
had overshot the mark, or they had been pitched over by the German
infantrymen, who kept so tight a hold of the position on to which they
had struggled.
Meanwhile the Bavarians from Bazeilles on the eastward of Sedan, the
Saxons by Daigny and Givonne on the north-eastward, and the Prussian
Guards edging round till they had reached due north of the town, were
steadily, and with very hard fighting, driving in the French on their
respective fronts. Pressing still to their own right, the right flank
of the Guards began to touch the ever further and further overlapping
left of the 5th Corps, till at length the junction was complete, and
there was no thoroughfare through lines composed of soldiers such
as those. And so the French host was environed and cut off from the
frontier and from escape in that direction by a semicircle round
Sedan, the chord of which was the Meuse. Then the Meuse on its south
side was lined by Bavarian and Prussian troops, and the investment
was complete. The citadel could not hold half the French infantry,
to say nothing of the cavalry, artillery, and train; the town, it
was seen from the battle-field, was densely packed even on to the
exposed side of the glacis; and it seemed, as the firing gradually
died away, almost to nothing, before three o’clock, that the battle
was surely over. A report, indeed, ran round that the place, and all
that was in it, had capitulated; but that this was premature was shown
by the recommencement of artillery fire from the south-east between
four and five. At what or at whom this fire was directed, none in our
vicinity could tell, till volumes of black smoke, rising from inside
the ramparts, gave indication that the city itself was the mark. The
French had almost abandoned the semblance of resistance, and I saw no
attempt at replying to this bombardment, which was over and past by
five o’clock, and then the stillness was something painful, in contrast
with the fearful din of the day. Before darkness fell the Germans had
drawn back off the battle-field, and had surrounded the whole town with
a cordon of artillery. The guns stood unlimbered and ready pointed at
the town—24 batteries, 144 guns—a gentle hint of what were the German
intentions in the morning if resistance should be persevered in.
My companion and myself had some expectation, judging from the aspect
of affairs, that toward the close of the afternoon the French were
concentrating for one last effort to break out in a due northerly
direction; and anxious to be in the vicinity if this should occur,
we had crossed the Meuse by a rope ferry at the village of Glaire,
and pushed across the corpse-flecked plain into the dead-littered
village of Floing at the further side. As we were clumbering up the
steep on to the upland plateau, there rose suddenly, from the dense
masses of troops collected on the southern swell, a hoarse roar of
cheering, caught up, as if by infection, by the men of the 11th Army
Corps in the bay around the mamelon, and on the plateau. From mouth
to mouth flew the tidings that the French Emperor had sent his sword
to the German King, that the whole French host were already virtually
prisoners of war, and that Sedan, with all that was in it and around
it, was formally to capitulate in the morning. From where we were we
saw nothing of the aide-de-camp with the flag of truce, or of the
grand sensational scene of his interview with the German monarch. The
ferry-boat was on the wrong side of the stream, and before we got over
once more to the south side, the King had set off on his return journey
to Vendresse, the Crown Prince had vacated his hill and had taken
the road back to Chemery, the flushed and wearied fighting men had
commenced preparations for their bivouac, and the autumn twilight was
fast descending. We came back past the Chateau Bellevue and through
Frenois to Donchery. The mean town looked like a city of the dead, for
every inhabitant seemed to have deserted it, save only the woman who
kept the hotel. I contrived to obtain quarters in it, and presently
there arrived a body of staff officers. These confirmed the tidings
we had heard, but could give no specific details. A meagre supper was
served, eked out by a few boxes of sardines, with which we happened
to be provided, and it was being eaten when suddenly a message came
that Bismarck would join the party. An officer who had constituted
himself caterer went into the kitchen to see what could be procured
for the great Count. Alas! the unhappy hostess, with many _mon Dieus_,
protested that unless they chose to eat herself, there was nothing
to be had save only eggs and bacon. On this modest fare accordingly,
washed down with champagne, Bismarck made a hearty supper; but before
he began to eat, he made a formal statement, reading from a despatch,
to the effect that the Emperor of the French had communicated to the
King the surrender of his sword. Bismarck reserved comments on this
announcement, but led off a hearty cheer, and then, like a jovial
fellow, gave the toasts of “The King,” and “The Fatherland.”
Before going to sleep I took a walk round the half-obliterated ramparts
which surround the once fortified town of Donchery. The scene was very
fine. The whole horizon was lurid with the reflection of fire. All
along the valley of the Meuse, on either side, were the bivouacs of
the German host. Two hundred thousand men lay here around their King.
On the horizon glowed the flames of the burning villages, the flicker
occasionally reflecting itself on a link of the placid Meuse. Over all
the quiet moon waded through a sky cumbered with wind clouds. What
were the Germans doing on this their night of triumph? Celebrating
their victory by wassail and riot? No. There arose from every camp one
unanimous chorus of song, but not the song of ribaldry. Verily they
are a great race these Germans—a masterful, fighting, praying people;
surely in many respects not unlike the men whom Cromwell led. The
chaunt that filled the night air was Luther’s hymn, the glorious—
“Nun danket alle Gott,”
the Old Hundredth of Germany. To hear this great martial orchestra
singing this noble hymn under such circumstances was alone worth a
journey to Sedan, with all its vicissitudes and difficulties. We had
a domiciliary visit in our bed-room during the night from a couple of
Generals in civil but exacting search for blankets to cover them as
they lay on the floor of the _salle à manger_.
Next morning we rose with day-break, intending to get as close to
Sedan as possible, that we might watch the critical state of affairs,
and take the earliest opportunity of getting inside the city.
Whencesoever he had come—it was rumoured that he had spent the night
in Donchery—there sat on his horse at the corner of the market-place a
sad-faced French general with red eyes, as if he had not slept. This I
afterwards learned was General Count Reillé. Ever as he tried to wedge
his horse into the narrow throat of the street leading to the bridge,
and so on to the road leading to Sedan, he was baulked by the steady
ceaseless stream of proviant-waggons and munition tumbrils, and he
smiled a weary forced smile as he drew his horse back out of the press.
At length an adjutant made a way for him, and he was gone. He could not
have been across the bridge when at the same corner of the market-place
showed the tall form and square shoulders of Bismarck on his powerful
bay horse. There was no redness about his eyes; it must have been past
one in the morning when he drank his last glass of champagne in the
Hôtel de Commerce, it would be rash to say how long he had been at work
after that; and yet here he was before the Mairie clock had chimed the
hour of six, fresh, hearty, clean-shaved, steady of hand, and clear of
throat, as the voice proved in which he bade the column-men give him
space to pass. He wore a blue military cloak and the undress cap of
the cuirassier regiment of which he is the colonel. On such a morning
where Bismarck was there for sure would there be momentous doings, and
we followed in his tracks as soon as possible. We lost him, however,
on the farther side of the bridge, but learnt he had ridden on toward
Frenois, and so followed that road. About two kilometres beyond
Donchery we met a rather shabby open carriage drawn by two horses,
driven by a coachman with a gold band. It contained four French general
officers, and a fifth, the one we had seen in the market-place of
Donchery, rode behind by the side of the ubiquitous Bismarck. The hour
was ten minutes past seven. There was no escort, or anything, save the
circumstance that the occupants of the carriage were French generals,
to mark out the equipage as anything exceptional. We were barely past,
when by a common impulse my companion and myself exclaimed, “That’s
Napoleon!” We dismounted, and returned walking behind a line of wains
which were going the same way as the carriage. Sure enough, on the
right-hand side of the back seat there sat the Emperor—that grey face
of his, impassive and sphinxlike as ever, but with its lines drawn
and deepened as if by some spasm. He wore a general’s uniform, with a
cavalry cloak, which was thrown open, and showed the decorations on his
breast. In no other respect did he differ from his companions in dress.
The modest cavalcade went on about a hundred yards, and then halted in
front of a small wayside house on the left-hand side of the road as
one goes from Frenois to Donchery. The cottage into which the Emperor
went on alighting was the right-hand cottage as one looks out on to
the chaussée, one of a block of three mean two-storied brick houses
inhabited by families of weavers. The houses stand some twenty or
twenty-five feet back from the road. In their front is a narrow level
of gravelled path—at the edge of this, in front of the right-hand house
were placed the chairs for the Emperor and Bismarck—and then there is a
grassy slope down to the ditch bounding the road. It was in obedience
to a sudden request of the Emperor that the modest _cortége_ halted
at the wayside house. I saw him turn round in his seat, and heard the
request he made to the Prussian Chancellor. Immediately on alighting,
the Emperor walked hurriedly to the rear of the house, and presently
returned and went inside for, at the most, five minutes. The three
officers occupying the carriage had gone inside at once, and were
followed by Bismarck and his mounted companion. Then the Emperor and
the Chancellor came outside again and sat down on two chairs which
were fetched for them by the weaver who lived downstairs. Some chairs
were brought out also for the French generals, but not enough, so one
or two of them lay down on the grass bank in front of the left-hand
cottage, and were presently joined by several officers of the German
staff. One of the French generals, the Duke de Moskowa I think, seemed
to have been wounded, and dragged one of his legs heavily behind him.
On a table in rear of the block of houses, there had been set out a
couple of bottles of country wine with glasses, and one of the French
generals, I shall not say which, kept popping round the corner to pay
his devoirs to the sour tipple.
When the interview between the Emperor and Bismarck commenced—at twenty
minutes past seven by my watch—Bismarck stood with cap in hand, but, as
it seemed, in compliance with an injunction from Napoleon, accompanied
with a bow and a slight smile, the Chancellor covered himself and
sat down beside the other. Then an earnest conversation ensued. The
Emperor occasionally smiled and made a remark, but it was evident that
Bismarck was doing the greater part of the talking, and that, too,
energetically. From our position we could just hear the murmur of
Bismarck’s voice when he raised it at those points where he thought it
necessary to give emphasis by the gesture of bringing the fore-finger
of the left hand sharp down on the palm of the right. The occupant of
the first floor of the right-hand cottage was all the while overlooking
the pair out of his front window. Along the road streamed the ceaseless
current of a proviant column, the rude teamsters glowering greedily at
the strange scene by the road-side—a scene the like of which is not in
the history of our century—and exclaiming occasionally in their uncouth
curiosity, “_Wo ist der Napoleon, den?_”
A little after eight von Moltke drove up from the direction of
Donchery, and after joining in the conversation for a quarter of an
hour, went away again. Bismarck followed him, mounted, at a sharp trot,
and the French party was left to itself. The Generals remained seated
in a clump. The Emperor took to stalking moodily up and down a path
in the potato-plot by the side of the cottage, limping slightly as he
walked, and smoking hard. After a spell of this exercise, he came and
sat down among his Generals, still retaining an almost total silence,
while they spoke and gesticulated with considerable animation, and,
as it seemed occasionally, a little confusedness. A little after nine
there came up at the trot from Donchery a half troop of the 1st Sleswig
Cuirassier Regiment of Life Guards. The Cuirassiers, with trained
celerity, formed a semicircle around the back of the house. The burly
lieutenant dismounted two of his men, and without a glance at the
sitting party or the semblance of a salute, marched them close up to
the cottage-wall just behind the Emperor’s chair, halted them, gave
loudly the order “Draw swords,” and then gave them their orders in an
undertone. I noticed the Emperor glance backward at this arrangement,
as if he did not half like it. There was a flush on his face, the first
evidence of emotion he had manifested. At a quarter to ten Bismarck
came back among the staff, which by this time had accumulated on the
road in considerable numbers, and Moltke’s lean face was visible in
the crowd on the road. He did not seem to care about having more to
say to the Frenchmen, and never went up the slope. Bismarck now wore
his cuirassier helmet and looked quite martial, but rather heated, and
no wonder, for he had taken a stretching gallop back in the direction
of Vendresse to meet his master the King. The King and his two great
subjects, the civilian Bismarck and the soldier Moltke, met on the
road at the foot of a steep slope about four kilometres backward
from Donchery toward Vendresse and Chemery. An estaminet stands just
opposite the spot of meeting, the portly proprietor of which watched
from a distance the hurried council of war which took place in the
field by the roadside, and took the pains to mark with an axe the tree
against which the King leant when the momentous consultation was in
progress.
Wiping his hot face, Bismarck strode up to the sitting Emperor, and
as we know now, communicated the message from his master the King,
and the arrangement as to the interim disposition of the illustrious
prisoner. After a short interview he beckoned to the carriage, which
had drawn off a little, and the Emperor entered it, followed by the
Generals, and, still escorted by the Cuirassiers, the party drove off
in the direction of Sedan. I followed as fast as I could, and caught
up its track as it entered the grounds of the château appropriately
named Bellevue, which overlooks the plain on which stands Sedan. In
the grounds a regiment of Bavarians had been bivouacking, but as the
imperial party arrived they were marched out. The château consists of
a centre block, with two wings joined to the centre by conservatories
on the first floor. The chief front is towards the road. I was at the
back of the house, but then the blinds were drawn down at the front,
so I had rather the best of it. In the conservatory on the left were
the French Generals; in that on the right was the Prussian staff. In
the dining-room on the ground-floor of the central block von Moltke,
Bismarck, and de Wimpfen were debating the terms of the capitulation.
The Emperor, I gathered, was lying down on a sofa in the drawing-room
on the first floor of the central turret, or in the boudoir which opens
off it. No doubt he was weary and sick at heart, while it required no
very keen eyes to discern that he was in bodily pain. And that had
been a long trying wait there by the wayside from seven till ten, with
little truly to lighten its monotony to the stunned, crushed man. A
colloquy with Bismarck, stern of heart, sharp, if courteous of speech,
unyielding in resolve, for an hour or more; for another hour or more
a listless kicking of heels while the man who had vanquished should
pronounce what was to be done with him. He, the Emperor of the French,
the proudest monarch in Europe, kicking his heels on the roadside by a
weaver’s cottage while a Prussian count galloped to a Prussian king for
instructions! If he were not too stunned to think at all, he must have
thought at times as he lay there that surely the morning’s doings were
one ghastly dream.
The deliberations as to the negotiations seemed likely, by the rumours
which reached us, to last for some time, and quitting the precincts of
the Château Bellevue, my companion and myself utilised the interval
in visiting the battle-field. The tract charged over by the Chasseurs
d’Afrique was a scene of terrible carnage. The Arab stallions ridden
by this force had died very hard; in many cases they had with their
struggles made graves before they had died for their riders and
themselves. The burial parties did not have much trouble hereabouts in
bringing corpses to the grave-pits. The difficulty was to clear a space
on which to commence a grave-pit. Higher up on the tableland there was
fearful evidence of the power of a shell-fire at short range. I counted
five headless corpses within two hundred yards—their heads had been
blown away as clean as if they had been guillotined. Men disembowelled,
with their chests driven into fragments, with legs or arms blown away,
were common spectacles. I found one man’s leg about twenty-five paces
distant from his body. Right on the battle-field we came on a friendly
quartermaster, who was superintending the collection of biscuit barrels
and wine casks that the French had left behind them in their hurried
retreat. He placed at our service the contents of a barrel of biscuits,
the outside of which was stained by a fluid which was red, but was not
wine; but bucket staves are not sponges, and the biscuits were very
good, and we were very hungry.
After hurriedly traversing a corner of the battle-field my companion
and myself determined to take our chance of being able to visit
Sedan. We found German outposts, consisting of three men each, near
the transverse passages leading through the glacis, and close to
them bodies of Frenchmen without arms, who chatted freely with the
German sentries. We got on to the glacis of the fortress with the
greatest ease in the world, and found the soldiers lying on it to
consist chiefly of Turcos and Zouaves, dirty fellows most of them, but
certainly in better case to all appearance than the troops we found
inside. Everybody was very friendly; wine was genially pressed on us,
all the more warmly when we mentioned that we were Englishmen. One
especially greasy and strong-smelling Turco, of a full Day-and-Martin
colour, insisted vehemently on kissing us, and we had to submit to the
oleaginous hug with what grace we might. Getting into the town was
a different matter. The gates were closed, and opened only to admit
the wounded as they were brought in on waggons. By the advice of this
friendly Turco, who set us the example, we jumped on one of the waggons
and passed in without interference. As rapidly as we could for the
chaotic press, we traversed several streets of the town. We saw where
M’Mahon lay wounded, and also how full the town was of troops. They
were swarming, densely packed, everywhere. Of the wounded, some were
in the churches, the houses, and the public buildings, others lying
unheeded and jostled in the courtyards; the dead were everywhere—in the
gutters, trampled on by the living, on the swampy margin of the moat,
littering the narrow way through the glacis and the fortifications,
lying, some of them, on the steps of a church. The sight was one never
to be forgotten—a sight of misery, chaos, disorganization, and general
devilry, which assuredly was unique in this generation—an eddying sea
of humanity, trampling recklessly over the dead and the wounded, the
men now yelling for the blood of their officers, now struggling in
fierce contention for a morsel of bread.
Hastening back to the Château Bellevue, we were yet too late for the
announcement of the signature of the capitulation. We had seen nothing
of that sensational incident—if it really did occur—when von Moltke,
as is related, led outside the reluctant de Wimpfen, and weakened his
obduracy by pointing to the ring of field guns unlimbered, and with
the gunners in position, girdling the fated city, and ready at the
word to commence a bombardment which would have been the synonyme
for a butchery. But we were just in time with a sharp run to see
the King up to the gates of the château, followed by his son and
the leading members of his staff, and to see the silent greeting—if
words were spoken they must have been muttered in a low tone by men
afraid to trust their voices—between the monarchs on the gravelled
drive at the bottom of the steps. The “good brothers” turned, and
mounting the steps, disappeared inside one of the rooms in the central
block, the royal staff partly occupying one of the conservatories,
partly remaining outside. The interview, that surely must have sorely
tried the composure of both the parties to it, lasted barely some
twenty minutes, and then Wilhelm was out and off in his carriage for
a drive through his victorious Kinder bivouacking by the Meuse. He
who was left in that inner room must have heard the air throb again
with the cheering which came from German throats at the sight of the
white-haired conqueror-king. Later in the afternoon I saw the Emperor
again. He came out in front of the château to superintend the unpacking
of his travelling carriage. He looked very wan and weary, although he
still kept up the old impassible look. The imperial equipage in its
magnificence was an extraordinary contrast to the simplicity of the
modest turnout of the Prussian King. In gold and scarlet the outriders
of the former glittered profusely. He of Prussia had his postboys in
shoddy cloth, with glazed coverings to their hats to keep the dust off
the nap.
The Emperor’s barber, with whom I had a chat as the suite waited
for orders outside the château, gave me some interesting particulars
regarding the last disastrous day in Sedan. The French army, he said,
had its efficiency destroyed by socialism and a craving for a republic.
It was in a chronic state of semi-mutiny, and many regiments would
not follow their officers on any consideration. This yeasty condition
of agitation made discipline an impossibility, and accounted for the
disregard of discipline on their part, which had enabled the Germans
so often to surprise their camps and drive them whithersoever they
listed. M’Mahon was wounded in a vain attempt to excite one of these
disaffected regiments to charge. The Emperor met him in the street
as he was being carried half unconscious into his quarters. If my
informant was truthful, Napoleon bore himself worthily during the
disastrous day. Imitating his uncle at Montereau, he directed guns
with his own hand, and was continually under fire. But the French were
totally out-manœuvred and outnumbered. They had expected to have to
cope with an army of 120,000 men; instead of this, nearly double the
number started up unexpectedly, as if from the ground. The troops in
Sedan candidly admitted to me that the Germans were better soldiers
than themselves, although not braver men; and this is about the truth
of the matter. They have a sense of responsibility which the French
want; they are splendid marchers, they fight like devils, they are
strong, self-contained, self-respecting, earnest, manly fellows; they
have generals who know how to direct them, and officers who know how to
lead them, and this is why they came to go on accordingly from victory
to victory.
Next morning (the 3rd September), we tried to get through Sedan with
intent to go a little way into Belgium. There was thoroughfare only one
way and for one class of persons. The gate was surrounded by a guard of
Bavarians, and a continuous stream of French prisoners, horse, foot,
and artillery, was fast passing out. We watched it for hours—it seemed
as if it never would stint, and at last we abandoned the intention of
getting through Sedan, and turned down the stream to the rope ferry
which we had used the two previous days. When we got to the bridge
over the canal, we came again upon the stream of French prisoners,
flowing in the direction we were going. The tract between the canal
and the Meuse is an island of some extent. The rope of the ferry was
cut, and the boat on the other side. Skirting the Meuse downward for
some distance, we found several ferries, but all the boats were, like
the first, on the other side of the stream. The fact was, the Germans
had utilised the island into a prison. They had turned the disarmed
French army bodily into it to the number of some 70,000, looking to the
Meuse and the canal to do the main duty of custodianship. It is true
that here and there on the farther side there stood a company under
arms, and that towards nightfall a chain of sentries was run along the
farther banks; but I do not believe that on the island itself there was
a single German. The Frenchmen had been turned on to the island just
as they came out of the town. The Germans themselves were temporarily
short of rations, and could spare nothing for their prisoners. But
the prisoners fared better than their captors, although goodness
knows how they did it. After all nobody can achieve a savoury mess
under difficulties like a Frenchman, or build himself a house where
another man would have to be content with the heavens for his roof.
Innumerable fires had been lit, about one seemingly serving three men.
The fellows dragged out firewood from recondite corners in the most
marvellous manner; recklessly tore down houses, and burnt doors, window
frames, and rafters; broke up carts, ploughs, fences, and everything
else available. On every fire was a saucepan, and in the saucepan were
potatoes, and something else. Where the potatoes came from was plain
enough; we could see the fellows delving them, but about the “something
else,” all that one could tell was that it smelt nice. There was a
flavour of onions in the scent—I began to think Frenchmen have an onion
bed somewhere about their persons—and a _soupçon_ of garlic and a
gamey whiff that made one’s mouth water. Most of the men who were not
cooking were building unto themselves habitations for the night. About
half of them had their _tentes d’abris_, which they were rigging up
dexterously, and bedding with boughs torn from the trees. The trees
were put under heavier contributions to build wherewithal leafy bowers
of considerable architectural pretensions, and positively I do not
think that, with the exception of the extremely late-comers, a single
man of the captive French army slept this first night supperless and
without some cover. They were the civilest, cheeriest, best-humoured
set of fellows imaginable. We two, quite alone, and unable to bestow
anything—for our flasks and tobacco-pouches were but drops in the
bucket, and very soon exhausted—experienced no word but of the frankest
courtesy and the heartiest friendliness, alike from officers and men.
The officers had been allowed to retain their swords, having given
their parole, but had to accompany their men, whose disarmament had
been very thorough. On the island is a handsome château, with beautiful
and extensive grounds, and of the cover there afforded the Frenchmen
took avail extensively. I do not suppose that in the island they had
much more room than in Sedan, but they preferred it for quarters,
since they could get firewood and potatoes. A few stray barrels of
biscuit had been brought into the island on carts, and their contents
were distributed as far as they would go, but there was not a biscuit
for every twenty men of the great multitude. After some conversation
with a group of captains in the grounds of the chateau, we strolled
down towards the river, and accepted the invitation of a bivouac of
Zouaves to join them at their supper. The mess was better than good,
it was superb. It consisted of potatoes, the indescribable savoury
“something,” and flesh of some kind or other. The swarthy Zouaves, in
their red fezes and baggy canvas breeches, treated us like princes, but
evaded a direct reply to the question what was the meat in their mess.
After we had bidden the merry rascals a hearty good night, we came upon
the carcass of a horse that had been killed by a shell, and there was
a clean slice or two out of its flanks. I did not think it necessary
to go back to the Zouaves and put it to them point blank whether they
had been regaling us on horse; but, like the man in the play, I had my
own thoughts on the matter. It was late before we quitted the fires on
the island; and when we were once outside and realised the difficulty
of finding quarters, we were sorry we had not stayed and shared the
bivouac of the Zouaves. Donchery we knew to have been invaded by a
whole Army Corps; Frenois was seething full of Bavarians. As we were
discussing the probabilities of a bivouac we drove past the front of
the Château Bellevue. All was in darkness. A happy thought struck my
companion. “Let us sleep here,” he cried. The gardener seemed glad
enough to have a couple of quiet civilians for his inmates. He stabled
our horse and conducted ourselves into the chateau, one of the most
beautiful residences, both internally and externally, I have ever
seen. The dining hall, where the capitulation was signed, was a model
of taste without meretricious display. It was wholly in stained oak,
save the roof, which is inlaid with American maple. The windows were
Gothic, and in niches round the room there were alternately mirrors
and Etruscan vases. One or two large pictures were let into the
panelling, and in recesses were divans. The chairs were high backed,
in finely carved oak. Above this room, up a winding staircase, and
on the first-floor, was the bedroom occupied by the Emperor on the
previous night, just in the state he left it. Before leaving at nine in
the morning, he had breakfasted with his suite in the dining hall. On
its beauties, as on those of the rest of the charming villa, we were
free to feast; there was nothing else to satisfy the appetite. The
gardener was very hungry himself and so was his wife. Nor, according to
the gardener, was there a drop of wine in the house, and appearances
certainly seemed to corroborate his asseveration. It fell to me to
sleep in the bed occupied by the Emperor on the previous night. Sheets
and a quilt were on the bed, but one of the window hangings, with its
semicircular canopy, had been torn down, and applied as an additional
covering for the couch of the Emperor. He had apparently been reading
in bed, for a translation of Lord Lytton’s “Last of the Barons” lay
open turned on its face, on a little table by the bed-head. There
seemed something of a sombre significance in the selection.
At this time the chateau was inviolate; not so much as an ornament
had been touched. The beautiful clocks ticked on every mantel-piece,
and the pretty knick-knacks of the young ladies were sticking on the
pincushions in their abandoned bedrooms. But about five in the morning
there was an incursion of a Bavarian regiment, which during the night
had been on guard over the prisoners on the island. Beyond doubt they
did not use the place tenderly. The Bavarians are, out of sight, the
most butter-fingered of the German soldiers, and anything conveniently
portable they annexed with neatness and despatch. What the men wanted
was wine, and what seemingly wanton damage they did to the wainscot,
panelling, &c., was in quest of it, a quest in the end crowned with
success.
By the 6th of September the King of Prussia was in Rheims, the
self-constituted guest of the Most Reverend the Archbishop in that
ecclesiastical dignitary’s palace, hard by the historical old
cathedral. There had been but a short stay for the German hosts on
the field where they gained laurels so green and yet so bloody. The
blood tint had hardly died out of the Meuse, the unburied dead yet
festered in the sunheat, and the ruins of Bazeilles yet smoked and
stank, when the vanguard of the Crown Prince’s army shouldered their
packs and trudged away up the valleys of the Argonnes towards the
fertile vine-lands of Champagne, marching nearly due southward but
with their faces ever set Paris-ward, and “Nach Paris!” ever on their
lips. Royal head-quarters made a long pause in the old cathedral
city, while men all over Europe were asking one another whether the
catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually ended the war, and looking for
the white dove of peace to alight on the blood-stained battle-field.
But the Revolution had taken place in Paris, and the leaders of the new
Republic were flushed with the chimera that Republican institutions
and untrained hordes of patriots, which at the talismanic name of
“Republic” were sure to rush to arms eager to fight and proud to die
for _la Patrie_ emancipated, could cope with the generalship and
the trained and victorious armies that had crunched the disciplined
soldiers of the Empire as a boy cracks a nut. It was from the crisis
of Sedan that may be dated the falling away of British sympathy from
the German side. Wise and considerate men at home, who in the beginning
had seen and readily owned to the justice of the cause in which Germany
had fought and conquered, let their reason and their logical perception
become enfeebled by a sympathy for misfortune which did honour to their
hearts. With others the keynote to the changed feeling was kindliness
for a Republic, a gushing abstract love for an institution which they
reckoned a synonym for the truest of all national liberty. A judicious
alternative to this mild phase of mental aberration might have been
discovered in an enforced residence in Paris during the months of March
and April last. When Wilhelm went to war in the name of the German
Fatherland, he put forth that he warred not with the people but with
its ruler. That ruler gone, he was bound to look to some person or to
some body, as the successor of the captive Emperor in some kind of
right or other to dispose of the destinies of France. He could not make
peace with the French nation in the gross; that nation must set up,
whether for peace or for war, something tangible to be treated with
by the victor, if it was to be peace; to direct war, if the nation’s
fiat was for war. The Provisional Government assumed this province,
and was tacitly accepted by France. Then the nation through this, its
mouthpiece, instead of suing for peace, instead of asking what terms it
might expect if it should sit down content with the punishment it had
received, cried “War, war to the hilt, war without a thought, a dream,
a hint of negotiation!” Wilhelm had no help for it, but to accept what
was virtually a new challenge, and fight on. And that challenge gave
to him a new antagonist. He now fought, no longer with the man who was
his prisoner, but with the French nation, with whom up till then he had
proclaimed that he had no quarrel, and he fought with it, because it
had taken up the quarrel that might have gone with the _Déchéance_,
and made it its own. The German did not quit his first position; France
and the French drove him out of it whether he would or not. There was
no alternative but to march on defiant Paris. Sympathy is a beautiful
feeling; but its failing is that very often it clouds discrimination.
Under the influence of effusive sympathy for France, who has not heard
men plead—“Ah, but in the hour of her triumph Germany might have shown
her magnanimity and offered terms to poor France, instead of coldly
standing at attention waiting for her beaten foe to humiliate herself
by suing for terms.” For Germany to have acted thus would not have been
magnanimity; it would have been quixotry, and quixotry certain to have
been misinterpreted by France. Because the German arms only occupied as
a formality a corner of Paris for a couple of days, did not Paris send
up the defiantly-complacent yelp that it was fear which had made the
occupation so transient and partial? Can international history point
to a precedent in which the unquestioned victor, unweakened either by
a single reverse or by a long war, fighting in a cause acknowledged as
just by all the world, took the initiative in offering terms, either
directly or indirectly, to an adversary so stubborn and haughty that it
seemed like enough the profferer would have had them flung back in his
teeth? Who ever heard of the gladiator in the arena, or the pugilist
in the ring cry, “Hold, surely there is enough,” while the opponent
proclaimed himself still full of fighting, and refused to be led away
by what in this case was an Europeful of judicious bottle holders?
While the King abode in Rheims, waiting for what never came, and while
Europe was talking and scheming, and France was hardening her heart and
stiffening her neck, the German armies were deploying into a grand line
for the advance on Paris. Three great roads converge toward Paris from
the east of France. On the southernmost of these leading from Châlons,
through Tour de Montaimé, by Montmirail, Coulommiers, Chaulmes, and
Brie Comte Robert, the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia it
was arranged should march. The northern route is _viâ_ Laon, Soissons
and Dammartin, but the fortresses of the two first-named towns still
held out, so that the 12th Army Corps and the Prussian Guards had
tracks farther to the south perforce allotted to them. The central
road from Châlons through Epernay is cut near Dormans, by the road
that comes from Rheims, by Ville en Tardenoise, and thence continues
its course through the beautiful valley of the Marne, threading
successively, as in a string, the pretty towns of Château Thierry, La
Ferté sous Jouarre and Meaux. Meaux was a pretty town once before the
deluge came upon it. This central road was set down as common property
for the right flank of the fourth army and the left flank of the third.
Along it lay the track of the 6th Army Corps, which, spared at Sedan,
was to head the advance on Paris. Later it was to be traversed by the
2nd Bavarians, and later still by the 11th Army Corps, which had been
left in the rear when its fellows marched out of the valley of the
Meuse.
Dispositions covering a front so extensive, and having an object so
vast and so momentous, were not made in a day. The men had to be rested
after feats of fighting and marching not surpassed in the history of
the world; supplies had to be accumulated near; communications had to
be everywhere perfected and made good. Meanwhile the King took his ease
in the archbishop’s palace. Bismarck, in his yellow and white cap,
stalked about the town alone, disregarding with a grim indifference
the crowds of beggar boys who fancied they could recognise benevolence
in the fact that they were not summarily sworn at by reason of their
importunity, and only found out their mistake when they had haunted the
stern man persistently to no purpose for half the length of a street.
Moltke paced the aisles of the cathedral for hours at a time, with
set face and abstracted eye, his hands ever clasped behind his back.
Captains and subalterns, dashing Freiwilligen and gay Vicefeldwebel,
made merry over the flowing champagne in the hotels and cafés, and
wished that there was a Rheims at every halting spot. The soldiers
ate and drank, sauntered and stared; dealing justly in uncouth and
fragmentary French with the shopkeepers of the town, and essaying in
a sheepish way to make a little love to the girls, whose coquetry
overcame even the conventional hatred. But although _festina lente_
was the motto, there was no time to be wasted. On the 7th of September
General von Tümpling, commanding the 6th army corps, had already his
head-quarters in Dormans. The German Uhlans who, when they had ridden
into Rheims on the Sunday previous, had all but seen the backs of
Vinoy’s men retreating, were far up the valley feeling the front at
least two days before I reached Dormans on the 8th of September. I
wonder how many British tourists are familiar with the rich, placid
beauty of the valley of the Marne, otherwise than as seen from the
window of a railway carriage. It will amply repay a much more detailed
inspection. On the afternoon I climbed a little hill above Dormans,
which overlooks the valley for several miles in both directions, and
the view well repaid the exertion. On either side of the river lie flat
and fertile “haughs,” as the alluvial tracts are called in Scotland;
and out of them rise almost imperceptibly the swelling knolls clad
with vineyards in which the frequent villages nestle snugly. I counted
ten villages from my hill-top. The whole valley was as quiet as if
there was nothing but peace in the world. Presently, from one of the
villages over against me, there arose the swell of military music; the
band of a regiment was quartered in it, and was treating the villagers
to a concert. I do not think I ever saw such a wealth of fruit of all
kinds as there was around Dormans. For the first time I realised how
the Israelites might have been compelled to resort to a stake borne by
two men to carry wherewithal the trusses of grapes from the vines of
Eshcol. Apples and pears hung by the roadside like hips and haws in
our hedgerows at home, alternated by trees laden with delicious golden
plums. It made one glad that the troops were marching in peace through
the valley of Dormans. It would have been desecration to sully this
Eden by making it a battle-field. A quiet race were the people of the
valley, sighing for quietude and for liberty, without plebiscites, and
without severe taxation, to till their soil and live prosperously in
their quiet way. They craved a strong and moderate Government, be it
what it might—monarchy or republic. The landlady of an auberge where
I halted for a short time put the matter to me very pithily. “I don’t
care a sou about politics,” said she, “and we have been taught to abhor
the Prussians, and specially to detest Bismarck; but, oh, how heartily
do I wish that in France we had such a one as Bismarck!”
Now that the strain of the forced marching was somewhat abated, it
was instructive to note how the Germans were resuming their rigour in
little matters of detail and discipline. I saw the officer of the day
turn out the quarter-guard the evening I arrived in Dormans, and he
bullied the men as if the regiment had been in barracks, because their
buttons were not polished and their coat-cuffs not turned down. The
soldiers were everywhere brushing and beating their clothes, or mending
holes in them. In a shoemaker’s shop there was a comical-looking row of
soldiers, all sitting solemnly against the wall, each with a boot in
his hand, waiting for his turn with the funny little French shoemaker,
of whose continual jabber they understood not one word, but courteously
replied with the invariable “Ja! Ja!” The Dormans tailor was hard at
work repairing officers’ uniforms; I wonder whether he was patriotic
enough not to utilise the “cabbage.”
