CHAPTER IV.

SEDAN: BEFORE AND AFTER.

Having made up our minds to quit the beleaguerment of Metz and strike

off in a southerly direction with intent to hit on the march of the

Crown Prince’s army, we started off rather vaguely on the 22nd of

August, and reached St. Mihiel, a small town on the Meuse, the same

night.

Now it seems hardly to be realised how difficult it was in the times

of which I am writing to get reliable information, or to guard against

being led away by some baseless rumour. I remember we lost the whole of

the 23rd by slanting away to the north-west as far as a village called

Fresnes, by reason of a circumstantial, but untrue story, to the effect

that a battle was imminent under the walls of Verdun. When we quitted

St. Mihiel for Bar-le-Duc on the morning of the 24th we could get no

certain information whether it was as yet safe to go to Bar-le-Duc.

We travelled with a column as far as Villotte, and then the troops

struck away to the north in the direction of Vaubenoit. In answer to

questions at Villotte, it was not to be learned that any German troops

had taken the road to Bar-le-Duc, which lies through that village.

There had been fighting, the villagers lyingly said, somewhere to the

south-west, and the road to Bar-le-Duc ran south-west. Going on upon

chance, we presently came into a deeply-wooded defile, extending for

several miles. Not a German was visible; indeed, nothing human was to

be seen. The place was calculated to make one nervous, especially when

one’s driver had a fixed belief that there was a Frenchman behind every

stump. He was a Luxemburger, and therefore theoretically a neutral, but

I think he sympathised with the _grande nation_.

Possibly no reader has ever practised the art of reconnoitring from an

open carriage, and I may describe the process. You cautiously advance

till you reach an angle; then you steal round it and halt, and sweep

the whole front and flanks with your binocular. Nothing suspicious

is visible, so you trot along the straight till you approach another

turn, when you repeat the cautious tactics. You get along at the rate

of about two miles and a half an hour. If you see anything suspicious,

such as the smoke of a camp fire, you cautiously retire your machine

and make a pedestrian reconnoissance. Of course, with all this caution,

we reached Vaires in perfect safety, and found it full of Bavarian

cavalry, who told me that their army was in great force in Bar-le-Duc

and ever so much farther forward. About two hours after we got into

Bar-le-Duc we saw the old King arrive in his open travelling carriage.

He had spent the previous night at Commercy. His quarters were in the

largest house in the town, the Banque de France, on one of the charming

Boulevards by which this very pretty town is surrounded. The Bavarians

were very proud at being permitted to find him his guard, and I confess

I pitied the two sentries on the door, who had to present arms on an

average of about four times a minute. A Bavarian regimental band played

in front of the Royal quarters in the early evening, and King Wilhelm

came out and placidly smoked his cigar on the balcony, listening to

the music. The townsfolk could not understand the quiet, homely way

in which the Royal state of the Prussian monarch is conducted. When

the French Emperor passed through on his way to Metz he, too, slept

at the Banque de France, but he was surrounded by a cordon of guards,

sentries, and police spies. The people made no secret of the fact that

they liked the Prussian way of doing business best. The hotel-keepers

remarked that they got their bills paid as if the generals were

tourists, whereas the French gave promises to pay when the war should

be over. During the day about thirty thousand men of the Crown Prince’s

army passed through the town—chiefly Bavarians. The light blue of the

Bavarian uniform does not wear well in point of looks—it gets soiled

in no time and then even the officers look seedy. The helmet, too,

is a creation of intensest ugliness. It has no split crow in gold

on the front, but the letter “L” for the King’s initial, and it is

surmounted by a ridgy tuft of upstanding bear’s-skin that looks like a

dolly. But the Bavarian soldiers, spite of an ugly uniform, were fine

fellows, and right serviceable-looking soldiers. The Crown Prince had

given them some notable lessons in marching, and they had thrown away

everything not essential, the very officers carrying their own kits in

knapsacks on their backs. There were no led horses with portmanteaus,

few pack waggons, and none of the impedimenta to which Prince Frederick

Charles’s army was somewhat addicted. The men did not seem very

uniform in size, and toward the tail of the regiment some of them ran

smaller than would be admitted in the German service. But they were

smart, clean-built fellows, with an elastic spring in their step, and

bright, keen eyes, and altogether had a fighting look about them; and

Weissemburg and Wörth were evidence that their actions corroborated

their looks. Their cavalry was smart enough, but not very brilliantly

mounted. The horses seemed more of the work-animal pattern than those

of the Prussian Dragoons or Uhlans, but looked good weight-carriers,

and had lost wonderfully little in flesh considering what had been

taken out of them.

What a grand old motto is _festina lente_! In the early morning of

the 25th, in full conviction that in two or three days the King and

the Crown Prince, according to the programme then current, would be

in Châlons, we started off thither, glad in the belief that we were

so well to the front. It was, I believe, in the forenoon of the 25th

that the change of tactics was arranged consequent on the discovery

of MacMahon’s movement to the north; thus, when the troops about

Bar-le-Duc were commencing that wonderful series of marches which

brought them on the right flank of the French in the valley of the

Meuse, we were jogging contentedly towards Vitry. In the worm-eaten

old fortress we found a couple of battalions, the place having been

abandoned by the Mobile garrison on the approach of the German troops,

the curious miscellaneous assortment of guns having been partly

pitched into the moat, partly left on the ramparts. The day after the

evacuation several hundreds of the garrison had been surrounded in

a wood by a comparative handful of Uhlans and made prisoners, after

firing a few harmless volleys. The garrison of Vitry and the troops

in the neighbourhood received orders on the 26th to march to the

northward; but no explanation of the reason accompanied those orders,

and nobody in Vitry had any knowledge as to the radical alteration in

the situation. The march to the north was regarded as simply a slight

diversion, and none doubted that MacMahon was falling back from the

camp of Châlons. The road to Châlons then seemed still the chief

thoroughfare for the advance of the German army, and off for Châlons we

set by the southern bank of the Marne. During the whole journey we saw

but one German—an officer driven in a gig by a peasant, and engaged in

noting the bridges and fords on the Marne. The timid country people,

anxious to sell their produce, continually begged of us to tell them

whether they could get into Vitry. We might have been in a land of

profound peace, so far away seemed everything warlike. When we reached

the iron gates where the municipals of Châlons collect the octroi dues,

it was matter of surprise that there stood no men in spiked helmets on

sentry there. On we drove into the town, through streets thronged with

people gossipping and gesticulating; and still never a German uniform

was visible. Relinquishing our intention of halting at a hotel, we

pushed right on, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, till we got

on the further boulevard, where a well-intentioned townsman stopped

us to say that if we went much further there were Germans still about

who were sure to requisition our vehicle. Thanking him for form sake

we pressed on till, some two miles outside of Châlons on the road to

Suippes, we overtook an officer and five men of the Black Hussars,

the last of the troops who had evacuated Châlons for the march to

the north. This party we accompanied to Suippes, where we were on

the extreme left flank of the German army. What boots it to narrate

the little good purpose to which, chasing the shadows thrown out by

defective information, we spent the days from the 27th to the 31st—how

we were carried prisoners by an over-zealous train officer to Turane,

where Prince Albrecht, commanding the cavalry covering the flank, blew

him up for his officiousness—how we tracked back toward St. Menehould

and then north to Vouziers, where we saw francs-tireurs shot, and

the villages burnt in which they had fired on the German patrols—how

on the 30th, passing through deserted camp after deserted camp of

MacMahon's army, we were within a short distance of the surprise of

Beamont without knowing it, and how at length in the afternoon we

came into Chemery by the southern road as the Crown Prince, with the

5th Army Corps, came down by the eastern from Stonne? Where the two

roads join at the end of the dismal village he halted, and regiment

after regiment, first of the 11th and then of the 5th Corps, marched

past him, dusty, fagged, but full of fight. Then there was a rattle of

wheels, and the carriages containing the King and his staff drove up,

and halted in the dusty road while Wilhelm dismounted, and stood by his

son till the last proviant waggon of the 5th Corps had filed past, and

till his uniform was so white with the dust that you might have taken

him for a venerable baker who had mounted a sword and a helmet. Then he

laid his hand on his son’s arm, and the pair walked slowly up a narrow

lane to the right between two gardens. For awhile father and son stood

talking earnestly, the senior with his hand on the other’s shoulder,

the younger holding an unfolded map in his hand and talking earnestly.

