I have said that there was no sleep for anyone in Gorze on the night

of the 16th of August. All who were not otherwise engaged were busy

among the wounded. But while the wounded groaned the leaders and the

staff had to work, organise, direct; for the victory was not won yet

by a great way. There was little access for outsiders to the busy

bureau of Prince Frederick Charles; yet I got a glimpse of it through

circumstances beyond my own control. While I was striving to soothe

into an approximation of coherency the landlady of the hotel, who

alternated between hysterics and vituperation of her species generally,

a couple of field-policemen took it into their honest heads to regard

me as a suspicious person, and forthwith conducted me to the bureau.

While justifying myself, a process which was not so difficult as it

had been the night before, I saw six orderly dragoons dispatched in

as many minutes in as many different directions. There was no staff

officer with leisure or inclination to enlighten a vagrant as to the

dispositions in progress, but this much I gathered that there was

urgent hurry for the bringing forward of every available man. What I

learned then must be supplemented by later information.

It seemed a foregone conclusion among the Germans that they were in

no case to resume hostilities on the 17th; nor did there seem much

apprehension that the French could take the initiative. By the morning

of the 17th there was every appearance that they had given up all hope

of opening up the southern road, and had indeed drawn back materially

from the position on the central road which they had held on the

morning of the 16th. It was not, however, blocked to them save by

detachments of German cavalry which patrolled it as far as Estain. The

German forepost line established after the fight of the day before,

extended from Ville-sur-Iron, north-west of Mars-la-Tour, in a slanting

south-easterly direction across the plateau till it struck the head

of the Bois de St. Arnould due south of Rezonville. The chain crossed

the southern chaussée between Vionville and Rezonville, a circumstance

showing how little ground the Germans had gained since the previous

morning. All through the night and during the early part of the 17th,

the several Army Corps were marching up and falling into the places

arranged for them in the council of war, and in the bureau over-night.

There was wonderfully little fuss and no confusion. Spicheren and

Vionville had been battles of occasion, joined without premeditation

or indeed expectation, and fought out as best they might, in what

manner and with what material was most available in the exigency. The

battle of the morrow was to be of another sort—one of the old formal

set battles, in which generals were to play with divisions and Army

Corps as with chessmen, were to elaborate combinations, to strike

preconcerted blows, to put forth their genius, science, experience,

and skill to gain the result they wished for. Not that the campaign

had not earlier been fertile in evidences of the possession of these

attributes by the men who directed the steps of the German armies. A

master-mind shone in every detail of the plan, of which the battles

of Spicheren and Vionville, occurring when they did, were incidental

excrescences, springing out of the pressure of a modification in the

circumstances.

Bazaine, crippled as he was by the action of the 16th, could not,

even supposing him tardily awakened to the danger of his position,

have made an attempt at extricating himself on the 17th. Drawn back

into a commanding position, with his right wing on Roncourt and

above the precipitous ravines of St. Privat-la-Montagne, his centre

on Amanvilliers, La Folie, and Leipsic, and his right on a natural

fortress, the plateau of St. Hubert, with Moscow on the right of it,

and Point du Jour on the left, and inclining backward over the ridge

to the left rear at Rozerieulles and Jussy, he held a position of

surpassing strength in itself, and wherein he was not actually debarred

from getting on to the central road by Verneville and Doncourt, while

with his right he kept open the northern road, emerging as it did from

his position at St. Privat. Had he elected he might have marched by

it on the 18th, and had a fair start of the Germans, whose nearest

point before they moved on that morning was several miles south of the

northern chaussée; but had he been ever so nimble he would have run

a fearful risk of being taken in flank, and in the best event would

inevitably have had his foes thundering on his rear by nightfall.

Let those who blame him confine their strictures to his unaccountable

sluggishness before the 16th. Let those who in cold blood urge that,

_coûte qui coûte_, he should have cut his way through the Germans on

that day, remember that in trying to do so he had exhausted all his

available reserves, except a portion of Ladmirault’s Corps. It was not

in the nature of things that he could have moved before midnight of

the 17th, and by that time the track he must have taken was scoured

by German patrols quick to send back the tidings of his movement to

the plateau of Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, by that time packed with

German Army Corps which had not suffered as had he the day before. No,

Bazaine was fairly out-generalled and out-manœuvred, and he accepted

the inevitable, greatly as it was his own fault, with conduct and skill

that to my thinking go some way toward redeeming his earlier mistakes.

I have used the word inevitable, but there was one chance open to him,

although a hazardous one, if he had been a man of prompt action. The

Thionville road leading into the valley of the Meuse at Longuion was

yet free from Prince Frederick Charles’s éclaireurs. By leaving one of

his corps d’armée in position about Amanvilliers and St. Privat with

orders to hold its ground as long as possible, and make a demonstration

as if with intent to use the northern road by Brie, falling back under

the guns of Plappeville when it could keep up the delusion no longer,

he would probably have gained a day’s start before the Germans would

have found out that his whole army was not still standing before them.

But the risks of such an attempt are apparent when it is noticed that

Prince Frederick Charles, had he been beguiled into spending the whole

of the 18th fighting with a single French army corps, would on the 19th

have still by the Brie road have been equidistant from Longuion with

Bazaine on his more circuitous route, supposing that the latter had

made all possible use of his start. If we consider that Bazaine, not

so much by his own fault as by the rottenness of the French system, or

rather want of system, of obtaining intelligence, had no conception

of the strength opposed to him, but on the contrary believed that on

the 16th he had fought all the German troops that were available for

the 18th, an additional reason is found for the line of action on

which he determined, nor is there any occasion to inquire into the

truth of the allegation that he felt himself not justified in quitting

Metz in its then condition of imperfect defence. Abuse him for what

we may, we cannot deny him the selection of a fine position on which

to stand the impact of an attack in force. Its natural strength was

worth to him at least an additional Army Corps. And he had strengthened

the fortress with judicious outworks in the shape of strongly-held

and carefully-fortified posts at St. Marie-aux-Chênes, Vernéville,

Gravelotte, and in the Bois des Vaux. His whole front was studded with

rifle-pits.[2]

Von Moltke and Prince Frederick Charles had imperfect knowledge of the

dispositions just detailed. They could not assure themselves whether

Bazaine had elected to stand and fight upon his ridges, or whether he

would not rather dash out upon the northern road, offering battle as

he came. It was necessary, therefore, to make dispositions to meet

both contingencies; and since the latter contingency was the likelier,

and, if it occurred, demanded the prompter dealing with, it behoved

the German leaders to commence the game with special reference to that

eventuality. The southern road was first of all to be securely blocked.

That task was assigned to the 7th and 8th Corps of the 1st Army, the

former lying in the western portion of the Bois de Vaux and the

eastern portion of the Bois des Ognons, standing in fine due south from

Gravelotte; the latter, touching the left of the 7th Corps, occupied

the western part of the Bois des Ognons, the Bois de St. Arnould, and

the Bois de Vionville. It stood south of Rezonville. Besides caring

for the southern road, and occupying a useful position in view of a

necessity on the part of the enemy for falling back on Metz, these two

corps served as a kind of stationary anchor for the 2nd Army to sway

from, or perhaps it would be a better illustration were I to liken

them to the fixed pivot on which it was to swing round should events

justify the movement. The 2nd Army had its front in a north-easterly

direction, parallel with the line of the northern road, which was

its first objective point, having relation to the contingency that

Bazaine would attempt to march off thereby. This front was composed of,

reckoning from right to left, first, the 9th Army Corps, which touched

von Göben’s left, and with the direction given it on Caulre farm;

second, the Guards, direction Doncourt; third, the 12th Army Corps

(Royal Saxons), direction Jarny. The second line was composed of the

troops that had been so severely mauled on the 16th, viz., the 3rd and

10th Corps. The 4th Corps was on its way toward Toul; the 2nd Corps was

not up, having only quitted Pont-à-Mousson early on the morning of the

battle.