Von Tümpling seemed in no hurry to advance from Dormans. Had he been
dallying in Rheims, one might have apprehended that he had found his
Capua, but pleasant place as was Dormans, every one said there were
more eligible quarters and equally beautiful spots farther down the
valley of the Marne. The truth is he was waiting till the 3rd army on
his left should get approximately abreast of him. He was certainly
near enough to his own front. On the 9th we started off with intent
to make Château Thierry before we halted. About eighteen kilometres
from Dormans we came to a bridge. The bridge itself was sound enough,
but on the other side of it an embankment on which the road was made
had been cut across by a trench. This was evidently the work of an
enemy, but of an enemy destitute of the guidance of engineers, and
ignorantly eager to oppose the German progress. As might have been
expected, the pitiful trench had been no great obstacle. It had been
partially and hastily bridged, and thus we knew that friends were still
ahead. About a kilometre farther we entered the village of Crezancy.
Nobody had anything to say to us as we passed through the village; but
when we got on the top of the hill beyond it, we found a sergeant’s
guard along with an officer. The latter told us that the post was the
extreme infantry advance, and that we must not pass it. A few horsemen
were scouting farther, but he had no assurance as to the state of
the country, and he could not allow us to go on any farther. He was
a fixture, he understood, for the day, and the forward movement had
for the time been arrested. So there was no resource but to return to
Dormans, where we learned that the head-quarters of the 6th Corps were
not to move till the 11th, and perhaps not then.
Impatient of the inaction, it occurred to us on the morning of the
9th to start off in a southerly direction, inclining a little to the
rear, so that thus we should strike the head of the more southerly
advance. The place where we intersected the first east and west road
was a village called Igny-le-Jard. There were no Germans there, and
the villagers said they had seen none but a few scattered Uhlans. Our
road then lay through a fine forest, intersected with rides for hunting
purposes, and full of deer. At Mareaille, on its farther side, we
came upon an advanced infantry-post—there was nothing beyond except
cavalry, said the officer who commanded the handful of men. A few
miles farther to the south, and we reached the charming village of
Corbellieu, lying snugly by the little river Surmelin. In the environs
was a beautiful chateau, surrounded with grounds, everywhere adorned
with parterres of flowers, and intersected by artificial streams and
lakes, crossed by bridges of fanciful construction. For miles the road
lay through avenues of fine trees, on either side of which were rich
farms or beautiful villas. We had passed Corbellieu for some miles,
still edging rearward, when the towers of a castle became visible,
and soon we entered the pretty village of Montmort, at the end of
which, raised high over it on an eminence, partly natural and partly
artificial, stands the castle of the same name. At one time, I doubt
not, a castle of great strength must have occupied the summit of
the commanding eminence. The site is one which the castle-builders
of the middle ages must have thoroughly appreciated. From the wall
encircling the esplanade I dropped an apple sheer into the street,
two hundred feet below; a double moat surrounds the abrupt height,
the top of which is reached externally by winding paths; internally,
by a winding staircase up a turret built into the rock. The castle
itself is comparatively modern. It was the property and the residence
of the Marquis de Montmort, who, along with his daughter, had very
sensibly remained at home to receive the Germans instead of running
away into Paris. He had for his guests the head-quarters of a brigade
of the 5th Army Corps, the officers of which, in consideration of the
courtesy of the Marquis in doing the honours of his own house, exerted
all their efforts to prevent intrusion on his privacy and towards the
preservation of the amenities of the charming place.
Quitting Montmort we pushed on a few miles farther south to Etoges,
which is on the great road. No German sentries were posted outside of
it. We traversed it from one end to the other, and found it wholly
French. Having left our carriage at the village auberge, we strolled
towards a fine chateau in the environs, at the gate of which a
courteous French gentleman accosted us. He was the son of the owner
of the chateau, M. de Kirchener, son of an engineer officer who
distinguished himself greatly in the Prussian service in the campaigns
of 1813 and 1814. M. de Kirchener is himself married to a sister of
the Duchess de Montebello. The old gentleman himself came out to meet
us, in a little trepidation, and knotting around his waist as he came
a scarf of the “Succour for the Wounded” pattern. The father and son
courteously joined in urging our removal from the auberge to the more
pleasant quarters which the chateau afforded; and there we spent the
night with not a German soldier, so far as we knew, nearer to us than
the outposts outside Montmort. There were, however, German troops
nearer Paris than Etoges, two squadrons of cavalry having passed
through it in the morning.
Next morning (the 10th) we started westward for Montmirail, with intent
to traverse a district memorable in the first campaign of 1814 as that
in which, in a rapid series of battles within a very small space,
Napoleon destroyed the army of Blucher. Soon after quitting Etoges
we came upon the fine plain of Champ Aubert, on which was fought the
battle of the 10th February, 1814. A monument stands in the centre of
the battle-field, erected by “the Emperor Napoleon III.” A couple of
kilometres farther on we reached the village of Vauchamps, outside
which took place the battle of the same name on the 14th February,
in which Blucher’s discomfiture was consummated. Passing through the
pretty little town of Montmirail, we crossed a deep gorge and came out
on a noble plateau, almost on the verge of which stands a fine fluted
column, surmounted by a gilded eagle and bearing on its pedestal the
announcement, dated 15th August, 1866, that “this monument was erected
by the orders of the Emperor Napoleon III. to indicate the spot on
which stood the Emperor Napoleon I. when he directed the efforts of the
French army in the battle of Montmirail on the 11th February, 1814.” On
the other sides of this pretentious monument are the names of the other
victories:—Feb. 12th, Les Caquerets, Nesle, Château Thierry; Feb. 11th,
Montmirail, Marchais; Feb. 10th, Champ Aubert; Feb. 14th, Vauchamps.
At Montmirail we passed through the advance brigade of the 5th Army
Corps, which we had seen in Montmort the day before. The previous day
had been a rest day, and the troops were fresh and thoroughly in good
condition and spirits. About six miles in front of Montmirail, at a
village called Vieuxmaisons, we found the battalion quartering itself
which constituted the vanguard. There was nothing beyond except a few
cavalry outposts, and although it was ascertained that there were no
French troops in the immediate front, there was reason to believe, the
officer told us, that there were detached little parties rancorously
scouring the country, who might be more awkward customers for people
like ourselves to encounter than regular soldiery. His advice coincided
with our own opinion that we had got to the end of our tether on this
lower road. There would be a further advance next day, no doubt, but
in the meantime Vieuxmaisons afforded nothing whatever calculated to
sustain life, it having borne the brunt of a squadron of hussars on the
previous night. The officers of the 58th, a fine Silesian regiment,
made us heartily welcome to a share of their rations, but thought it
advisable to regain the valley of the Marne. So with a hearty farewell
to the good fellows of the Posener Regiment, we struck across the
low sierras to Château Thierry, crossing as we did so the scene of
the battle of Nesle and close to Château Thierry the battle-field of
the same name, where Napoleon annihilated the remains of the corps
of Sacken, which he had beaten previously at Montmirail; and on our
arrival found that Von Tümpling’s head-quarters had come on into
Château Thierry in the course of the afternoon. Château Thierry was
taken and retaken several times, and three times sacked in the campaign
of 1814, but had long lost the traces of its early misfortunes. On
the occasion of the present visit of the Prussians there was no sack,
and, indeed, very little scarcity. The people had for the most part
stayed at home, and, disregarding the lies of the French newspapers
as to the conduct of the German troops, had laid in goodly stores
of eatables and drinkables, for which they found a ready market, at
no doubt remunerative prices. A sagacious citizen told me he would
not at all mind if the Prussians were to stop a month in the place,
for they were far better customers than French soldiers, and most of
the population seemed to be much of his mind. The officers chiefly
frequented the Café du Midi, close to the Hôtel de l’Eléphant on the
esplanade, and consumed their beer and coffee much as if they had been
in the Fatherland. In this place I saw the first manifestation of a
feeling of impotent insolence on the part of Frenchmen. As most readers
are doubtless aware, it is the custom in Germany to bow to the company
on entering a café, and to remain uncovered while the stay lasts.
While the café was at its fullest two young Frenchmen of the town
entered with some noise, and without any recognition of the company
laid hold of cues and monopolised the only billiard-table. At first
they were unobserved by the German officers, but their loud laughter
and exclamations presently attracted attention. Each wore his cap
cocked on his head, and they two were the only covered persons in the
room. A German lieutenant quietly arose, and removing the cap of one
of them made him a bow, quietly said, “Pardon, Monsieur,” hung the cap
on a peg, and sat down. The young fellow looked as if he would fain be
angry if he dared, but thought better of it, and went on with his game.
His companion did not take the hint, but cocked his cap all the more
defiantly, and I heard him whisper to his companion that he would not
have stood the insult if offered to himself. A German officer sitting
near me heard this too. He got up, walked solemnly to the Frenchman,
took off his cap, chucked it out of the door, looked the Frenchman
in the face for a minute, and then went back to his seat. The young
fellow made a lame attempt to explain that he wore his cap because he
had a cold, but nobody noticed him, and the pair went off, looking as
impudent as they thought was safe.
On the 12th the head-quarters of the 6th Corps moved forward to the
village of Nogent l’Artaud; but as several regiments had gone forward,
we did so too, in hopes of being able to spend the night in La Ferté
sous Jouarre. From Nogent the valley of the Marne is exceptionally
beautiful and fertile. The villages are plentiful and full of good
houses, lavishly decked with flowers, and every slope is covered with
vineyards. At times the valley is so narrow that there is room only
for the river and the road, and the railway has to betake itself into
a tunnel; then it widens into a charming flat on which lies a pretty
village. I do not think that I ever saw a more beautiful village, both
externally and internally, than Charly, about two miles west of Nogent.
Almost all the houses were villas, and they stood embowered among trees
amid a wealth of flowers. The soldiers, of which the place was full,
seemed imbued with the influence of its beauty, and respected its
amenity as far as was possible. From Charly we went forward to Croutes,
and then on to Luzancy, where we found the 51st Regiment quartered,
and then we knew that there was no La Ferté for us that night. The
51st constitute the extreme infantry advance, and whenever one saw it
one might be sure there is nothing further but a handful of horsemen.
Luzancy, a very little place, was full to repletion. We returned,
therefore, to Croutes, and found as much crowding there; so, instead of
retracing our steps to Nogent, we crossed the Marne and made for the
railway station of Nanteuil-Saacy, which we saw opposite with a couple
of houses beside it. One of the houses was deserted and stripped. In
the other we found a man and his wife, but the lady was doing her
duty by her country in this its hour of need by adding a unit to its
population. In these circumstances we took up our quarters in the
waiting-room of the station, sleeping on the seats, and lighting our
fire to boil our coffee-water with a basketful of used tickets. Next
morning we came on to La Ferté in advance of head-quarters.
The white fog so characteristic of the Marne valley was still hanging
over the pretty town of La Ferté, when, about half-past four in the
morning of Wednesday the 14th, we drove over the quaint old bridge on
our road forward to Meaux. All round lay the 6th Army Corps, the honest
fellows still slumbering soundly in the semi-darkness. As we drove
forward through the fog, there were but few signs of our having been
preceded by any large body of men. As day broke, the soft roadsides
showed tokens of having been trodden by cavalry, and the hoof-prints
had not been beaten out, as they invariably were, when infantry men
had come tramping after the horsemen. Seven miles beyond La Ferté,
still in the thick fog, we reached the village of Trilport, about
three miles from Meaux, and here were a few men of the 51st, and a
slender guard in front of the Mairie. The sentry shouted something
unintelligible as we passed him—it was not “Halt!” and so we did not
care to pull up. But when we had traversed quite half the fine bridge
which forms a continuation of the little town, a “Halt!” in loud and
peremptory tones, came from a dim figure half obscured by the fog.
It came again still sharper and louder as we continued to advance,
our horse having a good deal of way on him. Then the figure stretched
out an arm, and, snatching the bridle, sent the animal back on his
haunches, shouting as he did so, “Donnerwetter! can’t you see the
bridge is down?” Down it certainly was, and very near down were we,
too, in the fog. The arch nearest Meaux, one of considerable span, had
been utterly shattered by gunpowder, and the débris lay in the water,
creating quite a tempestuous little rapid. As we were thanking and
questioning the sentry, a gust of wind suddenly swept the fog away, and
there became visible, two hundred yards or so up stream, the wreck of
the fine railway bridge, all three arches of which had been blown up.
Gaunt and grim stood the shattered arches in the sombre light of the
morning, contrasting strangely in the sullen ruin of their appearance
with the busy scene in the intervening space. The pioneers of the 6th
Corps were just finishing a bridge which they had hastily improvised.
A pontoon train was hourly expected, but meanwhile the pioneers with
their axes had constructed a very creditable pile bridge. Now they were
causewaying the approaches to the timber platform with grassy sods
sliced from the bank. It was good to see the system and purpose with
which everyone worked. An officer stood by formally to superintend
operations, but he seldom needed to take the cigar from his mouth to
utter an order. The division of labour principle was carried out to
its fullest extent, and the result was speed, order, and efficiency.
As a special favour, this gentleman permitted our carriage to cross
before the bridge was quite finished, and in advance of a battery of
artillery, the horses of which were champing their bits with impatience
at the halt in the chill morning air.
The broken bridges on the Marne, at Trilport, were not the only
obstacles which the French engineers had attempted to interpose between
the Germans and Meaux. There was the tunnel at Nanteuil, a really
serious impediment. Had all the French operations on this line been
as thorough as this, the German advance would have been materially
delayed. But in other cases the engineers must either have been
consummately stupid or have built largely on a supposititious stupidity
on the part of the Germans. When they destroyed the bridges in the
direct line, they invariably left standing some convenient substitute
capable of being utilised by the easy expedient of going a few hundred
yards either right or left. Thus a mile beyond the Trilport ruin a
bridge on the canal had also been destroyed. But a wily Uhlan had
ridden down the towing-path till he came to a handy if rather narrow
wooden structure, about half a mile to the left, and then come back
on to the chaussée, and chalked on a convenient post the laconic but
intelligible word “Links.” “Links” (left) we went accordingly, crossed
the canal, and reached the outskirts of Meaux, where there was another
bridge down. This time the direction was “Rechts,” and obedience to
it soon brought us into the town, where there were nothing as yet but
a regiment of hussars and a few sergeants that had come on in advance
to take up quarters in the town and the neighbouring villages for the
troops. In the course of the afternoon the greater part of the 6th
Army Corps arrived in the neighbourhood of Meaux; comparatively few
men, however, being quartered in the town itself, in anticipation
of the accommodation requisite for Royal head-quarters, which were
expected from Château Thierry next day. General von Tümpling had
his head-quarters at Quincy Segy, a little village with a beautiful
château, about six kilometres to the south of Meaux, but divided from
it by a more serious obstacle than the trivial distance, in the shape
of a destroyed bridge on a branch of the canal. A Jäger regiment formed
the infantry foreposts in a line of villages, the centre of which was
Claye, about five miles to the front; and the 8th and 9th Regiments of
hussars were on patrol and vedette duty out to the front of the Jägers.
They had pushed reconnaissances as near to Paris as the village of
Gagny, close under Fort Nogent, and their report was that there was
no French force outside the ring of forts. But there had been a few
trifling skirmishes between detachments of French cavalry covering
the engineers in their work of destruction, and the German patrols.
Two or three German dragoons had been shot and a few French prisoners
taken. And the 5th Army Corps’ advance guard lay around Coulommiers,
considerably to the left rear. To the north, and also rather in the
rear, was the bulk of the Maas army, but its cavalry were reported
to have pushed patrols on the north-west, close up to Gonesse and
Montmorency.
On the morning of the 16th, while riding out to the cavalry foreposts
in company with a hussar officer, we suddenly came, on the great road
in front of Claye, on a little posse of French lancers, following a
civilian who carried a white flag. On the top of a little knoll the
lancers halted, and then retreated, leaving the “parlementaire” to come
forward alone. When he came within hail, it turned out that he was
the Second Secretary of the British Legation in Paris, and the bearer
of a communication from Lord Lyons to Count Bismarck. He got a mount
from one of the hussars, who vacated his saddle for the purpose, and
was escorted into the camp by a sergeant and a couple of men. Great
interest was naturally excited among the German troops when the news
spread of the advent of a “parlementaire.” A report had been current
a couple of days before that the defence of Paris was abandoned, and
although that had been contradicted, a wide-spread belief existed
that the Parisians were not prepared when confronted with the actual
realities of a siege, to let the matter go to extremities. The arrival
of the English secretary was accepted as in support of this view, and
everybody was anxious for the King and Bismarck to come on toward the
front. The Royal head-quarters arrived early in the afternoon of the
same day, and I learned, however, in the course of the evening, from
a reliable source, that Mr. Malet was the bearer of a communication
emanating, in the first instance, from Lord Granville, having for its
object that proposal relative to mediation which led to the historical
interviews at Ferrières, which Jules Favre terminated by futile
gasconade.
Mr. Malet was courteous enough to give a few details regarding the
condition of Paris, and the incidents of his journey from the capital
to the German foreposts. He described Paris as being in a seething
and excited condition, with divided councils, and a huge mass of
pseudo-soldiery, the individual bravery of each individual component
part of which might be unquestionable, but the general discipline of
which was so loose and flaccid as almost to disentitle, in his opinion,
the body of semi-armed men to the appellation of soldiers. He had spent
a night on his road, and the Gardes Mobiles where he halted had made
the cheerful suggestion that he should sleep “under the beautiful
stars.” Mr. Malet, reserving the question whether he would have any
objection to sleep “under the beautiful stars,” if they were visible,
pointed out the fact that they were not, and requested other sleeping
accommodation than that afforded by the earth as a mattress and the
sky as a canopy. This he ultimately obtained, his escort sleeping in
the adjoining shed. He saw evidences of the most flagrant disregard
of discipline on the part of the troops lying outside the defences of
Paris. The men coolly refused to get up and take their turn of duty on
guard when ordered to do so by their officers, although, to judge from
appearances, there would have been no hesitation had the order been
to get up and go into action. It says not a little for Trochu that he
could have constructed a measurably serviceable army out of materials
so unpromising.
Mr. Malet returned towards Paris next morning, leaving in the same
way as he had come, under an escort of German hussars. Those who
knew the nature of the risk he ran felt considerable apprehension
for his safety. In the course of the morning the French had fired
upon two flags of truce, and it was just a chance if Mr. Malet
should be recognized. However, he got among the defenders of Paris
without detriment, and, as we afterwards learnt, reached the British
Embassy—there was yet a British Embassy in Paris—in safety.
PART II.
METZ.
CHAPTER I.
THE SIEGE.
Instructions caused me at this juncture to quit the advance upon Paris,
and I left Meaux on the morning of the 17th September. It may not be
altogether devoid of interest to recall the position of the German
armies on that day so far as accorded with my knowledge. The troops
had hourly been pouring to the front since first the 6th Army Corps
crossed the pile-bridge at Trilport. The object, it was already known,
was completely to invest the capital. The 5th Army Corps, with the
head-quarters of the Crown Prince, striking south from Coulommiers, was
pushing on through the villages to Chaulmes, and thence to Brie, on its
road to cross the Seine at Villeneuve St. George; the pontoon train was
in front between the field artillery and the infantry. The 5th might
have marched faster, but that it had to tarry till the 2nd Bavarian
Army Corps (still on the road from La Ferté) should have got up with
it, taking the more circuitous route through the villages of Montceaux,
Vanteuil, Boutigny, and so on to the great Melun road at Segy. The
5th and the Bavarians were then to push forward round in the direction
of Versailles; the interval between their right and the Marne to be
occupied by the 6th Army Corps. The destruction of the bridge over the
Marne at Lagny had occasioned some temporary inconvenience, but this
had already been remedied by the erection of a pontoon. The artillery
of the 6th Army Corps had all gone to the south front. General Vinoy,
with a field army, mostly consisting of regular troops, was reported by
the Uhlans to be outside the cordon of forts on the south of Paris; and
it seemed as if the 3rd Army might have to fight for its passage across
the Seine. The Saxons were in force at Dammartin, touching our right,
while the 4th Army Corps, the right wing of the Maas Army, was feeling
round the north side of Paris. The King was expected to move forward in
a few days, and occupy the château of Ferrières.
The bridges over the canals as I drove back to La Ferté on my return
journey had already been repaired, but the Marne was still crossed
by the pile bridge, although there was an alternative pontoon lower
down the stream. Some little distance on the Meaux side of La Ferté
I encountered the advance of the 2nd Bavarian Corps, and I had to
strike off to the right on the road to Montmirail, till I came to a
cross road, which brought me down again into the valley of the Seine
upon Nogent, right into the rear of the Bavarians. There were no
troops on this road, but it had been extensively traversed during
the few preceding days, and the people were only just beginning to
return to their homes. The villagers were very timid, and, I may add,
very hungry, all along it, but it was wonderful how little damage the
Germans had done during their transit. The poultry still strutted
about the road through the village, and there was hardly a broken pane
of glass to be seen. Furniture and valuables the people had secreted
before the troops had come upon them, and the chief injury seemed to
have been sustained by the straw stacks, upon which the men had drawn
freely to make beds wherewithal in the empty houses. Over Nogent the
wave had passed a little earlier, and the place had proportionately
recovered more. Meat, both beef and mutton, was hanging in the open
butcher’s shop. All the way to Château Thierry was visible the eager
desire of the peasantry and farmers to overtake temporarily arrested
agricultural labour. Except for the occasional traces of a bivouac and
now and then a broken down vine stem, there was no evidence that a vast
army had so recently traversed this road. The children played around
the doors beside the old crones at their knitting, the men and women
were in the fields working with a clumsy assiduity, and it seemed to
me not uncheerfully. The vine-pickers were in the vineyards, filling
their creels with the great clusters of somewhat over-ripe grapes;
but their number was, no doubt, smaller than had peace reigned in
the land. There were cattle in the pastures and horses at the plough
and between the shafts of the carts. I do not think any one not aware
of the fact could have gathered from outward appearance that anything
of exceptional importance had recently occurred in the beautiful and
smiling valley. In Château Thierry were a handful of Bavarian bullock
drivers and a few footsore infantrymen. The people of this beautiful
town had never forsook it in numbers so great as had the inhabitants of
some other places; nor had they any reason to repent of their courage.
Now it seemed as if they had fallen again into the somnolent routine
of a provincial town. The burghers gossiped on the pavement, the young
ladies promenaded in the avenues of noble trees, the lads squatted on
the brink of the Marne, angling with a lazy pertinacity. The Hôtel de
l’Eléphant was empty, changed indeed from that Elephant which I had
seen a few days before, when Von Tümpling’s staff were buzzing the
bottles in the _salle à manger_, and the cook was in a white heat at
the multiplicity of orders. The landlord, a gentleman himself of the
elephantine pattern, confided to me, with a sage wag of the head, that
he would be heartily glad to see _Messieurs les Prussiens_ come back to
stop as long as they could make it convenient, for they were the best
customers he had ever had, never grumbled, and invariably rejected red
wine for champagne, for which they paid promptly the price demanded.
At Dormans were a considerable number of Germans, but no regular
force—only sick and convalescents, and stragglers, chiefly belonging
to the 63rd Regiment. Neither here did I find any misery. The
disconsolateness of Madame at the hotel only proceeded from the
circumstance that she had a son in MacMahon’s Chasseurs de France, of
whose fate at Sedan she knew nothing. The shops were all open, and
the show in the windows was by no means despicable. Next morning, in
and about Ville en Tardenoise, I met and passed the whole of the 11th
Army Corps on its march to the front. The men looked fresh and well,
and the horses in capital condition; but the ranks were considerably
thinner than before that terrible struggle on to the plateau above
Floing. Rheims was occupied by a division of Bavarians and another of
Würtemburgers. Although this town had been in a state of remarkable
ferment on the occasion of the first entry of the Germans, it had got
used to the situation in a very short time, and now it looked as if the
German occupation was a thing from time immemorial. It was Sunday, and
citizens and Bavarians were streaming out of the noble old cathedral
and the various churches of the city in all the apparent friendliness
of fellow-worshippers. Among the poorer classes in Rheims there had
been considerable hardship, owing to the dearness of provisions and
the obligation incumbent on them of providing food for the soldiers
billeted on them. The German authorities had, however, averted further
distress from this source, by establishing a commissariat for troops
billeted on all those unable to support them.
Although the route between Rethel and Sedan had been traversed by a
large portion of the German host on its south-western march after
Sedan, the district, at least as far as Boulzicourt, seemed to have
either suffered very little, or to have recuperated with surprising
alacrity. As in the valley of the Marne, field operations were going on
briskly. Agricultural horses seemed plentiful, and I saw several great
herds of cattle in the flat water meadows. I felt a deep interest in
the portion of road between Flize and Sedan. I had traversed it several
times before—once on the day of the battle of Sedan, when a few scared
old women, sitting crouching by their black hearths amidst the crashing
of the cannonading, and an occasional scanty group of timid-eyed men
peeping out from behind the stone dykes, were the only evidences of
resident population in villages that bore the red-fresh impress of the
fangs of the war-dog.
The people were gradually coming back to Flize, Dom de Mesnil, and
Fernois, the three villages between Boulzicourt and Sedan. In Flize it
seemed that there must be plenty of wine, as well as plenty to drink
it, for the auberge was crammed with the blue blouses. The females of
the families had fallen into the old familiar way of sitting knitting
in the sunshine outside their doors. But many houses were still closed
up, and here and there the blackened skeleton of a roofless house, a
grim memorial of the hot shell-fire. Over against Donchery the peasants
were fishing the dead horses out of the Meuse, and burying them in
great holes. It is impossible to describe the emotions which almost
every step of this road called up in my mind—associated as it was with
events fixed so indelibly in my memory. Here was the little house at
which I had seen Napoleon alight from his carriage on the morning of
the 2nd September. A child was playing on the spot where the Emperor
and Bismarck sat in that earnest colloquy of theirs which I watched so
intently. A woman was spreading clothes on the path in the potato plot,
up and down which I had seen the ruined man moodily pacing as he tugged
his dishevelled moustache, after Bismarck had drawn the white cap with
the yellow band down over his eyes, and posted off to take counsel with
his master. To the left was the ruined railway bridge over the Meuse.
In my immediate front was the Château Bellevue, before which I had seen
the perturbed meeting of the monarchs—Napoleon bowing low to hide the
workings of his face; Wilhelm studying not to hide his emotion. Away
across the low alluvial plain and the sweep of the river, that ghastly
schlacht-feld sloped upward from the low bluffs,—now brown and bare,
but, when I saw it once before, a fearful space in which surged to and
fro, in the gaps of the white smoke, the heaving masses of maddened
combatants—when I saw it yet again a ghastly expanse of death, here
chequered with dead grey horses and gay-clad dead riders, there flecked
with the more sombre uniforms of the German soldiers lying thick where
the mitrailleuse hail had beaten them to the earth. Below it was the
island, with the château in its centre, on to which I had seen the
ceaseless stream of French prisoners pouring on the 3rd—the once-gay
gardens of the château now bare, and the trees stripped of their
foliage. And farther to my right lay Sedan itself, with the German
landwehr sentry on its ramparts; and farther to the right, Bazeilles of
ghastly memory.
The scene had changed since last I looked upon it. As I drove down
the gentle slope into Sedan I met the townspeople, male and female,
the Cook’s tourists, and the relic-hunting riff-raff of Belgium,
sauntering in dilettante fashion along the road, which three weeks
ago had a ghastly fringe of corpses. The relic-hunters were picking
up the knapsacks out of the ditch, and stealing the sword bayonets
that had been set up in lieu of tombstones. In the open space between
the enceinte and the minor fortifications stood the captured French
artillery—five long straight rows of cannons, seventy-five in each
row, besides numerous mitrailleuses and tumbrils. A single sentry did
duty over the vast park. In the moats, German soldiers were punting,
and from the bridges they were bobbing for weapons of war hidden by
the water, occasionally bringing to the surface the bloated corpses
of those who had erstwhile wielded these same weapons. All the shops
in the town were open, and business seemed tolerably brisk. That the
spirit of enterprise was not wholly dead was evinced by huge posters
announcing “an immense consignment of cigars,” and every _Débit de
tabac_ was doing a roaring trade. The convalescent wounded, with pallid
faces and thin limbs, were placidly sunning themselves on the steps of
the public buildings or tottering feebly about the streets. One young
sous-officer interested me greatly. The reader may have seen the matrix
of a branch covered by a round plaster of clay to prevent the canker
from getting into the heart of the tree. This quiet, pale-faced lad had
lost his left arm at the shoulder. It seemed to me that the shoulder
itself had been taken out close to the collar-bone, and the bandages
stood out just like the clay bole to which I have referred. He must
have made a very quick recovery to be able to walk about not three
weeks after a capital operation of this nature.
The siege of Metz, to watch which was my new duty, had virtually begun
on that woeful day for the French arms when the ravine of Gravelotte
was stormed, and Bazaine, baulked in his last desperate effort to keep
hold of any of the main roads leading Parisward from Metz, was hurled
back under the guns of Fort St. Quentin. On the day after Gravelotte,
the soldiers of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz had begun, in
the prompt and thorough German manner, to girdle the environs of Metz
with a series of defensive earthworks, linked together by a continuous
cincture of entrenchment, so well contrived and so formidable as to
reduce to a minimum the apparent discrepancy in strength between a vast
army free to make its concentrations on any selected point, and a host
more numerous, indeed, but necessarily attenuated as regarded any one
point by reason of the immensity of the circle around the radius-border
of which it had to show an unbroken front. That there was a time,
during which Bazaine could have hewed his way through this girdle, if
he had commenced his effort with discretion, and prosecuted it with
daring energy and regardlessness of loss, it does not appear that in
the nature of things there can be any reasonable doubt. What effect
his emancipation would have produced, had it been effected soon after
Gravelotte, is a question involving considerations so various that,
in such a work as this, I may be excused referring to them in detail.
But it is obvious that had Bazaine been a leader of originality,
self-reliance, promptness, and boldness, instead of, as I estimate him,
an honest, rather sluggish man, thankful to get his initiative from
some one else, instead of ready to take his own initiative—a military
formalist mainly, distracted between his political and his military
obligations, and utterly unversed in the rare art of regalvanising
beaten troops,—had Bazaine been another sort of man, he might surely
have seriously complicated von Moltke’s strategy.[3] Suppose that he
had cut his way out in the obviously most eligible direction, somewhere
between Plappeville and Maizières les Metz, and marched at the pace
of the first Napoleon on the track of the Maas army. The Germans can
march, but they cannot fly; the hot energy of the Red Prince could not
have accomplished the impossibility of drawing in from the fringe of
the wide circle an army strong enough to give Bazaine battle before
he had won the start by several marches. It was the Maas army which
met MacMahon in the teeth at Buzancy and Nouart as he came lumbering
through the Argonne into the Maas valley; the third army had swung
round, not in time to head him, but to take him on the right flank,
extended in dishevelled march all along the valley. But if Bazaine had
been close on the track of the Crown Prince of Saxony, the latter would
have been in a vice. He could not have fought facing both ways. Had
he elected to arrest MacMahon, Bazaine would have been upon him from
behind; had he faced about and met Bazaine, the cannon of MacMahon
would have been roaring on his new rear. His position, in fact, would
have been untenable; and it seems plain that the only course open to
him would have been to slip out of the _crux_ to the southward, and
thus to have allowed the coalescence of the army of Châlons and the
army from Metz. The outcome of a junction so formidable it would be
folly to attempt to define. The French situation would still have
been precarious—perhaps nearly as bad as it was the day before Sedan.
For on three sides three German armies would still have hemmed it in,
and there was nothing behind it but the frontier. On the other hand,
there would surely have been much possible to an army of 300,000 men,
supposing the troops in good fighting heart, and the generals worth the
skin of an orange.
But Bazaine lay supine behind his forts till he got his initiative
in the shape of the plan to co-operate with MacMahon. It seems clear
that the planners of that general’s disastrous expedition contemplated
that his march would be bloodless till he should have reached the
north-western flank of the army environing Metz. Letters from Metz,
intercepted by the besiegers, bore testimony to the fact that MacMahon
was expected to make his appearance in that vicinity about the 30th
of August. The signal for the Metz army was to have been three bombs
fired in the air by MacMahon, and then a sortie was to be made at the
same moment that the army of Châlons was to fall on the German rear.
It is actually the case that Bazaine was cautioned against allowing
the guns of the fortress to have too much elevation when fired in
support of the sortie, to obviate the risk of the projectiles falling
in the co-operating army on the further side of the Germans. But
MacMahon had other fish to fry, and the three rockets never flashed
into Metz the signal for co-operative action; so on the 31st, in
blind bewilderment, Bazaine made his first great sortie, and made it
in the direction in which success would have been most difficult to
compass—in the direction of the north-east, the church spire of St.
Barbe being seemingly his landmark. Apart from the actual difficulties
to be encountered on unfavourable ground and against exceptionally
strong opposing works, the selection of this direction for such a
sortie seems simply inexplicable, unless Bazaine contemplated, not a
junction with MacMahon, but a bold push into the Rhine provinces—a
conception no admirer has ever dreamt of attributing to him. MacMahon
was expected from the north-west. Bazaine, had he cut through on
the north-east, would have had to march to the junction round a
third of the circumference of the compass, giving time for a German
concentration in the path of his circuitous march. But he failed to
break out: it may have been for want of persistency, a faculty in
which he seems to have been weak; it may have been that he recognised
what the Germans contend was recognisable, that the longer he tried
the worse he would fail; and after this effort, while his chances of
extrication diminished daily, his prospects, were he once outside, grew
more and more precarious. He seems in a great measure to have accepted
his fate, and solaced himself with the reflection that, at all events,
he was keeping from other work the great armies which constituted his
besiegers. That not a man of those might be judged superfluous, he
made sorties from time to time during the month of September, not of a
character suggesting an attempt to break out, but in force enough to
convince the makers of his toils that the ropes by which the captive
elephant was bound were not a whit too strong. No doubt, too, although
I believe Bazaine to have been a perfectly honest and loyal Frenchman,
he was hampered in his generalship by political considerations—of all
trammels the most ruinous to daring action. The last of these partial
sorties, most of which seem to have had supplies for their object, took
place on the 28th of September, the day before I reached the front, and
from the Germans engaged in it I gleaned some particulars respecting it.