Then Von Moltke and Blumenthal were beckoned up out of the throng of

staff officers, and presently Von Roon and Podbielski. The open air

council of war lasted for nearly half an hour, and then the King left

Chemery at a brisk trot, crossed the valley to Malmy, and went off down

the further side of the canal to his head-quarters for the night at

Vendresse. In the lane between the gardens, as I afterwards learnt, it

was decided that the crushing blow should be dealt next day instead of

being postponed, as originally intended, till the 2nd of September.

It was entirely by chance that, unattached as we were to anything or

anybody, while posting letters in Vendresse about seven o’clock on the

morning of the 1st September, we heard that there was fighting going

on to the north, in the valley of the Meuse. The King had been out

of bed and away ever since the early morning—gone, one of the Royal

gendarmes sagely informed us, to visit the battle of the previous

day but one. Of course we started at once, found the road utterly

deserted, and, taking the wrong branch at the fork, came down into

the valley of the Meuse nearly as far west as Mezières, and for the

time at least out of view of the great battle that was raging as

we trotted rapidly forward. But the whole valley was resonant with

the din of battle. Away to our right we could hear the crash of the

artillery fire at Sedan. Over against Donchery, midway between Sedan

and Mezières, the blazing villages sent baleful flakes of flame up

into the bright sky. At Mezières itself the Würtembergers, from the

top of the heights between us and the town, were replying with shells

and musketry to the cannon from the bastions and the spiteful whirr of

the mitrailleuses from the glacis. As we came down into the valley we

passed through large French camps with the fires still burning. This

had evidently been the scene of a surprise. The men had left their

camp-kettles on the logs and their knapsacks in the lines; they seemed

to have hurriedly snatched their arms and made off, some indeed having

gone away without the preliminary ceremony of grasping their rifles.

Here and there, but at rare intervals, were strewn corpses of men and

horses, and the hospital flag was flying from several houses. Ere we

left the height we saw regiment after regiment of Würtembergers press

out of the village of Flize up on to the bluff which overhangs the

town, and stand there blazing away at something that seemingly lay

between them and the town, while the great guns of the fortress tried

in vain to dislodge them. Reaching Flize I found several regiments of

Würtembergers drawn up and in a high state of excitement by reason of

the easy manner in which they had driven the enemy close up under the

walls of Mezières. It had been a running skirmish for several miles in

length and breadth. The French on the previous night had broken down

a wooden suspension bridge crossing the Meuse close under the east of

Flize. The suspension cables were composed of strands of fine wire;

one of them only was cut, and the floor of the bridge had turned a

complete somersault over the still standing wire, lying upside down in

the bed of the river. The Würtembergers had, about midnight, thrown

a pontoon across in twenty-five minutes, and followed up the pursuit

on the northern river flat, while they continued to press the French

towards the town on the southern knolls and heights. About the time

we arrived the latter had been driven in a huddled mass on to the

exposed glacis of the fortress, and were struggling for entrance at

the gates. The Würtembergers from the heights, disregarding the feeble

and ill-directed fire from the guns that ought to have covered the

French retirement into the fortress, poured down volley after volley

of musketry into the chaotic mass lying below them. Then just as we

reached the height a battery opened fire with shells, and caught the

range of the entrance gate through the fortress wall at the first shot.

Two streams were meeting and battling at this entrance; the block was

complete, when a shell hurtled into its midst, and, exploding as it

fell, blew the densely-packed human mass, mangled and bleeding, in

all directions. This terrible fire of shells never ceased till the

Frenchmen were inside the great gate; and many there were that tried

to enter whom the bursting shells forbade not only to enter but to

live. The officer in command of the Würtembergers told us that he had

no intention of assailing the fortress itself till further orders,

and that he had complied with his instructions when he had chased the

French inside of it. The guns were roaring up the valley at Sedan, and

if we made haste we might yet be in time to see some fighting there. So

we went off rapidly towards Sedan along the great chaussée, and reached

a knoll behind the village of Frenois, which commands a view of the

whole valley, just in time to witness the last of a series of brilliant

cavalry charges made by the French Chasseurs d’Afrique, which went far

to annihilate that body of dashing horsemen.

Sedan, a fortress of considerable strength, with a moderate-sized

town, lies round the convex side of a northern bend of the Meuse. On

the south-east, toward Wadelincourt and Balan, there were considerable

artificially-caused inundations which materially added to the strength

of the place on that side. Further to the south-west, and on both sides

of the river, spreads out a considerable alluvial tract, probably at

one time a lake. Near the centre of the northern section of this is,

or rather was, the large village of Bazeilles. On the west side of the

town the configuration of the ground is more complicated. The river

quits the town in a north-westerly direction, leaving the suburb of

Torcy on the south, and presently trends away north-west by north for a

stretch over two miles. Doubling back with considerable abruptness it

comes back nearly due south a distance of about three miles, skirting

near the foot of this second stretch the grounds of the Chateau

Bellevue, and impinging rather abruptly on the high ground by the

village of Frenois, which diverts its course in a westerly direction

towards Donchery. By this loop a peninsula is enclosed, which a canal

across the isthmus converts wholly into an island—the island which for

several days formed the wretched prison of the captured French army.

At the angle where, on the side nearest Sedan, the canal leaves the

Meuse, stands the village of Glaire; nearer Sedan, on the south side

of the river, is the village of Torcy. On the southern side of Sedan a

range of more or less abrupt high ground quits the bank of the Meuse

above Wadelincourt (that is, on the south-eastern side of the town),

and sweeping round envelopes a plain of some size till it comes closer

to the river again at Frenois, after which it runs away parallel with

the Meuse till broken by the river Bar running down northward from the

low hills of the Argonne to join the Meuse not far from the village of

Dom-le-Mesnil. This range comprises several eminences of considerable

height: the loftiest is that just above the town of Donchery, on

the summit of which is the chateau of the same name,—the point from

which the Crown Prince directed operations on the day of the battle.

At ill-defined right angles from this range there runs out a lower

rounded spur, which gradually lessens in elevation as the river comes

to meet it at Frenois, and disappears altogether a few hundred yards

further north. On its northern shoulder is built the Chateau Bellevue,

which, from its moderate elevation, looks across the river and over

the plain to Donchery in one direction, and down upon Sedan on the

other, seeming from its position, as looked at from either place, to

stand considerably higher than it really does. On the north side of

the Meuse there is a range of high ground resembling in many points

that on the south. Commencing behind Sedan, the heights on the north

are less rugged and have their tops, as it were, shaved off, so as to

constitute a tableland sloping ever towards the river. Round the top of

the loop the heights come pretty close to the river, but they leave to

the west of it the considerable plain of Donchery, and their slopes are

easier, studded with villages and fields, alternated with woods. On the

Sedan side of the loop the belt of meadow-plain left is narrower, but

it attains a considerable width just opposite the village of Glaire.

Depressions rather than ravines serrate the high ground rectangularly,

one of these being close to the town of Sedan. Behind all rise the

forest-clad hills of the Ardennes, and the frontier is but a few miles

off among those.

