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.