The German foreposts occupied, in no great strength, the village of
Colombey, where there are three large châteaux, in the upper stories
of which there had been left by the inhabitants a considerable store
of grain. They had taken refuge in Metz, and probably acquainted the
French of the existence of these stores. Anyhow, in the afternoon of
the 28th the French, in large numbers, and covered by the artillery of
Fort St. Julien, made a dash at Colombey, their advance followed by
a number of empty waggons. For once they surprised the comparatively
weak German foreposts, and drove them out of Colombey. Covering their
operations by throwing forward tirailleurs into the woods to the front
and towards La Planchette, they filled the waggons with the grain
and started them on the return journey. But, meanwhile, the Prussian
artillery had come to the front, and the shells fell thick among the
Frenchmen in Colombey and the convoy on the road. The former scuttled
back in great haste under the guns of St. Julien; the waggons went on
at a gallop, but out of thirty-six only fourteen succeeded in getting
safe off. The rest were arrested _in transitu_ by the influence which
the Prussian shells exercised on the animals which drew the waggons—an
influence which manifested itself in limbs blown in a variety of
directions. There was no great loss in killed or wounded on either
side. A captain of the 44th Regiment was killed under circumstances
which were a disgrace to civilized warfare. When his detachment
was in retreat he fell wounded severely, but not mortally. His men
placed him in shelter, and then left him as they fell back. When they
recovered the village, they found the corpse of their captain mangled
barbarously—his fingers cut off for the sake of the rings he wore, and
his throat cut from ear to ear. I found the Germans justly incensed at
this atrocity.
The cargo which the train carried that left Saarbrück on the morning
of the 29th of September, was of a sufficiently diversified character.
There were country-women, with great tubs of butter, which they were
taking up to the front to find a good market; officers and soldiers,
new men and convalescents, both from sickness and wounds, on their way
to join and re-join their regiments; Saarbrück merchants going up for
orders; a few Englishmen, who nourished the idea that the fighting
was chronically in progress just outside the station at Courcelles,
and that, by walking a pace or two, they would be able to command a
bird’s-eye view of the whole affair; marketenders, who had been making
investments; and a few Frenchmen on their way to the intermediate
towns, who were doing their best to seem as German as possible. Our
way to Forbach lay through a corner of the ground on which was fought
the battle of Spicheren, and, as the train passed through the woods
near Schönecken, I saw not a few graves of the men who had fallen
in the fierce fight of the 6th of August. Near St. Avold we passed
the débris of the train which had been shattered in a collision that
brought death to several French prisoners, and at this town also we
found a large depôt of military stores and provender. There was a still
larger depôt at Falquemont, where also were collected a quantity of
artillery waggons captured from the French at Gravelotte. The station
at Courcelles was a sight. It was a centre from which radiated in
every direction long lines of waggons of every description, carrying
stores of all kinds to the different army posts, north, south, east,
and west. All around the deserted little village itself are great herds
of cattle, piles of stores, whole pyramids of medical comforts, and
long lines of sick and relay horses. The bustle was immense, and yet
everything seemed orderly. There was of course an Etappen Commando
in the station, but the worthy lieutenant who represented the said
Etappen Commando knew nothing whatever about anything. All he could or
would tell me was that Prince Frederick Charles’ headquarters were at
Corny, on the Moselle, to the south of Metz, but he did not know the
distance. He had no waggons, no horses, very little temper, and less
time to gossip. The circumstances were sufficiently unpromising. One
might as well look for quartern loaves in the kennel of Fleet-street as
for quarters in or around Courcelles; and the field-post, the only and
that a precarious means of getting to Corny, did not leave till three
in the morning. I took the resolution of pursuing the policy out of
which I often found luck eventuate, of going straight to the front till
the foreposts would let me go no further. Striking northward then, and
inclining westward from Courcelles, I passed in succession through the
villages of Laquenexy, Marsilly, Ogy, and St. Agnan. All these I found
occupied by troops, constituting the second investing line environing
the fortress and town of Metz.
All the district was dotted over with the graves of the battle fought
by Steinmetz on the 14th of August, and of men who had fallen in the
various forepost fights. From Courcelles the scene was one of utter
barrenness and desolation, wastes traversed everywhere by tracks of
waggons, chequered by abandoned bivouacs, the leafy bowers of which,
plastered with mud, stood forlorn and unused, all the troops having
been got under cover except the foreposts who necessarily had to
remain in the open. Very few of the inhabitants still remained in the
district, and of these the plight was very miserable. Agricultural
occupations were at a standstill; the vineyards, traversed by waggon
roads and cut in two by entrenchments, were utterly ruined. The houses
were wrecks, many of them wholly or partially burned by fires kindled
by the shells. In Courcelles, the only living thing not German was
a mongrel dog which stuck to his kennel when his owner ran away.
The Germans had christened him “Courcelles,” and the time-serving
rogue was already more than half German—traitor that he was. In the
forepost village of Montoy, which I visited the same evening, I found a
considerable number of inhabitants. One old woman sat placidly before
the door knitting stockings, while the troops lined the entrenchment
just in her front. I suppose she had got so used to shells and
bullets that she did not mind them, or it might be that her despair
had culminated in a sort of apathy of equanimity. The poor country
folks and villagers around Metz were in cases so miserable that it
seemed they must inevitably starve the moment that the Germans should
withdraw. Though they had horses, and though the bullets had not been
sweeping their farms, yet last autumn they durst not put a spade or
a plough into the ground. Every field holds the “sacred and precious
seed” that will germinate never till the last trumpet sounds. It is
right comforting to know that good friends—Friends in more than the
mere name—came to the aid of these poor wretches, with a promptness,
tenderness, and efficiency characteristic of a sect that ever prefer
acting to speaking. But this is anticipating. From St. Agnan I
proceeded two kilometres, still in a north-westerly direction, till I
reached the village of Flanville, where lay the 4th Regiment of East
Prussian Infantry, forming part of the 2nd division of the 1st Army
Corps. The regimental staff was comfortably located in a pleasant
château, and liking the looks of the place and the friendly ways of
the officers, I asked permission to attach myself for the time to the
regiment, a civility which was frankly and unhesitatingly granted.
I was informally taken on the strength, the good old Oberst made me
free of his modest table, the officers of No. 6 company, right hearty
fellows all, assigned me six feet by four of straw in the corner of
the drawing-room, in which there was not a scrap of furniture but a
grand piano, on which a sequence of voluntaries, sometimes accompanied
by singing, sometimes by dancing, seemed constantly going on, and
everybody was anxious to show attention to the Englander who had
strayed on to the foreposts. In the afternoon Lieutenant Werth, the
officer in command of the 6th company (vice the Hauptmann shot on the
31st of August), accompanied me on a ride round a considerable radius
of the eastern forepost circuit, and the lucidity of his explanations
enabled me to arrive at what I afterwards found was a correct idea of
the position, as it was in the end of September.
Next the Moselle, and eastward therefrom, the 8th Army Corps kept watch
and ward, its left on Ars-sur-Moselle, its right interlacing, at the
village of Magny, with the 7th Army Corps. From Magny the 7th held
the line of environment lying in the village of Peltre, the château
and house of Mercy-la-Haut, shattered and burnt, and on as far as Ars
Laquenexy. It had foreposts and _Feldwachen_ a little further forward,
but not so far as they had been a few days previously, when the
foreposts were at La Grange aux Bois. The left of the 1st Army Corps
lay in Colombey, which was also considerably burnt, feeling the right
of the 7th in Mercy-la-Haut. Its second line extended to the northward
in the villages of Ogy, Flanville, Retonfay, Château Gras, and Ste.
Barbe. The first line lay in Coincy, Montoy, Noisseville, Servigny, and
Failly. The whole of this latter line was within range of the big guns
of the great Metz outwork of St. Julien, which occupies the summit of
a mamelon. Between the first and second line there was an interval of
only about a mile. To the front there lay, first, the foreposts, then
the _Feldwachen_, and lastly the single sentries, within 1,500 yards
of St. Julien. The first line occupied a section of the continuous
entrenchment which ran right round Metz. All the villages were roughly
fortified by barricades, _chevaux-de-frise_, &c.; holes had been broken
through all the houses for firing, and, indeed, every village formed a
very respectable, if rough and ready fortress. The foreposts lay either
in single houses, also well fortified by entrenchments and barricades,
or in the field behind earthworks of no inconsiderable magnitude. The
_Feldwachen_ chiefly occupied woods or the gardens of châteaux. A
_Feldwache_ which may be taken as typical, I noticed in the village of
Lauvallière on the route to Saarlouis, two kilometres nearer Metz than
Montoy. Here lay two companies, arms piled close at hand, and ready
for a sortie from the enemy at a moment’s warning. To the left, in
the hamlet of la Plancette, was another _Feldwache_ in a deep ravine.
Here I had to dismount and walk up the slope beyond to the knoll on
which the solitary sentry kept his watch within point-blank range of a
chassepot bullet from the French works at the hamlet of Belle Croix.
We could see with the naked eye the Frenchmen moving about the forts
of les Bottes and St. Julien, and circulating about the environs both
of them and of the town, while the great eminence of Mont St. Quentin,
with its mass of fortifications on the summit, shut in the scene,
dominating the whole valley from the further side of the Moselle. All
the front was pitted over with the craters of shells. The men of one
of the regiments were erecting quite a permanent barrack of wood, the
sides covered with earth, behind an isolated brewery a little way in
the rear of Lauvallière. Further north, Noisseville was densely filled
with German troops; Nouilly, which lies between it and St. Julien, was
neutral ground, occupied by neither army, while the French were in
force in Mey and Vantoux, villages still nearer the fortress. We went
forward to the edge of a wood near Mey, accompanied by two Prussian
patrols, and got a warning to go back in the shape of a sharp fusilade
from out a garden in the environs of Mey. To complete the narrative
of the localities, the environment was taken up on the right of the
1st Army Corps by the Landwehr Division, consisting of three brigades,
each six battalions strong, under the command of General von Kummer.
They covered at that time the ground round nearly to the Moselle on
the north, but were afterwards moved to the other side of the stream,
changing places with the 10th Army Corps. The General commanding the
1st Army Corps, his Excellency von Manteuffel, lay in Ste. Barbe, a
little to our north rear. Our immediate commander was General von
Pritselwitz, the chief of the Second Division of the First Army Corps,
who had his quarters two kilometres behind us, in the little village of
Puche, where likewise was the Feldpost.
Even so early as the time of which I am writing, deserters and the
German prisoners whom Bazaine had sent back, concurred in representing
the condition of the troops inside and around Metz as being very bad
in the matter of food. They were represented as living chiefly on
horseflesh, and as having neither flour, rice, nor salt—the latter
want being the subject of much complaint. The discipline of the troops
was said to be good, and the morale of a character very different to
that of the disorganised horde who threw down their arms at Sedan.
But the German returned prisoners united in abusing the domineering
greed of the French officers, who cared nothing comparatively for
their men, provided their own wants were satisfied. This selfishness
seems forcibly to have struck the honest Germans, used as they are to
treatment so different.
It could not fail to strike even the most cursory observer that the
alertness and completeness of the German forepost system was a great
feature of the army, and one of the leading causes of its success. At
night the _Feldwache_ always went forward to the post occupied during
the day by the farthest outlying sentry. Here it broke right and left
into small picquets, leaving a strong nucleus in the centre. The
front, at a distance of 200 or 300 yards, was continually traversed by
cavalry patrols, who often rode right in among the sleeping Frenchmen,
whose system of night vigilance was not brilliant. Then there would
be a pistol shot and a round of wild chassepot firing in the dark,
and the daring Uhlan would dash out through the red legs, back to
his supports. Writing of chassepots, it may be noted that the German
forepost troops were by this time extensively armed with these weapons
to enable them to cope on equal terms with the French tirailleurs. Of
the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Regiment seventy-five men were so armed,
or rather seventy-five chassepots were in use and were transferred
from _Feldwache_ to _Feldwache_, as the changes of guard were made.
This seemed to settle the question as to the relative merits of the
Chassepot and the Zundnadelgewehr in the eyes of the Germans.
On the evening of September 29th it was officially made known to the
troops that the French were constructing three bridges across the
Moselle to the westward of Fort St. Julien, it was believed with a
view to a sortie in the direction of Maison Rouge and Woippy. About
four o’clock next morning the sky became brilliantly illuminated with
the shells under the fire of which they attempted to carry out their
design, and with the return fire with which the German artillery met
it. In the thick darkness the effect as seen from our position (about
four miles away) was magnificent. Between the louder crashes of the
cannon was heard the sharper rattle of the musketry fire, singly and in
volleys. The firing became fainter towards six o’clock, and by seven
had died away altogether—the presumption being that the French attempt
had been baulked, and this we afterwards learned was the case. A few
days previously the garrison of Thionville had surprised and captured
a German provision train, which was carried into that fortress. The
food being more needed in Metz than in Thionville, it was anticipated
that an effort would be made to fight the train through the German
environment into the beleaguered fortress. In all probability the
affair of this morning was a diversion intended to facilitate this
movement. The Germans, however, were fully alive to the contingency,
and they succeeded in foiling the attempt.
I found that the Germans were in possession of detailed drawings
and full particulars of the French troops lying around Metz, the
correctness of which I was afterwards able to verify. Bazaine’s
forces—that is to say, the army driven back on Metz after the battle
of Gravelotte—were not permitted to enter the town of Metz. The whole
army was encamped on the slopes of the outlying fortifications either
of the town or of the outlying strongholds, in the intervening country,
and in the various villages which still remained in the possession of
the French. The forts were garrisoned by Mobiles and National Guards.
Bazaine’s head-quarters were at Ban St. Martin, outside the town, and
around him lay the camp of the Imperial Guards. Opposite us on the
east side lay the 3rd Army Corps of the French army—Lebœuf’s corps.
Its forepost nearest us was in the wood in front of Mey, and the chain
extended southward to the front of the hamlet Belle Croix. The mass of
the corps lay to the rear. Within the previous few days a considerable
camp had been established on the slope of St. Julien, looking toward
us. We could see the white tents, and the red-legged gentlemen
strolling about them. Their patrols, mounted and on foot, were wont to
cross our front so near that the countenances of the men could be made
out with the glass. The German _Feldwachen_ could have picked them off
quite easily if they had chosen; but there was an order against firing
at small detached parties. The French did not show the same civility.
A single man could not show himself on the advance line without being
blazed at by a regular volley, which seldom, however, took any effect,
the firing being so wild. The guard changing was wont to be a great
time for a waste of French powder and shot all along the line, and the
field guns at Little Belle Croix made a point of spitefully throwing a
few shells on the brewery on the great chaussée constituting the chief
forepost on our right front.
When the French made a sortie, Lieutenant Werth informed me, their
scheme of advance was very characteristic. They scuttled out from the
shelter of the fortresses in the loosest skirmishing order and with
great rapidity till they had reached intermediate spaces sheltered
from the German fire, whether by woods or by the configuration of the
ground. In those they accumulated their masses, and came forward in
dense columns. But they had never, save on the great sortie of the 31st
of August, and at Colombey on the 28th September, succeeded in getting
to close quarters with the first line of the Germans. The artillery of
the latter came into play with its deadly practice, and then there was
no alternative but a rapid retreat. Their demonstrations were always
accompanied by a cannonade from Belle Croix and St. Julien, but seldom
by the discharge of field artillery. This latter circumstance had led
the Germans to the conclusion that the French were short of ammunition
for their field guns, and this seemed probable, looking to the lavish
use they made of them at Gravelotte. There must have been artillery of
great calibre in the forts, for Lieutenant Werth pointed out to me, by
Lauvallière, lying in the ditch, a huge shell, which could not have
been less than a 72-pounder. It was unexploded, a fact noticeable of a
large proportion of the French shells.
The losses that had been suffered by some of the regiments of the 1st
Army Corps since it had come within hail of Metz were stupendous. On
the 14th August, and in the minor fights of the 30th and 31st of the
same month, and those during the course of September, the 4th Regiment
lost (killed and wounded) 35 officers out of a total of 60, and 1,000
men out of 3,000. The 45th Regiment, lying in its vicinity, had lost
yet more of its officers. Out of 60 no fewer than 42 had fallen. The
result had been that a large number of Vicefeldwebels and several
sergeants had received commissions. As these were comparatively
inexperienced in their new duties, they were daily receiving assiduous
instructions from their seniors. These informal lectures were highly
interesting—not a few officers of the British service would have
greatly benefited by attending them. The troops also were drilled
daily, notwithstanding their position in front of the enemy. On the
morning of the 30th I watched a whole battalion at skirmishing drill,
and a right pretty sight it was. The recruits that had come forward
since the beginning of the war spent hours daily in perfecting their
drill, and the efficiency of the whole army was sedulously maintained
at the highest pitch.
I was present the same morning at the very interesting ceremony of the
distribution to the 4th Regiment of the iron crosses awarded to members
of it for valour in the field. The ceremony took place at Puche, the
head-quarters of the general of division, who personally distributed
the crosses in the presence of the officers of the regiment. The band
played the old regimental air, the “Hohenfriedberg,” and the colours
were on the ground. The gallant 4th had earned no fewer than twenty
crosses already, and the award seemed to have been made with the most
rigid impartiality, the men taking their full share of the coveted
distinction with their officers. The 4th is one of the old regiments
of the Prussian service, and its annals record a long and gallant
career. Its regimental march, the name of which I have just mentioned,
is secured to it by a special royal order in remembrance of the valour
which it displayed at the battle of Hohenfriedberg, fought in 1745.
To understand the means of defence which the French army enclosed in
Metz had to keep wherewithal the Germans at bay, a detailed description
of the remarkable fortifications with which the virginity of La Pucelle
was guarded may not be out of place. Although Metz is no longer French,
these works still exist in their entirety, to say nothing of their
having been strengthened, and therefore respecting them the present
tense may be used.
The town of Metz, with the great Cathedral, lies for the most part
on the east side of a branch of the Moselle, which forks off from
the main stream near La Grange aux Dames, and forms the islands of
Chambière, and lower down of Sauley and St. Simphorien. A large suburb,
however, stands on the first of these islands. The inner fortifications
surround the town continuously, with the exception of one gap to the
southward, which is covered efficiently by the branch of the Moselle
which divides the islands of Sauley and St. Simphorien. On the north
of the Ile de Chambière are two important forts on the inner line, one
at the north-western angle of the enceinte, the other detached in the
plain of the island, but connected with the enceinte by a covered way.
On the south of the inner line are the Redoubt du Pate to the east, and
the Lunette d’Arcon to the west, both connected with the enceinte by a
covered way. The western side of the inner line is covered by the great
Fort Moselle on the farther side of the main stream of the Moselle, a
double crown work of immense strength and magnitude, inclosing great
magazines and arsenals. To the south of it the bastion of Ile de Sauley
sends out a long spur of fortifications, which crosses the Moselle, and
terminates in a redoubt on the farther side. Nor is the eastern side
of the inner line less strongly protected. In front of the enceinte
looms the great double crown work of Belle Croix, to the full as large
as Fort Moselle, and more highly favoured by its natural position. To
the south of it stands Fort Gisors, a minor detached fortification
which serves to complete the circuit of connection with the Redoubt du
Pate on the south. Thus the town of Metz is, in fact, environed by two
lines of fortifications, the continuous enceinte with its bastions and
what I may term the outer cordon of the inner circle having intimate
connection with the enceinte.
Of themselves these defences would make the place all but
impregnable, but they are by no means the most important defences of
this extraordinary fortress. There is an outer circle of detached
fortifications, each of which is the complement of the other, and of
which no one can be assailed without the assailant laying his account
to be enfiladed by at least two of the others. Let me begin with these
at the Moselle, on the north of the town at La Grange aux Dames, and
work round, proceeding first in an easterly direction. After climbing
the bank of the stream we come to the chaussée leading to Bouzonville,
and crossing it we almost immediately come on the great glacis of
Fort St. Julien. This is an outlying fort of the first magnitude,
covering the whole of the round summit of a natural eminence, and
having on three sides a natural glacis, therefore of great extent. It
lies about two English miles from Metz, in a north-easterly direction;
and a little to the north-east of it is the Monastery and wood of
Grimont, the former of which Bazaine’s engineers had scientifically
diverted from ecclesiastical to military purposes. About a mile and
a half due south of St. Julien, and about a mile due east from Fort
Belle Croix, is Fort les Bottes, a great bog-backed structure chiefly
of earth, which was thrown up as a precautionary measure, either
immediately before or immediately after the outbreak of the war. The
Germans, I believe, are engaged in altering it from a “provisional” to
a temporary fort. Its position is very important as a link between St.
Julien and Fort Queleu on the south. It stands a little to the south
of the great chaussée from Metz to Saarlouis and Saarbrück, while as
yet the bisection has not taken place. Forward about a mile from les
Bottes, and on the chaussée just before it bisects, is a hamlet named
Belle-Croix, which must not, however, be confounded with the fort of
the same name. Here, also, the French had strong earthworks mounted
with guns, but these, for the most part at least, were field artillery,
and paucity of ammunition kept them tolerably quiet. About a mile and a
half south of Fort les Bottes, and about the same distance from Metz,
is Fort Queleu, also an important structure, dominating the main road
to Strasburg and the adjoining flat country as far as the telegraph on
the elevated ground before Mercy-le-Haut. Turning now westward, and
inclining to the south, we come to Fort St. Privat, at a distance of
about two and a half miles both from Fort Queleu and Metz. Its value
consists in the command it has of the eastern side of the valley of
the Moselle, of the road from Nancy, and of the railway lines which
converge behind it. Leaving it, we come to the Moselle again, this
time on the south-west side of the town, and striking up nearly due
north, we have nothing in the shape of permanent fortifications,
although during the siege there were several temporary batteries, till
we climb the great hump, on the top of which stands Fort St. Quentin,
the greatest outwork of Metz. St. Quentin is a complete fortress in
itself; it could hold out were all its neighbours taken, and it may
safely be termed impregnable, looking at the combined strength of
its natural position and its skilfully devised fortifications. Not
only does it dominate the country to the south, south-west, west, and
north-west, but it frowns outward to the east, and its great guns would
play an important part in the defence against an attack on the inner
fortifications of Metz. North-west of it, about a mile on the top
of the bluffs, lies Fort Plappeville, or les Carrières, the natural
position of which is not so strong as that of St. Quentin, because
the elevation on which it stands is not isolated, while it is open in
the rear, and therefore requires St. Quentin as the complement of its
defence, a defect the Germans are remedying. It acts as a defence over
a great tract of country to the west, and keeps a besieging force at a
respectful distance, so that it cannot reach the edge of the bluffs and
pitch projectiles down into Metz. Due north from Metz, about two miles,
and standing in the middle of the plain, bounded by the Thionville
Railway on the west, and the Moselle on the east, lies the improvised
work of St. Eloy, the last and not the least important of the outworks
of Metz. Its province is in combination with St. Julien to take care
of the valley of the Moselle to the northward, and to dominate the
great road to Thionville. All these fortifications (except the little
Belle-Croix) were furnished with heavy guns of position, and the French
had no lack of ammunition for the use of those great fortress guns,
although field artillery ammunition might have been short. Besides
their field artillery, the Germans had two or three batteries of siege
12-pounders on the western side of the Moselle, and I am not aware that
during the siege they had either any more numerous or more formidable
siege artillery on the ground. Their quiescently defensive, or rather
obstructive, position, then, was dictated by sound military conditions,
since a blockade answered exactly the purpose they had in view, viz.,
to reduce the place by famine.
None of the villages around Metz are very large, and Flanville is
one of the smallest of them—consisting of a few hovels huddled by
the side of a country road, under the lee of two large châteaux.
Small as it was, it had to accommodate the whole of a battalion of
the 4th. The men were packed closely in the houses, occupying lofts,
passages, sheds, and every other available shred of cover. The officers
occupied the two châteaux, both of which had been beautiful residences
before war had laid them waste. The colonels château still had its
garden undestroyed—in this autumn time a paradise of sweet-scented
flowers, with here a fountain, and there a leafy bower. Our château
had sustained harder fortune. A company of men, as well as a number
of officers occupied its spacious chambers; on the lawn outside were
stacked the needle-guns, ready for immediate use, and the flower-beds
had been trodden down almost beyond the power of recognition. A
Corporalschaft occupied the conservatory, and the flower-garden was a
drill ground. The château had been pelted by the French in the battle
of the 1st of September—it was still inside the range of their guns—and
the roof had been shattered by shells. We occupied the drawing-room,
in which were two great mirrors reaching to the roof. The one over the
mantel-piece had been penetrated by a bullet exactly in the centre, and
fantastically starred in all directions. Here is a sketch written on
the spot, of the manner of our daily life, when the gentlemen over the
way did not happen to be bellicose.
“In the grey morning, unless we have been previously roused by firing
on the front, the soldier servants come into our drawing-room bedroom,
bringing the morning coffee. Long before, the soldiers on the other
side of the partition have been stirring, and they are the merriest,
the most noisy set of Kerle imaginable. After coffee, drill begins.
The young soldiers are at the goose-step in the flower-garden; the
older hands practising skirmishing by companies in the neighbouring
vineyards. At nine comes appel—a kind of parade without arms, at which
the clothes and accoutrements of the men are carefully inspected. The
appel only takes place occasionally, but the under officers have a
minor appel every day, at each of which in turn there is an inspection
of a separate article. Now it is arms, now boots, now cloaks—the under
officer is responsible for the condition of his Schaft or squad, and
he takes care he shall not incur a reprimand through any want of
vigilance. After appel the officers breakfast. The feeding is homely,
and eaten in a homely fashion—clean plates, or plates of any kind, not
being plentiful, and the glass-ware decidedly deficient. But there
never wants a hearty appetite; and for a guest like myself, a hearty
welcome and a frank kindliness that I never can forget. Breakfast
over, comes an interval of visiting, gossiping, and beer drinking, for
we have our own marketender on the lawn, and Saarbrück is only forty
miles away. Some write, some read, others sleep; it is astonishing how
much sleep it takes to tire some people. The men employ themselves
in tailoring, in seeing to the rations, in conducting the cooking of
the dinner, and in smoking in the bright sunshine. Dinner is rather a
discursive meal; you imagine you have finished it when you have eaten
of the rice, the soup, and the mincemeat in your own particular room,
but going the round you find another mess devoting their attention
to plums and schinken, and you join in of course. Then you go a
little farther, and find the inmates of another room topping off with
chocolate or coffee and a _petit verre_. Of course you are asked to
partake, and equally of course you do so. After dinner is the siesta.
The quarters are then as quiet as in the dead of night. In an hour or
two a sprightly officer awakens, and assiduously devotes himself to the
stirring up of his more drowsy brother officers. A pack of cards comes
to the surface somehow, and presently the round table is surrounded
by a circle of card-players, the game proceeding with a considerable
amount of noise, owing to a habit most Germans have of all speaking at
once, each at the top of his voice. Those who are not at the card-table
stroll out to visit the brother officer who is on the _repli_, drop in
upon the worthy major and colonel, whom they find placidly smoking in
their beautiful garden, or watch Fort St. Julien and the French tents
through their glasses. Deep as the interest may be in the game which is
being played at the card-table, that and all other local interest fades
into nothing at the appearance of the Underofficer who has been over to
head-quarters to the Feldpost. It is good to watch the countenances as
the letters, hurriedly opened, are being pored over with eager faces.
The eyes of the portly Dantzic premier-lieutenant on the sofa become
strangely moist as the crumpled fuchsia and rosebud drop out of his
letter, the fragrance still clinging about them as when they had been
placed there as a love token from the children he has left at home.
What is that which the handsome young lieutenant hurriedly clutches as
it falls out of the envelope, and pushes inside his tunic on the side
next his heart? I don’t think it is a bill from his tailor. He would
not smile so if it were a dunning letter he was reading, and the most
gushing man is not addicted to the practice of stealthily kissing a
letter from his tailor ere he consigns it to his breast-pocket. Depend
upon it the lieutenant is happy in the knowledge that the girl of his
heart, far away on the shores of the Baltic, has not forgotten him.
The domestic side of the German character comes out very strong in
this interval of letter-reading. Nearly all the officers of the 4th
are from the same district, and the letter of one officer commonly
contains messages to others who at home are friends and neighbours. I
was amused to-day by the amazed delight of a grizzled officer who must
have seen close on fifty years, when he looked at the superscription
of one of his letters. ‘_Gott in Himmel!_ its from the old mother,’
he cried. Then came quite a gush of interest as to the age of the old
lady, and when he told us with some pride that she was close on ninety,
the ‘Donnerwetters’ were many and hearty. After the letters come the
perusal of the newspapers and gossiping as to their contents, and the
probable designs of Bismarck—it is always Bismarck who is named. When
darkness falls we have music and dancing. One of our volunteers is a
brilliant instrumentalist, and he comes down from his lofty abode near
the roof, and plays our piano in the drawing-room. Now it is ‘Die Wacht
am Rhein,’ the officers chiming in with the words, and the men on the
farther side of the partition and out in the environs taking up the
strain, till the volume of sound must sweep over the glades and the
ruined vineyards to the French field watches outside Belle-Croix and
St. Julien. Now it is a waltz which the young volunteer plays, and then
the spectacle would greatly delight Mr. Spurgeon, who is an advocate
for male dancing with male. A nimble young officer, who, if he were not
a gallant fellow with medals on his breast, would have made a capital
dancing-master, treats us to a burlesque rendering of the cancan,
and the music gets into the head of a rotund officer of middle-age,
who executes the most fantastic capers with a suppleness, and at the
same time a gravity, that sets everybody in a roar. He infects the
rest, and for the time one might imagine he was in the company of a
congregation of dancing dervishes. But we must not keep the men awake,
and, in truth, nobody cares to be a late sitter himself. By ten o’clock
we are all in bed, the whole place wrapped in slumber, save the
sentries who surround us with a cordon through which a mouse could not
creep. No more could a mouse creep into or out of Metz. The sentries’
orders are precise to allow nobody to pass through after nightfall
on any pretext whatever. Last night an officer and myself, who had
been out on the foreposts, allowed darkness to overtake us before our
return. As we approached the chain of sentries, the stern ‘halt’ came
to us through the darkness. ‘Officer,’ was the reply, but it availed
nothing—notwithstanding that the sentry belonged to the officer’s
own regiment. We had to stand till a party came to conduct us to the
guard, and then the officer went back and praised the sentry for the
creditable manner in which he had done his duty.”
After dark on the night of the 1st October the 4th Regiment marched
forward into the first line, occupying the village of Noisseville,
a position sufficiently far advanced to make its occupation very
ticklish work. The village was within easy range of the shell fire,
either from St. Julien or Fort les Bottes, while the field guns at the
little Belle-Croix were, so to speak, just over the way. The village
constituted part and parcel of the line of the German entrenchments;
every cottage was a stronghold; in every street, alley, and gap was
an earthwork. About 300 yards to our right front, in the bottom of a
rather abrupt valley was the village of Nouilly, belonging to neither
side. Just outside of it, on the French side, and to the north-west,
begins the Bois de Mey, on the southern edge of which lies the village
of the same name, occupied by the French. The wood swarmed with their
tirailleurs; we could see their red breeches through the trees, and
they also acquainted us with their presence by firing occasionally at
our patrols when they imagined they came too near the wood.
At night I went on the farthest _Feldwache_ on our front, just behind
the village of Nouilly, and remained there during the night with the
lieutenant in command. As soon as he relieved his predecessors, he
threw forward a sergeant’s party into Nouilly, with orders to hold it
till daylight. About one o’clock in the morning our cavalry patrols,
supported by an infantry detachment, felt their way to the edge of
the Bois de Mey, and there encountered a fierce but wild discharge of
musketry. They fell back on the sergeant’s party at Nouilly, who held
the place till they could discern the advance of large detachments of
French troops. The shots had stirred up the three battalions lying in
and around Mey, and they had come out on the rampage to annihilate the
patrols and whatever else should come in their way. The German sergeant
in Nouilly, however, quietly fell back on his supporting _Feldwache_,
where the lieutenant stood fast till he could see the Frenchmen
swarming into Nouilly, and then fell back on the _repli_, which in turn
supported the _Feldwache_. It did one good to see the coolness of the
officer, a young lieutenant, not to all appearance over twenty-five,
but who wore the ’66 medal. I asked him why, looking at the seeming
strength of the approaching force, he did not give a general alarm.
The apparatus for this purpose was complete. A fusee thrown into the
bonfire on the edge of the _repli_ post would have got 40,000 men under
arms in ten minutes, and the artillery galloping to the front in a
quarter of an hour. But it was exactly the responsibility of such a
general disturbance that prevented him from crying “Wolf”—although, to
my judgment, there seemed cause enough. The event proved how wisely
Lieutenant von Verzin had learned to calculate contingencies. The
French were content temporarily to occupy Nouilly, and after a brief
stay fell back on their original position at Mey. But if he refrained
from giving the alarm, he did not allow a single precaution to escape
him. His company was extended in skirmishing order on both sides of the
post, ready to retard the French advance should it have taken place. As
it was, a great number of shots were exchanged, but no harm was done on
either side.
Around the church of Noisseville there was a _repli_ post, continually
occupied by a company. The church itself, by the way, is, or rather I
fear I must say was, a very interesting structure. Of great age and
considerable architectural pretensions, it had been pounded with shells
more severely than any building I have ever seen. The French had
pelted it on one side, the Germans on the other. The steeple had been
originally square, now it was roughly round; there were great gaps in
the walls and holes in the roof, and the birds were singing merrily
in the half ruined structure. The _curé_ had remained by his church,
and, strange to say, his residence had escaped with very little damage.
The colonel of the 4th was his guest, or rather he was the colonel’s
guest, for he had nothing to eat but what was purveyed by our worthy
_Oberst_. The good _curé_ spoke German fluently, and got a kindly
salute from everybody; he took the firing very coolly, and seemed in
remarkably good spirits, all things considered. But to return to the
_repli_ round the shattered church. The 6th Company found it on the
2nd, and I found my way into Lieutenant Werth’s shanty after coming
back from the _Feldwache_ in the grey dawn. Till about one o’clock all
was quiet—the men lay about on the straw, smoking or sleeping, and the
cavalry videttes, 100 yards to our front, circled leisurely. Suddenly
there came a spattering chassepot fire from the riflemen on the little
Belle Croix directed against an infantry party which was beating
the foreground. The bullets came whistling over the _repli_ post as
Lieutenant Werth and myself jumped up to see what was the matter. One
hit the ground a little to our front, ricochetted between us, and
lodged in the arm of a soldier who was lying down a little in our
rear. The order was for all to get under cover immediately, but Werth
had some difficulty in getting obeyed, so eager were his fellows to
see what was going on. He himself stood coolly exposed as the bullets
came whistling by, minding them no more than if they had been so many
buzzing flies. Firing with the French is infectious, and it was taken
up all along the line as far as Mey, for what reason it was impossible
to say. The Germans did not think it worth while to reply, and the
videttes phlegmatically continued their circling. In about an hour the
French fire died away, having occasioned no casualty, save the wound to
the man in our _repli_.