The Germans had driven the French out of the country on the south

side of the Meuse, and the French lay along the northern bank. It

may be said either that they had no proper front, or that they had

three fronts. It was surely in some sense a front rather than a flank

position, the extended face shown to the Bavarians and Crown Prince of

Saxony’s army all the way from Bazeilles by Daigny back to Givonne. It

was a very deep flank, if it could be called a flank, on which the 5th

and 11th Corps fell on the west after their circuitous march to the

head of the loop. But the nominal front may be said to have stretched

along the river, with the fortress for its centre, whose fortifications

were manned, and in and about which was accumulated the French train

and other impedimenta.

Of the masses which fought so toughly with the Saxons and Bavarians

on the north-east and south-east of the town, or of the character of

the battle that raged all round that side, I can say nothing as an

eye-witness. But when I came in sight of the ground a large force of

French infantry, cavalry, and artillery held the broad, flattened

top of the bluff height next but one to the fortress on the westward

side of the town and the northern bank of the river. The great focus

of interest to me was this flattened bluff standing forward into

the valley, and bounded on the Sedan side as I have described, on

the Mezières side by a wider depression, which, rising gradually,

ultimately loses itself almost imperceptibly on the higher ground. This

depression forms a sort of bay, round which sweeps the high ground,

which then extends all the way westward as far as opposite Donchery,

more or less elevated, and crested everywhere by a dense wood. In the

very centre of this bay there rises an isolated knoll or mamelon,

nearly to an equal height with the high ground flanking the bay, and

affording a remarkable position for assailing with advantage the table

land on which stood the French; since, crowned with wood, it formed

admirable cover for any troops advancing from the west along the low

ground, who had full opportunity to make all their dispositions without

exposing so much as a helmet. And then, there was the choice either of

standing on the top of the mamelon and firing across, of going to the

left up the valley on to the height, or of debouching on to the low

river-flat to the right, and from there assailing the table land where

its slope was least abrupt, and where a road up its face was calculated

to afford material assistance to an attacking party. That the Germans

fully appreciated the strategical value of this mamelon became speedily

apparent.

In the small hours of the morning, the 11th and the 5th Army Corps,

which, after passing through Chemery, had pushed on to make their

bivouac between Dom and Donchery, had crossed the Meuse by two

pontoon bridges below their bivouac. The latter corps had struck up

at once right out of the valley to the edge of the forests cresting

the upper ground, and had then come left shoulders forward through the

upland farms and villages, having to fight their way smartly as they

progressed, and leaving a track of fire and smoke behind them. As we

came into the valley above Flize, the line of this advance was already

marked by those lurid insignia. The 11th Corps, on crossing the stream,

right inclined considerably sooner than the 5th, and kept on the lower

ground, while they bored on forward to round the top of the loop. Thus

those two corps were marching on the right flank of the French, or on

what I prefer to regard as having been its right face. Up till nine

o’clock the battle, in this direction at all events, had been confined

chiefly to artillery, but, soon after, the 5th Corps had got to close

quarters away on the further upland, and the left of the 11th Corps was

even sooner in the thick of it, nearer the river and adjacent to the

place where the depression in which stands the mamelon loses itself

on the upland. The French artillery first essayed in vain to stay the

resolute progress of the German troops. Then their cavalry charged

again and again—lancers, cuirassiers, and chasseurs-à-cheval—hurling

themselves on the ever-advancing columns, with a courage which all who

witnessed it unite in calling heroic. But the bayonets bore them back,

as bayonets, in the hands of resolute disciplined infantrymen, will

ever bear back horsemen, and then the two infantries came together, and

the engagement at this point became close and general.

While these things were being transacted on the upland, a manœuvre

was in progress for taking avail of the advantage which the isolated

mamelon rising out of the centre of the embayed depression, was

calculated to afford. There gradually massed behind it a large force

of infantry and several batteries of artillery, belonging, no doubt,

to the right division of the 11th Corps. More than one regiment and

battery occupied the summit, and fired across point blank, replying

with advantage to the direct cannon and mitrailleuse fire of the

French from opposite, by reason of their advantageous position among

the trees, while they also found opportunity to throw in a raking

fire upon the left shoulders of the French infantry engaged with the

Germans up at the head of the bay. A couple of regiments, under cover

of this fire, dashed up the bottom of the depression on to the table

land, and took the fighting Frenchmen on the flank, hurling them back,

and leaving their guns and mitrailleuses in a position from which they

had to retreat to prevent their own capture. The Germans then pressed

the French steadily backward across the table-land toward the ravine

on the side of Sedan, not without desperate fighting and heavy loss.

As they were being thus pushed back, the French flank came within the

range of two or three batteries of Bothmer’s Bavarian division, which

had from the first been stationed on the opposite side of the Meuse,

on a rising ground running out into the flat a little to the eastward

of the village of Frenois. But this was at long range, and did not do

all the execution which the leaders must have desiderated. Therefore,

from behind the mamelon in the bay, there issued to the right a German

infantry brigade of the 11th Corps and a battery of artillery. The

little force skirted the plain at the base of the high ground till it

came in a direct line with the fire of the Bavarian guns playing on the

height over their heads. There, in the meadow opposite, in and about

Floing they had a sharp brush with a regiment of French cuirassiers

of the Guard, who had been stationed in a hamlet on the verge of the

meadow. The cuirassiers, with their floating horsehair plumes and their

long, straight swords, charged home knee to knee like gallant soldiers

as they were; but we saw about half a dozen batches of white smoke,

and then a broken, straggling stream of horsemen hurriedly breasting

the steep by the terraced road that runs up it, leaving their track

chequered by fallen men and horses. The terraced road was then followed

by the battery, the brigade of infantry struggling up, regardless

of a path. The little force was wholly protected from the enemy’s

fire so long as it kept under the brow, and was further advantaged by

the Bavarian fire, which was whistling high over its head. That fire

stopped as the helmet spikes showed on to the table land, with the

battery flanking it, the whole looking straight into the right flank

of the Frenchmen retreating towards Sedan. The artillery began its

measured booming; the infantrymen plied the needle-gun. It seemed as

if the French retreat must become a rout. But there was still left

heart among the Frenchmen for an attempt to hurl at least this last

thorn in their side off the table land into the plain by the Meuse. At

a gallop through the ragged intervals in the confused masses of the

infantry came dashing the Chasseurs d’Afrique. The squadrons halted,

fronted, and then wheeled into line, at a pace and with a regularity

which would have done them credit in the Champ de Mars, and did them

double credit, executed as was the evolution under a warm fire. That

fire, as one could tell by the dying away of the smoke jets, ceased all

of a sudden, as if the trumpets which rang out the “Charge!” for the

Chasseurs had sounded also the “Cease firing!” for the German artillery

and infantry. Not a needle-gun gave fire as the splendid horsemen

crashed down the gentle slope with the velocity of an avalanche. I have

seen not a few cavalry charges, but I never saw a finer one, whether

from a spectator’s or an adjutant’s point of view, than this one of the

Chasseurs d’Afrique. It was destined to a sudden arrestment, and that

without the ceremony of the trumpets sounding the “Halt.” The horsemen

and the footmen might have seen the colour of each others’ moustaches

(to use Havelock’s favourite phrase), when along the line of the latter

there flashed out a sudden, simultaneous streak of fire. Like thunder

claps sounding over the din of a hurricane, rose the measured crash of

the battery guns, and the cloud of white smoke drifted away towards

the Chasseurs, enveloping them for the moment from one’s sight. When

it blew away, there was visible a line of bright uniforms and grey

horses struggling prostrate among the potato drills, or lying still in

death. Only a handful of all the gallant show of five minutes before

were galloping backward up the slope, leaving tokens at intervals of

their progress as they retreated. So thorough a destruction, by what

may be called a single volley probably the oldest soldier now alive

never witnessed. The cavalry blotted out, still the French infantry

found courage in despair for one last effort. It was to almost certain

death, and to absolutely certain defeat, that that straggling line

came on, irregularly firing as it pushed forward. Rushes of impotent

passion burst out from parts of the line; other parts only staggered

slowly forward, as if against a high wind. What came of the effort it

was hard to tell in the distracting medley, till the time came for

one to go on to the battle-field, after the combatants had quitted it.