King Wilhelm had been on the field on the forenoon of the 17th, and

before returning to Pont-à-Mousson, he had issued his formal orders

for the morrow. Wellington himself could not have been more laconic

or less devout. “The 2nd Army,” so wrote Moltke in his master’s name,

“will, early in the morning, at 5 o’clock, commence operations and

advance in échelon between Ville-sur-Iron and Rezonville. The 8th

Army Corps will co-operate in this movement with the 2nd Army on its

right. The 7th Army Corps will at first have the duty of covering

the movement of the 2nd Army against any demonstrations on the part

of the enemy from the side of Metz. The King’s further orders will

depend on the action taken by the enemy. Communications for his Majesty

will next find him on the height south of Flavigny.” Prince Frederick

Charles, quitting Gorze, quartered himself for the night between the

17th and 18th in Buxières. He was stirring early. What a subject for

a painter that morning gathering of the leaders of army corps by the

poplar-trees between Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, with the Red Prince

in their midst, brusque, curt, and emphatic! Around the group, conning

over a new slaughter, lay the ghastly evidences of a past. Mild-eyed,

handsome-faced Prince of Saxony; puffy, phlegmatic, _gros_ August

of Würtemburg; Alvensleben the aristocrat, with his thin clear-cut

features and bright hawk eye; Voights-Rhetz, with the shrewd, keen

look of a lowland Scot; Manstein, grim, grey, and determined; Göben,

of the massive head and thoughtful brow; these stand, in a roughly

defined circle, with their horses’ heads turned inward; and there

addresses them in a few short crisp sentences, the tall square man on

the powerful bay; he lets his hand drop on his thigh with an audible

thud, for he is very heavy-handed in every sense, this stalwart man

with the massive hair-clad jaw, the strong wide mouth, cruel in its set

resoluteness when the features are at rest, the well-opened piercing

eye under the splendid forehead, which, broad, square, and knotted

above the eyebrows, soars inexplicably away into calm benevolence. A

man this, in the tight red tunic, cast surely by nature in her special

mould for a great military leader. You might think with yourself, as

you looked at him, that you could not fancy him as a friend; look

again, and I dare swear you will fancy him far less as an enemy. Nor is

the Red Prince without friends, warm and jealous; if the women in the

French villages use his name as the Scotch peasants of old did the name

of the Black Douglas, to hush their babes wherewithal into awe-stricken

silence, his army would die for him to the last man, and I have seen a

pretty picture of bonny children climbing in loving trustfulness about

the knees of the heavy-browed and heavy-handed man. He does not detain

his generals long under the poplar-trees. One of them afterwards gave

me his laconic parting words, “Your duty is to march forward, find the

enemy, prevent his escape, and fight him wherever you find him.” And

Alvensleben the pious added in his quiet tones, “In the name of God,”

as the generals wheeled their horses outwards, and the little council

scattered.

Modern battle-fields are not like cockpits. Were that a real battle

which is ordinarily fought on Easter Monday on the Brighton Downs,

the spectators, who squat and lunch placidly on the Red-hill, would

find that commanding elevation very hot quarters. Generals, with the

perversity of human nature, do not make the convenience of spectators

the primary consideration in their dispositions, nor has any means yet

been discovered to enable the spectators to circumvent the inattention

to their convenience on the part of the military authorities, by being

in more than one place at the same time. The science of expeditious

and comprehensive war intelligence is still in its infancy. If the

millennium does not intervene through the zealous efforts of the

Peace Society, we may anticipate gigantic strides in this department

of catering for the avidity of the public, culminating perhaps in

opposition-balloons with a war correspondent in each hanging in

the air over the centre of the battle-field, and having a “special

wire,” per favour of Mr. Scudamore, leading direct into each Foreign

Editor’s room. But such appliances are for posterity. In the late

war, especially towards its commencement, the civilian spectator who

was not fortunate enough to be attached to a head-quarter staff (and

there were only three, I believe, to whom this well-deserved favour

was accorded) had to be thankful for very small mercies indeed. I

thought myself extremely lucky in not being interfered with when I

took up what seemed an eligible position at the edge of the wood of

St. Arnould, to the south of Rezonville. The forest land here throws

itself up into a little elevation, affording some command of the

rolling plateau to the north-eastward, with Gravelotte on its bosom,

the ridge of St. Hubert and Point du Jour beyond, and away to the north

on the horizon the bushy uplands of Vernéville, with the church spire

showing above the trees; yet here, as it was not difficult to discern

even at the time, and far more easy afterwards from sad _indiciæ_, it

was possible to witness only one phase of the battle, and that neither

the most critical nor the most decisive. I propose to narrate first

the occurrences of which I was the eye-witness here on the southern

edge of the field, and, having done so, to give then a short account

of the more northern operations, from the official documents and other

information I received afterwards from the Saxons and Guards, to whose

share fell so much of the heavy fighting on the German left and left

centre.

By half-past ten o’clock the 9th Corps was no longer visible on the

plateau about Vionville. It had gone off on its northern march, and

its place was occupied by the 3rd Corps, which swarmed all over the

gentle swells and depressions. On the breast of the higher ground

south of Flavigny there was a stationary group with led horses and

mounted escort behind, the dead of the 16th flecking the ground all

around. Orderlies and aides-de-camp galloped furiously from all points

to this stationary group—galloped furiously from it north, east, and

south. For here was the King; and here was von Moltke, with all the

ends of that seemingly-tangled skein gathered inside that marvellous

brain of his, behind the downcast inscrutable eyes. The 8th Corps, on

the fringe of which I stood, was showing itself out of the wood, and

feeling its way with no great decision apparently on to Rezonville,

whence ran the straight chaussée eastward into Gravelotte, the

southern outwork of the French front. There was little or no firing.

Now and then came a shell from the French batteries about Gravelotte,

tentatively as it seemed, to experiment as to the range, but the rare

reports only served to accentuate the lurid lull before the breaking

of the storm. The clouds presently clashed together, and the thunder

rattled out, coming down clear and booming on the wind from the

bosky coverts and the church spire of Vernéville. Nothing was to be

seen save the bursting of an occasional shell on the slope, but the

bickering volleys of musketry, giving the treble to the deep bass of

the artillery, told in language that could not be misinterpreted how a

hot and close fight must be going on out of our sight to the north. It

was about half-past eleven when the air first began to throb with this

din. Now it became apparent why the 8th Corps had been cropping out on

the plateau toward Rezonville. By mid-day the heads of the columns of

Weltzien’s division (the 15th) were pushing on north-easterly towards

Malmaison and the Bois de Genivaux, to take up the alignment with the

fighting further north. Barneckow’s division (the 16th), on the right

of the 15th, was pushing across the plain toward Gravelotte, in dense

broad columns, already half-deployed into line. Now we in the south

became familiar with artillery fire through another sense than that of

hearing. The German batteries went to action from Bagnieux southward

to the edge of the Bois des Ognons, pouring their fire into Malmaison,

the wood of Genivaux, and the village of Gravelotte. Nor were the

French slow to reply. It seemed as if the wood were one huge crater,

which incessantly vomited projectiles that tore through the air and

burst in the German ranks, strewing the plain with fallen men who were

left behind unheeded as the columns pressed ever on. Gravelotte, too,

was girt about with its zone of cannon and mitrailleuses, plied with

assiduous industry by gunners who must have known what of advantage

to the cause of France rested in their successful maintenance of the

advanced position. The cannonade for long was a drawn struggle, neither

side gaining much material advantage. But the slaughter of it was

terrible, and the Germans out in the open must have lost the most

heavily. How or when Gravelotte was at length taken I could not tell.

There was a gradual collapse in the French artillery fire, a ragged

deployment of their infantrymen in front of the village, a rush of

Barneckow’s men at the double, and a hellish mêlée of fighting that

seemed as if it would last for ever. On the deadly furnace of battle

the Germans perpetually piled fresh fuel. The Bois des Ognons emptied

itself on to the plain into a fearful plunging fire from the French

batteries on the heights of Point du Jour. The regiments struggled on

through it to precipitate themselves on Gravelotte; yet so fearful was

the shell-storm that beat on the plain to the south of Gravelotte,

between it and the woods, that the Germans had to swerve out from under

it somewhat, making a circuit so as to fall upon the village from the

west instead of the south. These were von Zastrow’s soldiers of the 7th

Corps. The Barneckows—whether it was they or the former who carried the

village I know not—had slanted away further to the north-east toward

the Bois de Genivaux, roughly aligning on its right with Weltzien’s

division. The French made a desperate stand in the wood, while by this

time their batteries at the Point du Jour were firing furiously into

Gravelotte—indication that it was no longer in French hands. I was told

afterwards that the hither edge of the Bois des Genivaux was carried by

von Göben’s soldiers at the point of the bayonet, and that they had to

push the French out of the wood by sheer bodily weight. Thus much was

not apparent from my position, although I had improved it by coming up

nearer the front; but there was no difficulty in discerning that the

fighting was desperate and protracted. All the while the din was to be

heard from the north out of the range of vision, but it seemed as if it

were now further back, whence the hope became common that the Germans

were faring somewhat better in the north than fortune suffered them to

do in the south.