On the night of the 2nd of October a detachment of the 4th did a
little job in the way of fire-raising. The neutral village of Nouilly,
immediately to the front of Noisseville, has already been mentioned;
it contained—or, at least, was believed to contain—considerable stores
of provisions, which, however, were so secreted in the cellars and
elsewhere, that the Prussians could not discover them. The inhabitants,
however, had for the most part taken refuge in Metz, and it was natural
that they should inform their military countrymen of the whereabouts
of the provisions. It was equally natural that men on short commons
should do their best to obtain all the food they could, from whatever
source; and it is believed that when the French patrols had temporarily
occupied Nouilly the night before, they succeeded in carrying away
with them some stores. The place lay so directly under the fire of
Forts St. Julien and les Bottes that it was not tenable permanently by
the Germans, and, therefore, there was no resource but to burn it.
A little after eight o’clock in the evening I was sitting at supper
with Lieutenants von Hosius and Fischer, of the 5th Company of the
2nd Battalion of the 4th regiment. The quarters these good gentlemen
occupied would hardly have been considered eligible by a London
working-man looking for lodgings. The house had been burnt out twice,
and the bare walls were now roofed in with a few planks loosely covered
with straw. Door and window were both gone, but their place was not
inefficiently supplied with blankets. There happened to be left a
tolerably decent table, and one side of the apartment was littered
with straw for a bed. We ate rather promiscuously on the foreposts
round Metz. If anyone had anything exceptionally good for supper it
was sure to ooze out, and then the fortunate man had an exceptional
number of callers who “dropped in promiscuous” just as the dainty dish
was upon the table. The dainty dish on this occasion consisted of salt
herrings boiled with onions, and washed down with beer warmed with
meal, lard, and schnaps. Lieutenant Fischer understood no English, but
had a faculty for expressing his meaning pantomimically in a manner
which I never saw equalled. As a linguist Mr. von Hosius had a great
superiority over his comrade. He knew some English. It is true his
knowledge was not of a varied character. So far as ever I learned it
was confined to “Good night,” with which he was wont to take delight in
saluting me about five in the morning, and a verse of “Lucy Long,” with
which he invariably essayed to follow up the conversation. Between the
salt herrings, my German, Mr. Fischer’s pantomime, and Mr. von Hosius’s
“Lucy Long,” we were getting on as well as could be expected, when a
feldwebel entered with an order for Lieutenant von Hosius, which the
latter read aloud:—
“Lieutenant von Hosius will parade at nine o’clock with 15 volunteers
of his company, and will proceed forward to burn the village of
Nouilly.”
Von Hosius was fond of salt herrings, and fond, too, of an opportunity
of distinguishing himself. The Iron Cross for Valour was already in his
button-hole. There were still herrings on the plate, and the hour was
only half-past eight. Fischer, by his direction, went outside to call
for volunteers, while he finished the herrings. The men lay about in a
couple of dismantled rooms, and in the garden at the back of the house.
“Volunteers to burn a village!” roared Fischer, into the midst of the
sleeping Kerle. Had he thrown a bomb among them he could not have
caused a more instantaneous and universal start. Volunteers! He wanted
fifteen, and here was the whole company round him like bees. He picked
his fifteen, taking the men who had no wives at home in the Fatherland,
and then came back to see if the mulled beer was done. By this time
von Hosius had demolished the last of the herrings, and as time was
short was setting about getting ready in the most systematic manner.
Having pulled on his long boots, he pulled out of his portmanteau the
little dagger which every officer wore to ward off the vultures of the
battle-field in case of being wounded, and shoved his “Adams” revolver
into his belt. Then, with a final glass of the composite beer, he
sallied out to the spot where his little band was drawn waiting for
him, and gave them a word or two of advice and precaution.
In truth, the undertaking was a most dangerous one. It partook, indeed,
not a little of the nature of a forlorn hope. A few hundred yards in
the rear of Nouilly we, it is true, had a _Feldwache_, but the French
were nearer it on the other side by Mey and the Bois de Grimont, and
had strong temptations for entering it by night. It might be that he
might encounter a force of French inside the village. In that case, of
what service would be his fifteen volunteers? It was almost certain
that, if this contingency should not occur, the party would encounter
a fierce foe in the execution of their task, and it was probable that
on their return they would be shelled both by St. Quentin and les
Bottes. I left Hosius giving his order, and went on to the _repli_
ground, through which he had to pass to get across the wine berg, and
down into the valley in which Nouilly lies. In a few minutes came the
measured tread of the little party, marching at the German quick step,
which is faster than that of any army I know. Von Hosius as he passed
hailed me laughingly with a parting “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long,” and then
disappeared in the darkness. For a while we could hear the crashing of
the little band through the vines, and then came the hoarse challenge
of the _Feldwache_ rear sentry. Then all became quiet. The group by
the watchfire in the _repli_ gave sufficient evidence of the ticklish
character of the enterprise. For a few minutes the officer in command
of the _repli_ and myself were the only persons who enjoyed its genial
warmth. Then through the gloom came stalking the major, and, after
a long look towards Nouilly, he squatted silently down by our side.
Presently another form appeared, that of the genial colonel himself,
who had been moved to forsake the society of the _curé_ to come and see
what success von Hosius should meet with. I don’t know exactly how they
came, but in half an hour nearly all the officers of the battalion were
around the bright wood fire. Everybody tried to appear unconcerned,
but it was equally certain everybody was fidgety. The regiment had
never yet failed in any duty assigned it, and if it failed now? Nobody
liked to broach the subject, but I could see it was uppermost in the
mind of all. And von Hosius was a tantalisingly long time in putting
us out of our suspense. An hour had gone—Nouilly was but ten minutes
forward from Noisseville—and the colonel’s nervousness was undisguised
as he hacked at the burning log with his naked sword, and drove his
spur into the leg of his chair. The major had taken to walking up and
down the inside of the entrenchment, and only the adjutant exhibited a
thorough nonchalance, but then he was very sleepy.
The vigilant lieutenant of the _repli_ gave a smothered shout, and we
all sprang to our feet. Flame-coloured smoke at last and plenty of
it. But surely, suggested the major, it really cannot be so far away
as that. Why that lowering smoke is on the other side of the Bois de
Grimont, and must be a private bonfire of the French—not the one which
von Hosius was to fire. It was too true, the alarm was a false one.
The colonel sat down again moodily, and the major began to mutter
something that seemed to me very like swearing. As for the adjutant
he went to sleep, and I very nearly followed his example. One thing
was favourable, the dead silence that reigned in the valley. It was
evident that von Hosius had encountered no French in the place, else
the rattle of the musketry would have been heard long ere now, and the
battalion, which was standing to its arms at the various company posts,
would have been lining the entrenchment with the needle-guns poked over
the earthwork.
Another half hour of suspense, and then a loud “Ha!” simultaneously
from the lieutenant on duty and the sentry. This time it was Nouilly,
and no mistake. Von Hosius had taken his time, that he might do his
work thoroughly. Not from one isolated house, but in six places at
once, belched out the long streaks of flame against the black darkness,
and the separate fires made as much haste to connect themselves as ever
did commanders who were eager to feel their supports right and left. In
ten minutes the whole place was in one grand blaze, the church steeple
standing up in the midst of the sea of flame, as if it had round its
turret the old motto of the Scottish Kirk, “_Nec tamen consumebatur_.”
But, church steeple as it was, it had not the attribute of the burning
bush, and a whole pyrotechnic display of sparks bore testimony to its
fall. Here and there against the flame could be seen a human figure
in frantic flight; and on a bluff just outside the village I saw in
the strong light a woman standing wringing her hands. These were the
innocent victims of war, the victims not of the Germans, but of him in
whose ears the poor serfs would three months ago have shouted “Vive
l’Empereur.”
Presently we heard again the crashing through the vine-brake, and our
outpost sentry challenge. The watchword was returned in the hearty
voice of von Hosius, and in five minutes more the little party was
inside the entrenchment of the _repli_. Von Hosius, of rather a portly
figure, was panting with the exertion of climbing the vine-hill, but he
found breath enough to greet me with “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long.” The affair
had been singularly successful. The duty had been executed without the
necessity of exchanging a single shot. The village, which burnt till
five next morning, had been so effectually fired that all the stores
which it might have contained must have been burnt; and so coolly had
the enterprise been gone about, that a respectable old horse which was
found in one of the stables of the village was led back in triumph, as
a trophy. I suppose the French held their fire because they did not
know whither to direct it. To have shelled Nouilly would only have been
to play into the hands of the Prussians, and the destroying party might
have come from Servigny, Noisseville, or Montoy. I lay down among the
straw, and went to sleep with the echo of “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long” still
haunting my ears.
On the foreposts we came to look upon the fortresses environing the
town of Metz, much as the Naples people regard and talk of Mount
Vesuvius when that mountain is in an uneasy condition. During all the
3rd of October St. Julien had been quiet. St. Quentin had not emitted
a single puff of smoke, and les Bottes might have been a flower-garden
tended by pretty girls. The same calm reigned on the morning of the
4th up till eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and the martial population
of Noisseville were taking it as easy as discipline would permit. To
the left of the Brewery, an isolated house on the chaussée, a little
in rear of Lauvallière and parallel with Noisseville on the south,
a large body of troops were engaged in constructing large wooden
barracks just in rear of the entrenchment line. These were being built
for the accommodation of the troops holding the post of the Brewery,
which had been reduced to ruins by the many bombardments which it had
undergone. The French in les Bottes could see the progress of this
work and the number of the men engaged in it; and the idea seemed to
strike them that it might not be out of place to attempt to interrupt
the building operations. Anyhow, they commenced rather a fierce shell
fire on the unfinished barracks, and also on the unfortunate Brewery,
under the shelter of which the working party was withdrawn when the
first grenade came hurtling over the trees. The Brewery must by this
time have been thoroughly well used to the visitation of shells, and
there was this consolation for it, that had it been exploded bodily
it could not have been ruined much more utterly than it already was.
All that it was good for was that the heap of stones which once had
composed a rather imposing structure afforded a kind of shelter for
troops drawn up in its rear. But even this office the Brewery was now
rendered incapable of performing. The shells sent its loose stones
flying in all directions, and it was thus that several men were
wounded. The contagion of firing was communicated by les Bottes to
the foreposts. These began blazing away at each other in a very level
fashion, the Germans replying to the French fire with the chassepots,
the use of which they had been practising sedulously for the last few
days. Everybody had got so much used to this intermittent outpost
fire that the only notice it met with was a whistle occasionally from
some soldier moving about our village when a bullet went singing past
him, or hit the wall a yard or two above his head. From firing at the
wooden barracks and the Brewery, les Bottes took it into its head to
throw a few shells into Servigny, the village to our right, and then
St. Julien chimed in with its great cannon balls. Noisseville occupied
an intermediate position between the Brewery and Servigny; but up till
about one o’clock it had unaccountably escaped the polite attentions
of the two French forts. About that hour, however, a great cannon-ball
came whistling across from St. Julien, crashed through the wall of
a house in which most of the officers were quartered, and tumbled in
among the stacked arms in an open space in the street, making a hole
in which a horse might have been buried. Nobody was hurt; but the
paymaster was nearly smothered with the débris which fell from the wall
through which the great ball passed. Les Bottes followed St. Julien’s
example in firing into Noisseville, the latter projecting 42lb. and
64lb. shells, the former confining himself to cannon-balls. It was a
great waste of powder and shot. Nobody was hurt, and all the effect
was that a village already for the most part burnt and in ruins was
destroyed a little more. The church was terribly wrecked by the cannon
of St. Julien. Already the exterior had been knocked out of shape,
but the inside retained much of its original integrity. A shell from
St. Julien crashed right through the altar, and brought the cross on
to the pavement in splinters. The fragment of a shell from les Bottes
shivered a beautiful marble monument, splitting it right up the centre,
and cutting in two the commemoration of the merits of a respectable
defunct villager. The Virgin Mary, as she stood in marble against the
wall, had a limb amputated, and was otherwise dismembered; and if the
pastor had been in the pulpit when another shell struck it he would
never have preached more. So hot became the cross-fire from the two
fortresses that it was judged advisable to withdraw the troops out of
the village a few hundred yards to the rear. The _Feldwachen_ were
of course left in their positions, as also were two companies in the
_repli_ by the church; but the rest fell back into an orchard behind
the village. It was great fun, in a sense, to be here and listen to
the French pelting the village, under the idea, no doubt, that it was
full of Prussian troops. We could hear the crashing of the rafters and
the smashing of the walls as the huge projectiles tore through them,
the shells exploding as they struck, and sending into the air a cloud
of fragments. All this time the musketry fire on the foreposts was
unceasing along a large portion of the line, and anyone dropping in
casually upon the scene would have imagined quite an important battle
was in progress. So little was this the case that the troops supporting
Noisseville and lying in Flanville and Retonfay were not put under
arms. The whole affair was an utterly useless ignition of powder, and
its only effect was to suspend for the day the construction of the
wooden barracks. When the firing had ceased we came back into the
village, and several found that the quarters which they had quitted
at one o’clock were no longer in existence at five. A few houses more
or less ground to powder in Noisseville was, however, quite a trifle
when the whole village might have been called a ruin. It surprised me
to observe with what extraordinary force some of the projectiles had
fallen. In a field beyond the church there was a hole in the earth
that might almost have served as the shaft of a mine. It marked the
spot where had fallen a shell from les Bottes. The pioneers dug it out
in the evening. They had to go to a depth of about six feet. The huge
ugly affair had not exploded, and two men extricated it gently, and
bore it in triumph, quite a little procession following, to lay it at
the feet of the colonel. The shell was reckoned to be 110-pounder. Just
fancy a missile of this magnitude striking a man full in the chest!
It would hurl him in little pieces in all directions. Or fancy it
exploding in the centre of a group, or in the heart of a column, and
scattering its great skin, an inch and a half thickness of metal, in a
shower of morsels, each about two inches square.
During the night, as I was told in the morning, les Bottes and St.
Julien renewed the firing on Noisseville. I confess to sleeping so
soundly, that I was in blessed ignorance of the circumstance, but when
I turned out in the morning I fell into a hole that was the crater of
an exploded shell, about two paces from the place where once there
had been a door. Several other shells fell in the immediate vicinity,
and the poor church got another blow or two. The 4th Regiment, on
the morning of the 5th October, was relieved by the 44th Regiment,
from Retonfay, with whom it exchanged quarters. Retonfay is a squalid
village, which was included in the second line of environment. Close to
it was a fine château, inhabited for the time by General Zglinitzky,
who commanded the brigade. It was the turn of the 4th for a spell on
rest, and the officers who, in the front line, were not at liberty to
quit their commands for an hour, were now comparatively at large for
the time. As soon as we reached Retonfay, and had taken up quarters,
one of them was kind enough to accompany me in a ride as far as the
Moselle, on the north side of Metz. We everywhere traversed the extreme
edges of the foreposts, and the ride was a very interesting one. From
Retonfay we struck the first line at the unfortunate Servigny—that once
pretty village, at which St. Julien seemed to have so especial a spite.
There was not much of Servigny to speak of—a few gable ends of walls,
and here and there the walls of a house without a roof. A battalion
of the 45th contrived somehow to find quarters among the ruins, and a
few villagers still wandered about in a ghostly fashion. From Servigny
we passed over a considerable ridge, to the charming village of Poix,
lying snugly at the opening of a valley which tends downward toward
the Moselle. This village is surrounded in all directions by beautiful
villas, the summer residences of the wealthier inhabitants of Metz. An
isolated suburb near the top of the ridge had suffered severely from
the fire of St. Julien—indeed, occasional shells were bursting in it
as we passed, but the village itself had not been much injured, and
the German troops dad respected its amenities in a very surprising
manner. A Division General dwelt amid roses and honeysuckles, in one of
the principal chateaux, built in rustic Elizabethan, and beautifully
furnished—the Feldpost inhabited the gardener’s rustic lodge in the
grounds. Vremy lies a little to the rear in the bottom of the valley,
which here assumes the character of a gorge, and the road compels a
detour into it, which was repaid us by the observation of the admirable
manner in which its houses and churchyard walls had been converted into
defensive works, thoroughly blocking up the gorge. Leaving Vremy, and
the hospitable officers who dwelt therein, we rode down the valley to
Failly, a considerable village, in which, until a few days previous,
had been the head-quarters of General Kummer, commanding the Landwehr,
now gone across the Moselle. From Failly there is a direct road to the
Moselle at Malroy, but, by a slight detour, the opportunity offered
itself of getting very close to the Bois de Grimont, which was full of
French troops, and of inspecting, at a comparatively short distance,
the fortress of St. Julien. An officer in Failly told us laughingly,
that there were two very beautiful young women in Villiers l’Orme,
the village which is so near to the Bois de Grimont, and I am not
certain that this information did not operate with my companion as an
additional argument for visiting the place. L’Orme is a very prettily
situated little village, just on the edge of the tableland on which
stand Grimont and St. Julien. We saw nothing of the beautiful maidens,
but the place was full of inhabitants, and the children were playing
merrily about, quite regardless, to all appearance, of the fact that
the place is within three hundred yards of the French outposts. L’Orme
was unoccupied by the Germans during the day. At night a small party,
under the command of an under officer, was wont to go forward, and
take up a position behind it. Occasionally, stragglers from the French
outposts visited it, we were told, in search of food. From the shelter
of one of its houses, we could see quite easily with the naked eye, the
French outposts—the men cooking or lying down, and the sentries walking
to and fro. Behind was the forest, and then the Monastery of Grimont,
while over the whole of the quiet little scene, St. Julien frowned
grimly, casting forward his dark shadow in the afternoon sunlight.
L’Orme had wonderfully escaped the ravages of war. Both parties seemed
to have agreed to respect it, probably on account of the number of
villagers who still continued to reside in it. I was told that not a
single shell had been fired into the village. But while we were there,
the shells were flying over our heads towards Vany and Charly, and it
seemed strange to see the children playing in the street, the girls
driving home the cows, and the old women placidly spinning in front of
their doors, when the missiles were whistling through the air above
their heads.
The French might have respected l’Orme, but they assuredly had no such
tenderness for anybody happening to traverse the space which intervenes
between l’Orme and Chieulles. The track led athwart an open field, with
a hedge in the rear, and the French posts lined the wood continuously,
at a distance of about five hundred yards. The distance is about half
a mile, and, unless we chose to make a very considerable detour, there
was no alternative but to run the gauntlet. My military friend went
first, at a brisk hand canter. He had hardly shown his horse’s head
beyond the cover of the houses of l’Orme, when the Frenchmen commenced
saluting him with chassepot bullets. I followed at a short interval,
and as the bullets became thicker and faster, our canter became a
gallop. The horses were fresh, and also desperately timid; ever as a
bullet whistled past them, and cut the twigs in the hedge, they gave a
bound and a shy that necessitated very close adhesion to the pigskin.
I was by no means sorry when we got into Chieulles, a village a little
farther retired from the point-blank range of fire, and which had also,
by mutual consent, been held as a neutral territory. There were in it
plenty of inhabitants, who seemed to have got quite familiarised to
their strange position, and carried on their ordinary avocations as
if the war were miles away. The village is rather a large one, and
contains several considerable buildings. From it our road lay to the
left rear, to a _Feldwache_ outside the village of Vany, and then into
the village itself. The French outposts gave us one parting salute
as we sallied out of Chieulles, and this evoked a response from the
_Feldwache_ for which we were making. We left the hostile outposts
firing away at each other very briskly, and rode forward, accompanied
by a cavalry officer, into Charly, a beautiful village, containing
many châteaux, and standing embowered amidst orchards. Here one of
the points of the battle of the 31st August was contested with great
desperation. All around the village the graves lay thick, now German,
now French. The bayonet had been at work that day in the environs of
Charly, and in one of its alleys took place a fierce and long-continued
hand-to-hand contest. It was very pretty to see how tastefully the
German troops had decorated the graves of their dead comrades. They had
made them up with turf, and planted flowers and shrubs on the ridge,
while at the head of each stood a wooden cross, on which was painted
the name and rank of him who lay below. The French graves were not thus
tended, but neither were they neglected. Brave soldiers never draw
distinctions between the last resting-places of foes and friends. The
graves of the French had been surrounded by hedges of shrubs, and the
cross had been set up at the head of each.
From Charly we rode on to Malroy, a considerable village lying on the
Moselle, about two miles north of Fort St. Julien. It was necessary,
however, to ride up the stream some distance to find the first
pontoon bridge crossing it at Argancey. Some distance higher up, at
Hautconcourt, there was another pontoon bridge, and close to it, at
Ennery, a very large depôt of provisions and stores for the supply of
the northern portion of the besieging army. Immediately on crossing
the Moselle, we came among the Landwehr men. “These men need not fear
comparison with the finest regiments of the regular army,” that was
my first remark to my companion. So far as I could discern, the only
distinction lay in the fact that the Landwehr had more hair on their
faces, as a general rule, than the line troops. About eight-and-twenty
to two-and-thirty seemed the general age of the Landwehr men; and as
regards a martial carriage they would not suffer alongside the Guards.
Riding leisurely back by a more circuitous route than that we had
pursued in going, we were near Failly when the sun disappeared in a
glorious setting behind the yellow crest of St. Quentin. Hardly had it
disappeared when a flash came from out of the shadow over against St.
Agathe. The roar of a heavy gun came booming across the valley, and
the sound had not died away before there was another flash and another
roar. In five minutes the whole slope for a distance of nearly a mile
and a half was lit up by continual flashes of artillery fire. Then the
batteries of St. Eloy took up the reply, with a slower but steady fire
of its heavy guns, their roar coming to us deadened by the thick fog
which was rising from the Moselle. The sight in the growing darkness
was indescribably grand. We sat on horseback on the summit of the ridge
at Poix, watching and listening, till St. Julien thought fit to chime
in on his own account, and his big shells gave us notice to quit the
ridge by the suburb of Poix on which we were standing. About eight
o’clock we returned to Retonfay, on the plateau before which we found
the brigade-general, and nearly all the officers of the battalions
lying there, standing watching and listening to the gun-fire. Soon
after eight it began to slacken, and presently died away altogether;
all through the night both St. Julien and les Bottes kept the German
lines on the alert by an occasional reminder, consisting of a 64-lb.
shell.
The 6th was a quiet day on the east side, although the din came to us
of a continuous bombardment from the other side of the Moselle to the
north side. By special request of the troops stationed in Retonfay,
there was divine service in the morning in a meadow in the village. The
division chaplain officiated, and the brigadier-general was present
with his staff. It was a fine sight to see the six battalions,
numbering as many thousand men, drawn up in a hollow square, with the
clergyman and the regimental band in the centre. The service commenced
with a hymn, in which all the troops joined with fervour. Then the
minister preached a kind of informal sermon. He selected no Scripture
text, his text was the duty of a Christian soldier in war time. His
words evidently came from the heart, and as evidently went to the
heart. When he spoke of the friends at home longing for tidings from
the front and yet half afraid to hear them lest they should learn that
the loved one had fallen in battle, many were the heads bent down on
the manly chests, and many a gallant soldier held his hand before his
eyes to hide the starting tear. It was remarkable what an effect the
chaplain’s words had in stimulating correspondence when the service
was over. Round each Feldwebel there was quite a little crowd eager
to obtain the “Correspondence Karte” on which the troops mostly wrote
their brief epistles, and the post corporal had enough to do to carry
the great bag with which he went over to the Feldpost in Flanville. A
little after the service I was sitting with the paymaster and another
officer, when a knock came to the door, and there entered a great
hulking fellow from Dantzic, who sheepishly asked the paymaster to
accommodate him with paper money for his bullion. How much do you think
he had? Why, counting pfennigs and a queer collection of kreutzers,
he could make up just one thaler, and this huge remittance the great
honest manly fellow wished to send to the Frau away on the shore of the
Baltic. It was only three shillings, but it was the last stiver the man
had, and he would go without his glass of beer till next pay day came
round. Fancy an English soldier coming to his officer with a handful of
half-pence for conversion into paper money! But a German regiment is
one great brotherhood, and the paymaster pocketed the coppers and gave
the man the paper thaler with a kindly word and look, for has he not a
Frau of his own in Königsberg, whose portrait lies against that broad
chest of his?
In the evening there was a camp fire, an institution not unknown at
Wimbledon in the early days of the Volunteer movement, when as yet
the encampment was but small, and when Lord Elcho’s sonorous voice
could be heard over the whole gathering. During peace time, there
is a camp fire—or a gathering equivalent to it—once a week in every
Prussian regiment, to which the married officers bring their good
ladies, and whither also the “beauty and fashion” of the garrison
town are invited. “Beauty and fashion” were represented in Retonfay
by a few French crones of fabulous age, who confined their remarks to
muttering “Mon Dieu” continuously, and who, I suspect, would gladly
have poisoned the whole regiment if they could have done so without
risk to themselves. But nevertheless we had our camp fire, and that,
too, under quite imposing circumstances. The spot selected was a
pretty meadow by the side of a stream, about two hundred yards from
the village. An officer of taste, and with a capital eye for landscape
gardening, had devoted himself from a very early hour in the morning
to perfecting the arrangements. With a fatigue party, he had thrown a
pretty rustic bridge across the stream, and lined the path leading to
it with green boughs. With these, too, he had enclosed a large circle,
with a smaller area close by for the band, and in the centre of the
larger circle a great bonfire had been built, its foundation raised
by the earth excavated from a trench dug around it. All the chairs
in the village were collected, and most of the tables, and placed in
picturesque confusion around this central point. The officers began to
gather about five o’clock. They were all so smart that I felt ashamed
of my old tweed shooting jacket and dilapidated wideawake. The parade
coats had been dug out of the bottom of portmanteaus, and looked
quite spruce and natty. Boots had been polished to a pitch that might
have stimulated the admiration of Day and Martin. Spurs and buttons
glittered brightly in the setting sun. Then our worthy colonel—Oberst
von Dietzen-Hennig—made his appearance, accompanied by his staunch ally
the major. The colonel, too, was evidently on ceremony, for he wore the
sword which King Wilhelm had presented to him with his own hands the
evening of one of the battles of the 1866 campaign. All rose to greet
the commanding officer, and immediately that he was seated, the band
struck up. So thoroughly was the affair managed, that an elaborately
written programme of the music was laid on the colonel’s table, of
which I took a copy. It may interest English readers to know what music
a Prussian regimental band played, while the bass accompaniment was
furnished by the roar of the guns over against us on the other side of
the Moselle. Here is a copy of the programme:
Fest Overture Fischer.
An der schönen blauen Donau Walzer Strauss.
La Belle Amazone Loischhorn.
March Potpourri Bach.
Künstler Fest Quadrille Hermann.
Fanfare Militaire Ascher.
It was a very pretty sight. About forty officers were present,
grouped picturesquely around the tables. Military servants circulated
everywhere, serving the company with glasses of beer. The outside
of the bough-enclosed circle was lined with the men of the various
battalions, who crowded to the spot, under the attraction of the music.
More hearty good fellowship could not be imagined. The colonel and
the youngster who won his silver shoulder straps but the day before
were on the most equal footing. In an interval of the music a young
officer came into the circle who had just returned from the hospital
at Düsseldorf, whither a bullet through the foot in the battle of the
31st August had sent him. Then he had been only a Feldwebel, but he
had got his lieutenancy when lying on his back, and this was his first
appearance among his comrades since his promotion. As he came forward
the colonel rose and called for a bumper to the health of his gallant
young friend. The young fellow bowed and blushed as all obeyed the
chief’s order, following the draught with a cheer that must have been
heard at St. Julien. Then the colonel was good enough to disarrange the
programme for the introduction of “Rule Britannia” as a special token
of consideration to the Englander present. By this time the darkness
had begun to fall, and the bonfire was formally set fire to, the circle
breaking up from the tables, and re-forming around its cheerful blaze.
The band exhausted the programme, and took to playing song tunes, the
officers chiming in lustily with their voices, and the men on the
outskirts taking up the chorus. The scene was one in which a painter
would have delighted—the bright wood-fire lighting up the faces of
the circle around it, and ever and anon, as it shot up more brightly,
dissipating the thick darkness beyond, and flashing on the faces of
the men through the boughs. But no painter could give effect to what
was to me the most weird phase of the affair—the measured thud of the
cannonading sounding between every pause in the music or lull in the
din of the conversation; and it was strange, too, to reflect that,
as we sat here cheerily, we were still within the range of the great
guns of St. Julien. I could not help thinking of the effect which a
forty-two pound shell would have had had it fallen and exploded right
in the heart of the bonfire. The good fellows of the 4th, however,
troubled themselves with no such speculations. It was sufficient for
them that St. Julien was quiet, and that the fire was cheery, the
company good, and the beer reasonably plentiful, and palatable. In
the course of the evening one of the captains gave a toast, which was
received with intense enthusiasm—the health of the gallant comrades
who had won the decoration of the Iron Cross. It was on the breast
of at least half those who sat round the fire. When the cheering had
subsided the band struck up the “Paris” march, a _souvenir_ of 1813,
in remembrance of which campaign the Iron Cross was first instituted.
About half-past eight the colonel gave the toast of “Our Comrades of
the Artillery,” in honour of some gentlemen of that service who were
present, and then, after the band had played “God Save the King,” said
good night, and went away to his supper. I followed him in a very short
time, but when I came outside to smoke my cigar in the moonlight,
before turning in among the straw, I could still hear the merry chorus
down in the meadow by the camp-fire. It was then about eleven o’clock,
and how long after the last of the roisterers may have kept it up I
have not the slightest idea.
The foggy morning of the 7th October ushered in what turned out to be
the most important and determined sortie made by Bazaine since the
failure of the 31st of August. I know not whether the French gave to
the affair a name; the Germans recognized it as the “Schlacht bei
Maizières.” Battles there were in plenty in this bloody campaign
that showed a larger total of killed and wounded; but the “Schlacht
bei Maizières” made widows and orphans in the Fatherland far beyond
proportion; for the men who bore the brunt of it were husbands and
fathers,—the stout Landwehrmen of the Division Kummer. I had quitted
Retonfay early in the grey morning with the intention of making the
complete circuit of the environment of Metz before my return. The
morning was extremely misty. As I reached the eminence at Poix I could
barely see Mount St. Quentin above the fog in the valley, the sun’s
rays striking upon its warm grey peak. It seemed as if a general
armistice had been declared; even the forepost fire had dropped.
Crossing the Moselle at Argancey, I made first for the Château of
Amelange, and afterwards in a direction due Metz-ward, until I reached
the furthest _Feldwache_ at Maxe. Then I struck across the valley,
inclining rather to the rear, first to Grandes and then to Petites
Tapes, in both of which there lay only an under-officer’s guard of
nine men; and avoiding Ladonchamps, by advice, I reached St. Rémy,
where I found on duty the 59th Landwehr Regiment. Thence my journey
lay still athwart the remotest foreposts to Norroy and Plesnois, the
latter village being in the heart of the Bois de Saulny, and my road
then lay straight southward on St. Hubert, on the south-west of Mount
St. Quentin. I detail the different stages of this ride as it was right
across the theatre of the afternoon’s fight, and because the quietude
everywhere in the morning formed so strong a contrast to the sudden
hurly-burly of the afternoon.
Near Plesnois my horse cast a shoe, and as the road was rugged I was
rather in a fix, when there rode past a staff officer attached to
the head-quarters of Baron Schüler von Senden, commanding the 2nd
Division of the Landwehr. This gentleman was quartered in Maizières,
and he most courteously invited me to return with him thither and be
his guest for the night. On the return journey this gentleman gave me
some information which contributed materially to an understanding of
the events which followed. In the bombardment of the two previous days
the position occupied by the batteries of German heavy guns had been
at Frenecourt, near the commencement of the rise of the hills some
distance to the south-west of Maizières. To speak more precisely, they
were stationed on the low heights of Le Horiment, on the rising ground
behind which there stood an observatory commanding the whole plain.
But the Germans had batteries considerably to the front of Frenecourt.
Six field batteries stood mid-way between it and Sennecourt, and on
the 6th they had pushed forward a second battery as far as Sennecourt
itself. From these several positions the bombardment of St. Eloy had
been going forward intermittingly, and also a shell-fire into the
village of Ladonchamps, some little distance nearer Metz than St. Rémy,
on the line of railway. Till lately this village had been reckoned
neutral territory, but on the 2nd October the French had seized it, and
established a battery in front of it. The village itself had been burnt
the same night by German shells, but still the French had retained
the position, and the German fire in the intervening days had been
partly directed to the dislodgment of the enemy from a position which
was important, as the occupants of it could enfilade the whole front
across the valley. On the 6th nearly a thousand shells had been thrown
into Ladonchamps and the neighbourhood, and late in the evening the
French had evacuated the shattered fragments of a once smiling village.
The Germans had at once thrown forward troops in its direction,
establishing their _replis_ in its rear, and sending forward sergeants’
parties to occupy it and Grandes and Petites Tapes villages, to which
its possession was the key. St. Rémy constituted the chief support,
and here lay the 59th Regiment of the Landwehr. Maxe, close to the
river, and considerably in advance, was occupied, as I already knew,
by outposts detailed by the 10th Army Corps, from the other side of
the Moselle. The two divisions of the Landwehr stretched right athwart
the valley from the bridge at Argancey, where they touched the 10th
Army Corps, to near Marange, where they met the 3rd Corps, and to the
Landwehrmen was thus confided the duty of keeping the flat alluvial
tract on the western bank of the Moselle. This was the substance of the
information which my friend of the staff communicated to me on our ride
to Maizières. Here I found the head-quarters of General von Kummer.
About one o’clock I was sitting at lunch with two staff officers in
an arbour in his garden, when the guns of the German batteries by
Sennecourt began to give tongue. “Only a few Frenchmen loafing round
Ladonchamps,” observed one of the officers. “There will be nothing
serious to-day; there is too much mist in the valley.” Certainly it
seemed as if he must be right. When I had been on the heights at
Sennecourt I could not see the villages in the valley below, nor the
Cathedral of Metz. Fort St. Quentin, our constant landmark, had been
utterly invisible. But the roar of the guns grew louder and louder,
and then came first one great boom, and then another, from the big guns
lying behind at Frenecourt. The officers fidgeted, but still would not
own that anything was the matter. But their _nonchalance_ gave way when
an aide-de-camp came up at the gallop, spreading the alarm everywhere
as he went, and dashing on to the general’s quarters for instructions
to guide the front. In five minutes more we were all in the saddle,
and, after a short gallop, were looking out on the scene of action
from the fringe of the wood in front of the Châteaux of Brieux and
Amelange. That the reader may understand the tactics of Bazaine and
the manner in which they were foiled, it will be necessary to give a
brief description of the ground. From Metz to Maizières there is a long
trough, with a flat bottom—the alluvial margin of the Moselle. This
tract is about four English miles wide. On the west it is bounded by
the heights I have already named, and nearer Metz by those of Norroy
and Saulny. On the east it is bounded by a lower series of bluffs,
on which stand the villages of Olgy and Malroy; but between them and
the flat bottom runs the Moselle, infringing considerably on the flat
expanse just opposite Olgy. Across this bottom, at the narrowest part
thus formed, lies a series of villages—the two Tapes and St. Rémy, with
Maxe and Ladonchamps respectively slightly to the east and west front.
More or less, there were German troops in all those. The dispositions
detailed to me by the staff officer had been substantially maintained.