Under the veil of white smoke the tattered line of infantrymen seemed

gradually to melt away, without having ever come to close quarters with

the enemy, who stood so solidly pouring his fire into its teeth; but

that some, both of the horsemen and the footmen, must have got somehow

to the brink of the slope, seemed evident from the fact that dead men

of both arms lay after the battle either on the road which slanted

up the steep, or huddled at its bottom, as if either their impetus

had overshot the mark, or they had been pitched over by the German

infantrymen, who kept so tight a hold of the position on to which they

had struggled.

Meanwhile the Bavarians from Bazeilles on the eastward of Sedan, the

Saxons by Daigny and Givonne on the north-eastward, and the Prussian

Guards edging round till they had reached due north of the town, were

steadily, and with very hard fighting, driving in the French on their

respective fronts. Pressing still to their own right, the right flank

of the Guards began to touch the ever further and further overlapping

left of the 5th Corps, till at length the junction was complete, and

there was no thoroughfare through lines composed of soldiers such

as those. And so the French host was environed and cut off from the

frontier and from escape in that direction by a semicircle round

Sedan, the chord of which was the Meuse. Then the Meuse on its south

side was lined by Bavarian and Prussian troops, and the investment

was complete. The citadel could not hold half the French infantry,

to say nothing of the cavalry, artillery, and train; the town, it

was seen from the battle-field, was densely packed even on to the

exposed side of the glacis; and it seemed, as the firing gradually

died away, almost to nothing, before three o’clock, that the battle

was surely over. A report, indeed, ran round that the place, and all

that was in it, had capitulated; but that this was premature was shown

by the recommencement of artillery fire from the south-east between

four and five. At what or at whom this fire was directed, none in our

vicinity could tell, till volumes of black smoke, rising from inside

the ramparts, gave indication that the city itself was the mark. The

French had almost abandoned the semblance of resistance, and I saw no

attempt at replying to this bombardment, which was over and past by

five o’clock, and then the stillness was something painful, in contrast

with the fearful din of the day. Before darkness fell the Germans had

drawn back off the battle-field, and had surrounded the whole town with

a cordon of artillery. The guns stood unlimbered and ready pointed at

the town—24 batteries, 144 guns—a gentle hint of what were the German

intentions in the morning if resistance should be persevered in.

My companion and myself had some expectation, judging from the aspect

of affairs, that toward the close of the afternoon the French were

concentrating for one last effort to break out in a due northerly

direction; and anxious to be in the vicinity if this should occur,

we had crossed the Meuse by a rope ferry at the village of Glaire,

and pushed across the corpse-flecked plain into the dead-littered

village of Floing at the further side. As we were clumbering up the

steep on to the upland plateau, there rose suddenly, from the dense

masses of troops collected on the southern swell, a hoarse roar of

cheering, caught up, as if by infection, by the men of the 11th Army

Corps in the bay around the mamelon, and on the plateau. From mouth

to mouth flew the tidings that the French Emperor had sent his sword

to the German King, that the whole French host were already virtually

prisoners of war, and that Sedan, with all that was in it and around

it, was formally to capitulate in the morning. From where we were we

saw nothing of the aide-de-camp with the flag of truce, or of the

grand sensational scene of his interview with the German monarch. The

ferry-boat was on the wrong side of the stream, and before we got over

once more to the south side, the King had set off on his return journey

to Vendresse, the Crown Prince had vacated his hill and had taken

the road back to Chemery, the flushed and wearied fighting men had

commenced preparations for their bivouac, and the autumn twilight was

fast descending. We came back past the Chateau Bellevue and through

Frenois to Donchery. The mean town looked like a city of the dead, for

every inhabitant seemed to have deserted it, save only the woman who

kept the hotel. I contrived to obtain quarters in it, and presently

there arrived a body of staff officers. These confirmed the tidings

we had heard, but could give no specific details. A meagre supper was

served, eked out by a few boxes of sardines, with which we happened

to be provided, and it was being eaten when suddenly a message came

that Bismarck would join the party. An officer who had constituted

himself caterer went into the kitchen to see what could be procured

for the great Count. Alas! the unhappy hostess, with many _mon Dieus_,

protested that unless they chose to eat herself, there was nothing

to be had save only eggs and bacon. On this modest fare accordingly,

washed down with champagne, Bismarck made a hearty supper; but before

he began to eat, he made a formal statement, reading from a despatch,

to the effect that the Emperor of the French had communicated to the

King the surrender of his sword. Bismarck reserved comments on this

announcement, but led off a hearty cheer, and then, like a jovial

fellow, gave the toasts of “The King,” and “The Fatherland.”

Before going to sleep I took a walk round the half-obliterated ramparts

which surround the once fortified town of Donchery. The scene was very

fine. The whole horizon was lurid with the reflection of fire. All

along the valley of the Meuse, on either side, were the bivouacs of

the German host. Two hundred thousand men lay here around their King.

On the horizon glowed the flames of the burning villages, the flicker

occasionally reflecting itself on a link of the placid Meuse. Over all

the quiet moon waded through a sky cumbered with wind clouds. What

were the Germans doing on this their night of triumph? Celebrating

their victory by wassail and riot? No. There arose from every camp one

unanimous chorus of song, but not the song of ribaldry. Verily they

are a great race these Germans—a masterful, fighting, praying people;

surely in many respects not unlike the men whom Cromwell led. The

chaunt that filled the night air was Luther’s hymn, the glorious—

“Nun danket alle Gott,”

the Old Hundredth of Germany. To hear this great martial orchestra

singing this noble hymn under such circumstances was alone worth a

journey to Sedan, with all its vicissitudes and difficulties. We had

a domiciliary visit in our bed-room during the night from a couple of

Generals in civil but exacting search for blankets to cover them as

they lay on the floor of the _salle à manger_.

Next morning we rose with day-break, intending to get as close to

Sedan as possible, that we might watch the critical state of affairs,

and take the earliest opportunity of getting inside the city.

Whencesoever he had come—it was rumoured that he had spent the night

in Donchery—there sat on his horse at the corner of the market-place a

sad-faced French general with red eyes, as if he had not slept. This I

afterwards learned was General Count Reillé. Ever as he tried to wedge

his horse into the narrow throat of the street leading to the bridge,

and so on to the road leading to Sedan, he was baulked by the steady

ceaseless stream of proviant-waggons and munition tumbrils, and he

smiled a weary forced smile as he drew his horse back out of the press.

