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.