Bazaine had laid his scheme with great art. Covered by the dense fog,
he had made his dispositions with such adroitness that when it lifted,
a little past one, his arrangements were already all but complete. In
the first instance, he directed a strong assault on Ladonchamps. The
Landwehr outpost held the place as if they were 10,000 instead of 100
men, and the French sent their infantry swarming into it, while their
artillery played upon it. “Only an attempt to re-occupy Ladonchamps,”
quoth my friend of the staff, as he lit a fresh cigar; “the guns will
teach them the folly of that, and we can go back to our arbour.” It
seemed, truly, if any argument could be convincing, that the German
artillery must be so. The white spurts of smoke were visible all round
the valley. On the right front the batteries at Sennecourt were hard at
work, and also others nearer us on the flat, while the great guns at
Frenecourt were sending shells at a long range right over Ladonchamps
in among the advancing French. Then, on our left, before Amelange,
two other batteries were maintaining a semi-cross fire; and from the
bluffs, on the other side of the Moselle, between Olgy and Malroy,
the Prussian field artillery were also roaring. But my friend of the
staff was not, for an hour or two at all events, to see the arbour.
The attack on Ladonchamps was a diversion. Suddenly the villages of
Grandes and Petites Tapes, of St. Rémy and Maxe were overwhelmed by
a cataract of Frenchmen. The battalion of the 59th Landwehr which
held St. Rémy would not fall back, as it should have done in common
prudence, but stood up there in the street till the French having
played upon it with their artillery, and rained on it chassepot and
mitrailleuse bullets, finally pushed backwards the shattered remnant
on to the chaussée by dint of sheer numbers. The Fusilier battalion of
the 58th occupied Grandes Tapes, and it occupied Grandes Tapes when
the fight was done, but the occupation consisted of the dead and the
wounded. The battalion would not give ground, and may be said to have
been annihilated as it stood, the men with their backs to the wall and
their faces to the foe. It afterwards transpired that 300 men of this
battalion were made prisoners, after a desperate resistance, and sent
into Metz. The other battalions of the same regiment suffered terribly.
So far, then, Bazaine had succeeded. He had re-occupied the chain of
villages athwart the valley, and had got a few batteries of artillery
out to their front to reply to the German fire. But the status quo he
neither wished to, nor could retain. The German artillery, throwing
its projectiles from three sides of the parallelogram, interfered with
the realization of the latter conception. As regarded the former, it
seemed clear that Bazaine would not have done what he had if he did
not contemplate something more. That something, I have not the remotest
doubt, was a sortie to establish connections with Thionville. His
tactics were well conceived. From St. Rémy and the two Tapes he kept
the German fire engrossed, both musketry and artillery. He sent forward
from Grandes Tapes great swarms of tirailleurs, who fared extremely
ill at the hands of Landwehr men. But, besides this, he massed in the
rear what was, beyond all question, a very large force. There must have
been nearly 20,000 in all on the bank of the Moselle, and under cover
of the houses of Maxe. The head of this force he hurled forward to cut
through the German cincture where it was weakest, close to the river.
The moment was a critical one. Those regiments of the Landwehr which
had not already been sent forward against the villages were too far
to the westward to be in time to meet this attack as it ought to be
met—directly face to face. But the 10th Army Corps had been crossing
the pontoon bridge, and massing between the river and Amelange. Their
general, Voight Rhetz, was in nominal command of the days operations,
and he gave the order for several regiments to advance. It was a sight
never to be forgotten. First came the Fusiliers, extending at a rapid
run into skirmishing order, and covering the whole plain with their
long thin lines. Then the dense columns of companies of the Grenadiers,
the bands playing and the colours unfurled—unwonted sight. But all the
work was not left wholly for the infantry to do. The artillery, for the
moment, left the villages alone, and concentrated their fire on the
advancing columns of the French by the Moselle. There was but little
response from the French field artillery, but the sullen sides of St.
Julien flashed out smoke and fire, and from the earthworks of St.
Eloy came missiles at the shorter ranges. The mitrailleuse venomously
sounded its angry whirr, making the skirmishers recoil nervously as
they crossed the line of its fire, and tearing chasms in the fronts
of the solid masses of which they were the forerunners. The artillery
and the skirmishers were enough for the French. The dense columns
staggered and then broke. Through my glass I could see a continuous
_sauve qui peut_ into the village of Maxe. But when they had once got
stone and lime between them and the Germans, the French were obstinate
and would go no further. In vain the German artillery pounded into the
villages, advancing closer and closer in alternate order of batteries
with a precision and rapidity that could not have been exceeded on
Woolwich-common. That obstinate battery in front of Grandes Tapes
would not cease, and the French tirailleurs still lined the chaussée
in its front. By this time it was nearly four o’clock, and there was a
lull on our side that seemed ominous. As we stood in this suspense a
staff officer galloped along the front line with orders for a general
advance to take the villages by storm. The attack he hurriedly told me
was to consist of the four brigades of the Landwehr, with a division of
the 10th Army Corps on the left and supporting. In a few minutes more
the command came sounding along the line, and the men sprang from their
cover and went forward with that steady quick step so characteristic of
the German marching. The shells from the battery in front of Grandes
Tapes tore through the line, the mitrailleuse and chassepot bullets
poured against it their leaden hail, but still the Landwehr, silent and
stern, went steadily to the front. The oldest veteran in the field was
never in a more furious fire than that to which the centre of this line
was exposed. General von Brandenstein, commanding the third brigade
of the Landwehr, was shot down close to me, and several of his staff
were wounded. At length the entrenchments were reached, behind which
were lying the shattered remnants of the 59th and 58th Landwehr. The
fraternisation consisted in the cry of “Hurrah Preussen!” and then
“Vorwärts—immer vorwärts!” and the line threw itself to its front at a
run. The gunners from the battery, brave men and stubborn, had barely
time to run round the corner before the Landwehrmen were upon them. The
guns they left perforce. In the villages the French made a last stand,
but it had been better for them that they had run away at first. The
Landwehrmen, with less of the conventional warrior in them than the
Line, were not so much inclined to give quarter as are the professional
soldiers. With many a Frenchman this afternoon the shrift consisted of
a bayonet thrust. They fought like devils in the narrow ways of the
villages, and used the mitrailleuses with rare judgment and effect. But
then there came the steady inexorable stride forward of the Landwehr
men, the bayonet lent force with that huge thigh and back power which
is the leading characteristic in an athletic sense of the German
physique, and the villages were cleared of all save victors, dead, and
wounded.
To the Landwehr must be conceded the honour of the fray. They it was
who checked the rush of the French advance by holding the villages
till they had not a man that could stand upright and fire the needle
gun. To them also was entrusted the grand final advance which swept
the French out of the villages. I had seen the German Line soldiers
fight before this day. I had learned to believe that they could do
aught any soldiers in the world could do. But it was not till now that
I gauged the calibre of the Landwehr, how that in all things they were
the equals of their brethren of the Line. Cool in the intrenchments,
when they lay calmly in position, picking up the bullets that fell
among them—resolute, indomitable, in their steady quick march forward,
and then irresistible in the final rush with which they carried
the villages—they were troops to delight the heart of a man with a
soldierly instinct. Nothing was more observable than the cool manner
in which the wounded went to the rear in the general advance—every man
depending on himself if he could walk at all, declining the services
of assistants to help him out of the fray. Nor were they slight wounds
with which these gallant fellows struggled unaided to the rear. One,
for instance, to whom I spoke, was shot right through the lungs, and at
every step his breath came panting through the bullet-hole. It might be
that he struggled on till he reached the straw in the court-yard of the
Château of Amelange, where the doctors were toiling up to their elbows
in blood; but I fear his was one of the many bodies that checkered the
green fields behind the advance. Gallant fellows as they were, it went
to one’s heart to see the Landwehr fight and die. Not like a linesman
could they take their life in their hand and go down into the fray
conscious that nobody would hunger because they fell. For every second
Landwehrman that fell at Maizières there was a widow in the Fatherland,
and, with children of my own around my hearth, my heart swelled to
think of the number of unconscious orphans made that sunshiny autumn
afternoon in the pleasant villages and the quiet plains of Deutchland.
Pray God that, fight who may, there may be no more deadly battles in
which the Landwehr shall have to take part. Not that, as it seemed to
me, they dwelt upon the thought of Frau and Kinder. The hairy Kerl,
with the grey in his beard, and who knew how many young birds were in
his nest, went straight to the front as boldly as the sprightly young
volunteer who had only a girl to weep for him if he fell. But they
are a prayerful people those Germans, and I fancied, when the word
“Vorwärts” came sounding through the ranks, that many a man bent his
head for a moment into his hand, as if he were entering a church.
On my way to the rear, after the brunt of the fight was over, I looked
into the court-yard of the Château of Amelange, where the doctors
were hard at work. The men lay all around waiting for their turn,
and smoking like so many lime-kilns. Here already by five o’clock
there were quite two hundred wounded, and those in Amelange were
but a handful compared to the gross number that had been wounded.
The doctors, with shirt sleeves up and coat off, were toiling with
blood-smeared hands with cool but nimble dexterity. One of them seemed
something between a cannibal and a butcher as he looked up for a moment
from a case with a bloody knife-blade between his teeth.
In the evening, postal celerity being an object, I left Maizières to
ride to Courcelles. Immediately after crossing the pontoon bridge at
Argancey, a detour became necessary. The German artillery was still
firing in the moonlight from the heights above Olgy, and St. Julien
was sluggishly throwing projectiles on to the tableland, seemingly to
shut up their fire. All the ground in the rear of Charly and toward
Fany was pitted with shells that had fallen and burst during the day.
A brisk musketry fire was still going on in front of Chieulles and
l’Orme, so quiet when I had ridden through them in the morning. The
French, pouring down out of the Bois de Grimont, had made a feigned
attack in considerable force up this valley, and the old women and
children in Chieulles must have had their equanimity not a little
disturbed. All I could hear as I rode through the villages was, that
a good many had been killed and wounded; and I met a large ambulance
train coming forward into the fire from out the village of Vremy.
Poix had been shelled during the day, but all was now quiet there. A
little further on I came to the rear of Servigny and Noisseville, from
which I met my friends of the 4th returning singing triumphantly. The
French from Mey and the slope in front of St. Julien had sent three
battalions into Nouilly, and thence had attempted to storm the _repli_
in front of Noisseville, but had been repulsed with considerable loss,
the German artillery driving them out of Nouilly into the wood. I was
in time to accompany a tentative advance of the German artillery along
the chaussée right under the earthworks of Little Belle Croix, which
was chiefly remarkable from the circumstance that St. Julien made no
effort to arrest the operation. I afterwards learnt that there was
further fighting in the early part of the night in front of St. Rémy,
and that a battalion of the 81st had been forced to retake Ladonchamps
at the bayonet point, losing in the task five officers and over one
hundred men.
It is not difficult, I think, to form a tolerably correct opinion
as to the plan of Bazaine’s tactics of the 7th. I am aware that the
importance of this sortie has been belittled by testimony from the
interior of Metz, but I have a habit of believing in what I see, and
the evidence of eyesight was corroborated as well by prisoners taken
in the affair as by conversations with responsible and well-informed
men on the other side, after the capitulation of Metz. At the lowest
estimate Bazaine must have had 100,000 men, who, so far as the defence
of Metz was concerned, were superfluous, and, therefore, detrimental. A
hundred thousand men will sooner consume a given quantity of provisions
than will twenty thousand; and when the larger number reach starvation
point, the surrender of everything—field troops, garrison, fortress,
and town—must occur. But for their appreciation of this eventuality,
nothing would have pleased the Germans better than to have opened a
fair passage to Bazaine any hour in the twenty-four. He might have come
outside the cordon and welcome with 100,000 men, and in the course of
the following day, when he was holding a council of war, and debating,
_more Gallico_, whether to march on Sedan or strike southward and cut
the German communications, a hundred thousand Teutons and more would
have fallen upon him from all points of the compass and smitten him
hip and thigh. But if his field army had been chopped into fragments,
the fortress of Metz, with its garrison left inside, would still have
confronted the besiegers, and its reduction would have been postponed
in proportion to the procrastination of the starvation point effected
by the fewer mouths to feed. Of all this Bazaine, a capable man, whose
merits, within certain limits, the Germans acknowledged frankly, could
not have failed to be aware. He objected to capitulation simpliciter
in the fortress, or to the alternative of capitulation or annihilation
in the open field. But there lay the Moselle, beckoning him on to the
half-way house of Thionville, and beyond Thionville, at the distance
of a single forced march, lay the frontier. Oh! if he could only dash
out through that vexatious cordon. True, across the broad plain lay
the divisions of the Landwehr. A regular soldier himself, Bazaine had
probably learned to despise the Garde Mobile with all the contempt
of a veteran used to command veteran troops; and nothing was more
natural than for a Frenchman to reason from a false analogy that, as
the Garde Mobile, so were the Landwehr. The result gave him to digest
his misconception as best he might. But the conception of Bazaine’s
effort was creditable to his knowledge of the military art. While he
made his grand effort against the Landwehr in the valley, he did his
best to keep the other sections of the environing circle from finding
leisure to concentrate in support of them. The attack on Vany, L’Orme,
and Chieulles was well calculated to engross the 10th Army Corps; that
from Mey on Noisseville and Servigny might well perform the same office
with regard to the 1st Army Corps; the 7th Army Corps might be supposed
to have their hands pretty well full with the sortie against Peltre,
Mercy-le-Haut, and Ars-Laquenexy, and with luck this sortie, too, might
get through as far as the depôt at Courcelles, and bring back of its
abundance to the Gardes Nationaux, who were plying the big guns on the
ramparts, and to the hungry citizens. The well-conceived feint against
Ladonchamps was intended to keep the 3rd Army Corps in play, occupying
as it did the slopes between the valley and the fort of Plappeville.
And then—there was but the Landwehr to cope with, and surely 40,000
veteran French troops might crash through the lines of these citizen
soldiers, weakened as those lines were by elongation across the whole
plateau. Then, hey for Thionville! only ten miles off, where a secure
lair might be had under the guns of that fortress while the columns
caught their wind; and then, picking up by the way what superfluous
troops there might be in its garrison, who could say what next for an
army with no impedimenta? Had the design succeeded Metz would have been
a tougher nut for the Germans to crack than ever, for their policy of
starvation would have been seriously compromised.
The two grand blunders which defeated the scheme were the misconception
on Bazaine’s part of the strength, prowess, and effective dispositions
of the Landwehr, and the mistaken idea that his feints to the right and
left would so engross the 10th and 3rd Army Corps as to prevent them
from aiding the Landwehr to give him check on the plateau. His error
on the former point must have come to him when he saw his regulars
recoiling pell-mell from the Landwehrmen in the villages; the salvoes
of artillery sent by the 10th Army Corps from Malroy, Olgy, and other
heights on the east side of the Moselle, and by the 3rd Army Corps from
Frenecourt, Sennecourt, and the heights above St. Rémy, all coigns of
vantage on the bluffs on the western fringe of the valley, must have
made him comprehend that a feigned attack, even if inconsiderable, was
not capable of engrossing the full attention of a German Army Corps.
The batteries on the positions I have named enfiladed him ruinously.
Down the valley there tore a fierce direct fire from the batteries at
Amelange and those in front of Brieux, which advanced by alternate
batteries with as much coolness and precision as I have seen the troops
of a cavalry regiment working in the Phœnix Park; while from the
heights on either side came such a cross-fire that I was filled with
respect for the troops of Bazaine, when I realised the fact that they
waited for the infantry assault to dislodge them from their position.
Add to Bazaine’s disadvantages that he was miserably short of field
artillery, and the conclusion is obvious that he could not but have
failed under the circumstances, while the deduction was no less patent
that the frustration of any future attempt was equally inevitable.
On the morning of the 8th, the aspect of affairs was still threatening.
It seemed as if the turn had come round of the 1st Army Corps on the
east side of the environment. When the sun rose the French were seen
accumulated in dense masses between Fort St. Julien and the village of
Mey. Both St. Julien and les Bottes maintained a continuous if somewhat
discursive cannonade, making the stones fly all about the village of
Noisseville, whither I had hurried on the first alarm. From 7 A.M. till
early in the forenoon, there came the din of warm artillery fire from
the direction of Peltre and Mercy-le-Haut. At daylight the whole of our
first and second lines were drawn forward in support of the first line,
and the advance posts had fallen back. At nine a battery of German
field-artillery opened on the French infantry from the angle of the
church of Noisseville, and located in a cunning overbank emplacement,
was not to be dislodged by all that St. Julien and les Bottes could do
with that intent. About mid-day, however, a furious pelt of rain came
down and washed the heart out of the French, if there had been any in
them from the first. Gradually the forts, as the infantry retreated
into their rear, gave up firing, after having thrown in the course
of the morning over 100 shells into the fragments of the village of
Noisseville. The fire gradually died away to the south, and about 2
P.M. came the order for the reserves and the artillery to return to
quarters, and for the outposts to be reinstated in their old positions.
The rain which quenched the ardour of the French lasted with scarcely
any intermission for forty-eight hours, and made its impression on
the health of the besieging army. Bronchitis and diarrhœa were the
chief complaints engendered; typhus, which soon after became almost
an epidemic, now first gained serious head. One saw waggon load
after waggon load of sick men going down to Courcelles. Much might
have been done, that was not done, both by German organisation and
by those other organisations set on foot through the liberality of
nations sympathising with human suffering, to ease the hardships of
those poor fellows. It would not have been difficult to have organised
a cheap and serviceable ambulance service to have accommodated both
sick and wounded. Around Metz, in the third line, there are everywhere
practicable roads. District depôts might easily have been established,
one, say, at Ste. Barbe, another at Olgy, a third somewhere behind
Sennecourt, and a fourth at Gravelotte. To these depôts might have
been consigned the sick and wounded Germans from the several regiments
and brigades—the poor fellows whom I saw making long weary journeys to
Courcelles, in springless country carts or on foot. Between each of
these depôts there might have been a continuous service of vehicles
resembling elongated Irish jaunting cars. Such vehicles are the true
pattern of an ambulance. They would hold a man on either foot rest
slightly broadened, two more on the seats, and one above the well in
the centre. Four poles at each corner, with a tarpaulin, would make
an efficient protection from the weather. Thus, by easy stages, and
resting at intervals in the depôts, the sick and wounded might have
been brought down in ease and comfort to Courcelles, whence the trains
were ready to convey them to Germany. These hospital trains were the
most complete things of the kind I had ever seen. The carriages were
built on the American model, with entrance at either end. There were
two tiers of beds down each side, three in each tier, and the beds
had every appliance calculated to give comfort to the occupants. One
carriage was devoted to the purposes of a laboratory, another formed a
living and sleeping room for the volunteer attendants, and a third was
a kitchen. To a callousness for suffering, which must be characterised
as general, there were two exceptions which must be named. One was
the German depôt at Courcelles, of which Baron Von Kramm was the life
and soul, and which did an immensity of good without pretension. The
Baron himself was one of the most energetic men I have ever met,
and wrought day and night with the supremest contempt for the good
things of this life. The other exception was the branch of the English
ambulance, which had its head-quarters in Remilly, under the control
of Mr. Austin Lee, a young gentleman endowed with unquestionable
administrative talent and great energy; he was ably supported by his
assistant, Captain Norman, and within the sphere of my own observation
accomplished much really good work.
On the 11th, a French deserter from Metz was brought into Retonfay;
he belonged to the 59th of the Line, and to the Army Corps of which
Marshal Lebœuf had the command. His regiment, along with two others,
was lying, he reported, on the slope on which stands the village of
Vantoux, a little behind Mey. He told us that his desertion was a
matter of arrangement with a large body of the soldiery. Lots had
been drawn who should make the first attempt, and if the experiment
succeeded, the others were to desert likewise. He dodged along the
verge of the Bois de Grimont, and then came sneaking through the
vine-bergs till he reached the German _Feldwache_ behind Nouilly. Many
Frenchmen were observed apparently watching his career. The man was
an Alsatian, as, he said, were most of the men of his regiment, and he
spoke German well. He said the French soldiers lying around Metz were
tired of their lives. Nominally, the force to which he belonged lived
under canvas, but the stench in the tents was so strong, by reason of
cutaneous diseases among the men, that almost all slept in the open
air. This for several days before must have been tantamount to sleeping
in a water-butt. The skin disease was chiefly of a scorbutic character,
caused by the want of vegetables, the absence of salt, and the almost
exclusive living on horse-flesh. The poor fellow’s mouth and face were
in a very bad state from scurvy. He stated that numbers of his fellows
were similarly affected. The spirit of disaffection was, he reported,
almost universal; even the Guards were tainted with it. Since the
defeat of the 7th the troops had positively refused to make any more
sorties, and it was with difficulty that the officers could prevail on
the men to go upon outpost duty. Of bread, the deserter said, there
was considerable scarcity, and the quality was bad; the quantity of
rice served out was a tea-cup full per day between two men. This, with
the bread, was all the food besides horseflesh the men had. They had
eaten the horses of several cavalry regiments, and were now masticating
battery horses.
Confined to quarters for several days, by an accident which befel me
on the 10th October, I had leisure to note that inattention to sanitary
conditions, which was the weak point in the otherwise almost perfect
organisation of the German army. The French inhabitants around Metz
were outer barbarians in this respect. The hamlet of Tully Veolan, as
described in _Waverley_, was an elysium of cleanliness compared with
the little French villages which everywhere dot the territory around
the city, and in which were quartered the bulk of the besieging army.
Before every door a large and venerable dunghill reeked; in the back
cellars, and in the sties immediately behind the houses, dwelt colonies
of swine, whose lairs, apparently, had not been purified within the
memory of the oldest inhabitant. In dry, warm weather, these dunghills
and pigsties impregnated the air with the pungent fumes of ammonia; in
wet weather, their ooze percolated everywhere, and was indescribably
fœtid. Thus the Germans were the inheritors of nuisances not of their
own engendering. But they were by no means behindhand in the race of
nuisance manufacturing. The entrails of slaughtered cattle, instead
of being collected into one deep receptacle, and there buried deeply
after having been strewed with quicklime, were strewed at random around
the villages and in the gardens, with a little loose earth thrown
over them, through the interstices of which a piece of paunch was
often visible; and no disinfectants were used. Then the establishment
of, and the enforcement of resort to, latrines, placed in suitable
localities and assiduously disinfected, seemed to be almost wholly
neglected, and the consequences were, a state of filth in the immediate
vicinity of the houses, to allude to which further would compel the
use of plainer phraseology than the reader might stomach. It is quite
an erroneous belief that it is important only in warm weather to study
sanitary conditions. Cold, raw weather, with fog, opens the pores of
the human animal nearly as much as the most relaxing tropical climate,
and is far more depressing to the spirits. Open pores, and dulled
spirits, are the conditions exactly fitting a man for the reception
of malarious particles floating in the air; and a heavy fog, when
the ground sweats again, and the air is almost stagnant, is just the
atmosphere in which one can hardly move without coming in contact with
such particles.
Living as I did, with regimental, as contradistinguished from staff
officers, I enjoyed considerable opportunities for estimating the
thoroughness of the German system of military training and education.
A German general ought to be a good despatch-writer, considering the
training in this line which he must have undergone. He began to write
despatches as soon as he acquired a separate command, were it only of
half a company. The despatch system of the German army is perfect, and
the compilation of an accurate and detailed narrative of each campaign
ought to be very easy. Take an instance. From Retonfay, on the morning
of the 12th October were transmitted to divisional head-quarters,
the despatches from the 4th Regiment, recounting the doings of that
contingent in the action of Noisseville, on the 31st of August and
1st of September. The colonel sent in his summary of the manœuvres of
the three battalions under his command. The major of each battalion
likewise made his report of the proceedings of his own battalion,
and every captain or officer in command of a company, also sent
forward a succinct statement of his company’s doings. These reports
were accompanied by a chart on a large scale, showing the positions
of the regiment at various periods of the battle, and drawn in this
instance by a young lieutenant of our mess, the most accurate and rapid
military topographist I have ever known. To be a practical draughtsman
is imperative with every German officer. The puzzle with me was to
find out what accomplishment is not imperative. The prickles which
surround the rose of a commission are many and sharp, and, after all,
the rose (at least in a nursery-gardening sense) is no great thing.
Take the case, for instance, of my own especial comrade in the 4th,
which presented no exceptional features. He came to the regiment from
the gymnasium, in the capacity of avantageur. An avantageur is neither
more nor less than a private soldier who aspires to a commission.
On joining he had to pass an examination to demonstrate his general
scholarship. For twelve months he served in the ranks, rising meanwhile
to the non-commissioned rank of Vicefeldwebel, and then he went for
a year to the military school. On leaving this, he had to pass an
examination on everything relating to the art military, and then he
came back to the regiment as a Degen fähnrich, that is to say, as the
wearer of a sword without commissioned rank, for six months longer. The
officers of the regiment then voted him eligible for a commission, and
expressed their readiness, by the same vote, to accept him as a comrade
and a credit to the service; this step being an indispensable prelude
to a commission. Whereupon the King was graciously pleased to sign his
commission as second lieutenant, a rank which he had contentedly held
for six years, and may hold still, for aught I know to the contrary. He
wore the medals for 1866; he had commanded the company for the last two
months, because his seniors had been killed off; he was looking forward
with hope to be a premier lieutenant in the course of another year, and
a captain in perhaps ten more. His pay in war-time was about 11_l._
10_s._ a month, in peace he had not much more than about half as much.
And he was a thoroughly contented, even-minded, German gentleman, proud
of the service, proud that he bore a commission in it, very hungry for
the Iron Cross, fond of fun, and fonder still of work and fighting. I
have simply cited him as a typical example; his fellows were as like
him as peas. Who would not like to see a few peas of such a pod in the
British army?
Reluctantly obliged to quit the front, as the result of the accident
already alluded to, I spent the time from the 14th to the morning
of the 18th invalided in Saarbrück. Having partially recovered, and
reaching Remilly early in the forenoon of the 18th, I found ready
to start five fourgons belonging to the English Ambulance Company.
These were about to start for a journey round Metz, and I had the
opportunity afforded me of a seat in one of the carriages. Our journey
to Corny lay behind the foreposts through a chain of villages in the
rear of the great bulk of the Prussian regiments in the south of Metz.
As we passed Pontoy we emerged on the upland plateau lying to the
south of Forts Queleu and St. Privat, and before us to the north lay
those sulky-looking fortresses which refused to be enlivened even by
the rays of the afternoon sun which fell full on their sullen sides.
St. Privat was speaking with its great guns, firing in the direction
of the Moselle, but close to us lay a German field battery in utter
quiescence, sure token that nothing of importance was going on. At
dusk we reached Corny, and applied to the Etappen Commandant for
quarters. His answer was an imperative suggestion of the same character
as that which the Gardes Mobiles made to Mr. Malet on his way from
Paris to Meaux. We had no resource but to sleep under the beautiful
stars. They were fortunately in our case visible, and we bivouacked
not uncomfortably in an orchard outside the town, which was greatly
preferable to finding harbour in any of the houses of Corny, infected
as they were to the very ceiling with malignant typhus. A visit for
purposes of information to the fine old château occupied by Prince
Frederick Charles resulted in my being told that the parlementaire
which came out a day or two previous had returned into Metz without
any definite result, and that it was believed that Metz would now hold
out to the bitter end. Further, that there was to be no change in the
Prussian tactics. Still “masterly inactivity” was to be the policy,
and the intelligence received from Metz of a reliable character was of
a nature to indicate that this policy could not possibly, ere long,
fail to effect the desired results. Prince Frederick Charles had been
suffering seriously from dysentery, and was still far from fully
recovered, but he was able to sit his horse, and he had never devolved
his functions of commander-in-chief on any substitute.
Corny lies in a trough on the edge of the Moselle, shut out from even
a distant view of Metz by two curious conical hills, which are part of
the series of which the hill of Mousson and the range of St. Quentin
and Plappeville are also summits. The peak nearest the river and
also nearest Metz is known as the Mont St. Blaise. Its elevation is
considerable, and its position renders it highly eligible as a look-out
station. On its summit there was an observatory, and this observatory
I visited on the morning of the 19th, notwithstanding the black looks
of those in authority in Corny. The whole hilltop is honeycombed with
artificial caves, formed, I suppose, in the old days, when the ruin
on the summit was a castle inhabited by some magnate of Lorraine, who
from his eyrie here dominated the beautiful plain before him, and
the valley of the Moselle. Alongside of this ruin, and at an equal
elevation, stands a lonely farmhouse, and in front of it the Germans
had erected a wooden look-out post, open toward Metz, and mounted with
a very powerful telescope. Not a man could move within the scope of
vision that the action was not noted by the officer who constantly
sat with his eye at this instrument. A series of telegraph wires from
the several head-quarters of the different army corps converged into
a little office in the rear of this look-out post, and the intentions
of the French were thus known as soon as they proceeded to manifest
them by action. The post was occupied by two officers belonging to
the Second Army Corps—and they had at their disposal a detachment of
soldiers to act as orderlies, messengers, &c. What a glorious view
opened out before me as I stood on the little plateau in front of the
ruin of the Castle of St. Blaise, and looked Metz-ward! On the left
lay the narrow valley of the Moselle, with the slope of the vinebergs
in front of Gorze rising beyond. At our feet, to the left, lay
Ars-sur-Moselle, skirted by the railway, with the old Roman aqueduct
spanning the Moselle with its antique arches, and the new road-bridge
nearer Montigny, where is the junction of the railway lines from Nancy
and from Saarbrück. A locomotive was dodging about the junction as
I looked down upon it, and right before me stretched the rich and
beautiful plain, variegated with green and brown and yellow, according
to the tint of the crops and the foliage, and with the great twin tower
of the Cathedral of Metz standing up defiantly in its centre. The river
wound through the flat in three great stretches: one close under the
frowning bulk of Mont St. Quentin, that sulked blackly across at us
on the left front; the other twisting in a long half-loop far away to
the right. As it seemed immediately under us, Fort St. Privat peeped
spitefully out over the poplars surrounding the pretty village and
château of Cuvry, and further to my right the grim earthwork front of
Fort Queleu showed itself over the plain like a huge beaver-dam. The
prospect was vast. Carrying the eye over the spires of the cathedral,
I could see to the north of Metz the long link of the Moselle trending
eastward toward Olgy and Malroy, and with the powerful telescope in
position I could even discern St. Eloy and beyond it the blackened
ruins of St. Rémy, Ladonchamps, and Grandes and Petites Tapes, where
on the 7th I had seen the Landwehrmen die in their tracks rather than
yield the post they held, although bidden thereto by an overwhelming
number of enemies. It may be interesting to give the positions of the
hostile forces as seen from this summit, since the status quo then
visible was unaltered when the capitulation took place.
To begin at the now well-known Mercy-le-Haut. Opposite this point the
French were in force in front of Grigy, from which position they, on
the previous night, had burnt the remaining houses of Peltre. Working
westward, the French foreposts were in Bevoye, Magny, in front of
Montigny, and thence across the Moselle, at Moulins-les-Metz, which
had been burnt about a fortnight previously. From Moulins the forepost
line ran up toward St. Hubert, between St. Ruffine and Chazelles, hence
in front of Scy through the valley close under Mont St. Quentin to
Lessy, and thence northward with a slight sweep allowed by Plappeville
to Lorry, and thence to Vigneulles and Woippy. The completion of the
circle I have already detailed. The German foreposts, commencing
from the right, stood at Peltre, and thence westward in front of St.
Thiebauldt, and in la Papeterie (opposite Magny). Then there was a
sweep comparatively close to Metz, as the Moselle was neared, and the
Teuton foreposts stood impudently at Frescaty, whence the sentries must
have been able almost to discern the complexions of the gunners in St.
Privat. The line crossed the Moselle to Vaux, considerably in front of
Ars-sur-Moselle, and then made a dart forward to Jussy, right under the
guns of St. Quentin. Longeau, where there was a battery of 12-pounders,
continued the chain to Chatel St. Germain. Across the plateau and the
wood of Chatel ran the links of the strong forepost chain, giving a
wide berth to the big guns of Plappeville, behind Lorry, through the
Bois de Vigneulles to Saulny, from Saulny, still further north-east, to
Villers-le-Plesnois, and so by Norroy to the bloodstained Ladonchamps,
and the villages whose names are known in connection with the combat of
the 7th, to the Moselle at Maxe.
So much for the positions of the two hostile armies in this portion
of the investiture. A few words now as to the position of the French
inside their outposts yet outside the town of Metz, the gates of which
were sealed to Bazaine’s army as rigorously as was the road to liberty.
The French had in all, in the environed space and outside Metz, four
great lagers or camps. The first and probably the largest was on the
slope of Mont St. Quentin, looking toward Mont St. Blaise. I could
see the rows of tents athwart and athwart the slope, past the village
of Scy, and stretching almost down to Chazelles. Another great camp
almost joined the first at Longeville, a village on the west bank of
the Moselle, and this lager straggled up the river margin first to
Ban St. Martin, where Bazaine had his head-quarters, and so on to the
north as far as Devant-les-Ponts. A third camp was in front of St.
Julien, toward Vantoux, Vallieres, &c., concerning which detailed
information has already been given. The fourth camp was around Borny
and Grigy. Besides those camps of soldiers there seemed two great
collections of sick, so far as I could discern through the telescope of
the observatory. One of those was placed on the esplanade of the town
of Metz, and along the river brink. I saw the sick being carried about
on stretchers, and the curtains of the tents looped up to give air to
the inmates. Another great sick camp seemed to be on the Island of
Sauley, where it was believed the cases of typhus fever were as much as
possible isolated.
After quitting Corny on the 19th, our way lay across the river by
Noveant, the means of transit being a pontoon bridge. Just outside
Corny we came on a graveyard, which the Germans had improvised for
the bodies of those who had died in the hospitals there, whether from
sickness or wounds. They were burying the dead now in deal coffins, but
the coffins were put in the ground with very scant ceremony. I saw a
fatigue party putting a couple into a hole, the coffins lying on the
grass while the men dug their receptacle.
Gorze was very much changed for the better since the last time I had
visited it in the days of blood. From the summit of the great convent
on the hill there still was flying the hospital flag; but under it lay
few or no wounded men. The hotel was tenanted by the cheery officers of
the staff of Prince Louis of Hesse, who commanded the troops lying in
the town, consisting of several regiments of Hessian men, with the lion
instead of the eagle on their helmets. The inhabitants had all come
back to their houses, and lived not alone on amicable, but seemingly
on cordial terms with the stalwart Hessians billeted upon them. Madame
of the hotel, who in August had moved about in a stolid apathy of
despair, utterly disregarding any questions that might be put to her,
and with hardly energy enough to wring her hands, was now blithe and
sprightly, moving about briskly in response to the requirements of
her numerous guests. The stains that blood had made on the floors
were still visible—indelible probably while the boarding lasts, but
Madame’s despair was much more evanescent, and with her return to good
spirits the landlady’s instinct of charging stiff prices had returned.