At length an adjutant made a way for him, and he was gone. He could not

have been across the bridge when at the same corner of the market-place

showed the tall form and square shoulders of Bismarck on his powerful

bay horse. There was no redness about his eyes; it must have been past

one in the morning when he drank his last glass of champagne in the

Hôtel de Commerce, it would be rash to say how long he had been at work

after that; and yet here he was before the Mairie clock had chimed the

hour of six, fresh, hearty, clean-shaved, steady of hand, and clear of

throat, as the voice proved in which he bade the column-men give him

space to pass. He wore a blue military cloak and the undress cap of

the cuirassier regiment of which he is the colonel. On such a morning

where Bismarck was there for sure would there be momentous doings, and

we followed in his tracks as soon as possible. We lost him, however,

on the farther side of the bridge, but learnt he had ridden on toward

Frenois, and so followed that road. About two kilometres beyond

Donchery we met a rather shabby open carriage drawn by two horses,

driven by a coachman with a gold band. It contained four French general

officers, and a fifth, the one we had seen in the market-place of

Donchery, rode behind by the side of the ubiquitous Bismarck. The hour

was ten minutes past seven. There was no escort, or anything, save the

circumstance that the occupants of the carriage were French generals,

to mark out the equipage as anything exceptional. We were barely past,

when by a common impulse my companion and myself exclaimed, “That’s

Napoleon!” We dismounted, and returned walking behind a line of wains

which were going the same way as the carriage. Sure enough, on the

right-hand side of the back seat there sat the Emperor—that grey face

of his, impassive and sphinxlike as ever, but with its lines drawn

and deepened as if by some spasm. He wore a general’s uniform, with a

cavalry cloak, which was thrown open, and showed the decorations on his

breast. In no other respect did he differ from his companions in dress.

The modest cavalcade went on about a hundred yards, and then halted in

front of a small wayside house on the left-hand side of the road as

one goes from Frenois to Donchery. The cottage into which the Emperor

went on alighting was the right-hand cottage as one looks out on to

the chaussée, one of a block of three mean two-storied brick houses

inhabited by families of weavers. The houses stand some twenty or

twenty-five feet back from the road. In their front is a narrow level

of gravelled path—at the edge of this, in front of the right-hand house

were placed the chairs for the Emperor and Bismarck—and then there is a

grassy slope down to the ditch bounding the road. It was in obedience

to a sudden request of the Emperor that the modest _cortége_ halted

at the wayside house. I saw him turn round in his seat, and heard the

request he made to the Prussian Chancellor. Immediately on alighting,

the Emperor walked hurriedly to the rear of the house, and presently

returned and went inside for, at the most, five minutes. The three

officers occupying the carriage had gone inside at once, and were

followed by Bismarck and his mounted companion. Then the Emperor and

the Chancellor came outside again and sat down on two chairs which

were fetched for them by the weaver who lived downstairs. Some chairs

were brought out also for the French generals, but not enough, so one

or two of them lay down on the grass bank in front of the left-hand

cottage, and were presently joined by several officers of the German

staff. One of the French generals, the Duke de Moskowa I think, seemed

to have been wounded, and dragged one of his legs heavily behind him.

On a table in rear of the block of houses, there had been set out a

couple of bottles of country wine with glasses, and one of the French

generals, I shall not say which, kept popping round the corner to pay

his devoirs to the sour tipple.

When the interview between the Emperor and Bismarck commenced—at twenty

minutes past seven by my watch—Bismarck stood with cap in hand, but, as

it seemed, in compliance with an injunction from Napoleon, accompanied

with a bow and a slight smile, the Chancellor covered himself and

sat down beside the other. Then an earnest conversation ensued. The

Emperor occasionally smiled and made a remark, but it was evident that

Bismarck was doing the greater part of the talking, and that, too,

energetically. From our position we could just hear the murmur of

Bismarck’s voice when he raised it at those points where he thought it

necessary to give emphasis by the gesture of bringing the fore-finger

of the left hand sharp down on the palm of the right. The occupant of

the first floor of the right-hand cottage was all the while overlooking

the pair out of his front window. Along the road streamed the ceaseless

current of a proviant column, the rude teamsters glowering greedily at

the strange scene by the road-side—a scene the like of which is not in

the history of our century—and exclaiming occasionally in their uncouth

curiosity, “_Wo ist der Napoleon, den?_”

A little after eight von Moltke drove up from the direction of

Donchery, and after joining in the conversation for a quarter of an

hour, went away again. Bismarck followed him, mounted, at a sharp trot,

and the French party was left to itself. The Generals remained seated

in a clump. The Emperor took to stalking moodily up and down a path

in the potato-plot by the side of the cottage, limping slightly as he

walked, and smoking hard. After a spell of this exercise, he came and

sat down among his Generals, still retaining an almost total silence,

while they spoke and gesticulated with considerable animation, and,

as it seemed occasionally, a little confusedness. A little after nine

there came up at the trot from Donchery a half troop of the 1st Sleswig

Cuirassier Regiment of Life Guards. The Cuirassiers, with trained

celerity, formed a semicircle around the back of the house. The burly

lieutenant dismounted two of his men, and without a glance at the

sitting party or the semblance of a salute, marched them close up to

the cottage-wall just behind the Emperor’s chair, halted them, gave

loudly the order “Draw swords,” and then gave them their orders in an

undertone. I noticed the Emperor glance backward at this arrangement,

as if he did not half like it. There was a flush on his face, the first

evidence of emotion he had manifested. At a quarter to ten Bismarck

came back among the staff, which by this time had accumulated on the

road in considerable numbers, and Moltke’s lean face was visible in

the crowd on the road. He did not seem to care about having more to

say to the Frenchmen, and never went up the slope. Bismarck now wore

his cuirassier helmet and looked quite martial, but rather heated, and

no wonder, for he had taken a stretching gallop back in the direction

of Vendresse to meet his master the King. The King and his two great

subjects, the civilian Bismarck and the soldier Moltke, met on the

road at the foot of a steep slope about four kilometres backward

from Donchery toward Vendresse and Chemery. An estaminet stands just

opposite the spot of meeting, the portly proprietor of which watched

from a distance the hurried council of war which took place in the

field by the roadside, and took the pains to mark with an axe the tree

against which the King leant when the momentous consultation was in

progress.

Wiping his hot face, Bismarck strode up to the sitting Emperor, and

as we know now, communicated the message from his master the King,

and the arrangement as to the interim disposition of the illustrious

prisoner. After a short interview he beckoned to the carriage, which

had drawn off a little, and the Emperor entered it, followed by the

Generals, and, still escorted by the Cuirassiers, the party drove off

in the direction of Sedan. I followed as fast as I could, and caught

up its track as it entered the grounds of the château appropriately

named Bellevue, which overlooks the plain on which stands Sedan. In

the grounds a regiment of Bavarians had been bivouacking, but as the

imperial party arrived they were marched out. The château consists of

a centre block, with two wings joined to the centre by conservatories

on the first floor. The chief front is towards the road. I was at the

back of the house, but then the blinds were drawn down at the front,

so I had rather the best of it. In the conservatory on the left were

the French Generals; in that on the right was the Prussian staff. In

the dining-room on the ground-floor of the central block von Moltke,

Bismarck, and de Wimpfen were debating the terms of the capitulation.

The Emperor, I gathered, was lying down on a sofa in the drawing-room

on the first floor of the central turret, or in the boudoir which opens

off it. No doubt he was weary and sick at heart, while it required no

very keen eyes to discern that he was in bodily pain. And that had

been a long trying wait there by the wayside from seven till ten, with

little truly to lighten its monotony to the stunned, crushed man. A

colloquy with Bismarck, stern of heart, sharp, if courteous of speech,

unyielding in resolve, for an hour or more; for another hour or more

a listless kicking of heels while the man who had vanquished should

pronounce what was to be done with him. He, the Emperor of the French,

the proudest monarch in Europe, kicking his heels on the roadside by a

weaver’s cottage while a Prussian count galloped to a Prussian king for

instructions! If he were not too stunned to think at all, he must have

thought at times as he lay there that surely the morning’s doings were

one ghastly dream.