Yet in the south there were gleams presaging a victory to achieve

which much had yet to be done. Von Göben had seemingly gained the

wood, gaining thereby no respite from the persistent firing of the

batteries at St. Hubert and Point du Jour. Von Zastrow, with intent

as it appeared to give his friends of the 8th Corps some relief from

this, had clothed the neighbourhood of Gravelotte, as soon as it was

in German hands, with four batteries from Kamecke’s Division, but the

reply to them was so strenuous that it seemed surprising how they were

able to keep their ground, while the continuous explosion of shells in

and about the Bois des Genivaux gave evidence that the 8th were still

in purgatory. As it seemed in bitter chafing at their sufferings,

ever and anon fierce attempts were made to crush the causes of them.

Dimly and vaguely only could the movements be discerned from where

I stood, but large detachments must have burst out of the wood, and

pushing down into the dip where was the bed of the Mance, breasted the

opposite slope, and debouched against Moscow and St. Hubert. Through

the glass I could see the broken battalions as they clambered piecemeal

out of the hollow, and tumbling together into approximate formation

strove to push on up the gentler slope. Then there came heavier smoke

banks on their right flank above the batteries at Point du Jour; the

batteries of mitrailleuses at St. Hubert raged like wild cats right in

their faces; the French infantry men, in position between St. Hubert

and Moscow, fringed their ranks with spurting white smoke from their

chassepots. It seemed as if, while a portion of the German attack fell

back, the other moiety had lain down to get some cover and to bide the

spending of the storm. True they had lain down, those soldiers who

did not retreat; but it was not for them more to rear themselves into

dressed ranks. It was for them to lie deeper yet, when the time should

come, under the sod on which they were now prostrate. Effort after

effort met with a similar fate, and at length the bootless and costly

efforts were suspended. Von Zastrow had strengthened his artillery by

Gravelotte, till, as I afterwards learned, he had fifty-four guns in

position there, under whose pounding the French fire at Point du Jour

somewhat slackened, giving at length some relief to the 8th Corps in

the wood to the northward. Zastrow boldly pushed infantry forward

in support of his artillery, which to say the truth seemed to have

rather incautiously worked themselves out to the front, so as to be in

danger should the French essay a rapid and energetic push from Point

du Jour across the ravine. Not content with this, it was clear that

he had determined on beginning the offensive on his own account. This

act of Zastrow’s is the war incident of Gravelotte which has been most

canvassed and controverted. It unquestionably resulted in disaster. As

unquestionably it was done in the face of his positive orders to hold

his own, and act as the stationary pivot for the corps to north of him.

And it is certain, too, that Zastrow acted on his own responsibility

in what he did, and in virtue of a certain far from narrow discretion

which the German military policy allows to officers of any rank when

placed in a position of self-reliance. Zastrow, it appears, had

little to guide him as to the state of matters in the north. The wind

had shifted as some say, and blew away from him the sound of the

cannonade by Amanvilliers, Montigny, and Champenoise. As others have

it, there was an actual lull in the firing soon after three o’clock,

about the positions named. It is urged in favour of Zastrow that this

inaudibility of the northern cannonade, from whatever cause, gave him

some right to conclude that the French centre and right had been thrown

back, and that the strenuous defence on the left was all that was

between them and complete defeat. If these his premises had been sound,

there is no doubt that Zastrow’s conclusion, and the action he based

upon it, were eminently creditable to his generalship. Had the French

right and centre really been pushed back while the left maintained

its ground, it is plain that Bazaine would have proceeded at once

to strengthen the latter with the troops driven back on the former,

since he could afford to disregard the progress of the German left and

centre, sure ultimately to be brought up all standing on the great

rear-buttress before which the French fought—the fortress of Metz. This

in fact was what Bazaine did some hours afterwards when the Saxons

had turned his right and the Guards had smashed his centre. Zastrow,

arguing accordingly, as it seems, judged that it would be good strategy

to anticipate any such strengthening for the French left by attacking

it at once, and forcing it to participate in the retrograde movement to

which he had concluded the centre and right were abandoned. Nay more;

a decisive move on his part on the extreme French left might let him

get through to their rear communications, and once in possession of the

throat of the great chaussée about Jussy, he blocked the chief line of

French retreat, while the 8th Corps, relieved from terrible torment by

St. Hubert and the Point du Jour, might debouch from the wood on to

the plateau, and take its position in the final crushing of the French

front.

How Von Zastrow reasoned I do not know; but he acted as if he had

reasoned in the groove I have indicated. A sanguine man, he had not

counted the cost of success, even if he should gain it; he had not,

indeed, sufficiently studied the question whether success at all were

possible. He shot his bolt, a self-reliant and over-confident archer,

and he failed even to get the distance of the target. It was close

on four o’clock when the offensive movement became perceptible. From

beside Gravelotte one brigade (the 25th, of Glümer’s corps) streamed

down into the ravine inclining south-easterly, and the slackened French

fire at Point du Jour kindling up upon them as they moved. Kamecke’s

division, which was already astride of the ravine where it penetrates

the Bois de Vaux, contributed the 28th brigade, which could be seen

pressing up to debouch on to the plateau of St. Hubert, where the

skirting wood ceases nearly due south of Point du Jour. The French

seemed to catch at the significance of the movement instantaneously as

it was begun: their infantry, rushing to the left through the poplar

trees on the chaussée, formed across the southern plateau, so as to

flank as well as front the Germans when they should come staggering up

on to this new battle-field. More batteries were dashed hurriedly into

position and got into fire. Those previously there swung their trails

round to the north somewhat, and their muzzles thus looked the way the

German brigades were toiling upwards. High up as were the French, the

depth of the ravine afforded the Germans miserably little cover from

their fire. For the French gunners could almost see into its bed; and

although the inverse rise could not be reached by a direct fire, they

yet let fall upon it a plunging fire which, from the steepness of the

slope, was much more destructive than plunging fires for the most part

are. The loss must have been terrible in those ranks while they were

struggling on to the debouchment. At length the edge of the wood and

the lip of the ravine was gained. You could see groups and isolated

men straggling out into the open and falling into formation in that

momentary confusion which always attends such a reorganisation. Just

then cannon, mitrailleuse, infantry fire, as if by signal, burst into

one fell combination of outpour. Had the formation been an inanimate

structure, it must have been battered down by sheer weight of metal;

how much less then could it stand, made as it was of sentient men!

There were efforts to make head against it nevertheless; detached

rushes of rash men who were not to be convinced of the impossible till

overtaken by arguments which crushed conviction in, while they crushed

motion and life out. It was piteous to watch the efforts. I have seen

sheep swept away in a spate swirling down a Highland glen—watched their

struggles as they caught foothold on a scaur, where the rushing water

shallowed, to get out of the vortex on to the firm land on the bank

that seemed so absurdly close; how the water kelpie seized them again

as they strove, whipped them remorselessly off their legs, and sent

them down stream again battling impotently, as they span in the eddies,

or were hurried down the rapids. The sight recurred to my recollection

as I watched those soldiers struggling grimly for foothold on the edge

of that deadly plateau. They would not give it up. Ever as one attempt

was beaten back and crushed down, there were men pushing staunchly

on to make another. It seemed such a little way, such a very little

way, up to the poplar trees there and to victory; surely, with the

goal so nigh, it was not to be thought of that it should be pronounced

inaccessible. A thief might as well have tried to steal the Koh-i-Noor

from its case in the Exhibition, as these men have persisted in their

struggles to get to those poplar trees through the storm of iron and

lead, the serried ranks, the densely lined rifle-pits, which were its

protecting show-case. “_Mörderisch_” was how one that had looked into

the eye of the fire till it beat him down, described that fire to me

the same night—a quiet, unemotional, blood-depleted Feldwebel, who had

been brought into Rezonville that the _Stabsarzt_ might judge whether

it was worth while tinkering at a man who had six bullet-holes in him.