In August, when I asked her whether I should pay her anything for the
quasi shelter I had had for the night under her roof, she only stared
blankly in my face, and I could not get an answer from her. Now, when I
asked her whether she could give me a bottle of good wine, she eagerly
replied in the affirmative, and placed before me a really good bottle
of Muscat, for which she put on, with a smiling face, the fancy price
of twelve francs.
The road from Gorze to Rezonville consists, first of an ascent through
a narrow gorge into a corner of the Bois de Vionville, and then it
traverses the plain in a line with the close of the battle of Vionville
on the 16th of August. On the bleak October forenoon all that we saw
in the way of traces of the fights of August were the many graves and
occasional heaps of the _débris_ of the battle-field. But another
sense than that of sight bore testimony to tokens of carnage. Every
grave-heap had beside it an eccentric tombstone in the shape of a
barrel of chloride of lime; yet, notwithstanding this disinfectant,
the taint in the air was unmistakable and indescribably fœtid. In the
village of Rezonville were still some of the more severely wounded,
and the doctors were heartily glad to see the stores which the English
ambulance fourgons contained. At Rezonville the troops were Hessians,
belonging to the 7th Army Corps. After a short halt, to enable Mr. Lee
to distribute his stores judiciously, we pressed on to Gravelotte,
where we were most cordially received by the officers of a battery of
artillery quartered there. Afterwards we were permitted to go on to
the foreposts in front of Chatel St. Germain, looking over to Fort
St. Julien. The chain of sentries stood just where it had done on
the morning of the 20th of August, looking down into the intervening
valley. The French had a large cavalry forepost in the bottom of the
valley. On the slope around the pretty village of Scy lay the white
tents of the French camp which I had seen on the previous day from
the top of Mont St. Blaise. Walking some half a mile in the direction
of the Moselle, we came presently on a promontory that juts out into
the valley, and commands a view of the whole country. It seemed that
at our very feet lay the huge pile of the Cathedral; the tin on its
spires flashing up in a watery ray of the morning sun, and the great
mass casting a dark shadow across the Place d’Armes. On the Isle of
Sauley we could see the “isolated” crawling about the river’s edge, and
between the ramparts and the great southern camp a locomotive was at
work on the railway.
As we walked back from the extreme foreposts we passed many rifle-pits
on the crest of the rising ground forming the sentry-line, and also a
regularly-constructed battery, with earthworks in front and casemates
and magazine in the rear. On the platform were mounted six 12-pounders,
and in the rear, near Chatel, were several batteries of field
artillery. The 12-pounders looked across at Fort St. Julien in the most
impudent manner imaginable, as if to say, “Your fortress exists only on
our sufferance; we could blow you to little pieces with a round or two
if we chose, but we prefer leaving you alone, out of our tender mercy.”
And St. Quentin, on its part, seemed to look across at the 12-pounders
with something of a risus sardonicus on its grim grey features.
Returning to Gravelotte, we set out for the completion of our design
to make the circuit of the Prussian position. Our road lay past the
blackened ruins of Malmaison, in which, on the afternoon of the 18th
of August, 200 French wounded were burnt, by shells fired from French
guns. The smell in the shell, which was all that remained of a once
large mansion, was horrible. The tiles had fallen in and hidden the
charred corpses of the miserables who perished in the conflagration;
but here and there projected a ghastly blackened hand, or a gartered
leg swathed in discoloured red cloth. The place was one vast horrible
grave, never to be thought of without a shudder. In a lonely upland
valley we came upon the forlorn and ruined hamlet of Champenoise,
utterly burnt out, smashed and pounded in all directions with shells,
pitted all over with the dents of chassepot bullets, and its precincts
full of mounds, below which lay, side by side, defenders and captors.
Further to the north, in the rear of Amanvilliers, was a twin battery
to the one at Gravelotte, very daintily constructed, and fenced round
with _chevaux de frise_, and I rather think some pleasant little
surprises in the shape of mines. From Amanvilliers the road trended
away to the left to avoid the entrenchments in the vicinity of the
foreposts at Saulny, and presently reached the village of Jerusalem.
Lying in a sequestered and somewhat isolated tract, few students of
war literature have heard much about this tiny namesake of the great
Hebrew city of antiquity. Nevertheless, it was the scene of a terrible
conflict on the evening of the 18th of August. It had its Titus in
General von Pape, but there was no Josephus to chronicle the episodes
of the fray. Yet as eloquently as any pen could have described them
were they indicated now by the silent yet expressive grave-tokens sown
thickly all round the little spot, whose ruin was so utter that it
might, to complete the parallel with its namesake of old, have been
sown with salt.
Quitting the plateau lying to the north-west of Fort Plappeville,
we drove through a great wood, chiefly of underbrush, and suddenly
came out on a bluff overhanging the valley of the Moselle. Our point
was just before Feves, and the view was glorious. Moy before us in
the valley, one could easily trace the line of the German foreposts
stretching across to the river; nearer to Metz again was the French
line, and behind it the white tents of the camps, with columns of
troops moving about in the interval. We could see the zig-zags of Fort
Moselle, and of the enceinte surrounding the town. At Feves, just below
us, and in a splendid position, was a battery of 12-pounders, the same
that I had seen speaking to such good purpose on the afternoon of the
7th. Getting down into the valley, we crossed the Thionville road, and
struck for the temporary wooden barracks erected on the railway to the
right front of Maizières, in which was quartered the Fusilier battalion
of the 81st Regiment, which had distinguished itself in Ladonchamps on
the night of the 7th. In front of the Baracken was another battery of
12-pounders, and on the other side of Maizières, before the Chateau of
Amelange, stood yet another. We crossed the river at Hautconcourt, and
came down to Charly in the gloaming. Next morning I quitted my good
friends of the fourgons, and struck across for my old comrades of the
4th Regiment, whom I found quartered in Château Gras, a little village
some half-mile to the north rear of Retonfay.
Among the “kent faces” that greeted me after my absence I missed
one or two whom I had learnt to reckon friends. The adjutant of the
battalion, a joyous lad fresh from the schools, a youngster of eighteen
summers, had succumbed to the hardships of the situation. The marrow
was not “set” in the growing boy’s bones, and where seasoned men
found it not an easy matter to keep sickness from assailing them with
success, the dart had penetrated through his green frame, and he had
been compelled to go back to the Fatherland, a shattered veteran ere
he had attained his full stature. I missed, too, another face, that
of a lieutenant, whose determination to consider himself well while as
yet the fever had not left him, I had respected in one sense, while in
another I had deprecated. Wounded in the fight by Noisseville on the
1st of September, he had been sent back to St. Wendel, where in the
lazarette fever had laid hold of him. His wound healed, and the fever
in part abated, the soldier lusted to be again with his comrades in the
forefront of the battle, and he had quitted the lazarette while as yet
the dregs of the fever had not been eliminated from his frame. On the
day of his arrival he lay beside me on the straw, with the alternate
cold and hot fits working their will of him, and then I told him that
his return had been premature. My words were made good by the fact that
two days after the doctor had peremptorily insisted on his return to
St. Wendel, and so he had gained nothing by his enterprise save another
strain on his constitution.
A friend had kindly kept for me a little diary of the siege events on
this face which had occurred since my retirement to Saarbruck, but
they were of so little importance as not to call for reproduction.
The only actual sortie made by the French troops, and that in
comparatively small numbers, had been on the 16th, in the direction of
the Brewery. Of course they were driven back. They could have hoped
for nothing else. All the damage they did was to shoot through the
chest the Feldwebel of the 6th Company. King Wilhelm had no better
non-commissioned officer in all his vast army. Strauss smoked his
cigar while the doctor cut the bullet out of his back, the lieutenant
beside whom he was shot holding him up while the operation was being
performed. Then he quietly squared up his company-book, and counting
the money in his hands (the Feldwebel is the pay-sergeant of the
company), handed everything over to his successor in right trim, and
went away philosophically in the waggon to a lazarette. Deserters had
become so numerous as to engender a suspicion that there was a design
for depleting the garrison by this device, and so eking out the stores
of food. A few deserters are useful, and not to be discouraged. Assume
that none of them speak the truth; King David tells us that “all men
are liars,” and yet from our fellow-men’s utterances we contrive to
extract some grains of truth. In like manner a little wheat can be
winnowed out of the chaff of a deserter’s farragos, and one or two are
acceptable. But now that their name was legion, the order had been
issued to receive no more bodies of deserters into the lines, but
to send them back whence they came by the powerful argument of the
needle-gun. How was it that so many of the deserters were drunk when
they came in? Was strong drink on tap in the outposts round Metz, or
were the men dosed for the attempt? The latter hypothesis might seem
to be borne out by the fact, of which I was assured, not by French
prisoners alone, but by German doctors who had administered to the
French wounded, that the French tirailleurs who pushed so boldly to
the front at Maizières on the 7th were all full of brandy. Ichabod!
Ichabod! How had the glory departed from the French arms when the
leaders were compelled to infuse Dutch courage into their soldiers! The
French were the readiest to scorn the Russian serf-soldier because,
when he came up through the fog wreaths on the morning of Inkermann,
his sluggish pulses had been quickened by corn-schnaps. Now, it seemed
that they found the same unsoldier-like stimulant requisite in their
own case.
I have heard Count Bismarck compared to an elephant’s trunk, as one for
whom nothing was too great or too small. But Bismarck was not the only
German in this war who looked after all little matters as well as the
great. I was much amused by an item in one of the orders of the day
from Prince Frederick Charles’s head-quarters. It was to the effect
that whereas an unprincipled rascal of a Hamburg cigar merchant had
been selling boxes of cigars to the troops, the upper tier of which
consisted of good weeds while the lower ones were unmitigated trash,
the military authorities of any place where this astute gentleman
should present himself, were enjoined to lay hold of him and transmit
him to the head-quarters at Corny. At such an entry one may smile,
but I defy him to refrain from respecting the all-pervading care and
watchfulness which took cognisance of such a matter as this. In such
care and watchfulness lay the root of much of the Prussian success. A
campaign is not made victorious by dint of fighting alone; success more
than half depends on efficient organisation, even as regards seeming
trifles.
Château Gras must have been a beautiful village before the tide of war
came and strewed sand and shingle over its charms. A fine old chateau
is the principal building in it, the noble garden of which had been
very little injured, while the furniture had also suffered very little.
In a room on the ground floor the books still stood on the long ranges
of shelves upon the wail. So careful were the Germans to prevent injury
to property that on the door of every room occupied by them was pasted
an inventory of its contents, for which the successive occupants were
held responsible, just as in a barrack at home. The chateau till lately
had been a large Feldlazarette, occupied by the wounded of the fights
before Noisseville of the 31st of August and 1st of September. The
smell of the chloride of lime was still so powerful in the beautiful
rooms that some of the officers preferred more modest quarters in the
houses of the village. When the owner of the chateau came back he must
have shuddered at the legacy the war had left him. Of the wounded in
the great lazarette, not a few had succumbed before the grim king of
terrors. In a quiet corner of the garden, looking out through the trees
on to St. Julien, St. Quentin, les Bottes, and the great towers of the
cathedral in the centre of the plain, is a graveyard, where lie those
who died of their wounds in the lazarette. It is prettily enclosed with
a wooden paling. The one great grave, over 100 yards in length, is
banked up with green sods, and the surface trimly raked. It is flanked
up by a great wooden cross bearing the simple inscription:—“Hier ruhen
285 Preussische und 5 Französische tapfere Krieger.” There are besides
several graves of officers, which are adorned with box-wood crosses
planted in the soil and with wreaths of immortelles.
By the 25th of October the symptoms grew more and more pronounced of
a speedy ending to the siege, apart altogether from the accounts of
negociations which we had from line to head-quarters. On the night
of the 24th I had a conversation with a deserter whose information
seemed of considerable exactitude and apparent truthfulness. He spoke
of a rapid and continuous diminution in the rations served out to the
troops, and of increasing irregularity in the supply. Eight days back
the bread ration had been half a pound a day for each man; now it was
reduced to four ounces, and there was difficulty in procuring this
morsel. The man understood that the Imperial Guards who lay around
Bazaine at Ban St. Martin, received rather more food than the other
troops, and they were used by reason of their superior discipline and
their greater contentment as a means of keeping in some semblance of
order the line regiments. To each peloton a live horse was given per
day, but the man described the brutes as consisting of little else than
bones and hide. There can be little wonder that the number of sick was
greatly on the increase under such circumstances. Out of 800 men of
which this man’s battalion consisted, 200 were sick and unfit for duty.
Those who were nominally able men were, he said, in a state of great
weakness, and certainly his own appearance corroborated this statement.
Various statements appeared to have been made within the last day or
two by the French generals to their troops, to keep them from falling
into utter despondency. Another deserter brought out a cock and bull
story about a general order, to the effect that the Empress was to
arrive in Metz on the 25th, and to assume the supreme power, and that
then on the next day the whole army was to march away to the north
by permission of the Germans. The authorities seemed to interpret
these and kindred statements as giving intimation of a sortie in
force towards the north on the 26th. The line to the north of Metz
on both sides of the river was accordingly greatly strengthened,
and the troops in the third line all round were called out at five
o’clock in the morning of that day, in positions enabling them to act
efficiently as reserves and supports for the first and second lines.
These precautions were no doubt wise, yet on the face of things it
seemed that a sortie was physically impossible. It had rained with
hardly any intermission for three days, and was still raining. Except
where the macadam of the chaussées afforded a hard bottom under the
mud, it was impossible to traverse the country on foot. One floundered
helplessly in the slippery stuff till he got to a deeper place than
usual, and then had to struggle vehemently to prevent himself from
sticking outright. No regiment could have kept its formation in ground
so holding; and to move artillery or train, except on the macadamised
roads, must have been utterly impossible. Following the caution of the
Germans, I rode round early to Malroy to be on the ground, if anything,
contrary to my belief, should take place; but the alarm, as I had
anticipated, turned out to be false.
The 26th October was a great day with us in Château-Gras. Metz had not
quite capitulated. There had been no sortie. The rain was coming down
unceasingly, and the country was one huge slush. But nevertheless, I
repeat, it was a great day with us. It was our doctor’s birthday, and
there was no reason why we should not keep it, while the generals were
finishing the more serious business. Our doctor was a man unknown to
fame, but he deserved it more than many a man who has earned it. He was
of the fighting jolly style of medico; although his business was to
cure wounds, he had no objection, but the contrary, to cut out work for
himself. If you had met him in Cork, you would unhesitatingly have set
him down as a native, with his merry black eyes, wide laughing mouth,
and—how shall I put it delicately?—his nose with the Hibernian bend.
And it was the birthday of this excellent fellow.
I could not make out in the morning why _appel_ was hurried over so
rapidly; but I was soon to learn. The adjutant tucked my arm under
his, and marched me off into the chateau. Of the _salle_ the officers
had made a mess-room, and it was into this fine apartment that the
adjutant guided me about ten o’clock in the morning. We were one and
all, it seemed, the guests of the doctor on this the anniversary of his
natal morn. Nor was the doctor hospitable without the means. A certain
good lady, calling him husband, and dwelling in Königsberg, had not
forgotten the day, and, as a birthday present, had sent her good man
a great chest. The sum total of the contents of that chest, the world
through me can never know. The enumeration I heard indeed, but I lost
the tally when the doctor was about half through with it. Suffice it
to say that the table groaned under a load of delicacies. I had seen a
telegram from Berlin, to the effect that the troops before Metz were
living on mutton. The telegraphist would have opened his eyes had he
dropped in this morning. There was Schinken and boiled ham, there was
a German sausage, as big as the good heart of the doctor’s wife, there
was a snug little barrel of sardellen, pickled with bay leaves; there
was German gingerbread and rusks; there was fresh butter, and there was
compot of plums, and I don’t know what all else. Then, for drink, there
was the choice of Malaga and claret, rum, brandy, Hamburg bitters, and
absinthe, and a hearty welcome to season all. We had a curious way of
eating in the foreposts, what may be styled, a miscellaneous manner of
feeding. Sausage, gingerbread, sardines, and compot, were seen on one
plate at once, and served to season one another in a very impartial
way. I don’t think the doctor could reasonably have complained of the
appetites which were brought to his feast. He had one appetite of
which he could have had no anticipation. Just as we were in the middle
of the feast, a miserable devil of a French deserter was brought in
from the foreposts. I never before saw the wolfish glare of absolute
hunger darting from a man’s eyes. Wet, dirty, half-rotten, seemingly
from scurvy, with puffed lips, and hollow cheeks, this gaunt spectacle
of a man devoured the food with his great staring eyes. He could not
reply to any questions, so concentrated was he upon his gaze at the
meaty ham-bone, and when the Hauptmann threw it to him, it positively
made one shudder to see the dog-like style in which he fell a-worrying
of it. When all, including, I hope, the poor wretch in the lobby, had
eaten their fill, the senior Hauptmann called for full glasses, and in
a neat speech proposed the doctor’s health. The doctor was very waggish
in his reply. He suggested we should dedicate a bumper to St. Julien
and les Bottes, because they had been courteous enough not to intervene
to the detriment of the crockeryware, and expressed, further, a fervent
wish that Bazaine were making one of the company. By twelve o’clock
the doctor was drunk out—that is, his stores were—but a happy thought
struck a lieutenant concerning a barrel of beer which he had in his
room. This was fetched, and its contents went the way of the doctor’s
stores.
As we broke up, I heard the word go round that there would be a
“picnic” in the evening. One is apt to associate the idea of a picnic
with leafy glades, blue muslin, bad champagne, and lobster salad. None
of these _agréments_ had we in Château Gras. The rain was falling fast,
the winter wind was blowing bitterly, and the idea of a picnic seemed
about as wild as would have been the suggestion of an oratory. But
nevertheless the “picnic” came off, although not quite according to my
preconceived notions of this institution. It was an indoor picnic; in
point of fact, it took place in the hall where the doctor gave his
breakfast. It was on the mutual co-operation principle—everybody was
expected to bring something. My contribution was a box of sardines, a
lump of butter, and a bottle of rum. I am afraid this was not quite
up to the general mark; but what I had I gave—I could no more. I
stood in the lobby awhile, watching the arrivals and their several
contributions. One Hauptmann was accompanied by his servant carrying
half-a-dozen of red wine, a lieutenant had a leg of mutton and a bag
full of sugar under his cloak. The hall looked quite civilised. On the
great round table in the centre stood an actual moderator lamp, with a
painted shade atop of it, its pedestal resting on a mat. Talk of war
times, here was refinement with a vengeance. A great wood fire blazed
cheerfully on the hearth, and the glasses—somewhat nondescript in
shape and size, it is true—sparkled on the board. After a brief pause,
the first service of tipple was brought in, contained in a white soup
tureen and an antique china vase. The drink was very good. I regret
being unable to furnish the recipe for its composition. I may state,
however, that among the ingredients were red wine, white wine, rum,
cognac, schnapps, cloves, and cinnamon; of the proportions of each I
could learn nothing. I incline to the opinion that a “stock” pot with
the red wine was put on, and, as contributions came in, that they were
emptied into the pot promiscuously.
For about two hours conversation, alternated with story-telling, was
the order of the evening. The talk fell once upon the causes of the
French defeats, and after various explanations had been started, a
sententious premier lieutenant, who had not previously opened his
mouth, struck in with this original illustration and very sound
theory:—“The chief rabbi of the Dantzic Jews had taken a new house, and
his flock determined to stock his wine butt for him. An evening was set
apart for the affair, and one after another the Jews went down into the
cellar, and emptied each his bottle into the big vat. When the rabbi
came next day to draw off his dinner wine, he found there was nothing
in the cask but water. Each and every Jew had said to himself, that one
bottle of water could never be noticed in so great a quantity of wine,
and all acting up to this, the rabbi had not got a drop of wine in his
butt. Now it was just the same with the French army. One soldier said
to himself that it would not matter a copper if he sneaked away—in so
great a multitude he would not be missed. But the devil of it was, that
one and all took this line of reasoning, and the result was that nobody
was left to look our battalions in the face.” Everybody laughed at the
premier lieutenant’s quaint illustration, and then we had a stand-up
supper at the sideboard. That finished, singing was the order of the
evening. It surprised me not a little when one of the officers struck
up “My hearts in the Highlands,” and almost all were able to chime,
not alone with the tune, but the words. The doctor treated us to a
composition of his own, composed to illustrate passing events, for the
burden of it was—“The Bois de Grimont oh!” The Bois de Grimont was the
wood out of which the French sharp-shooters so persistently peppered
away at our foreposts. Encouraged by the success of this effort, he
gave us another song _pour l’occasion_, the chorus of which mixed up
“Mercy-le-Haut,” and “Ter Teufel,” in some mysterious manner. It may
interest the British music-hall patrons to know that a translation of
“The Captain with the whiskers” is one of the chiefest favourites with
the German officers. They rattle away at its lively chorus with great
delight. We had it to-night over and over again. At ten o’clock the
“stock” pot being empty, we broke up with great joviality, and betook
ourselves each unto his respective straw.
CHAPTER II.
PUCELLA RAPTA.
After all our long waiting from day to day in anticipation of
the capitulation of Metz, that event came upon us with a strange
suddenness. It had only been a few days previously that it was
mentioned in the general orders from head-quarters that the
negotiations had been definitively broken off; and when men heard this
they set their teeth hard, and prepared for another spell of waiting,
variegated with fighting. But there had been symptoms of the end being
imminent in the haggard deserters who came among us from day to day,
with their longing looks at our black bread and flesh. Orders had been
issued to the railway people in Saarbrück to have material in readiness
for repairing the railway communication direct into Metz; and this was
another symptom. But still, when the report ran round the regiment,
on the afternoon of the 27th, that the capitulation had actually been
negotiated, some found it difficult to realise the fact—confirmation
was wanting. It was true that the day before the generals commanding
the several army corps had been summoned to Frescaty by an order of
Prince Frederick Charles, and that some of us had the “straight tip”
under promise of the profoundest secrecy; but everything looked so much
in the ordinary way, that people could not realise the fact of the
capitulation. Men went on the field watch as usual, and the confronting
foreposts still continued to exchange shots. No white flag was visible,
and the unbelieving Thomases of the 4th shrugged their shoulders, and
would have none of the tidings. But general orders are convincing
arguments, and even the unbelieving Thomases took to clapping their
hands and capering, when the news came under the sign manual of the
chief of the staff.
At twelve o’clock on the forenoon of the 28th each of the outlying
fortresses was taken possession of by two battalions of German
infantry, a squadron of cavalry, one heavy battery without tumbrils,
100 artillerymen with the complement of officers, and an engineer
detachment. The following is the apportionment of the force of
occupation. The troops occupying
St. Quentin were found by 18th Infantry Division.
Plappeville ” ” 3rd Army Corps.
St. Julien ” ” 1st Army Corps.
Queleu ” ” 8th Army Corps.
St. Privat ” ” Hessian Division.
At the same hour a battalion of the 7th Army Corps marched forward, and
took possession of the Porte Serpenoise, one of the gates of Metz,
and another battalion from the same corps occupied the Porte Moselle.
Two hours before the occupation of the forts, I should observe, there
were sent forward from each of the occupying detachments an artillery
officer and a small body of under officers, accompanied by engineers,
to take over the powder magazines and the respective forts, and they
sent out the report to the effect that all was in order before the
troops were allowed to march in. This precaution was no doubt dictated
by a recollection of the catastrophe at Laon.
It was in orders that at one o’clock on the 28th the French army
should formally lay down its arms. By reason of the confusion which
reigned everywhere this disarmament was protracted and piecemeal, a
large proportion of the force not disburdening themselves of the now
useless arms till the following morning. There was no set ceremony,
yet the affair was imposing from its very simplicity. It was conducted
in detail, each corps laying down its arms in the neighbourhood of its
own station. I saw several regiments of the 3rd Corps d’Armée—that of
Lebœuf—disarm themselves. In straggling masses the men defiled past,
piling their arms in great heaps at the word of command from their own
officers, who laid down their swords as the men did their chassepots,
building quite a little heap of them to the right of the great stacks
of rifles. The disarmed French troops then returned into their
bivouacs, which they occupied for one night more, before quitting for
other bivouacs round which should stand German sentries. For this last
night they preserved a semblance of freedom. The Germans left them to
themselves. Except in the forts and at the two gates I have mentioned,
not a spiked helmet was to be seen nearer Metz than had been seen a
week before. The _Feldwachen_ were mounted as usual, the _replis_ were
established, and the troops stood fast as ever in their long and weary
watch around Metz. Indeed, in the course of the night there was a
slight skirmish somewhere between Vautoux and Mey, conducted on their
own account, as I afterwards learned, by a few men who thought proper
to repudiate the capitulation. So late as when I passed Little Belle
Croix on the forenoon of the 29th, I heard a few dropping shots on the
slope to the right, but whether they were fired in anger I never was
able to learn.
On the morning of the 29th October—sombre day for the French arms—the
Frenchmen came forth and rendered themselves to their captors—corps
by corps, and under the command of their own officers. The 6th Corps
(Canrobert’s) came from its bivouac by Woippy to Ladonchamps, where
on the 7th so many of its members had stained the soil with their
blood. Their prison-bivouac was on the plain in the rear of the wrecked
and burnt village. The 7th Corps, that of Ladmirault, came out over
the ridge between St. Quentin and Plappeville, and found quarters,
inhospitable enough I fear, on the bleak plateau of St. Maurice. The
Imperial Guard marched down to Longeville, crossed the railway bridge
at Tournebride, passed on to Frescaty to the left, and found their
bivouac in the plain between Orly and Augny. The garrison of Metz
itself, consisting of about 20,000 men, chiefly of Mobile Guards,
marched by Le Sablon, past the ruined village of Magny, and so forward
to the outskirts of St. Thiebauldt. The 2nd Corps (Frossard’s), with
Laveauconfied’s division, and the 4th brigade came out past La Posette
on the great Strasburg chaussée, and found their bivouac behind the
village of Ars Laquenexy. The 3rd Corps (that of Lebœuf) came out among
us of the 1st German Army Corps along the chaussée leading to Saarlouis.
Each corps, as it marched out, was received by the German troops
covering the respective section of the environment. They were led
by their own officers, who formally handed over their men to the
German officers, and then they were at liberty to quit their ranks
and return to Metz, there to wait the trains which should convey them
into captivity across the German Rhine. It should be mentioned that
their parole was accepted from none of the officers of the army of
Metz, a stringency adopted in consequence of the numerous defaults of
honour perpetrated by officers released on parole after having been
made prisoners. The men under the command of their under-officers were
then marched out to the bivouac places, which had previously been
partly prepared, wood for fires having been collected and a supply of
provisions being ready for distribution.
I was with the 1st Army Corps when it took up its position to receive
the corps of Lebœuf. From all the villages around, the villages
inhabited for so many weary weeks, the villages made memorable by
fights, by burnings, by graves, by sickness, and by deaths, streamed
the regiments on to the chaussée. There had been much rain during the
night, and although the sun broke out about ten o’clock, the watery
haze hung about the bottoms of the valleys and the mud splashed as
the troops strode through it. Mud! why we had had nothing but mud for
weeks, and should we mind it now, looking at the errand on which we
are bound? No. The “Wacht am Rhein” rises lustily from the pioneers in
the front, and the regiments as they come down the side roads catch
up the strain. On we go past the Brewery, with the grenade pits, the
graves, and the entrenchments around it—itself a mere heap of shattered
bricks—on to the gentle slope behind the village of Lauvallière. Then
right and left wheeled the heavy columns, leaving the chaussée open,
and a parallelogram of about 100 feet in width on each side of it. In
front of the Brewery stood the artillery, before the artillery the
serried ranks of brass-spiked helmets all the way down the gentle
slope, almost to Lauvallière. Arms were piled, and there the Germans
waited for the advent of the men with which it almost seemed, through
the length of time that the armies had confronted each other, that
they could claim a kind of personal acquaintance. While the troops
waited I pushed forward towards Metz to meet the Frenchmen. Already,
it is true, we had plenty of Frenchmen, but they were all civilians,
and there were Frenchwomen too, and French children. The road had been
opened in the morning, and they came crowding out, the poor creatures
who had abandoned their village homes and crowded into the town when
the pennons of the Uhlans had shown themselves on the fringes of the
villages. On they came, waggon load after waggon load, with their
trumpery household goods and their agricultural implements piled on
the waggons behind the women and children. They knew not what it was
that they had come out for to see. Perhaps they expected to find their
cottage homes as they had left them—not roofless, wrecked, utterly
ruined, as was the grim reality. Lauvallière seemed to give the first
shock to their cheerfulness. Gaunt and grim stood its houses, burnt
to the shell, the graves lying all around, the holes in the fields
where the shells had burst, the breastworks behind which had stood
the German foreposts. As each waggon and each knot of peasants came
into Lauvallière there was a halt, and full many a “Mon Dieu!” In
Lauvallière there was a large tannery, which must have employed many
workmen, and been an important and profitable concern. It was now a
mere shell—not a fragment of the woodwork is left. I chanced upon its
owner standing on the bluff over against his property, and gazing upon
it in moody silence. Twenty paces farther on I came on a little group,
the extreme pathos of which made my heart swell. It was a family, and
they sat in front of what had once been their home. That home was
now roofless. The stones of the walls were all that was left. The
garden was a wreck, and the whole scene was concentrated desolation.
The husband leant against the wall, his arms folded, and his head on
his chest. The wife sat on the wet ground, weeping over the babe at
her breast. Two elder children stared around them with wonder and
unconcern—too young to realise the misfortune which had overtaken all
the family. The silence of the grief-stricken group was more eloquent
than any words. No home, no food, a waggon, and a couple of starved
horses, a field with four graves in it. This is the brief summary of
the belongings and condition of the family. All were alike; although
this family was the one I happened to see, because their home lay on
my road in Lauvallière, some similar piteous sight must soon have been
visible by every house in every village all around Metz. What need for
me to occupy space by writing of what every one with a grain of human
sympathy in his composition can picture and mourn for himself?
The stream of _émigrés_ continued as I came up the slope on to the
flat, on the edge of which lay the improvised fortification of the
village of Belle Croix. Belle Croix was ghastly in its utter solitude.
Burnt and shattered by German shells, it must nevertheless have been a
very strong position. All round the entrenchment across the road, was
a moat of some depth. The angles were stockaded, the walls loopholed,
and there still stood in position a couple of field guns, which, as the
Germans had known to their cost many a time, were located with great
skill. Owing to the block caused by the entrenchment the road had been
diverted. It had been little enough used before this morning. The grass
grew thickly on the chaussée between Lauvallière and Belle Croix. As
the peasant waggons came crowding out, they stuck in the heavy mire of
this détour, and many were the _sacrés_ before they were started again,
the lean horses being too weak to pull them through the heavy ground.
When I had passed Belle Croix I could not help owning to myself that
I had never till then succeeded in forming a proper conception of the
real strength of the natural position of Metz. On the right, with a
valley intervening like a deep trench, lay the blunt-topped mountain,
crowned by Fort St. Julien. On its slope were the bivouac fires of
the troops of Lebœuf. Nothing could venture on this slope—a great
natural glacis—so long as Fort St. Julien thought proper to forbid the
passage. On my left, also on an eminence, although from the positions
whence I had previously seen it, it appeared to be on a flat, lay Fort
Queleu, square and massive, dominating the plateau to the left of the
chaussée. But this plateau is closed in Metz-ward by a fortification
all to itself—the great earthwork of les Bottes, whose grenades had so
often burst in disagreeable proximity, and which now stood solitary
and empty, with not even a sentry on its earthen summit. Over the top
of Fort les Bottes were visible the towers of the cathedral, and the
picture was framed in by the background of that great elevated ridge
of which the two chief peaks are crowned by Forts St. Quentin and
Plappeville.
It was just beyond les Bottes that I met the first French soldier—a
cavalryman of the line. The fellow was as drunk as he well could be to
be able to move at all. He staggered forward in tacks, dropping his
kit piecemeal as he came. At a bend in the road behind Four-à-Chaux,
I came upon the head of the prisoner column, marching onward to their
reception at the Brewery. The men were in a very miserable state,
covered with mud, wet, sodden seemingly, indeed, through and through
with wet, many of their faces blotched and scabbed with scurvy, and
quite one-third in a state of drunkenness. Not a few were in a state of
bestial drunkenness, their clothes disarranged, and decency utterly
disregarded. A little farther on, and right and left, lay the great
bivouac before Fort Belle Croix. The troops were being collected by
their officers in pelotons previously to being marched out, and several
columns were already converging on the great chaussée. As each body got
the order to go forward a cheer came from the slovenly and dislocated
ranks, and from the columns on the march there broke out at intervals
a fitful chorus of some lively marching song. Most of the officers
were grave, taciturn, and downcast. Surely they must have despised the
reckless throng which they nominally commanded. The men obeyed their
officers and regarded the sound of the bugle after a fashion, but it
was evident that they were utterly unaffected by the catastrophe which
had befallen the arms of their country, and were eager only to get
somewhere where a full meal of victuals awaited them. Poor wretches,
after all it is not fair to be too severe on their disorganisation.
How near actual starvation they had come to before their leader would
give up the game, their faces pale through the dirt of days, their lean
frames with the rags hanging about them, told far more powerfully than
protestations, and were the most convincing reply to the easy untruths
of those who would have had Europe believe that Metz was betrayed.
Passing the columns of prisoners at a canter, I was back again
before the Brewery ere the front of that column had reached the place
where stood the Germans waiting for them. The dismounted cavalry
came first, followed by the artillery; last of all came the infantry
of the line. The cavalry seemed to have lost all self-respect; they
greeted the Germans with cheering, and several men broke from the
ranks and slouched forward through the mud with intent to salute with
a spirituous kiss the German officers standing in front of their
companies. It was curious to notice the opposite idiosyncrasies of the
two nationalities. Grave and stern stood the German victors, with,
as it seemed, a silent pity rather than contempt for the demented
tatterdemalions who proffered them the undesirable greeting; while the
Frenchmen chattered and gesticulated, “sacréd” and spluttered, sang
and laughed, as they slouched through the gauntlet of humiliation.
The officers quitted their commands as each reached the alley fringed
by the German battalions, and returned to Metz or the vicinity. The
prisoners, comprising the whole of the 3rd Corps, till the day before
under the command of Lebœuf, and numbering about 23,000 men, were
escorted to a position between Château Gras and Retonfay, where was
fixed the site for their bivouac. The guards for the French prisoners
were contributed in rotation by the several divisions. The daily quota
for the bivouac at Château Gras was four battalions of infantry, one
battery of artillery, and one squadron of cavalry. In command of it
had been placed Colonel von Deitzen Hennig, of the 4th regiment, his
adjutant being Lieutenant von Verzin. Food had been collected for the
supply of the prisoners, who had, of course, to bivouac in the open
air. From the 30th daily drafts, each 3000 strong, were despatched
toward Germany _viâ_ Saarbrück and Saarlouis. In all the capture
consisted of 173,000 men, including three marshals, forty-seven general
officers, and 6000 regimental officers. General Kummer, the general
in chief command of the Landwehr, was appointed interim Commandant
of Metz. General von Kastrow took the control of all arrangements
connected with the transport of the prisoners and the quartermastership
generally of the district around Metz and as far as Thionville. The
German troops which had formed the besieging army were not, it was
arranged, to enter the town, except when marching through. Metz was,
with the forts, in the meantime, to be garrisoned by the Division
Kummer and the 7th Army Corps. The circle of environment was, however,
greatly reduced in size from the day after the surrender. The 2nd
Army Corps drew inward to Montigny. The 8th came on to Magny, the
10th to Woippy. The 18th infantry division, charged with the custody
of the Imperial Guard, lay now at Longeville, Moulins les Metz, St.