The deliberations as to the negotiations seemed likely, by the rumours

which reached us, to last for some time, and quitting the precincts of

the Château Bellevue, my companion and myself utilised the interval

in visiting the battle-field. The tract charged over by the Chasseurs

d’Afrique was a scene of terrible carnage. The Arab stallions ridden

by this force had died very hard; in many cases they had with their

struggles made graves before they had died for their riders and

themselves. The burial parties did not have much trouble hereabouts in

bringing corpses to the grave-pits. The difficulty was to clear a space

on which to commence a grave-pit. Higher up on the tableland there was

fearful evidence of the power of a shell-fire at short range. I counted

five headless corpses within two hundred yards—their heads had been

blown away as clean as if they had been guillotined. Men disembowelled,

with their chests driven into fragments, with legs or arms blown away,

were common spectacles. I found one man’s leg about twenty-five paces

distant from his body. Right on the battle-field we came on a friendly

quartermaster, who was superintending the collection of biscuit barrels

and wine casks that the French had left behind them in their hurried

retreat. He placed at our service the contents of a barrel of biscuits,

the outside of which was stained by a fluid which was red, but was not

wine; but bucket staves are not sponges, and the biscuits were very

good, and we were very hungry.

After hurriedly traversing a corner of the battle-field my companion

and myself determined to take our chance of being able to visit

Sedan. We found German outposts, consisting of three men each, near

the transverse passages leading through the glacis, and close to

them bodies of Frenchmen without arms, who chatted freely with the

German sentries. We got on to the glacis of the fortress with the

greatest ease in the world, and found the soldiers lying on it to

consist chiefly of Turcos and Zouaves, dirty fellows most of them, but

certainly in better case to all appearance than the troops we found

inside. Everybody was very friendly; wine was genially pressed on us,

all the more warmly when we mentioned that we were Englishmen. One

especially greasy and strong-smelling Turco, of a full Day-and-Martin

colour, insisted vehemently on kissing us, and we had to submit to the

oleaginous hug with what grace we might. Getting into the town was

a different matter. The gates were closed, and opened only to admit

the wounded as they were brought in on waggons. By the advice of this

friendly Turco, who set us the example, we jumped on one of the waggons

and passed in without interference. As rapidly as we could for the

chaotic press, we traversed several streets of the town. We saw where

M’Mahon lay wounded, and also how full the town was of troops. They

were swarming, densely packed, everywhere. Of the wounded, some were

in the churches, the houses, and the public buildings, others lying

unheeded and jostled in the courtyards; the dead were everywhere—in the

gutters, trampled on by the living, on the swampy margin of the moat,

littering the narrow way through the glacis and the fortifications,

lying, some of them, on the steps of a church. The sight was one never

to be forgotten—a sight of misery, chaos, disorganization, and general

devilry, which assuredly was unique in this generation—an eddying sea

of humanity, trampling recklessly over the dead and the wounded, the

men now yelling for the blood of their officers, now struggling in

fierce contention for a morsel of bread.

Hastening back to the Château Bellevue, we were yet too late for the

announcement of the signature of the capitulation. We had seen nothing

of that sensational incident—if it really did occur—when von Moltke,

as is related, led outside the reluctant de Wimpfen, and weakened his

obduracy by pointing to the ring of field guns unlimbered, and with

the gunners in position, girdling the fated city, and ready at the

word to commence a bombardment which would have been the synonyme

for a butchery. But we were just in time with a sharp run to see

the King up to the gates of the château, followed by his son and

the leading members of his staff, and to see the silent greeting—if

words were spoken they must have been muttered in a low tone by men

afraid to trust their voices—between the monarchs on the gravelled

drive at the bottom of the steps. The “good brothers” turned, and

mounting the steps, disappeared inside one of the rooms in the central

block, the royal staff partly occupying one of the conservatories,

partly remaining outside. The interview, that surely must have sorely

tried the composure of both the parties to it, lasted barely some

twenty minutes, and then Wilhelm was out and off in his carriage for

a drive through his victorious Kinder bivouacking by the Meuse. He

who was left in that inner room must have heard the air throb again

with the cheering which came from German throats at the sight of the

white-haired conqueror-king. Later in the afternoon I saw the Emperor

again. He came out in front of the château to superintend the unpacking

of his travelling carriage. He looked very wan and weary, although he

still kept up the old impassible look. The imperial equipage in its

magnificence was an extraordinary contrast to the simplicity of the

modest turnout of the Prussian King. In gold and scarlet the outriders

of the former glittered profusely. He of Prussia had his postboys in

shoddy cloth, with glazed coverings to their hats to keep the dust off

the nap.

The Emperor’s barber, with whom I had a chat as the suite waited

for orders outside the château, gave me some interesting particulars

regarding the last disastrous day in Sedan. The French army, he said,

had its efficiency destroyed by socialism and a craving for a republic.

It was in a chronic state of semi-mutiny, and many regiments would

not follow their officers on any consideration. This yeasty condition

of agitation made discipline an impossibility, and accounted for the

disregard of discipline on their part, which had enabled the Germans

so often to surprise their camps and drive them whithersoever they

listed. M’Mahon was wounded in a vain attempt to excite one of these

disaffected regiments to charge. The Emperor met him in the street

as he was being carried half unconscious into his quarters. If my

informant was truthful, Napoleon bore himself worthily during the

disastrous day. Imitating his uncle at Montereau, he directed guns

with his own hand, and was continually under fire. But the French were

totally out-manœuvred and outnumbered. They had expected to have to

cope with an army of 120,000 men; instead of this, nearly double the

number started up unexpectedly, as if from the ground. The troops in

Sedan candidly admitted to me that the Germans were better soldiers

than themselves, although not braver men; and this is about the truth

of the matter. They have a sense of responsibility which the French

want; they are splendid marchers, they fight like devils, they are

strong, self-contained, self-respecting, earnest, manly fellows; they

have generals who know how to direct them, and officers who know how to

lead them, and this is why they came to go on accordingly from victory

to victory.

Next morning (the 3rd September), we tried to get through Sedan with

intent to go a little way into Belgium. There was thoroughfare only one

way and for one class of persons. The gate was surrounded by a guard of

Bavarians, and a continuous stream of French prisoners, horse, foot,

and artillery, was fast passing out. We watched it for hours—it seemed

as if it never would stint, and at last we abandoned the intention of

getting through Sedan, and turned down the stream to the rope ferry

which we had used the two previous days. When we got to the bridge

over the canal, we came again upon the stream of French prisoners,

flowing in the direction we were going. The tract between the canal

and the Meuse is an island of some extent. The rope of the ferry was

cut, and the boat on the other side. Skirting the Meuse downward for

some distance, we found several ferries, but all the boats were, like

the first, on the other side of the stream. The fact was, the Germans

had utilised the island into a prison. They had turned the disarmed

French army bodily into it to the number of some 70,000, looking to the

Meuse and the canal to do the main duty of custodianship. It is true

that here and there on the farther side there stood a company under

arms, and that towards nightfall a chain of sentries was run along the

farther banks; but I do not believe that on the island itself there was

a single German. The Frenchmen had been turned on to the island just

as they came out of the town. The Germans themselves were temporarily

short of rations, and could spare nothing for their prisoners. But

the prisoners fared better than their captors, although goodness

knows how they did it. After all nobody can achieve a savoury mess

under difficulties like a Frenchman, or build himself a house where

another man would have to be content with the heavens for his roof.

Innumerable fires had been lit, about one seemingly serving three men.