Von Zastrow’s heart must have bled as he watched his Kinder going down

by sections. I know not whether an order came that the brigades should

give up the useless persistence in courting annihilation, or whether

they drew back in realisation of the insanity of such persistence. They

did abandon it, and shrunk back off the plateau, lying down on the

inverse bank of the ravine, screened from the enemy’s direct fire, but

exposed to the plunging fire, and raked by French infantry detachments

that had pushed forward to the brink of the ravine, further northward,

opposite St. Hubert. The batteries whose duty it was to support the two

infantry brigades had to seek the plateau by the only route practicable

for wheels—the chaussée crossing the ravine by deep cuttings and steep

fall and rise. They got down, as it appeared, into the ravine. We saw

them wheel off into the road and clatter down the Gravelotte slope at

a trot. Behind them, at a swinging canter to overtake the guns, dashed

a noble regiment of Uhlans. How gallantly the horsemen rode on their

way to death! Artillery and cavalry disappeared into the ravine. Was it

bottomless, then, that they never came out? The French infantry fire

spurted out of the rifle-pits on the further brink; several batteries

of mitrailleuses, in regularly constructed emplacements, took to

grinding sedulously their cursed output; the cannon further back on

the Point du Jour made practice over the heads of the mitrailleuse men

and the sharpshooters, down into the bosom of the gorge. The German

artillerymen did, as it appeared, get into action, with the muzzles

of their pieces sticking up into the air, but guns were dismounted,

and the gun detachments had to be reinforced over and over again, from

the reserves in the rear by Gravelotte. As for the Uhlans, the morrow

furnished a chart of their doings—a chart on which the courses were

traced in by dead men and horses. They had striven to charge up the

inverse slope of the chaussée on to the plateau of St. Hubert, and

they had failed. Men and horses, not many,—it must have been a mad

forlorn hope of reckless men,—lay on the roadway in the gutters, just

on the brink of the plateau; there were none further, but very many

all the way behind. If ever horsemen were wantonly butchered by being

sent where it was staringly impossible they could have been of service

unless their horses had been winged, those Uhlans were. I believe that,

after losing nearly half their number, they were got down the narrow

bed of the Mance, somewhere behind the position where the two infantry

brigades were lying. They might as well have been in the moon.

Except an effort to cover with infantry-fire in some measure the

batteries in the ravine, by the sending forward a couple of battalions

of the infantry brigade that had been kept in reserve, an interim

paralysis was forced upon the 1st Army. The firing still continued,

both artillery and musketry, quickening now without apparent cause,

now falling away for a little into a dropping fire; but of offensive

movements on either side there were none. The game had seemingly ended

in a stale-mate. Von Zastrow had little or nothing in hand, for, as it

appeared, he had sent a brigade away on a fanciful excursion through

the Bois de Vaux with a wide circuit to come in from the south upon

Jussy and outflank the extreme French left; a rash project, which,

the direct attack having failed, whose success must surely have

been assumed in devising the flank march, ought to have resulted in

the annihilation of the detached brigade, if the French had been as

enterprising as they were stubborn. Von Göben was jammed in the Bois

des Genivaux so long as the French fire from Moscow, St. Hubert, and

the Point du Jour could sweep him off the onward path. The 1st Army was

clubbed. Von Zastrow’s intended _coup de grâce_ was arrested; in his

haste not to be too late he had raised his arm too soon, and had spent

himself prematurely.

The Germans invaded France with armies whose numbers it is easy

enough to utter glibly off the tongue, but whose magnitude it is very

difficult adequately to realise. How many Britons have ever seen

30,000 armed men in a mass? We go to an Easter Monday review, and

see some 26,000 men march past a saluting point, and come home in

the notion that we have been looking at an uncommonly large body of

troops. Let our Easter Monday Volunteer Army stand as an equivalent

to a German army corps. The former takes about an hour and a half to

defile past the commander. The Germans had fourteen of the latter

in France to make war wherewithal, besides Landwehr divisions, a

Würtemburger contingent, and fortress artillerymen, equal, on a

moderate estimate, to two army corps more. At our Brighton pace a

whole day, just twenty-four hours, would be consumed in the marching

past of this half-million of men. There are obvious advantages in

war-making when your numbers are so large that you do not require to

stand particular about the absence or presence of an odd army corps

or two, when you can comfortably leave one as a force of observation,

dispatch another on a distinct measure of precaution, and reckon with

tolerable confidence on yet a third dropping in to help you finish off

your work with the greater thoroughness. This was the happy condition

of the Germans at Gravelotte. If you care to join in the French cry,

“Over-matched by two to one!” the Germans grimly meet you with the

rejoinder, “Why be overmatched then? or, if you cannot help yourselves,

why fly in the face of all experience of war, and roar ‘À Berlin!’ at

the head of your scantier levies?” War is not a game like a school-boy

boxing-match, where the spirit of fair play insists that there shall

be some approximation to an even match between the two combatants.

And even the school-green instinct of fair play does not stand in

the way of allowing the stronger boy to put forth his whole strength

when the weaker boy denies his weakness and is the challenger. The

opportunely arriving German army corps on the 18th of August was the

2nd, whom Fransecki had marched without a halt from Pont-à-Mousson to

Buxières on the southern rear of Mars-la-Tour. There, as it seems, the

Pomeranians had cooked and eaten, and, as giants refreshed, had come

on to Rezonville, eager to have a share in the day’s amusement. Thence

the King sent them into Gravelotte, to help Zastrow to a solution of

the problem in which he had got mystified. It was a strange, grand

sight to watch these fresh and splendid soldiers marching on in a

stream that seemed endless. Nobody knew, within such ken as we had,

whence the wonderful windfall had come. Some swore it was the 5th

Corps from the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army, that there was General

von Kirschbach himself on the grey horse, and that the Crown Prince

was in colloquy with his father at Rezonville. Others had it that it

was the 4th Corps which had thus turned up promiscuously. But be it

what it might, sure it was it did not dally by the way. The leading

regiments formed in front of Gravelotte, others went north-easterly, so

as to touch von Göben’s flank in the Bois des Genivaux. By this time

it was seven o’clock, and the setting sun going down in blood,—blood

in the sky as on earth,—cast his ruddy rays slantingly on the lurid

smoke-banks that overhung the battle-field, and battled with the yet

redder-forked tongues of fire which were bursting out of the burning

farm-buildings of Malmaison, where the wounded Frenchmen were being

roasted alive in miserable helplessness. There was a general advance.

The Zastrows straightened themselves up in their layer in the ravine,

and once more essayed to get a grip of the ground on its brink.

Fransecki’s leading brigade took the chaussée and the easier dells of

the ravine towards the Bois des Genivaux. The 8th Corps pressed the

branches aside and sprang out of the wood into the open, heading for

Moscow. Behind, all along the rear of the grand movement in which some

60,000 men were concerned, the artillery of the three corps shelled

incessantly the French positions. The scene in the deepening twilight

was inexpressibly splendid—with a splendour, however, that was baleful,

and made the flesh creep and the blood turn. Right gallantly did the

French stand up against the huge living wave. Their army was fighting

not for the feeblest chance of victory: hardly any conceivable freak

of the captious goddess could have given it that. But it was fighting

for something yet more critical than victory,—for its very life; for

if the Point du Jour were carried by the Germans, then von Zastrow’s

aspirations would have tardily yet surely been accomplished. The

beaten centre and right would have had their line of retreat invaded;

the defeat would have become a chaotic slaughter till the broken and

bewildered battalions, barred from the chief line of retreat, had

huddled somehow close under the guns of Plappeville and St. Quentin.