Ruffine, and Longeau. The 1st Army Corps came forward closer under the
wing of St. Julien. The foreposts were still to be maintained, the
chain of communications being kept up just as in the old days. It was
anticipated that by seven days all the prisoners would have been sent
away.
After I had seen Lebœuf’s command taken over by the 1st Army Corps,
I returned towards Metz, meeting on my way a stream of straggling
soldiers who had missed their corps, and were staggering out under
loads of tents, blankets, and what not. The environs of the town were
very desolate and very filthy. Mud, raw horseflesh, burnt-out bivouac
fires, huts made of the branches of trees, old women, and skeleton
horses, were the leading characteristics. There was no difficulty in
getting into the town, where I found the shops all open, but with no
great show of edibles. Meat hung in the butchers’ shops, although it
was chiefly, if not altogether, horse; the cafés were crowded, and
there appeared no exhaustion in the stocks of the shops devoted to
the sale of any material. Tobacco was plentiful, wine, spirits, and
liqueurs in great abundance. Making my way to the Hôtel de l’Europe,
I found it crowded with French officers, and I also found there one
Englishman, Dr. Ward, of the International Society for the Succour
of the Wounded, who had just been decorated by the French military
authorities for his attention to the wounded; and two Americans, Dr.
Good, of the same society, and who had also been decorated; and Mr.
Eustis, a commercial gentleman, who had spent forty-eight days of the
siege in prison under suspicion of being a spy. The spy mania had raged
very strongly in Metz. Seventy-eight persons were arrested on suspicion
in one day. Eight in all I was told had been shot as convicted spies,
including the notorious Shieull, to whose adroitness and accurate
information the French believe Von Moltke was indebted for his
knowledge of the weakness of the French dispositions on the frontier,
and for the hint which he utilised into the successes at Wörth and
Weissenburg. The following is a statement of the tariff of prices for
food ruling in Metz three days before the capitulation, supplied by the
manager of the Hôtel de l’Europe:
Beef 8 francs per lb.
Horseflesh 10 centimes to 2 francs per lb.; “choice
horse,” the tender loin, fetches the latter price.
Eggs 1 franc each; have been 1f. 20c.
Fowls 20 francs each.
Pike (fish) 8 francs per lb.
Coffee 6 francs per lb.
Ham 8 francs per lb.
Cheese 40 francs per lb. (nominal, all done.)
Salt 5 francs per lb.
Geese, fat 65 francs per pair paid yesterday.
Oats 120 francs per sack of 200lb.
Chocolate 5 francs per lb.
Bread White, none since 16th October; brown,
4½ sous per lb.
Mutton None for two months.
Wine Plentiful, and old prices maintained;
bottle of champagne for 7 francs.
Notwithstanding these extraordinary prices, the tariff in the Hôtel de
l’Europe was much the same as usual. I dined there in the evening at
the _table d’hôte_ for seven francs, including half a bottle of wine.
Breakfast was _à la carte_, about seven francs; bottle of champagne,
seven francs. We had four courses for dinner, the waiter said none were
horseflesh, and it is not seemly to call even a waiter a liar. The
room was crowded with French officers. I dined at the same table with
Colonel Michel Ney, a nephew of the historical Marshal. He had received
some half-dozen sabre-wounds in the cavalry fight at Vionville, and
was only half recovered. At the same table also sat General Duplessis,
a French officer of distinction, who also had been severely wounded.
In the evening there was a tremendous rush of German officers into the
hotel, and quarters became impossible at any price. Forty officers
were sent bedless away from the Hôtel de l’Europe, and I was indebted
to a good-hearted American for half his bed. The French and German
officers fraternized a little in the _salle_ after dinner. At first
the Frenchmen were a little inclined to be sulky and reserved, but
the heartiness of the Germans soon thawed the ice, and the champagne
promoted the flow of kindly feeling. I was told that in the forenoon,
when the officers of the Imperial Guard said adieu to their men,
profuse tears were shed by both. There was no such emotion manifested
by Lebœuf’s corps.
In the afternoon of the 28th, when the news of the capitulation was
made known, there had been a sort of revolutionary riot in Metz. The
National Guards made a display of refusing to give up their arms,
ran to the Place d’Armes, where they congregated in large numbers
and several shots were fired. The cathedral rang the alarm hell and
the shops put their shutters up. The editor of one of the ultra
journals was the ring-leader; mounted on a white horse, with a pistol
in his hand, and others in his belt, he hounded on the mob to yell
for Bazaine’s blood. That distinguished person, however, with great
discretion, remained in his quarters in Ban St. Martin. The mob,
composed in a large proportion of civilians, laid hold of an officer
of the Imperial Guard, and holding pistols at his head, forced him to
carry in the front the Republican flag. A hint from the mayor that
the Germans would be sent for to put down the disturbance had its
effect after the gamins had roared themselves hoarse shouting “Vive la
République!”
It seemed it had not been until ten days before the capitulation that
the troops of Bazaine’s army were forbidden to enter the town of Metz.
Up till then they had circulated freely in the town, using the cafés,
and spending their money in the shops. Until six days before it, a
ration of bread of 100 grammes had been issued to each soldier. Since
then they had had no rations, except horseflesh. The townspeople had
been on bread rations as well as the troops, the rations consisting
of 200 grammes of brown bread. Those who were able paid for their
ration, the poor receiving it gratuitously. It surprised me that Metz
had been able to hold out so long. The place had not above 50,000
inhabitants, if so many, and with no previous warning it had supported
for seventy days a gross population of 230,000 mouths. These are the
official figures. The dearness of provisions had been progressive. For
instance, on the 16th of August butter had already reached the fancy
price of 4f. per pound. On the same day chickens ranged from 6f. to
8f. At the date of the capitulation, butter could not be procured at
any price, and the same might be said of chickens. Metz had certainly
not capitulated for want of munitions of war. The fortress had ample
supplies still left. Although Metz was an arsenal, no manufacture of
cannon or projectiles had gone on during the siege. There had been no
occasion for any such work, and if there had, the want of coals would
have presented an insuperable obstacle. Powder had, however, been made
in large quantities. All the coal used in Metz comes from Saarbrück,
and there had recently been great scarcity—so much so that an order had
been issued a week before the capitulation that the gas in the town
should be extinguished at seven o’clock, under a heavy penalty. Candles
were plentiful, and the deprivation was therefore not so seriously felt.
Of sick there were altogether, in and around Metz, on the date of the
capitulation, about 20,000 soldiers, of which about 9000 were wounded
men. The latter had chiefly been wounded in the sorties. Of the wounded
in the battles of Courcelles and Gravelotte most were either recovered
or dead. Very many mutilated men were to be seen in the streets.
Latterly almost every operation had ended fatally. Pyæmia, hospital
gangrene, and typhus had their sway on frames previously debilitated by
hardship and famine. Of hospital stores the greatest lack was in the
matter of leeches. For two of these Dr. Ward had on the previous day
paid 180 francs. His colleague was down with brain fever, and he paid
this wildly fancy price to save his life.
Three or four newspapers continued to be daily printed in Metz up to
the capitulation. Since no outside information had reached the town for
so long, the newspapers had chiefly concerned themselves with local
gossip, hopes, fears, and canards. A file of one of them was a curious
sight. The stock of paper had long run out, and the journals had been
printed one day on red paper, another on blue, a third on buff, and so
on—advertisement placard paper having necessarily been had resort to.
The last issue of one journal was printed on brown packing paper.
All the afternoon of the 29th, the division of General Kummer came
pouring into the town, with bands playing and colours flying. The great
Landwehrmen stared around them with undisguised curiosity at the nut
which they have found so hard to crack. The townsfolk jabbered among
themselves as the troops defiled, and there were not a few scowling
faces. What cared the Landwehrmen for the scowling faces? From the
slush and mire of Maizières and Ladonchamps they had come into a
reasonable prospect of beds and bottles of wine. They were quartered
for the most part in the Caserne du Génie, the Hôtel de Ville, and
other public buildings. The officers were in private houses. Ye gods!
with what zest did they devote themselves to champagne in the _salle_
of the hotel! Generals, lieutenants, Vice-feldwebels, all in the lump
were there, and one and all speaking after the German manner, at the
top of their voices—the din was deafening. The French officers cleared
off early to bed, all save two, who sat on moodily in a corner, pulling
their moustaches and drinking absinthe—the poison that has sapped the
virility of the French army.
Some officious patriots had made themselves busy during the night of
the 28th, with the statue of Marshal Fabert in the Place d’Armes. When
capitulation was first mooted, a wreath of immortelles and laurel was
woven round his head, and a flag stuck in his hand. On the morning of
the 29th, the Marshal appeared draped in a full suit of crape, with a
hole in it, through which was visible the inscription—the words which
the gallant Marshal addressed to Louis XIV:
Si pour empêcher qu’une place
que le Roi m’a confiée
ne tombât au pouvoir de l’ennemi,
il fallait mettre à la brêche
ma personne, ma famille et tout mon bien,
je ne balancerais pas un moment à le faire.
Bazaine had not quite the grit in him to act up to the programme
chalked out by the staunch old Marshal.
Two or three days elapsed after the surrender of Metz before a regular
and reasonably quick postal service was established from the city, and
for any one to whom time was an object it was necessary to despatch
letters from Courcelles, the interim terminus of the railway. To reach
this point I quitted Metz early on the morning of the 30th October,
compelled to wriggle now right, now left, to circumvent the numerous
entrenchments still blocking up the main roads.
On my way from Colombey to Courcelles my track lay through the
prisoner-bivouac of the 2nd French Army Corps (Frossard’s). It was
a very miserable scene. The fires of the previous night had burnt
out, and the morning fires had not been lit. The miserable prisoners
lounged about in seeming utter despair, the fine rain wetting them
through and through, and keeping soft the mud with which their coats
were plastered. Some few had erected tents, but the great mass had
spent the night in the open standing round the fires, for to lie down
must have been impracticable. I saw a couple of corpses lying in the
ditch by the roadside, and was told that six or eight poor wretches
had succumbed to exhaustion and exposure during the bitter night. If
it was any consolation to the prisoners, their German guards were in
as miserable a plight as their captives. The chain of sentries posted
all round slouched backward and forward on their posts, and the fixed
corporal-schafts leaned gloomily on their weapons. In the road in
front of Ars Laquenexy a kind of market had been established, but the
dealers had hardly waked up under the tilts of the carts. They were
marketenders chiefly from the German frontier about Saarlouis, and
the bulk of their wares consisted of spirituous liquor. The French
prisoners were by no means short of money. All the cash in the bank
and military chest in Metz had been disbursed in paying up the troops’
arrears of pay, and there were plenty of francs in their pockets.
In Courcelles I saw the arrival of the first column of prisoners to be
sent down by the train to Saarbrück. There were 2000 of them, and five
trains, each containing the same number, were being despatched every
day. Poor fellows, they seemed very miserable, but they bore their
misery with a fortitude which filled me with respect. The rain poured
down upon them in a deluge as they stood in the road, which was a foot
deep in mud, of the consistency of pea-soup. Here they had to wait for
about an hour, while the arrangements for their transit were being
completed, and it was good to see the courtesy and quiet fortitude
which they manifested. I went among them in the mud. Everywhere the
poor fellows stepped aside with a half bow to let me pass. If one
accidentally jostled me, the “Pardon, Monsieur,” was prompt and warm. I
found these French prisoners here as ignorant as those whom I had seen
at Sedan. Some of the sergeants asked me for news of the outer world,
but the men seemed chiefly concerned to know whither they were going,
and what kind of country Germany was. I named several towns as among
their probable destination, leading cities of Germany, but very few had
more than heard of them, and knew nothing either of their magnitude or
of their locality. At last the prisoner-train was ready, some sixty
carriages packed as closely as the men could sit or stand. Several open
trucks had been brought into requisition, and it seemed to me as though
the men were actually stacked upon them, so thickly were they packed.
With a whistle the heavy train sluggishly set itself in motion, and
away it rolled with its freight of Frenchmen down what was once one of
the most charming valleys in France. The Frenchmen were prisoners on
their way to expatriation, the valley was a wilderness. On the ramparts
of St. Quentin, which from a distance overlooked the scene, paced the
square-built men with the brass-spiked helmets. The virgin fortress of
France, never till now profaned by the foot of an invader, was held by
the Landwehrmen, and the streets of the town echoed to the clash of
the German subaltern’s sword.
As I drove out across the glacis of Fort Belle Croix, I was struck with
the alteration which had taken place there since the previous day.
Then the whole expanse swarmed with life. Cavalrymen, artillerymen,
infantrymen, were blended in chaotic confusion, out of which it seemed
impossible to evolve order. Now the expanse lay blank and bare.
Cavalrymen, artillerymen, infantrymen, had been drafted off it. Nothing
was left but the mud and a few horses, too debilitated to be removed,
and dropping, even as I passed, into the slush out of which they should
never rise. There was a horse market in Metz on the 30th, or rather
just outside the gate. I imagine a good many horses changed hands to
which the parties who disposed of them would have had some difficulty
in proving a valid title. Prices ranged from a franc and a half up to
five pounds, but this latter was a fancy price, and only given for an
officer’s charger of breeding and substance.
After seeing the prisoner-train leave Courcelles, I drove away
northward, and after visiting the headquarter staff of the 7th Army
Corps at Puche, and my friends of the 4th regiment at Retonfay, went
into the lager of Lebœuf’s corps on the slope between Château-Gras
and Retonfay. It was getting towards evening by this time, and I was
in the right time for seeing the Frenchmen making their preparations
for bivouac. What splendid fellows they were to be sure at this kind
of work. Already the tents had a drain through each to carry off the
surface water. The great poplar trees on the chaussée—those that the
Germans had left standing—were falling fast. Those that the Germans had
felled the Frenchmen were chopping up into lengths, and carrying off
to the bivouac fire. Others stood round the bivouac fires or lay on
curious improvised beds, contrived with dexterously-placed stones to
keep their constructors out of the mud. In the blaze of the fires were
pots and saucepans; rather than part from a saucepan when he has once
secured it, I believe a French soldier would lose one of his boots.
The pots and saucepans were simmering merrily and emitting a fragrant
odour—whence it was derived I could not guess. The rations had been
meat and biscuit; nothing else save salt. The men had dug up again
the already thrice turned over potato fields and might have got a few
tubers. But potatoes, and meat, and biscuits were impotent to create
the pleasant odour, one of the recondite mysteries of French cookery.
The atmosphere after the capitulation was full of stories of the prices
paid in Metz during the siege for articles of food. Most of these were
to be taken _cum grano_, since the beleaguered, now that it was all
over, not unnaturally took a pleasure in piling on the agony. But the
one which I am going to narrate I had from an undeniable source, and I
give it as illustrative of the profligate frivolity among the wealthier
and more aristocratic officers, which has been one of the chief causes
of the ruin of the French army. There had been in Metz during the
siege a certain lady of the Parisian demi-monde, who had come to Metz
when the Emperor came, and could not get away when he retired _viâ_
Verdun to Châlons. Two officers of the Garde Impériale had been rivals
for this lady’s affections. The lady, it seemed, had a fanciful and
delicate appetite, and one day in the early part of the last month of
the siege she expressed a fervent wish to be regaled on turkey and
truffles. “Ah, you know that is an impossibility,” was the rejoinder
of one of the swains. “I don’t know that,” said the other, eager for
an opening; “I shall try what I can do.” The other, in his jealousy,
offered to bet 500 francs that he would not succeed, and the wager
was accepted. The officer came to the landlord of one of the hotels
and gave him the commission, adding that money was no object. The
head waiter went on a foraging expedition, and after two days’ search
brought the officer a turkey and truffles, with a little bill for a
thousand francs; so the gay guardsman won his bet and lost 500 francs.
As I was driving out to Courcelles my coachman quietly told me that his
wife and three children were starving. When we returned at night I went
with him to ascertain the circumstances for myself. He guided me into
a part of the town close to the middle branch of the Moselle, inhabited
only by the poorest of the poor. I had before then only been on the top
of the crust which overlay the misery caused by this siege. I had dined
and eaten dessert, I had called for wine, and lo it was forthcoming.
So far as concerned the hotels, the world seemed to wag very much as
its wont. I saw no ghastly faces in the streets pallid with want, as
were the faces of those citizens of Antwerp, who cheered the lean
Stadtholder when he swore to eat his boots before he would surrender.
But it was not because there were no pale faces and attenuated forms in
Metz that I did not see them in the streets, but because the miserable
ones cared not to make a parade of their misery. It was a sorry sight
the squalid room of the coachman presented. Of bread the family had
not had a morsel for three days; then they had received as ration two
pounds for six. One of the six—an infant two years old—wants rations no
more. The little body lay on two planks under the window, the victim of
bodily exhaustion, from deficient and improper food. How could a child
of two years survive on sinewy horseflesh, in scanty quantity, and on
a casual morsel of bread, the meal of which was mixed with sawdust and
chopped straw to make it eke out? All up and down the poverty-stricken
street the wretchedness was much the same. Horseflesh and want of salt
had killed off the children like flies. The mortality among the little
ones had been frightful. The elder children were covered with blotches
and scorbutic sores, caused by want of salt and of variety in their
food.
As regards the inhabitants of Metz itself, it seemed likely that the
misery would soon come to an end. There was no want of wealth in Metz,
and the rich citizens were reported to be public spirited. Now that
food could be bought, it was sure to be bought and distributed freely.
But no such amelioration was to be expected for the wretchedness—a
wretchedness almost without hope—of the villagers inhabiting the
country around Metz. They had nothing—not even a roof above them, in
the pittiless rain. Of their cottages nought was standing but the bare
walls, often pounded with shells. Their gardens were waste, their
cattle were gone, their furniture was wrecked, their straw was dung,
their fields lay fallow and studded with graves. A day spent in the
misery around Metz must have made as water a heart hard as the nether
millstone. But help came to the helpless. It will be long ere “the
Friends” will cease to be remembered by the simple peasant people whom
they helped through the ghastly slough of despond.
The railway into Metz having been opened on the 30th, a convoy of
300 generals and superior officers went off at five o’clock in the
afternoon. On the 31st, at 10.30, a train left for Mayence, _viâ_
Nancy, for the accommodation of generals and chief staff officers. A
regular series of trains was organised on the 1st of November for
regimental officers. The first, leaving at 9.30, accommodated the
officers of the garrison; the second, at 1.30, for the officers of
the Imperial Guard, cavalry of the reserve, and engineers. At 1.30,
the officers of Canrobert’s corps (the 6th), and division of Forton.
At 4.15 a train took off the officers of the 2nd Corps (Frossard’s),
and the brigade Lapasset; and at 6.15, the 3rd Corps (Lebœuf’s). Great
consideration was invariably shown by the German authorities for the
officers, and careful arrangements were made for the wounded and sick
French, chiefly under the supervision of German doctors.
I spent the afternoon of the 31st in inspecting, so far as time would
permit, the fortifications of the town of Metz, and those constituting
its exterior defences. What I had already gathered concerning the
natural and artificial strength of the forts of St. Quentin, St.
Julien, Plappeville, St. Eloy, and Queleu I found more than borne out
by personal investigation. Whoever holds Metz holds an impregnable
fortress. Nothing can so much as get at the fortress of Metz proper
while the outworks hold out, and there is no reason that, properly
garrisoned and provisioned, they should not hold out for ever. It might
be possible to batter down St. Eloy or Queleu, the others cannot be
got at advantageously in any way on account of the strength of their
natural position. The weak point of the fortress is towards the east,
between Queleu and St. Julien; but the complement of the defence on
that side is made up by the “provisional” earthwork of les Bottes.
From what I heard I think it probable that the day after the 14th of
August, the Germans, if they had made a dash, and had been prepared
for severe losses, might have effected a lodgment in front of Fort
Belle Croix in this direction, and, indeed, if all tales were true,
might have pushed their way into the town itself. We all know how easy
it is to be wise after the event. The English army in the Crimea was
abused for not going straight into Sebastopol two days after the Alma,
instead of sitting down on the bleak plateau over against the fortress.
Had its leaders known the state of the fortifications, no doubt the
weary winter and the heaps of dead might have been spared to Britain.
So with the Germans before Metz. I was assured that so confident were
the French of success—so ridiculous did they think the idea that it
was possible to invest Metz—that it was not till after the battle of
Forbach that serious efforts had been made to place the fortress in an
efficient state of defence. The guns were not mounted till then behind
the embrasures. Les Bottes was unfinished—a mere heap of shapeless
earth. Even now it was not properly finished, and looked as slovenly
a piece of fortification work as I ever saw put out of hand by troops
who asserted they had engineers in their ranks. Nevertheless, it had
a front, and guns mounted on that front. The Germans, ever masterful
and prompt, would not, I was satisfied, delay long to alter les Bottes
from a “provisional” into a permanent fort. Subsequent events bore out
this anticipation; and, with their efficient and thorough system of
administration, Metz, if impregnable hitherto, will be henceforth, if
such a thing can be, doubly impregnable.
From what I learned, there had been a good deal more of huckstering
than patriotism among the civilian population of Metz. There was a
reason for the _émeute_ on the evening of the 28th. The wily burghers
had been keeping back their stores for a market, while their poorer
fellows hungered because of the high prices, and the army starved.
Horses were dying daily for want of forage; yet the Germans found
stores of hay and corn quietly stowed away in unlikely places. It was
the same with other articles of consumption, and the administration
seemed to have been either not strong enough or not cunning enough
to make everything forthcoming for the common good. Napoleon called
us a nation of shopkeepers, but I take leave to doubt whether our
shopkeepering idiosyncrasy would have developed itself in such a
manner. I could not help having a quiet chuckle at the douce burghers,
whose market Bazaine had spoiled. How they hated him for it! And they
spoke their minds right venomously after the French manner.
If one listened to all he heard, he was bound to accept the conclusion
that Bazaine was a renegade and traitor of the largest possible
calibre. It seemed, according to the gossip of the natives, savage
that their canny little scheme for putting money in their purses had
failed, that Bazaine nourished the design of having himself declared
Regent of France, and that he only relinquished this ambitious project
for the consideration of a fabulous subsidy, contributed I could
not exactly learn by whom. It was useless to point out to the angry
and disappointed cits that on the face of it this was rubbish, and
that Bazaine kept his upper lip straight and his face to the foe so
long as, and indeed longer than, he had an army capable of fighting,
marching, or standing up to be shot down. If he had had subordinates
honest and capable of co-operating with him, had he been unfettered at
the outset, and had the discipline and _moral_ of his army not been
deteriorated before he took the command of it, it might have been that
the chroniclers of this war would have had a different tale to tell.
It was with a deep interest that I listened at the table d’hôte the
same evening to the despondent remarks of a venerable French gentleman,
who had been a colonel at Waterloo. The old man had the water in his
eyes as he spoke of the depreciation in the character of the forces
of his country. The cause that had wrought the curse of deteriorated
discipline was, according to him, the pernicious itch for popularity
with which all the French superior officers were bitten. Canrobert, he
told me, had been the great initiator of this popularity-hunting fever.
In his rough, bluff way he used familiarly to appeal to the private
soldiers as “his children” whether their rations were what they liked,
and if an ill-conditioned fellow, thus encouraged, vented a grumble, he
would turn on the colonel and blow him up sky-high. One very pregnant
observation he made, a remark which I had thought of all the evening,
and doubly significant as coming from a Frenchman and an officer.
“Surely,” said I, “this will bring the French to their senses, and we
must have peace in a very short time. And just as surely that peace,” I
continued, “must be a permanent one, for the French army, with all its
craving for _la gloire_, must realise the fact that there is not much
in the way of _la gloire_ to be got by being greedy for the Rhine.”
“I don’t know,” said the old man, mournfully. “Logically you are
right, no doubt; but severe as the lesson has been, I question of
its effect. It is the officers of the French army who chiefly are
the clamourers—senseless and frothy clamourers—after _la gloire_.
They shrieked for war, enervated with lust and absinthe as they were,
ignorant of their duties, their minds uncultivated, and debilitated
with luxury. I fear they are too far gone, too utterly vitiated and
emasculated mentally, to be able to draw the conclusion from the
premises; and I should not be surprised if, a year hence, you may
hear the parole loafers who are swinging about the streets to-day,
yelling for war again, as unprepared to pursue it to success as they
were when this one was entered into, and as reckless and regardless of
consequences as they were then and are now.”
Just conceive what France must have come to when one of her _anciens
militaires_ could speak thus! That the officers of his army were, in
his opinion, so utterly spineless as to be unable to recognise the fact
that they had been beaten, the causes which had led to their defeat,
and the utter impossibility that unless they purged and lived cleanly
they could make even a fair fight of it against the cool-headed and
heavy-handed German! The whirligig of time brings round many curious
changes, but it is utterly outside the nature of things that Frenchmen
as they are, as I saw them in this war from day to day, can ever,
given what advantages they may, be a match in warfare for a people so
constituted as those which dwell in the Vaterland. The hot iron of
adversity brands deep, and has a wonderful power to cure ailments, but
if the surface is so calloused that the iron will not mark, how can the
beneficial result be achieved?
The old gentleman was specially severe on the Zouaves. When these
regiments were first constituted, he said the ranks were really full
of fighting men. But as their fame grew they became fashionable, and
then their ruin set in. The ranks were crowded by young sprigs who
had no other thought than a picturesque uniform, waxed moustaches, the
demi-monde, and absinthe; and the once stout and capable regiments had
lost their prowess and become enervated and flaccid. This view may be
exaggerated—the _ancien militaire_ of the table d’hôte was not the
first man that ever put forth the opinion that “the service is going
to the dogs, by Gad;” but it is in a measure confirmed by the events
of this war, in which the French infantry of the line displayed far
greater valour and patient endurance than the pet regiments.
One might have been surprised on entering Metz for the first time since
the capitulation how little sickness was apparently existing in the
town. One strolled on to the Place Royale, and there saw the streets
of railway waggons, which in the early days had been brought into the
town from the station—300 of them—and diverted from the carriage of
luggage or merchandise to be hospitals for the reception of the sick
and wounded. Here and there a convalescent limped about on crutches,
or a pallid-faced man glided past, from whom you instinctively
shrank with a curious feeling that the taint of the fever must be
hanging about him still. But of sweeping pestilence there seemed no
traces. One had to look for the deadly sickness in quiet corners in
the little improvised hospitals, where there were only a few cases,
or in the neglected villages around the town where hygiene had been
comparatively neglected. There it was and there alone, where you could
find forms which you were told were those of men, but passed out of
all recognition as such, discoloured and bloated in the last stages of
the foul black small-pox. It might be that you chanced on a lazarette
into which the terrible demon of hospital gangrene had entered and
fixed his relentless fang, never to be withdrawn till the earth should
have been heaped on his victim. A few cases of this terrible disorder,
and only a few, I saw. Not alone was the sense of sight called into
requisition; no cordial in Metz seemed to have the virtue of washing
the horribly fœtid odour out of my throat, where it stuck as if it were
something solid. I trust no reader will ever be called to look upon the
corpse of one who has died of pyæmia. One took his life in his hand
going among such spectacles. Here is a house in the Isle de Saulcy in
which there are five sick men and two corpses. There is a doctor with
them—a lone man, for the very women, with their tender hearts hardened
by the terror of the dread infection, have run away. The doctor is a
mere youth in years, but there is grey already in his hair, and he
tells me that the last six weeks have made him feel as an old man. With
every breath he inhales he risks his life nearly as much as if he held
his fist into the cage of a cobra capella. What words can describe
the colour of these semicomatose forms which he handles so tenderly?
Have they been blown up in an explosion, and had their skins dusted
over to ease the smart of the burn, and to hide the swarthy brand of
the powder? No, they are the victims of a far worse misfortune. They
lie smitten to the marrow with the terrible _Typhus exanthematicus_,
the floury typhus, which is happily so rare that many a respectable
and capable general practitioner in Britain has never heard of it.
The flour which the exanthematicus powders on the skin of its victim,
seldom washes off. Almost invariably face and flour dust are alike
hidden in the grave.
The railway station outside the Porte Serpenoise of Metz was a curious
sight. It was the depôt of all the vast train of that Corps-Francs
organized by the Chemin de fer de l’Est, with a military constitution,
and having a material that had cost fifteen millions of francs. The
corps numbered 1200 men, and they, with all their material, their
bridges, their stalls, their waggons, their pontoons, and their vast
timber blocks, were destined to act as the pioneers of the French army
on its march “à Berlin,” and to repair the damage to the communications
wrought by the Germans, falling back beaten and demoralised across the
Rhine on their capital. There was a bridge here in pieces, specially
constructed to be thrown across the Rhine. The bridge had never quitted
the locality where it was constructed. It was the prize of the army
that had not only kept the watch fast and true on the German Rhine,
but that was standing sentry on the Moselle, the Marne, the Seine,
and the Loire. And to-day in the drizzle of the small rain, the bold
Corps-Francs were slowly jogging it on the prisoner-train towards the
Rhine which they had thought to approach in array so different.
Many a day it will take Metz to recover from the handiwork of the
men who undertook to defend it. The tourist who in the early summer
came to this virgin queen of the Moselle might have noticed outside
the fortifications a belt of buildings about half an English mile in
breadth. The trim villas of the wealthy citizens had stood here in the
dainty gardens; the pretentious house of the mayor had been here behind
its red-brick walls. There had been snug little cottages _ornées_,
where dwelt ladies, about whose antecedents few knew anything, but
who had fair faces and who dressed magnificently. Not one stone now
remained upon another of all the villas, the mansions, the cottages.
All was blank desolation. Here and there the stump of a fountain,
erstwhile standing in a pretty garden, asserted itself disconsolately,
its once superincumbent Cupid or Neptune half battered into the mud.
The ground was churned into slush by the tread of many footsteps, and
fetid odours blew over it from the dead horses that were rotting on its
surface. This belt of desolation was the _zone militaire_ of Metz—the
space outside the fortifications, where buildings were allowed to be
erected solely on the condition that if it should be necessary at any
time for military exigencies to destroy them, the owners should not
be entitled to claim compensation. The military exigency came in July
last, and now the portly mayor might bite his thumb, and the owners of
the villas and the cottages grope about the ruins for salvage, for no
consolation was forthcoming for them in the shape of compensation.
On the 1st of November I continued my investigations as to the
condition of the French sick who had been left by the capitulation as
a legacy to the Germans. In those inquiries I derived great assistance
from the courteous kindness of Dr. Leithold, of the division of General
Kummer, on whom devolved the supervision of all the medical and
sanitary arrangements. Dr. Leithold had in all inherited about 19,000
sick men, among whom were included only sixty German prisoners—all the
rest were Frenchmen. This included the sick in the field hospitals
and the various forts. The diseases chiefly raging were typhus and
dysentery, the latter with a strong tendency to assume the phase of
the former. There were not many cases, however, of spotted or floury
typhus. Small-pox was far from rare, and in not a few cases it was
of the most virulent form. A good deal of scurvy was also existing.
I fancy that a great quantity of scurvy cases of a mild type had not
been allowed to enter the hospitals, for of the prisoners in the
lager by Retonfay I saw a considerable number bearing the evidences
of suffering from this disease. With the good and varied rations now
being distributed, a disease which had been superinduced by their
absence was sure soon to disappear. In order at once to clear for the
occupation of troops the barracks in Metz, hitherto used as hospitals,
and to provide a change into higher and purer air, all the sick able to
move were being sent out into the highlying forts surrounding the town.
This step, it was hoped, would stimulate healthy action in systems
which had become low, degenerate, and stagnant, and good nourishment,
which was being provided with a lavish hand, would naturally co-operate
greatly in the setting up of this healthy action. His Excellency von
Kummer deserves to be held in honour by all humanity for the prompt
and solicitous arrangements which he caused to be instituted for
relieving the pressure on the sick of the pre-capitulation condition
of things. A great bakery of white bread was at once set up in the
Caserne des Chasseurs, and orders were circulated that all medical
officers in charge of lazarettes should have carte blanche to make
requisitions for bread. Stores were hurried in of coffee, chocolate,
soup extract, and other comforts, and by Sunday morning there were very
few sick who were not the better of the advent of the Germans. Prior
to the establishment of the regular system of supply, the Berliner
Hülfsverein, represented by Herren Adolph Schwabe and E. Minlos, was,
with the English Ambulance, among the first to commence a distribution
of comforts. Britons may be glad to know that they too helped towards
the Liebesgaben with which were packed the fourgons of the Berliner
Hülfsverein, since the British National Society helped its funds with a
donation of 1000_l._, the administration of which was confided to Mr.
Schwabe. As General von Senden and his staff entered the town a scene
occurred, pathetic enough in one aspect to move the deepest sympathies
of those who love the Fatherland and its children, and yet not without
a certain grotesqueness that only affords another illustration of the
narrow gap which exists between tears and laughter. As the General rode
down the Rue de la Prison Militaire, he passed the prison of the Maison
d’Arrêt, where the German prisoners taken on the 7th at Maizières were
confined. As the Landwehrmen on that day had met the foe with shouts of
“Hurrah Preussen!” and “Immer vorwärts!” so now, gaunt, hollow-eyed,
and squalid, the great gallant fellows cheered their countrymen as
they came on. The cheer was hardly so full-volumed as when it had
echoed through the gables of Ladonchamps; scanty rations exclusively
of horseflesh were not quite the class of feeding off which to cheer
lustily. But von Senden, not unfamiliar with the cheers of his Landwehr
men, heard the “Hurrah Preussen!” from behind the bars, and, halting,
called out to his Kinder to know how they fared. The hungry men told
their plight, and the general turning to the Intendant who rode behind
him, asked when he could have food up for the wants of the prisoned
Landwehrmen. “Not for an hour at least,” was the reply. Then von Senden
turned to Mr. Schwabe, the bearer of the Liebesgaben, and asked whether
he could do nothing till the Intendant got up his column. The fourgons
of the Berliner Hülfsverein were not a furlong behind, and they came up
at the trot. The bread tumbled out of the waggons, and in at the prison
windows. But the waggons contained other provender than bread, and the
question was asked of the prisoners as they munched their bread, what
relish they would have to it. Who that knows the German palate but can
anticipate the reply. “Haben Sie Wurst?” was the response, as if from
one man, and then from behind came a piping voice, it must have been an
epicurean boy who spoke—“Oder Schinken?” Wurst is the German sausage,
suggestive to the British mind of trichinæ, and other nameless horrors,
but dearer to the German heart than any other edible. Then they got
cigars—the prisoners—and von Senden and the Berliner Hülfsverein passed
on, the former to take up his head-quarters, the latter to distribute
their arrowroot, tea, woollen garments, winter beds, biscuits, and what
not of Liebesgaben to the wretched French sick.