The fellows dragged out firewood from recondite corners in the most

marvellous manner; recklessly tore down houses, and burnt doors, window

frames, and rafters; broke up carts, ploughs, fences, and everything

else available. On every fire was a saucepan, and in the saucepan were

potatoes, and something else. Where the potatoes came from was plain

enough; we could see the fellows delving them, but about the “something

else,” all that one could tell was that it smelt nice. There was a

flavour of onions in the scent—I began to think Frenchmen have an onion

bed somewhere about their persons—and a _soupçon_ of garlic and a

gamey whiff that made one’s mouth water. Most of the men who were not

cooking were building unto themselves habitations for the night. About

half of them had their _tentes d’abris_, which they were rigging up

dexterously, and bedding with boughs torn from the trees. The trees

were put under heavier contributions to build wherewithal leafy bowers

of considerable architectural pretensions, and positively I do not

think that, with the exception of the extremely late-comers, a single

man of the captive French army slept this first night supperless and

without some cover. They were the civilest, cheeriest, best-humoured

set of fellows imaginable. We two, quite alone, and unable to bestow

anything—for our flasks and tobacco-pouches were but drops in the

bucket, and very soon exhausted—experienced no word but of the frankest

courtesy and the heartiest friendliness, alike from officers and men.

The officers had been allowed to retain their swords, having given

their parole, but had to accompany their men, whose disarmament had

been very thorough. On the island is a handsome château, with beautiful

and extensive grounds, and of the cover there afforded the Frenchmen

took avail extensively. I do not suppose that in the island they had

much more room than in Sedan, but they preferred it for quarters,

since they could get firewood and potatoes. A few stray barrels of

biscuit had been brought into the island on carts, and their contents

were distributed as far as they would go, but there was not a biscuit

for every twenty men of the great multitude. After some conversation

with a group of captains in the grounds of the chateau, we strolled

down towards the river, and accepted the invitation of a bivouac of

Zouaves to join them at their supper. The mess was better than good,

it was superb. It consisted of potatoes, the indescribable savoury

“something,” and flesh of some kind or other. The swarthy Zouaves, in

their red fezes and baggy canvas breeches, treated us like princes, but

evaded a direct reply to the question what was the meat in their mess.

After we had bidden the merry rascals a hearty good night, we came upon

the carcass of a horse that had been killed by a shell, and there was

a clean slice or two out of its flanks. I did not think it necessary

to go back to the Zouaves and put it to them point blank whether they

had been regaling us on horse; but, like the man in the play, I had my

own thoughts on the matter. It was late before we quitted the fires on

the island; and when we were once outside and realised the difficulty

of finding quarters, we were sorry we had not stayed and shared the

bivouac of the Zouaves. Donchery we knew to have been invaded by a

whole Army Corps; Frenois was seething full of Bavarians. As we were

discussing the probabilities of a bivouac we drove past the front of

the Château Bellevue. All was in darkness. A happy thought struck my

companion. “Let us sleep here,” he cried. The gardener seemed glad

enough to have a couple of quiet civilians for his inmates. He stabled

our horse and conducted ourselves into the chateau, one of the most

beautiful residences, both internally and externally, I have ever

seen. The dining hall, where the capitulation was signed, was a model

of taste without meretricious display. It was wholly in stained oak,

save the roof, which is inlaid with American maple. The windows were

Gothic, and in niches round the room there were alternately mirrors

and Etruscan vases. One or two large pictures were let into the

panelling, and in recesses were divans. The chairs were high backed,

in finely carved oak. Above this room, up a winding staircase, and

on the first-floor, was the bedroom occupied by the Emperor on the

previous night, just in the state he left it. Before leaving at nine in

the morning, he had breakfasted with his suite in the dining hall. On

its beauties, as on those of the rest of the charming villa, we were

free to feast; there was nothing else to satisfy the appetite. The

gardener was very hungry himself and so was his wife. Nor, according to

the gardener, was there a drop of wine in the house, and appearances

certainly seemed to corroborate his asseveration. It fell to me to

sleep in the bed occupied by the Emperor on the previous night. Sheets

and a quilt were on the bed, but one of the window hangings, with its

semicircular canopy, had been torn down, and applied as an additional

covering for the couch of the Emperor. He had apparently been reading

in bed, for a translation of Lord Lytton’s “Last of the Barons” lay

open turned on its face, on a little table by the bed-head. There

seemed something of a sombre significance in the selection.

At this time the chateau was inviolate; not so much as an ornament

had been touched. The beautiful clocks ticked on every mantel-piece,

and the pretty knick-knacks of the young ladies were sticking on the

pincushions in their abandoned bedrooms. But about five in the morning

there was an incursion of a Bavarian regiment, which during the night

had been on guard over the prisoners on the island. Beyond doubt they

did not use the place tenderly. The Bavarians are, out of sight, the

most butter-fingered of the German soldiers, and anything conveniently

portable they annexed with neatness and despatch. What the men wanted

was wine, and what seemingly wanton damage they did to the wainscot,

panelling, &c., was in quest of it, a quest in the end crowned with

success.

By the 6th of September the King of Prussia was in Rheims, the

self-constituted guest of the Most Reverend the Archbishop in that

ecclesiastical dignitary’s palace, hard by the historical old

cathedral. There had been but a short stay for the German hosts on

the field where they gained laurels so green and yet so bloody. The

blood tint had hardly died out of the Meuse, the unburied dead yet

festered in the sunheat, and the ruins of Bazeilles yet smoked and

stank, when the vanguard of the Crown Prince’s army shouldered their

packs and trudged away up the valleys of the Argonnes towards the

fertile vine-lands of Champagne, marching nearly due southward but

with their faces ever set Paris-ward, and “Nach Paris!” ever on their

lips. Royal head-quarters made a long pause in the old cathedral

city, while men all over Europe were asking one another whether the

catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually ended the war, and looking for

the white dove of peace to alight on the blood-stained battle-field.

But the Revolution had taken place in Paris, and the leaders of the new

Republic were flushed with the chimera that Republican institutions

and untrained hordes of patriots, which at the talismanic name of

“Republic” were sure to rush to arms eager to fight and proud to die

for _la Patrie_ emancipated, could cope with the generalship and

the trained and victorious armies that had crunched the disciplined

soldiers of the Empire as a boy cracks a nut. It was from the crisis

of Sedan that may be dated the falling away of British sympathy from

the German side. Wise and considerate men at home, who in the beginning

had seen and readily owned to the justice of the cause in which Germany

had fought and conquered, let their reason and their logical perception

become enfeebled by a sympathy for misfortune which did honour to their

hearts. With others the keynote to the changed feeling was kindliness

for a Republic, a gushing abstract love for an institution which they

reckoned a synonym for the truest of all national liberty. A judicious

alternative to this mild phase of mental aberration might have been

discovered in an enforced residence in Paris during the months of March

and April last. When Wilhelm went to war in the name of the German

Fatherland, he put forth that he warred not with the people but with

its ruler. That ruler gone, he was bound to look to some person or to

some body, as the successor of the captive Emperor in some kind of

right or other to dispose of the destinies of France. He could not make

peace with the French nation in the gross; that nation must set up,

whether for peace or for war, something tangible to be treated with

by the victor, if it was to be peace; to direct war, if the nation’s

fiat was for war. The Provisional Government assumed this province,

and was tacitly accepted by France. Then the nation through this, its

mouthpiece, instead of suing for peace, instead of asking what terms it

might expect if it should sit down content with the punishment it had

received, cried “War, war to the hilt, war without a thought, a dream,

a hint of negotiation!” Wilhelm had no help for it, but to accept what

was virtually a new challenge, and fight on. And that challenge gave

to him a new antagonist. He now fought, no longer with the man who was

his prisoner, but with the French nation, with whom up till then he had

proclaimed that he had no quarrel, and he fought with it, because it

had taken up the quarrel that might have gone with the _Déchéance_,

and made it its own. The German did not quit his first position; France

and the French drove him out of it whether he would or not. There was

no alternative but to march on defiant Paris. Sympathy is a beautiful

feeling; but its failing is that very often it clouds discrimination.