The men who stood at Point du Jour, St. Hubert, and Moscow had it in

their keeping to avert this terrible fate—to break the fall, all too

dislocating already, of their brethren of the centre and right. Nobly

they did their devoir. In numbers they could have been but slender as

compared with their assailants; but they had a position, the merits

of which were worth many men, and they were worthy of the position.

The night fell, and still the bright streaks of flame shot westward

from the batteries at the Point du Jour, evidence that French guns and

gunners still stood there. Gradually the tongues of flames ceased to

shoot forth, gradually a hush, such a contrast to the din of the day

that it was almost painful, came over the bloody field. The dogs of war

were satiated; they had lapped blood till they might lap no more. And

still the Frenchmen stood by the Point du Jour, keeping at bay the foe

while their friends defiled into safety behind the screen thus sturdily

maintained for them. The 1st Army had fought well and squandered life

recklessly; but spite of the late reinforcements it had to submit to

the failure of its capital enterprise. The foreposts all but touched

each other through the watches of the night. Those of the Germans were

made specially strong, for the day’s work had taught the watch-setters

respect for those men on the crown of the height above them. And what

of them? One knew nothing till the morning broke, and then it was found

that the shattered churchyard-wall, and the smashed and half-burnt

wayside houses, the rifle-pits and the battery emplacements were

silent, save for the groaning of the wounded left behind, and empty,

save of those and of the dead who lay beside them. The French, having

held the position so long as it was of use, had abandoned it, and by

six o’clock Fransecki’s forepost men, creeping cautiously forward to

the crown of the ridge, saw before them the brown scarp of Fort St.

Quentin, with the beaten French host clinging round its base.

The wearied and powder-grimed Germans threw themselves down on the

field, and slept among the dead who littered it. Bivouac fires were

sparse, the men were too spent with hard fighting to care for food

or warmth. They were lighted to their slumbers by ghastly chamber

candlesticks; by the pillar of fire that yet towered heavenward from

the burning Malmaison, and by another fire that showed over the horizon

by Verneville. In the darkness between nine and ten, there burst out

the din of a furious cannonade to the north, and the tired soldiers who

had piled their arms were made to resume them. But soon this in its

turn died away, and the battle-field was left in peace.

Having now recounted what I personally saw of the battle of Gravelotte,

I proceed to give a brief narrative of the occurrences which were

not within the scope of my observation. The position of the several

corps of the 2nd Army has already been detailed. By seven the three

corps forming the 1st line were already on their north-easterly

march in gigantic echelon of army corps. Their advance in this line

was directed, as I have stated, to meet the expected contingency

that Bazaine would attempt the northernmost of the three westerly

routes toward Verdun. The German leaders had as yet no information

warranting them in concluding definitely that this design had been

abandoned, although indications pointed in that direction. These

indications became so marked towards ten o’clock that Prince Frederick

Charles judged it wise at least to arrest the march designed to meet

a contingency, the occurrence of which was improbable; he therefore

halted the Saxons, the flanking corps on the left, at Jarny, and the

Guards at Doncourt; the 9th Corps had some time previously reached

Caulre, and were halted there, cooking their breakfasts. It was not

long before the Prince obtained additional assurance that the French

were contemplating no advance move, but had elected to give him battle

on ground of their own choosing on the plateau of Amanvilliers,

and, as it appears, the King in his southerly position was early in

possession of intelligence which led him to form the same conclusion.

It would appear, however, that neither von Moltke nor Prince Frederick

Charles had any idea that the French right was prolonged so far to

the northward as it was; but on the contrary had the idea that their

right flank rested on the village of Amanvilliers. It was in the light

of this impression that the Saxons got the order to march on Batilly,

where they would be close to Bazaine’s path if he should tardily move

off by the Brie road, while in the absence of any such endeavour, their

course was thought open to make an easterly sweep, and take in flank

the supposed French right in Amanvilliers, while an attack was being

made on that position in front.

The latter attack was entrusted to the 9th Corps, supported by the

Guards. Manstein marched his men off from Caulre about half-past ten,

and headed direct on la Folie by Verneville. It was at the latter place

where he experienced the first resistance from the French holding it

as an outpost position, and as soon as he showed his columns beyond

it, began the furious cannonade, which to us in the south had been the

token that the battle was begun in earnest. He had to fight his way

hard after passing Verneville. To get at the French position he had

to march through the interval between the Bois de la Cusse and the

north end of the Bois des Genivaux. The end of this gap toward Metz is

closed in by Amanvilliers and Montigny-la-Grange; and here the French

were posted in great strength, and indeed took the offensive against

Manstein as he strove to deploy. He was not strong enough to make

much impression on the position. Part of his artillery he got forward

nearly as far as the farm of Champenoise, which was terribly mauled by

his shell-fire, and with a part of Wrangel’s division he occupied the

edge of the Bois de la Cusse fronting toward Amanvilliers, supporting

the infantry by several batteries. The Guards, in the meantime, had

in part received another direction, the result of Prince Frederick

Charles’ appreciation of the fact that the French right extended

further than he had at first reckoned upon. Von Pape marched his first

division over Jouaville to Habonville, on the north of the Bois de la

Cusse, while Budritski, whose first orders were to march his division

(the 1st) on Verneville to support Manstein, had his course presently

altered also upon Habonville. St. Privat was found strongly held by

the French, and as it would have made a gap in the German line had the

Guards gone so far north as to attack it, recourse was had to artillery

practice to drive the French out of it. From a position between St.

Ail and Habonville, Prince Hohenlohe, the General commanding the Guard

artillery, converged on St. Privat the steady fire of no fewer than

fourteen batteries of artillery, or, in other words, of 84 guns. Under

the personal orders of Prince Frederick Charles, who visited that part

of the scene of action between one and two, this pitiless fire was

persevered in for more than an hour, as a means of marking time till

the Saxons should come up on the left; and Prince Hohenlohe was able

gradually to improve the positions of his batteries directed against

St. Privat. But although the Saxons, pressing on from Jarny, were true

to time, it was found that there was other work for them still further

on the left. The French were in force also in St. Marie-au-Chênes,

and before the Saxons could co-operate with Prince August against St.

Privat, it was necessary to sweep this obstacle out of their path, and

also to ascertain exactly how far this French right, ever seemingly

elongating itself further and further, really did extend. Prince George

of Saxony with the 24th Division, supported by a brigade from von

Pape’s left, fell upon St. Marie, while Montbe, with the 24th Saxon

Division, swept round by Auboué and found that at length he was on the

right of the French flank, and had at last got their weather-gauge. It

was half-past three already when the Saxons (23rd Division) had carried

St. Marie, and were ready with the 24th, looking now straight at

Roncourt, to co-operate with the Guards in an attack on the formidable

position of St. Privat. Meanwhile Manstein with his 9th Corps was not

prospering. He had got a grip of the gap with Amanvilliers in its

throat, and of the two woods flanking that gap; but farther he might

not come. Amanvilliers was a position of great natural strength, and

the French had accumulated about it a force of artillery which fairly

coped even with the strong artillery that Manstein had brought into

opposition. Fifteen of his guns were dismounted or otherwise rendered

unserviceable by the French fire.

It was with difficulty that his infantry, by the Chantrenne Farm

and the north-east corner of the Bois des Genivaux, could maintain

themselves against the repeated and furious attacks of the French from

la Folie, raked as they were also by mitrailleuse and artillery fire

from Amanvilliers. On his right, the Hessians in the Bois de la Cusse

were lacerated by a persistent infantry and mitrailleuse fire from the

hamlet of Jerusalem, while the French artillery at St. Privat, firing

over Jerusalem, showered shells upon the wood; and, in short, so far

from being able to pursue the offensive, he had quite his work to hold

his own. But the advantage of practically unlimited reserves told in

his favour. The 3rd Army Corps had been marched on Verneville, and

halted there. Its artillery was available to support Manstein, and it

was used in this way, as also was a portion of its cavalry. Then the

Guards and the Saxons were perfecting their dispositions for storming

St. Privat, and that would relieve his pressure from the left. Already

before five the Guards were distracting the attention of the French

holders of Jerusalem. The Garde Schützen Regiment had spread itself

through the sparsely wooded Bois, and were scrambling forward through

the underbrush. Soon the whole of the 4th Brigade of the Guards was

marching on St. Privat from Habonville, and it was speedily followed by

the bulk of von Pape’s division from St. Privat. The Guards got near

St. Privat, but they could not get into it. It was held by the French

with inveterate stubbornness, and the natural strength of the position

backed their defensive efforts. Prince August of Würtemberg had to hold

his hand, and betake himself to artillery fire till assured of the

co-operation of the Saxons, who were marching southward from Roncourt.