On returning to the Hôtel de l’Europe, after a round of the hospitals,
I found in the _salle_ an officer from Retonfay who had ridden in to
tell me that the General in command of the brigade had sent to desire
me to call upon him. It was very well calling on generals if one went
of his own accord, but a summons to attend was calculated to make
one nervous. Had I been writing of the positions without sufficient
discretion, I anxiously asked of myself, or had any order been issued
to forbid correspondents from frequenting the foreposts? Speculation
was useless, and I went straight out in the moonlight to the big
château inhabited by the General, in the outskirts of Retonfay. There
was no frown on the features of the gallant old Pole; my portion
was a warm grip of the hand, and a cordial salutation. The General,
instead of having a wigging for me, wished to ask a favour of the
journal I represented. The General’s children are half English, his
wife is an English lady, and his mother-in-law, who, to judge from
the enthusiastic manner in which the General spoke of her, is utterly
unlike mothers-in-law in general, had thoughtfully sent her fighting
son-in-law a box of concentrated soups all the way from a western
suburb of London. The gift had moved the General to tender thanks, if
he might, through the columns of an English journal, and to make of
the box of soups a peg on which to hang a compliment to the British
nation. The General pondered, as he ate his soup, on the form which
this communication should take, apologising to me for his silence from
the circumstance that he desired “to make a little wit.” When he had
got to the salad, he found the spirit move him, and he dictated as
follows:—“I thank you, dear grandmamma, for your delicious soups; the
vermicelli and the tail ox are delicious. The North German Ambassador
has made a mistake when he said that the English nation has only
manifested a warm-heartedness towards the French. As I eat my dinner,
I am a witness to the contrary.—Your loving son,—Von Zglinitzki,
Major-General.” The good General slightly distorted the relation
existing between him and the relative he desired to address; but I
supposed he had taken the word from his children.
On the 2nd of November the whole of the 10th Army Corps defiled through
Metz on its southward march towards Troyes. Its General, Voight Rhetz,
sat in the saddle in the Place Royale, with Kummer beside him, and a
background formed of the trucks devoted to hospital purposes. On the
other side of the broad thoroughfare stood groups of French officers
looking on critically as the men went past with whom they had so often
been engaged. To have seen the different regiments pass the saluting
point with everything about them as neat as if they had come out of
barracks, you would never have thought they could have been doing
forepost work and fighting for two months. Fresh, stout, clean, and
supple, the great stalwart fellows came past with the German quick
step in one long continuous stream for two hours, and long before all
had passed the Frenchmen had sunk into a dull silence that seemed to
betoken acquiescence in an inevitable fate. There was no cheering or
singing; the bands played as they passed the General, but the “Wacht
am Rhein” was kept for the country roads. Besides the 10th, the 3rd
Army Corps was on the march for Troyes. The 7th for the present was to
remain in Metz; the 2nd had started Paris-ward before the capitulation;
and the 1st, after seeing off the last of the prisoners, was destined
for the northern march toward Lille and Amiens, along with the 8th
Corps. General Kummer, leaving the commandership of the town for an
active command, was succeeded by General von Löwenfeld. General Kummer,
during his brief tenure of a very difficult and delicate office, had
earned a well-deserved popularity. His urbanity and consideration to
the French officers were appreciated warmly by them all, and not a few
of them referred to the subject in my hearing with deep feeling. I have
omitted to mention before, that when the report of the capitulation
became spread abroad throughout the army on the evening of the 28th
Oct., a great number of regimental officers had a sort of caucus
meeting, in which they discussed the matter. Universal indignation at
the conduct of Bazaine was expressed, and it having been estimated that
the officers present were able to rely on the fidelity of a following
of some 25,000 men, it was resolved that a desperate effort should be
made that same night to cut a way through the German lines. The meeting
separated, and one of its members came to the Hôtel de l’Europe, where,
over a bottle of champagne, he made his last will and testament, and
with a tear in his eye, committed it to his friend my informant, and
went forth with set teeth on his desperate emprise. Next morning he
came back to breakfast, blythe as a bird, and reclaimed his will. It
seemed there had been a miscalculation. Instead of the following of
25,000 men on which the officers had relied, they could not get a man
to follow them. The realisation of the misconception prevented the
attempt being made.
I never tired of passing my time in watching the Place Royale and
the Esplanade, on which were quartered the wounded. On the former
were the railway car hospitals, on the latter are fine roomy tents,
holding twelve men each comfortably. What a variety of mutilations
you noticed among the convalescents. Men who had lost a leg, others a
foot, others an arm; the gamut of mutilation was run up and down till
you almost expected to see a man walking about without a head. It was
a listless, weary promenade which these unfortunates executed. Some
few formed little groups for conversation, and others made belief to
play at a kind of outdoor billiards on a wooden frame on the ground,
but most patrolled languidly backwards and forwards, with a dejected
listlessness that was the more painful to witness because it is so
un-Frenchlike. I suppose they must have been tired of the promenade
at the top of the Esplanade over against the river, for there were
seldom more than a few there. And yet the view from it is one of which
I think it must take a long time to get weary. If I could think the
inhabitants of the Esplanade possessed of so much depth of feeling, I
would fain have imagined that they shun the promenade on the ramparts
that the sight of so much of beauty lost to France might not wound
them too poignantly. Behind, among the tents, are the statues, and the
still bright flower-beds. In front, at one’s feet, are the outworks,
and then the broad stream of the river, with the fertile meadows of
Simphorien beyond. On the right, across the stream, is the Isle de
Sauley, the island of the weeping willows, with its powder-magazines
all but hidden among the graceful willows and the tall poplars. On the
left is the citadel, with its green earthworks and glacis, and beyond
the beautiful suburb of Montigny, with the bend of the stream farther
on ending in the railway bridge, the horizon to the south, bounded by
the range of heights, of which the highest is Mont St. Blaise, with its
ruined château and the Observatory, from which I had looked down on the
plain and city. Over St. Simphorien is the other branch of the Moselle,
fringed by the nestling villages of Moulin, St. Ruffine, Ban St.
Martin, and Devant-les-Ponts, wearing a very peaceful aspect but for
the absence of smoke from the chimneys. Over them towers abruptly the
rugged Mont St. Quentin, with the vineyards on its shoulders, lovingly
hugging the white villages, then the bare interval of red scarp, and
then the summit, crowned by the great spreading fortress, its warm grey
tint brought out in the slanting sunbeams. Well may St. Quentin be
called “the eagle of Metz,” soaring over the valley, as it does, up in
the very sky. Alas! for France and Metz, the wings of the eagle were
shorn. On its ramparts there was an eagle still, it is true, but it was
the eagle on the helmet of the Prussian sentry, who as he paused in
his beat, and looked down on what a week before deserved the name its
inhabitants so fondly gave it, “La Pucelle,” may be trying how he can
adapt the German song, “Oh Strassburg, oh Strassburg, Du wunderschön
stadt,” to the new conquest. Verily, it is a wonderful city, a city for
the possession of which to stake everything and to fight to the last
man and the last ditch. Now that the German army had seen it—few who
have not studied him know what an instinctive eye the German soldier
has for the beauties of nature—he would not be a discreet man who
should have suggested that the prize should be let slip. Nothing so
much strengthened Bismarck’s hand in his demand for Lorraine, as the
opportunity the German army had for seeing and admiring Metz.
The very heavens seemed to smile on the capture of la Pucelle. For
days before Bazaine had sent in his capitulation it had seemed as if a
repetition of the deluge of Noah was in progress. All the low country
was inundated; where the waters had not yet reached, the ground was a
thin, spongy, quagmire of mud. On the day that the Germans marched in
and the French marched out, the heavens still wept copiously, as if in
lamentation over a spectacle so full of woe for France. But when the
German sentry had taken his post on the gates, and when the black and
white flag floated out over the huge brown works of Plappeville, out
came the sun in a joyous radiance. As if by magic, the waters abated.
On St. Simphorien, where but the day before the dove could have found
no rest for the sole of her foot, an army might now have manœuvred.
The mud dried up, and the roads become hard again—those wonderful
roads that stubbornly resisted deterioration by the grinding wheels
of the cannon and proviant columns, and which ought of themselves to
prevent the name of the Third Napoleon, their constructor, from being
held in execration by the French. Under the bracing influence of the
bright sun and the frosty wind, everybody and everything seemed to
regain cheerfulness. The French prisoners yet remaining in Retonfay
had somehow got the mud off their clothes, and with the mud had gone
the moodiness. The German troops had heel-balled the eagle on their
helmets, and polished after a fashion the long boots that for days
before had been caked with successive layers of mud. The townspeople,
in all their sullenness, felt and yielded to the influence of the
fine weather. The ladies of the place, of whom hitherto we had only
caught glimpses as a pretty face peered out from behind a window-blind,
came out into the streets, and tripped along, daintily booted and
delicately gloved, among the dashing German subalterns, who might
have been excused for glances of undisguised admiration, and among
the throng of common soldiers, who seemed unimpressible, but were as
courteously civil as if they had served an apprenticeship as masters of
the ceremonies. Metz seemed to have no objection to any amount of what
it no doubt considered the mammon of unrighteousness in the shape of
Prussian thalers. All the shops were open, and had got stocked with a
rapidity that might have been accounted for either by concealed stores
or by wonderful enterprise in getting supplies speedily from Saarbrück
or Nancy. The cafés swarmed with German officers, with French officers,
with French civilians. It was already two days since the departure of
the last train had been notified for the conveyance of French officers
to Germany, but there must still have been close on 1800 of them left
in Metz. I suppose the greater proportion of them must have been on the
sick or convalescent list, but I saw comparatively few who appeared
seriously ailing. The diverse propensities of the two armies in the
matter of drinking could be seen at a glance by a visit to a café.
The German officer, trim, neat, buttoned up to the throat, dressed as
regimentally as if on parade, and with a carriage that might suggest
his having swallowed a ramrod, entered, saluted the room all round with
a stiff-necked bow and a chink together of his spurred heels; then
stalked to a seat, and called for a “Glas Bier.” The French officer,
his frogged and furred undress pilot coat open at the throat, and
showing a slice of shirt-collar and of front—a dickey, for aught I
know—and with the invariably white or brightly-coloured cravat, thrown
loosely round his neck, lounged in with his hands in his pockets,
nodded to a friend, tumbled in a heap on to a settee—if he ever
swallowed a ramrod the gastric juice must have made pulp of it long
ago—and called for a _petit verre_ of cognac or absinthe. He took his
tipple neat, fiery as it is. As the German plunged his moustache into
the froth of his beer flagon, he gave one the idea that he was drinking
because he had thirst and wanted to quench it. It was impossible to
think the same of the Frenchman as he took a sip out of the little
glass, and rolled the spirit round his mouth and under his tongue with
as much gusto as if it had been a sin.
As I was strolling on the Esplanade, on the morning of the 4th, I met
a comfortable-looking old gentleman, in gaiters and woollen gloves.
A remark as to the scenery served as a mutual introduction, and he
told me he was an old officer of artillery who, during the greater
part of the siege, had held the position of Commandant of Fort Queleu,
and who, when capitulation seemed imminent, had returned to the civil
life, out of which the siege had temporarily called him, so as to
escape expatriation as a prisoner of war. The good old gentleman spoke
very frankly as to the events of the siege, and had no hesitation in
speaking his mind as to Marshal Bazaine, and the motives by which, from
first to last, he had been actuated. When the Army of the Rhine first
fell back around the fortifications of Metz, after the battle of the
18th of August, instead of making efforts which he thought undoubtedly
would have been successful, to push onward for a junction with the rest
of the French forces, Bazaine’s explanation to his principal officers
for his policy was to the effect that the forts of Metz were in a
defensive condition so backward that he dared not, consistently with
his duty to France and his impression as to the importance of Metz as
the premier fortress of the Empire, abandon it in its then inchoate
condition to a defence to be carried on solely by its garrison. In
this view the commander of Fort Queleu declared that he completely
coincided. Comparatively trivial efforts would, he believed, have
sufficed to reduce Metz immediately after the 18th of August, had
there been no army to support the garrison, and to strengthen the
fortifications, and had the Germans taken immediate advantage of the
state of weakness. Bazaine, he continued, with a zeal and industry
beyond all praise, had put the forts into a state of efficient defence
by the end of the month. It was then, according to my informant’s
views, that his presence for the first time became _de trop_ in Metz,
and then it was that he ought, with all the vigour he could exert, to
have burst through the German cordon and got at large. That he could
have done this, whether in prosecution of the temporarily energetic
sortie which lasted over two days—31st August and 1st September—in the
direction of Nosseville, Servigny, and St. Barbe, or in the better
line down the valley of the Moselle, my interlocutor had no doubt;
and it is fair to him to mention that I found many German officers
who could not conscientiously differ from this view. After the middle
of September, however, Bazaine’s position, in view of breaking-out
tactics, had become hopeless. Sickness was decimating his ranks; his
troops had already eaten deep into the means for transporting artillery
and train. I asked the old commandant how, in his opinion, it was
that Bazaine did not strike a decisive blow for extrication after his
presence in Metz for good had ceased. The reply, to my thinking, was
very pregnant. Bazaine, a capable general, a gallant man, and a sincere
patriot, hung balanced between two stools. Instead of looking with a
single eye to his duties as a military commander, he became distracted
with political complications. In the early days he was studying the
interests of the Emperor, and the means of conserving for Imperialistic
uses the army under his command. Later on, the poison of personal
ambition had impregnated the system of the hitherto straightforward
soldier. He had nourished dreams of seeing himself Regent of France,
and made ducks and drakes of his reputation without attaining the
personal _quid pro quo_ he hankered after.
What a strange kaleidoscopic scene in those early post-capitulation
times did the great room of the Hôtel de l’Europe present from day
to day! Yesterday it had been thronged by officers of the 7th Army
Corps; to-day it was the 8th; on the morrow it would be the turn of
the first to snatch a glass of the “sparkling” before the route is
taken for the champagneless villages on the line of march. As I sit in
my quiet corner, there comes clinking and clattering in a divisional
staff; hussars blue, hussars green, hussars red, hussars brown, and
hussars black—the last with the grinning death’s head and the crossed
thigh-bones in silver on the busbies. All are speaking at once, most
at the top of their voices, and the clamour is for champagne, of which
400 bottles were drunk in one day in the room in which I sit. If I
had the portrait edition of the _Almanach de Gotha_, I might identify
the bearers of some of the proudest names in the Fatherland; for the
wearers of the showy uniforms are many of them princes and poins. Of
Grafs and Freiherrs, the crop is too large to take any account of.
This young slip of a lad with the pale face and the slight moustache
is of the blood royal of Russia, and not many removes off the throne
of the Czar. He is studying the art of war, attached to the staff of
General Manteuffel. If grim Nicholas—he of the Roman nose and strong
jaw—were alive to-day, with what interest would he be watching this
contest, and how searching would be his questioning of his young
kinsman on his return to the banks of the Neva! Who is this straight,
square man, stiff of figure and massive of head, that comes quietly
into the room alone? All rise respectfully as the door frames, as in
a picture, that powerful figure. The sparse hair on the face is but
slightly grizzled; surely the man with the few medals on his broad
breast, and the simple General’s star at his button-hole cannot be
a personage of great distinction. You may search in vain the roll
of the German army to find a name more honoured or more deserving
of honour. The big quiet man is General von Göben, the commander of
the 8th Army Corps, the youngest commander of an army corps in the
Prussian service, the one who has seen the most fighting. So gluttonous
is he for fighting, that when there was peace within the borders of
the Fatherland this modern Bayard was fighting in the fierce internal
strifes of Spain. In this war he has borne the brunt of the hardest
fighting. At Spicheren he had relieved Kamecke of the command; on the
rugged slope of Gorze, and in the thickets of the Bois des Genivaux,
he saw full many of his Rhinelanders go down. Von Göben seats himself
beside a burly officer with a bushy beard, clad in the white and green
of the Cuirassiers. The pallor of the big officer’s face contrasts
markedly with his jetty beard. Well may he be pale. A furrow of that
field at the north of Vionville soaked in not a little of his blood
as he lay there on the night of the 16th of August, a chassepot ball
in his chest and a sword-cut across that hard, bullet head of his. It
was he who led the Cuirassiers, diminished from a strong regiment to
a weak squadron in that last death-charge against the French battery.
He took the cigar out of his mouth to shout the “Vorwärts,” and then
sat down in his saddle and spurred the big bay into a charging gallop.
It was his luck and his hard head, he tells you, that pulled him
through when so many of his brother officers fell to rise no more.
And now he is a Rittmeister, no less, and has a good chance of the
order _pour merite_. At a side-table there sit together an Oberst of
reserve Uhlans, and a quiet little officer in a general’s uniform. The
chubby Oberst ought to have an army corps at least, if, indeed, he
should not supersede von Moltke, to judge of the energetic and fluent
manner in which he is demonstrating how a battle should be won to the
quiet little taciturn man beside him, who has a queer half comical
look in those grey eyes of his. The Oberst is, to use a vulgar phrase,
teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. The little General commands a
division, and has before to-day directed the operations of an army.
He is the author of a standard work on military strategy; whereas the
Oberst for the last dozen years has been tilling his acres away in
Pomerania. Nearer to me is a group of subalterns of a Hohenzollern
regiment, the youngsters drinking Rhine wine when all others in the
room are votaries of champagne. The Hohenzollerns affect “a deep deep
draught of the good Rhine wine,” for they are a Rhineland Regiment, and
it has always been a regimental tradition to stick to the Rudesheim.
In the group is a blithe young face I know right well. Many a hearty
clink of glasses has passed between us, not a few mornings have we
patrolled together the foreposts in the valley on the French side of
Saarbrück. Under the silky moustache you may faintly trace two slight
weals. How they came there is a story. The lad was among the foremost
up the steep of the Spicheren-berg. So difficult was the climb that he
had to take to his hands and knees, and, as you may see a butcher do,
he stuck his sword between his teeth. Like a silly fellow, he turned
the edge inwards instead of outwards, and when, after his manner, he
took to roaring “Vorwärts,” the keen blade enlarged the naturally by no
means diminutive orifice of his mouth. At another table sits Kummer,
the chief of the Landwehr men, with a certain Landwehr, fatherly look
about himself. In the corner opposite me is the sole group out of
uniform. Two are the almoners of the Berliner Hülfsverein, the third is
Professor Kollmann, of Munich, who has thrown aside the toga and the
doctor’s cap to take the charge of a lazarette. The fourth is, what
think you?—a lady. In the military history of Europe the name of von
Alten is not unknown to fame. It can be unfamiliar to no student of
Waterloo literature. The male von Altens of to-day are all soldiers,
and the lady at the table with the Professor is their sister, and a
sick nurse in an hospital at Chalons. In the salons of Berlin there was
no fairer face than that of Agnes von Alten; now the salons know it no
more; but when the soldier awakes from out of his delirium, or when
the chloroform-influence leaves him after an operation, he finds her
bending over him in tender solicitude. There are those, I fancy, in the
gay staff coats at the centre table, who would gladly hail a wound if
they could only choose their nurse.
The forenoon of the 5th I devoted to a careful examination of the
French line of defence which opposed the German environment on the
west. A description of its characteristics may, I fear, be but dull
reading, but I do not feel myself entitled on that account to refrain
from writing it, looking at the fact that the salient points of this
line of defence probably disappeared within a few weeks after, and
that some details with regard to it may not be useless in a humble
way to the Alison or the Kinglake of this stupendous war. Crossing
the river and the Thionville Railroad, on which a train of repairing
materials was moving forward with a tentative slowness that reminded
me of a Highland pony’s movements in a bog, I traversed a flat expanse
of considerable size, which had been occupied as the French Guards’
camp, and then passed through Ban St. Martin, noticing on the way
the château in which Bazaine had had his head-quarters. The abrupt
rise of St. Quentin began two steps after I had cleared the lanes of
Ban St. Martin. Looking at this hill from where you will, you cannot
question its steepness; but how steep it is on the face looking towards
the town is only to be appreciated by whoever essays to climb it on
a frosty morning, when the air is rarefied, and when the ground has
yielded its hardness caused by the frost into superficial slipperiness
caused by the sun’s heat. There was no road but a faint footpath
through the vineyards, which soon broke into what may be called a spray
of still tinier tracks, and then utterly disappeared. As I toiled
slowly and laboriously up the slippery steep, it became apparent to
me that a position such as that of Fort St. Quentin, so advantageous
because of its isolation and the great area which its height allows
it to dominate, may yet have elements of weakness caused by its very
isolation and height. Looking upward as I clambered, I could see no
grim earthworks on the crest, no cannon mouths depressed so as to sweep
this ascent. The hill shoulders up very steeply for three-fourths its
height, and then “tumbles home” so rapidly to the summit on which
stands the fort, that its base, as well as the lower steeps, are
protected from the fire of the fort by the convexity of the more upland
configuration. This fire could not be brought to bear upon these spaces
directly, no matter by what expedient, and if once, therefore, an
enemy’s force could get across the outside area swept by the guns of
the fort, it might nestle snugly, if audaciously, right under the lee
of the fortress, keeping itself safe much in the same manner as we read
of a nigger sticking on the back of a crocodile while the monster snaps
his jaws and lashes his tail to no purpose. All that St. Quentin could
do in the way of dislodgment must be by an indirect and plunging fire,
and the bay of safety is so close, that its artillery essaying any such
fire would have to fire at an elevation closely approaching to the
perpendicularly upwards. But a glance backward as one climbs forcibly
impresses on one the care and skill with which the several parts of
the defence of Metz are made to dovetail one into the other. Where the
configuration of the ground draws the teeth of St. Quentin, the bare
tusks of the citadel of Metz show themselves dangerously. Its guns look
across the Simphorien on to the alluvial plateau of Ban St. Martin and
the lower steeps of Mont St. Quentin, and change the “bay of safety”
into a position utterly untenable, while the batteries of Montigny
and Longeville, one face pointing up the river, the other athwart it,
opposed at once a direct and enfilading fire to any body of troops
rash enough to essay the path leading to this same untenable bay of
safety. Nor was this all that has been done to guard this access, and
to negative the feasibility of this place of lodgment. Out of the round
shoulder of Mont St. Quentin, just where the “tumbling home” begins,
there rises an abrupt, isolated peak, a kind of junior Mont St. Quentin
in itself. On the summit of this Bazaine’s engineers had knocked up a
hasty, but most useful outwork. A strong loopholed palisading enclosed
bomb-proof subterranean quarters for about half a battalion, and there
were evidences that on the top of this bomb-proof a couple of pieces
of artillery had been mounted. From the slits in the palisading the
infantry men standing on the tread could have searched with the muzzles
of their chassepots the “bay of safety,” while the shells from the
depressed pieces of artillery could have torn down through the steeps
of the vineyards, or pelted into the pretty châteaux and snug cottages
of Ban St. Martin in the level bottom.
Traversing the interval between this useful outwork, and the almost
upright substructure of granite blocks which forms the eastern
foundation of Fort St. Quentin, I came upon a deep cutting, crossed
by a foot-bridge. At the bottom of the cutting was a railway worked by
wire ropes. At the summit of the incline, a little to my right, was the
house of the stationary engine that had puffed so assiduously during
the siege, but that was now silent and deserted. On the left the track
seemed to tumble over a precipice into the valley of the Moselle, near
to Longeville—the declivity must in truth be very steep. This line,
used for the transport of building materials and munitions of war for
Fort St. Quentin, and a continuation of which had performed the same
function for Fort Plappeville, was constructed, it may be interesting
for railway readers to know, on the same gauge as the well-known
Festiniog line. It must have been of extraordinary importance during
the building and siege operations. Crossing the flying bridge of the
railway, I climbed up on to the plateau on which stands the fort,
through a perfect litter of chassepot guns and chassepot ammunitions,
which had been strewed there by the French troops to whom the order had
been given to lay down their arms within the fortification. I skirted
its left, making for the brow of the mount, looking out over against
the plateau of St. Hubert and Châtel St. Germain, anxious, as on the
morning of the 19th of August I had seen the French army lying on this
brow, to see how from it the Prussian position must have appeared.
Fort St. Quentin by no means occupies the whole of the summit of the
hill of the same name. It stands on an almost imperceptibly raised
space on the extreme verge of the eastern extremity. To the westward
extends a rugged flat of about a mile in length, by half as much in
breadth. The appearance the hill presents was as if some Titan of old
had shaved off flat its pointed top, and then strewed boulders over
the surface. These boulders, as well as the space between them, are
now covered with a short, half-heathy sward. It was then on this flat
that the French had sought refuge when at daylight on the 19th of
August we looked out from the miserable bivouac on the blood-stained
field of Gravelotte, and saw their white tents between us and the dull
heavy mass of Fort St. Quentin, as if for safety they were throwing
their bare arms around the protecting fortress. On the flat were yet
visible the traces of the trenches they had dug around the tents, and
their _al fresco_ kitchen fires had left their marks on the sward. I
was not a little surprised on pressing forward to the edge of this
flat to find its margin bordered by a substantial and systematically
constructed entrenchment. This line of entrenchment sprang up the
steep side of the hill between the top and the village of Scy, which
is just outside its cordon. If constructed at all during the siege, it
must have been made in the early days. The face was banked up with an
earthen slope now grass grown; inside was the inner face of an upright
wall of stones uncemented by mortar. This entrenchment was regularly
constructed with salient and re-entering angles, and with bastion-like
projections at intervals, for sweeping the face laterally. Close behind
were, at intervals, bomb-proof half-underground constructions for the
protection of troops not actually lining the entrenchment, and that
it was not meant as a place of occasional resort, but was habitually
held by defenders, was evidenced by the durable construction of the
kitchens, as well as by other less savoury tokens of the continuous
presence of troops. In the rear of the bomb-proofs, at frequent
intervals, were the earthworks thrown up for batteries. Encircling, as
this entrenchment did, the extreme edge of the plateau, its defenders
could look right down into the valley below, as well as across at the
lower and less abrupt heights opposite which constitute the fringe of
the plateau of St. Hubert; and with proper appliances and moderate
determination, could, to all appearance, have prevented anything from
living in, much less successfully traversing, that valley, to make an
assault. This defence work of the summit of Mont St. Quentin, which
may be called the key of Metz, presented an appearance so formidable
as to seem almost to reduce into a superfluity the great fort in its
rear; although of course the utility of the latter became obvious for
all round firing at long ranges in co-operation with the other forts
for the protection of Metz. This line ran away, still as strong as
ever, down into the dip between the summit of Mont St. Quentin and the
longer hog-backed ridge of Plappeville. As it came on upon the latter,
instead of climbing directly up the face and so passing close under the
greater fortification, it took a sweep westward, skirting the eminence
near its base, and was continued right round to the northern front of
Plappeville, putting an effectual check upon any sudden surprise from
the Bois de Châtel or the Bois de Saulny.
How deceptive are appearances! From the shattered hamlet of St.
Hubert, on the grand chaussée, I had looked over to St. Quentin on
the morning of the 19th August, and had thought I could have knocked
at the gates of the fort after a short half-hour’s walk. Now, looking
from St. Quentin to St. Hubert, I could barely see the ruined hamlet,
and the poplar trees on the chaussée stood up against the horizon.
Yet the distance could not have been so great after all, since a shot
from Fort St. Quentin on the morning I refer to had killed two German
soldiers mounted at the hamlet on the chaussée. Now on the horizon
were visible the long low huts which the Germans had erected as their
temporary barracks. Much closer on the left, and near the chaussée,
where it passes through Roserieulles on its way into the Moselle
valley, I noticed the trim square earthwork, so completely constructed
as to have been sodded up with turf, of a German battery. In this
battery had stood the 12-pounder guns which had burned the village
of Moulin les Metz in the early days of October. What the gunners in
St. Quentin were thinking of to allow the erection of this earthwork
in such a position I could not comprehend. To pound it to pieces they
need scarcely have taken the trouble to elevate the muzzles of the
great guns on the top of the casemates. A steady cannonade must have
made its construction too arduous for the Germans, not given, save in
rare instances, to squander lives wantonly. Nay, more, at a quarter
of a mile closer still, at La Maison Blanche, just behind Longeau,
there stood an impudent little affair of an improvised battery, thrown
up for a few field pieces. I wondered if the gunners there, whose
lives were not worth five minutes’ purchase had St. Quentin been in
earnest to dislodge the cocky little concern, ever sent a six-pound
shell flying across the valley at the big guns of the fort, in mere
bravado. Quitting the entrenchment, I plunged down the slope, about
midway between the villages of Lessy and Scy. Now I was among what
had been the French outposts, guarding the country roads and the hill
paths. The inartistic character of the field defences, on the French
side, surprised me not a little. There was a trench across the path
with the earth thrown up on the farther side, and that was all. There
was no cover for retreat, there were no means of pouring in a cross
fire, there was no continuation of the cordon of entrenchment, so
as to give cover for a thin line of riflemen connecting the posts.
It was the same with the position for a field watch in front of
Plappeville, between the entrenchments and the Bois de Châtel. The
half-moon ditch and paltry earthen breastwork stood there utterly
isolated and disconnected. Under a hot fire from the adjacent wood,
no relief could have reached it, nor could its occupants have fallen
back on their supports in the inner entrenchments, without ruinous
loss. It was another story when, having crossed the bottom, I came upon
the German foreposts on the opposite slope. On one side of the narrow
path there looked down on me a venomous little work, behind which some
half-a-dozen marksmen might have stood. Half-a-dozen paces forward, on
the other side, there was a duplicate. It made one uncomfortable, even
in the solitude, to move about in the continual consciousness that,
look which way one might, there was one of these posts looking one all
but full in the face, while at least a couple of others were squinting
at one on the flanks. Then right in front came an obstruction of
felled trees, then the _chevaux de frise_ of vineyard stakes stuck in
the ground, and last of all the deep trench across the road, with its
substantial parapet running away on either side in an unbroken cordon.
It was not one road that was so protected on the German side, but all.
A comparison of the field works of the rival armies impressed me, in
short, with the conviction that the French works were constructed by
soldiers, the German by engineers; and this surprised me the more,
because the engineering ability displayed on the part of the French in
the choice of sites for the forts, and in their construction, was of a
very high order, an opinion, I am sure, which will be confirmed by our
highest military critics.
Hark! I hear the quiet tramp of the German infantrymen marching down
the narrow street. It is the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps on
its way through Metz. Ha! here comes the 45th, fresh, clean, and
confident. Can you see any gaps in those dense files of fours, although
it was the 45th that furnished the 285 _tapfere Krieger_ that lie in
one long grave in the quiet garden by Château Gras? No, the depôt
of the 45th has given over 1400 recruits to the Regiment which it
feeds, and if more are wanted (and more were wanted), I doubt not
the depôt is equal to the demand. And here comes the sister regiment
of the brigade, the gallant 5th, the blood of whose linesmen ran in
the gutters of Servigny in that “Schlacht bei Noisseville” on the
afternoon of the 31st August. Here is the dashing Hauptmann, who one
night, having sitten a little in the sun before it went down, took it
into his head to pay a visit to the fair maidens of Villiers l’Orme.
The Hauptmann lost his way, and only found it when he was under the
nose of a French field watch. He lost, too, his horse, and had a
night’s rest in the open in the vine-berg; but he does not look much
the worse for it, does he? Crash! bang! Surely I know that tune! It is
the old “Hohenfriedburg.” Faugh-a-ballagh there for the fighting 4th.
If the obstruction consisted of men with arms in their hands, instead
of a posse of _gamins_, the 4th would do their own work in the way of
Faugh-a-ballagh. At the head of the brigade rides General Zglinitski,
full, let us hope, of “vermicelli and tail ox.” He looks quite fresh
and rosy. I wish his “grandmamma” could see him as he jogs through the
Port de France. Ha! here comes the good Oberst, with the cares of that
horrible lager of French prisoners off his mind; and now he is on the
road again with a reasonable prospect of a fight. Behind him comes the
1st Battalion, marching splendidly; the houses echo again to their firm
tread; and the 2nd Battalion follows, with the portly Mecklenburgher
Major at its head, and young von Verzen, his adjutant, by his side.
Here comes Puttkamer, “the good old man,” as we used to call him,
who speaks English with a Scotch accent, because he learnt it from
a certain Jessie of northern extraction. What do I hear? Can it be?
Yes; it is the familiar, although still far-off, salutation of “Miss
Lucy, Lucy Long.” Verily there is von Hosius in the flesh, and a good
deal of that same, too. At his heels his Scotch terrier “Phipps,” and
by his side his trusty Fïscher, adept at pantomime and lover of salt
herrings. “_Kommen Sie mit?_” is the hearty question that greets me on
every side. _Ach nein_, worse luck, old friends. To the 2nd succeeds
the Fusilier Battalion, with the stalwart senior Hauptmann at its head,
its major is detached on another command. Company after company passes
me, the honest Kerle in the ranks grinning a kindly greeting to one
who had shared with them their roughs and smooths, chiefly the former,
goodness knows, for not a few weeks. Near the tail of all comes the
11th Company, my own, with stately Ertmann marching in its front. There
is a little darn on the right breast of his coat; you would scarcely
guess, to see his sturdy step and upright carriage, that it marks the
spot where entered the bullet that went through him on the 14th of
August. _Mein leiber Werth_, best of chums! truest of comrades! Shall
we ever meet again, I wonder? And as I live, here is Feldwebel Strauss
mended again after that unlucky bullet at the Brewery, and with the
company account-book sticking out of his breast as of old. They turn
the corner over the bridge, and my Metz friends are out of sight. Good
luck and plenty of fighting be their lot wheresoever the fortune of war
may carry them, and a glad home-coming when the _Friede_ comes at last!
END OF VOL. I.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Gustave von Alvensleben who commanded the 4th Corps is a full
general.
[2] I observe it has been asserted that the French in those earlier
battles did not resort to rifle-pits. Anybody asserting this who was
in sight of the operations must have been stone-blind. I have been in
dozens of them. The story of 800 and odd corpses having been found in
one after the battle of the 14th of August must have been a “goak”
perpetrated by some youngster on the staff eager to feed Germany
with sensationalism. There were two varieties of what the Germans
call schützen-graben. Of one the churchyard at Point du Jour is a
good example—a triangle surrounded with a low wall, which had been
loopholed, and with a trench inside for additional cover. The other
pattern consisted of a small half-moon excavation—the convexity toward
the enemy—the earth from the hole breasted up in front, over which the
marksmen fired in a kneeling position. The maximum garrison of one of
these rifle-pits must have been about twelve men, half of them firing
while the other half rested behind the shelter. To have packed throngs
of men into large rifle-pits would simply have been to provide so many
charnel-houses. Doubtless numbers of the little half-moons are still to
the fore on the battle-fields. It is easy to tell the French works from
the German by the objective of their convexity. The Germans, however,
converted many of them.
[3] I give no heed to the balderdash written about Bazaine’s
abandonment to sensual indulgence, of which I have been unable to find
a scintilla of unprejudiced and impartial confirmation.
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