The 10th Corps, too, was summoned close up in reserve, and, indeed, a

part of Kraatz-Koschlau’s division actually took part in the storm. At

half-past six the Guards, standing waiting on the south and west, heard

the music of the Saxon guns from the north, and then the von Papes got

the word to show of what metal were the Prussian Guards. They stormed

furiously into the place; as furiously came Montbe’s Saxons in from the

north. The double attack carried St. Privat; but after the Germans were

in it, the French refused to go out, and had to be turned out, fighting

desperately every step of the way, and causing terrible loss to their

assailants before the operation was accomplished. Thus the French had

their right flank turned, and were forced from the strong position

on which it had rested. They were rolled backward into the woods of

Jaumont and Saulny, but not utterly broken or completely disheartened.

For it seems unquestionable that Bazaine was able to march toward the

maintenance of his left-wing position at Point du Jour not only a

portion of the Imperial Guards who constituted his reserve, and of

whom he had made some, but hardly a sufficient, use during the day, but

also some of the troops who were engaged at St. Privat, and who were

moved under cover of the forced attack made on Manstein’s position from

Amanvilliers, just at nightfall.

How was it faring with Manstein while Prince August was relieving

him of one embarrassment by carrying St. Privat? He, too, had made

an offensive attempt on Amanvilliers simultaneously with von Pape’s

push at St. Privat, sending forward a brigade of the Hessians and a

part of Wrangel’s Division in combination with a detachment of the

Guards detailed from the right of that corps, the whole supported by

the artillery of the 3rd Corps. But even now Manstein could not get at

the heart of the French centre in Amanvilliers, Montigny, La Grange,

nor could his artillery get the dominance over that of the French.

Alvensleben with his 3rd Corps was close up, and prepared to back up

the labouring 9th Corps with the whole of Buddenbrock’s Division.

But Buddenbrock’s men were not to be used just then in an offensive

movement, for as they were coming the French took the initiative in

great force, and hurled large masses of infantry on the Bois des

Genivaux. It is a moot point whether the Imperial Guard participated in

this attack in any strength. Next day, behind la Folie, I saw several

dead Guardsmen, and after the capitulation of Metz an officer of the

corps told me that a whole brigade of the Guards had been in action

about Amanvilliers late in the day. If this was the case, it must

have suffered little in proportion to the line regiments engaged, for

the crop of corpses in Guard uniforms was comparatively very scanty.

This late effort on the part of the French, made in twilight that had

deepened into darkness before it was finally quelled, could scarcely

have had any other object than to mask the retirement of the beaten

right wing. It answered its purpose then not inefficiently, and there

seems no ground for concluding that the Germans succeeded at all that

night in carrying the position of Amanvilliers any more than the

southerly one at Point du Jour. But it must have been tenable only on

sufferance and by the favour of the darkness, and like Point du Jour

it was abandoned in the early morning. The Saxon cavalry, with dashing

enterprise, penetrated the northern forests the night of the battle

and cut the railway and telegraphic communications between Metz and

Thionville. By the following night the ring of Germans around Metz was

well defined.

The battle of Gravelotte was both positively and relatively less bloody

than that of Vionville. With more than double the number of troops

engaged on the former day as compared with the latter, the Germans

lost about 14,000 men; the French probably about the same number.

What force Bazaine had in the field is difficult to estimate. When he

surrendered, his strength, 173,000 men, was as surprising as it was

inexplicable on the estimates to which the Germans had access. It

seems impossible that he could have had fewer than 150,000 men at his

disposal on the 18th of August; and it seems equally impossible that a

man in possession of his senses, even without a scintilla of military

capacity, should not on such an occasion have mustered out to the last

man.

About noon on the 19th, I crossed over the ravine of Gravelotte, where

in the gutters of the chaussée the blood of the Uhlans stood in red

puddles, and pushed on past the ruins of the Auberge of St. Hubert and

up to Point du Jour. The burying parties had hardly begun their work,

the wounded were still lying on the slopes in great numbers. From the

sharp angle formed by the chaussée, where it turns sharp to the south

above St. Hubert, I went forward on the old Roman road over the flat.

The Germans had not lost a minute. Already they were reversing the

front of what the day before had been French battery emplacements and

rifle pits. The replis lay behind entrenchments shaded by boughs of

trees which the French had cut. And the French looked so strangely

near—seemingly just over the way. They were encamped in peace on the

slopes and the summit of Mont St. Quentin, the white _tentes d’abris_

clustering round the fortress, and the smiling villages on the slopes.

The scene was like a gigantic pic-nic or a gipsy camp, with the French

tents beyond, and the Germans lolling in their bowers. There was no

formal truce, but the peace was unbroken. Fort St. Quentin might have

shelled the plateau where lay the Germans—in the morning, indeed, it

had sent two shells into a group of mounted men standing before the

detached house at the sharp turn of the road; but it seemed as if this

had been merely a kind of formal protest against any supposition that

it was not solely of its own will and pleasure that the fortress was

quiet. The assertiveness was too emphatic to have been agreeable to the

two dragoons killed by one of the shells; but the Germans were quite

content to concede what they could not well have challenged, all the

more readily because St. Quentin rested satisfied with the somewhat

grim formality.

For a day or two immediately after Gravelotte there was a good deal

of confusion as regarded several matters in the army which lay on

the battle-field where so many gallant soldiers were yet without

graves. The commissariat arrangements were hardly equal to the strain

put upon them, while the great dearth of water, and the badness of

quality in what was to be found, combined with the already ripe taint

of putrefaction, the heat of the weather, and the revulsion from the

excitement of the battle, to stimulate disease among the soldiers. Men

who had to trust to the field-post for the transmission of letters, had

their tempers sorely tried. On the 19th I consigned a letter to a fussy

but civil functionary who was in charge of a field-post wagon a little

way in front of Rezonville, and who professed his expectancy to start

“_gleich_,” which experience had taught me was a very elastic word. I

found the field-post wagon was still stationary the following morning,

the civil and fussy gentleman cooking at a bivouac fire a diabolical

mess, consisting of fat bacon, onions, biscuits, minced something or

other (it might have been postage stamps), coffee-grounds, and rice,

while his horses placidly slept the sleep of the just as they stood

ready harnessed for the start, even as they had done on the previous

night. Again the courteous official professed his belief that he was

to start _gleich_, although he owned that he had not the remotest idea

what was his destination. In reply to my proposal to take my letter

away and give it to some other less indefinite field-post, he professed

his readiness to give it up, but advised me not to make bad worse. The

ultimate result was that the letter miscarried altogether, and it was

the case that letters which did arrive took longer time in reaching

England from Gravelotte and the vicinity about this period, than they

did from before Paris at a later period of the war.

On the morning of the 20th August I revisited the flat in front of the

hamlet of St. Hubert, on which were stationed the German outposts,

behind the entrenchments which they had been steadily working upon, and

from which, the day before, the French army was visible, lying on the

face of Mont St. Quentin, and around the villages of Scy, Lessy, and

Lorry. To my surprise the French had totally disappeared. On the Friday

the ground was white with their tents, around which swarmed the brisk

gentlemen in the red trousers. Now, on the Saturday, not a tent or a

pair of red trousers was visible. The surly fortification on the top

of Mont St. Quentin frowned across in its solitude, the church-spire

of Lorry smiled in the sunbeam that slanted across it, but the traces

of a great army had as completely disappeared as if the ground had

opened and swallowed up the host. I followed the concavity of the

German semicircular entrenchments round to the left through the corner

of the wood of Chatel, which extends under various names, but in one

continuity, as far as Saulny, which is nearly due north from Metz. The

Germans held the wood, and were entrenching its verge. Thus, within my

own observation, a German belt extended thus early around Metz, from

the Moselle at Moulins, in a sweep first to the west and then to the

north, till it reaches within a mile and a half of the Thionville road.

The troops which lined this belt consisted chiefly of Prince Frederick

Charles’s army. The completion of the ring was taken up by the army

of General von Steinmetz. His district, so to speak, began at the

Thionville road, and swept round the eastern semicircle of environment

to the Moselle below Metz. Of course a space of such a magnitude as

is here indicated could not in so short a time be invested with that

closeness which would have been the case had the siege been simply

that of a fortified town and citadel. But the investment was close

enough for this,—that the army which was inside could not hope to get

outside without fighting a pitched battle. Such a force as that of the

French lying in and around Metz was not like the garrison of a detached

fort, capable of an effort at cutting its way out by a sudden sortie.

It must, as it seemed, break the cordon in form, and with warning

sufficient to admit of a German concentration to oppose the endeavour.

In view of the long and weary inaction which the soldiers of the 1st

and 2nd Armies endured while summer waned into autumn, and autumn had

all but chilled into winter, it may not be uninteresting if I quote the

_ipsissima verba_ of a passage which I find in the notes which I made

on this 20th of August, as calculated to show how, even thus early,

circumstances rendered it possible to forecast the policy of the German

leaders.

“Hitherto the German army has taken the _rôle_ of aggression, and

the French army has stood solely on the defensive. On the part

of the Germans the aggressive tactics hitherto have been at once

politic and characteristic in a national sense. It was necessary as a

feature of the German programme that the French army of Metz should

be got “into chancery,” and that there should be some desperate and

decisive fighting, in which might be demonstrated the impossibility of

resistance to the fury and persistency of the German assaults. Both

these ends have been accomplished. The army of Metz is beleaguered

under its walls, the armies of Steinmetz and Prince Frederick Charles

grimly standing sentry over it. The steep of Gorze, the plains of

Vionville, of Rezonville, and of Gravelotte, the ravine beyond it,

and the plateau of St. Hubert, strewn as they are with German dead,

but left, nevertheless, in the rear of the unrelenting advance of the

German host, bear bloody but unquestionable testimony to the fury and

obstinacy of their attack. Thus the double purpose is attained. Now,

therefore, the German tactics undergo an alteration. The children of

the Fatherland will no longer spill their blood in attacks which would

be purposeless, and therefore wanton; they await in their turn the

assaults of the beleaguered French army. Sooner or later that assault

must come. Want of supplies must precipitate the assumption of the

offensive on the part of the French. But if they can manage to live

till Christmas on the traditional French wealth of resources in the way

of edible matter, it will not accord with German policy to attack them.

So long as they are surrounded as they are now, they are harmless; if

they would break the environment, and become again dangerous, they must

fight for the freedom. The German leaders will not court the affray.

Why should they, since their great object is the maintenance of the

blockade? But since this is their object, it may well be imagined how

they will resist any attempts to raise that blockade.” It afterwards

fell to my lot to be an eye-witness of the manner in which at least one

of those attempts was resisted.

And was this investment of Metz, then, with its result, to all

appearance, postponed indefinitely and uncertain, to be the end of

all the German forced marching after Spicheren; of the rapid push

across Lorraine; of the double battle above Gorze; of the German dead

whose corpses are fertilising the plains of Vionville and Gravelotte;

of the thousands of wounded who cumbered the towns and the villages

all the way in the rear to Cologne and Mannheim? No. While there was

another French army still in the field it was not for the Germans to

linger about the scenes of their victories, and take to Lord Russell’s

policy of “Rest and be thankful.” Prince Frederick Charles and General

Steinmetz were reckoned, together, capable of sitting on the brink of

the French well at Metz, and looking down on the French army in its

depths. The Crown Prince, his army rested and refreshed in la belle

Nancy, was already pushing westward, giving the contemptuous go-by to

the obdurate little Toul. Already we heard rumours that his cavalry

scouts were swarming in the valley of the Marne. About St. Marie,

Amanvilliers, the blood-stained St. Privat and the battered Jerusalem,

the picked soldiers of Germany—the army corps of the Guards, the Royal

Saxons with their lissome dash, and the slower-pulsed Saxon Province

men of the 4th Corps, were making haste to bury their dead, and were

girding up their lines, to form a new—a 4th—army under the command of

the Crown Prince of Saxony, and march westward and northward along the

river from which the army took the name under which it made itself

famous.

In a day or two the hotels of Pont-à-Mousson were to lose the custom

of the princes and counts who were on the royal staff, for the King

was to strike southward _viâ_ Commercy, and joining his son at Ligny,

accompany the 3rd Army in what seemed then was to be the straight, if

not the bloodless road to Paris. What had occurred before Metz was but

the first act of the tragedy, what should occur thenceforth in its

vicinity was in this Titanic drama only “secondary business;” the piece

was to be played on and out nearer and yet nearer to the torn heart of

France.

But enough of what then was the future. On Saturday the 20th I

traversed the whole of the battle-fields of Tuesday and Thursday, and

the outward and visible signs of slaughter more and more convinced me

that the fight of the former day had been unquestionably the fiercer

and the more hotly contested. Let me attempt to give some idea of what

may be termed the area of slaughter in the two days’ fight. Within a

space of about six miles in length by four in depth there was not a

space so large as Piccadilly Circus that did not bear some token that

one or more men had fallen upon it. Now the tokens were dead bodies,

sometimes straggling so that several yards intervened, sometimes so

close that you could hardly step without treading on the dead; again

they consisted of bloody coats, pieces of linen, helmets, cuirasses

with the tell-tale holes in them, knapsacks riddled by bullets, dead

horses all but blown into fragments by the bursting of shells. The

lines of demarcation between the German and the French dead were in

places drawn with almost mathematical accuracy. On one of the roads

leading up the steep slope out of Gorze I came on an outlying part

of the table-land where the Germans lay very thickly. It looked as

if they had advanced in a column along the road, for its margin was

quite bordered with the dead. Here it was where the column had come

up which an American of genius and fancy likened to a great anaconda,

pushing forward with long tortuous folds till a battery opened on its

hinder parts and amputated and all but destroyed its tail. Then I came

to the place where the column had struggled into deployment and had

got within the fatal 200 yards’ distance of the Frenchmen. The latter

lay far thicker then than the Germans had lain in the first space.

Burial parties were at work at this place, but seemed bewildered to

decide where to make a beginning. I advised one of the officers to

double-trench the ground all over, laying the dead along the hollow

of each successive trench, something like a celery bed; so many were

they that this market-gardening style of grave would have been, I

am convinced, the best plan for getting them out of sight; saving

transport to isolated grave-pits, and lessening the temptation to bury

too near to the surface, which is always strong with burial parties

who have excavated with labour a large pit, into which they are

anxious to crowd all the corpses in the neighbourhood, regardless of

the fact that the uppermost are so near the surface that the plough of

the next spring must uncover their remains. The surface of the little

churchyard of Gravelotte had been raised three feet all over in one

day. The church had been crowded with the most severely wounded in the

Thursday’s battle, and as the poor fellows died they had been carried

out into the churchyard. This with its loopholed wall had been the

scene of a desperate stand on the part of the French, and already had

more than its own share of corpses: so that, when I had seen it on the

Friday, the bodies, chiefly of Frenchmen, were lying two deep all over

its edge. The interior of the church was a sight I never can forget.

Most know the ornamental character of these Catholic churches on the

Continent, the meretriciously decorated altar, with the pictures, the

candles, and what not. The white altar-cloth was splashed with blood,

the floor was bedded all over with the wounded, and the atmosphere had

become tainted and malaria-laden. In the churchyard I had noticed the

little wooden memorials over the village dead, with the wreaths of

immortelles around them, sticking up through the stacks of dead. To-day

they were out of sight, covered with the earth that had been thrown

over all as the easiest and quickest method of a wholesale interment.

I have referred to the “fatal 200 yards” of the Germans. Always the

attacking force, as they had hitherto been, their fire was confessedly,

and in the nature of things, wilder than that of a body waiting

in a stationary position for them to come; and it was ever at the

long-range distances that the French did so great execution among them

with the chassepot. As to the question of the comparative accuracy

of the zund-nadelgewehr and the chassepot as weapons of precision at

long range, the Germans did not as yet appear inclined to express an

opinion, yet one might gather even thus early what a terrible respect

they had already learned for the weapon which they afterwards confessed

to be “pale death” itself. But when they got within the 200 yards,

and brought their needle-guns down to the point-blank range, then it

was that their fire was of the “fatal” character I allude to. French

prisoners with whom I spoke told with a shudder of the shower of

bullets from the needle-gun at and within this range, that fell upon

a column about the breasts and faces of the men, and against which

nothing could stand. It is only on such vantage grounds as the top of

the Spicheren or the edge of the ravine above the Gravelotte ravine

that the French stood up for any time against this fire of the Germans.

Before quitting the position before Metz, on Monday, the 22nd August,

I took a final walk along the foreposts on the Gravelotte side. The

entrenchments of the Germans were now nearly complete, and although

rough and ready, were very artistic in their formation. Sentries were

stationed on the brink of the valley lying between Mont St. Quentin

and the Chatel plateau, with strong piquets lying concealed in their

rear. From their position I could see with the glass into the mouths

of the heavy cannon of Fort St. Quentin, which looked strangely close.

Going along a little to the right, in the direction of the Moselle, I

was able to turn, so far as eyesight was concerned, the shoulder of

Mont St. Quentin, and lo! stretched out before me lay the beautiful

plain of Metz, with the river gleaming in the sunshine, the spires

and roofs of the town sparkling brightly, and the gloomy mass of Fort

Bellecroix—the finest work of Cormontaigne—grimly covering the right.

The German cordon, I was assured by a staff officer, was now completely

drawn round Metz, and Thionville was also invested. There was every

appearance that the armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz

had quietly settled themselves down in their position. Crimean men have

been wont to assert that the French were the best constructors of huts

in the world, but I question whether the Germans do not excel them. All

along these tablelands they had built themselves dainty little leafy

habitations out of the branches and bark of the poplar trees that line

the roads, and seemed as comfortable as if they were at home in their

cottages in the Fatherland. As I passed one of the regiments its band,

standing in a circle, was practising one of Mendelssohn’s masterpieces,

the men enjoying the strains _sub tegmine fagi_, while all around the

burying parties were engaged in burying not only their own but their

enemy’s dead out of their sight.

On returning to Pont-à-Mousson, from my first start to Thiaucourt, I

had determined to walk no longer, but at once to invest in a horse, if

one was to be procured in the town. This at first seemed doubtful, for

the Germans had made a very exhaustive levy, but ultimately I chanced

on a horse-dealer whose stud had not quite been swept away. He was one

of the most marvellously stolid men I have ever seen, half German, half

French; the blended blood seemed wholly to have stagnated in his veins.

Almost the only sign of animation he evinced was a wink, but then that

wink was remarkably expressive. I was fortunate. He had an admirable

horse in his stable, sure-footed, fast, easily kept, and in fact a

compendium of equine virtues. But—bother the buts, they always crop up

in such cases—this paragon of animals had one little drawback, he was

stone-blind. Now there sometimes are advantages connected with a blind

horse—that is, if he is a reasonable animal otherwise. He trusts his

rider and will go straightforward courageously, till the rein gives a

hint to turn to the right or the left. There is no fear of his shying,

because to him there are no objects of alarm. He commonly has good

action and a light mouth. In view of all this I directed the blind

horse to be saddled and brought forth. I mounted and set him a-going.

It is cruel to be hard on the misfortunes of a fellow-creature, but

this horse must have had a mental organisation as opaque as the pupils

of his eyeballs. Three steps in any one direction were enough for

him, then he tried another, and so continued this process, totally

insensible to any suggestions on the part of his rider. He ran his

nose against a house, and then he all but fell over a plough; finally,

in one of his tacks, he broke the glass of a general’s carriage, and

brought down a “Donner wetter” or two upon my head. Tired as I was

of walking, I became fully impressed with the fact that it would be

cheaper to walk ten miles than to ride the blind horse one, even if

such a feat were possible, and, dismounting, I led him back somewhat

ignobly to the stable. The horse-dealer winked solemnly, bestowed a

caress on the abominable brute, and expressed his astonishment that I

should not have found him all that could be desired. The excuse was,

that he had always been driven alongside of another beast, and the

deprivation of his companion had demoralised him. But I was bidden be

of good cheer, the horse-dealer was still assured that he would be

able to accommodate me. After a little delay another steed was brought

forth. He was “long and low”—the true Leicestershire desiderata.

The length was principally in the neck, which resembled that of an

ostrich; the lowness was in the back, which curved downward so that

his withers and rump stood up like two sharply-pronounced hills. His

colour was a dirty-white; he had capped hocks, a pair of most villanous

recently-broken knees, and a wicked backward cast in his eye that

said very little for his temper. His appearance was certainly not in

his favour, but remembering the adage never to trust to appearances,

and being assured he was a remarkable performer, I mounted and got him

under way. He went decently enough to the end of the street; but when a

battery of artillery came along the cross street at a trot he soon gave

me a sample of his remarkable performances. He declined to go forward

at any price, but instead he was open to kicking as freely as the heart

of man could desire. He kicked the battery into the direst confusion,

wriggling about here, there, and everywhere, continually elevating that

prominent rump of his, and struggling furiously to get his head down. I

thought I should have had to choose a favourable moment and dismount,

leaving him and the battery to settle it between themselves, but at

length I got his head homewards, and then he suddenly subsided, and

walked to his stable as if he had done something to be proud of.

The horse-dealer winked again as I returned a second time, and said he

had still another beast. The past experience was not of a character

to tempt further experiments, but I wanted a horse badly, and I knew

this was my last chance; so I told them to bring him out. He was a

very conscientious-looking quadruped, slightly monumental as to his

legs, but then he had a bold Roman nose, and a tail possessed of what

may be styled the Grecian bend of horsetails. My heart warmed to him

at once, for, like myself, he was an old dragoon. He had been cast

from a French cavalry regiment in some remote age, and had since been

engaged, judging by the collar marks, as a beast of burden. Well, I

started with this animal for a third trial, and to do him justice, his

conduct did not belie his conscientious aspect. He plodded forward

steadily at a kind of compound of a walk, a trot, and a canter; he

seemed to be walking with his fore legs, trotting with one of his

hind legs, and cantering with the other. The effect was novel, if not

wholly agreeable, and then he really got over the ground very fairly.

On the day of Gravelotte he carried me uncommonly well, his ancient

military training making him stand fire like an adjutant’s horse, which

is generally too depressed in spirits to manifest emotion at anything

short of an earthquake. I began to get very sweet on him, although

the scarcity of keep was a considerable inconvenience. There was but

little bother with him on the Thursday night. When I joined the bivouac

I fastened him to the end of a row of cuirassier horses that were

picketed close by, and the men gave him of their oats and hay. But they

went away next morning, the bivouac broke up, and fresh quarters had to

be sought. In one of the houses of the deserted village of Gravelotte I

found a room which was tenanted only by two sorely wounded men and an

hospital attendant. All the other houses were packed full of wounded,

and one was in luck in getting the use of a chair, and of the common

frying-pan in which to cook a piece of bacon bought from a marketender.

But there was no room for the horse, and if there had been, he would

not have been the best company for the wounded men. I tied him up

outside while I ate, wrote, and slept, and then late in the afternoon

it struck me that he must be thirsty. I rode the brute a circuit of

some five miles in search of water, and when I got back it was all but

dark. On entering the room I found one of the wounded men lying dead,

and the other removed along with the hospital man. It was not pleasant

to occupy the same room with the poor dead fellow, and luckily an empty

stable turned up next door with plenty of hay in the loft. Having fed

the horse copiously, I adjourned among the hay to sleep, and in the

morning I found my noble steed was gone! Perhaps he had broken the

fastening, and walked away of his own accord; perhaps a passing suttler

had stolen him. Anyhow he was clear away, leaving me as a memento the

saddle and bridle. These, which were of the nature of a white elephant,

I was glad to get rid of for a box of cigars, and fortunately my

comrade turned up from Pont-à-Mousson with a carriage horse, and driver

that by some inscrutable means he had discovered there unrequisitioned.