Under the influence of effusive sympathy for France, who has not heard

men plead—“Ah, but in the hour of her triumph Germany might have shown

her magnanimity and offered terms to poor France, instead of coldly

standing at attention waiting for her beaten foe to humiliate herself

by suing for terms.” For Germany to have acted thus would not have been

magnanimity; it would have been quixotry, and quixotry certain to have

been misinterpreted by France. Because the German arms only occupied as

a formality a corner of Paris for a couple of days, did not Paris send

up the defiantly-complacent yelp that it was fear which had made the

occupation so transient and partial? Can international history point

to a precedent in which the unquestioned victor, unweakened either by

a single reverse or by a long war, fighting in a cause acknowledged as

just by all the world, took the initiative in offering terms, either

directly or indirectly, to an adversary so stubborn and haughty that it

seemed like enough the profferer would have had them flung back in his

teeth? Who ever heard of the gladiator in the arena, or the pugilist

in the ring cry, “Hold, surely there is enough,” while the opponent

proclaimed himself still full of fighting, and refused to be led away

by what in this case was an Europeful of judicious bottle holders?

While the King abode in Rheims, waiting for what never came, and while

Europe was talking and scheming, and France was hardening her heart and

stiffening her neck, the German armies were deploying into a grand line

for the advance on Paris. Three great roads converge toward Paris from

the east of France. On the southernmost of these leading from Châlons,

through Tour de Montaimé, by Montmirail, Coulommiers, Chaulmes, and

Brie Comte Robert, the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia it

was arranged should march. The northern route is _viâ_ Laon, Soissons

and Dammartin, but the fortresses of the two first-named towns still

held out, so that the 12th Army Corps and the Prussian Guards had

tracks farther to the south perforce allotted to them. The central

road from Châlons through Epernay is cut near Dormans, by the road

that comes from Rheims, by Ville en Tardenoise, and thence continues

its course through the beautiful valley of the Marne, threading

successively, as in a string, the pretty towns of Château Thierry, La

Ferté sous Jouarre and Meaux. Meaux was a pretty town once before the

deluge came upon it. This central road was set down as common property

for the right flank of the fourth army and the left flank of the third.

Along it lay the track of the 6th Army Corps, which, spared at Sedan,

was to head the advance on Paris. Later it was to be traversed by the

2nd Bavarians, and later still by the 11th Army Corps, which had been

left in the rear when its fellows marched out of the valley of the

Meuse.

Dispositions covering a front so extensive, and having an object so

vast and so momentous, were not made in a day. The men had to be rested

after feats of fighting and marching not surpassed in the history of

the world; supplies had to be accumulated near; communications had to

be everywhere perfected and made good. Meanwhile the King took his ease

in the archbishop’s palace. Bismarck, in his yellow and white cap,

stalked about the town alone, disregarding with a grim indifference

the crowds of beggar boys who fancied they could recognise benevolence

in the fact that they were not summarily sworn at by reason of their

importunity, and only found out their mistake when they had haunted the

stern man persistently to no purpose for half the length of a street.

Moltke paced the aisles of the cathedral for hours at a time, with

set face and abstracted eye, his hands ever clasped behind his back.

Captains and subalterns, dashing Freiwilligen and gay Vicefeldwebel,

made merry over the flowing champagne in the hotels and cafés, and

wished that there was a Rheims at every halting spot. The soldiers

ate and drank, sauntered and stared; dealing justly in uncouth and

fragmentary French with the shopkeepers of the town, and essaying in

a sheepish way to make a little love to the girls, whose coquetry

overcame even the conventional hatred. But although _festina lente_

was the motto, there was no time to be wasted. On the 7th of September

General von Tümpling, commanding the 6th army corps, had already his

head-quarters in Dormans. The German Uhlans who, when they had ridden

into Rheims on the Sunday previous, had all but seen the backs of

Vinoy’s men retreating, were far up the valley feeling the front at

least two days before I reached Dormans on the 8th of September. I

wonder how many British tourists are familiar with the rich, placid

beauty of the valley of the Marne, otherwise than as seen from the

window of a railway carriage. It will amply repay a much more detailed

inspection. On the afternoon I climbed a little hill above Dormans,

which overlooks the valley for several miles in both directions, and

the view well repaid the exertion. On either side of the river lie flat

and fertile “haughs,” as the alluvial tracts are called in Scotland;

and out of them rise almost imperceptibly the swelling knolls clad

with vineyards in which the frequent villages nestle snugly. I counted

ten villages from my hill-top. The whole valley was as quiet as if

there was nothing but peace in the world. Presently, from one of the

villages over against me, there arose the swell of military music; the

band of a regiment was quartered in it, and was treating the villagers

to a concert. I do not think I ever saw such a wealth of fruit of all

kinds as there was around Dormans. For the first time I realised how

the Israelites might have been compelled to resort to a stake borne by

two men to carry wherewithal the trusses of grapes from the vines of

Eshcol. Apples and pears hung by the roadside like hips and haws in

our hedgerows at home, alternated by trees laden with delicious golden

plums. It made one glad that the troops were marching in peace through

the valley of Dormans. It would have been desecration to sully this

Eden by making it a battle-field. A quiet race were the people of the

valley, sighing for quietude and for liberty, without plebiscites, and

without severe taxation, to till their soil and live prosperously in

their quiet way. They craved a strong and moderate Government, be it

what it might—monarchy or republic. The landlady of an auberge where

I halted for a short time put the matter to me very pithily. “I don’t

care a sou about politics,” said she, “and we have been taught to abhor

the Prussians, and specially to detest Bismarck; but, oh, how heartily

do I wish that in France we had such a one as Bismarck!”

Now that the strain of the forced marching was somewhat abated, it

was instructive to note how the Germans were resuming their rigour in

little matters of detail and discipline. I saw the officer of the day

turn out the quarter-guard the evening I arrived in Dormans, and he

bullied the men as if the regiment had been in barracks, because their

buttons were not polished and their coat-cuffs not turned down. The

soldiers were everywhere brushing and beating their clothes, or mending

holes in them. In a shoemaker’s shop there was a comical-looking row of

soldiers, all sitting solemnly against the wall, each with a boot in

his hand, waiting for his turn with the funny little French shoemaker,

of whose continual jabber they understood not one word, but courteously

replied with the invariable “Ja! Ja!” The Dormans tailor was hard at

work repairing officers’ uniforms; I wonder whether he was patriotic

enough not to utilise the “cabbage.”

Von Tümpling seemed in no hurry to advance from Dormans. Had he been

dallying in Rheims, one might have apprehended that he had found his

Capua, but pleasant place as was Dormans, every one said there were

more eligible quarters and equally beautiful spots farther down the

valley of the Marne. The truth is he was waiting till the 3rd army on

his left should get approximately abreast of him. He was certainly

near enough to his own front. On the 9th we started off with intent

to make Château Thierry before we halted. About eighteen kilometres

from Dormans we came to a bridge. The bridge itself was sound enough,

but on the other side of it an embankment on which the road was made

had been cut across by a trench. This was evidently the work of an

enemy, but of an enemy destitute of the guidance of engineers, and

ignorantly eager to oppose the German progress. As might have been

expected, the pitiful trench had been no great obstacle. It had been

partially and hastily bridged, and thus we knew that friends were still

ahead. About a kilometre farther we entered the village of Crezancy.

Nobody had anything to say to us as we passed through the village; but

when we got on the top of the hill beyond it, we found a sergeant’s

guard along with an officer. The latter told us that the post was the

extreme infantry advance, and that we must not pass it. A few horsemen

were scouting farther, but he had no assurance as to the state of

the country, and he could not allow us to go on any farther. He was

a fixture, he understood, for the day, and the forward movement had

for the time been arrested. So there was no resource but to return to

Dormans, where we learned that the head-quarters of the 6th Corps were

not to move till the 11th, and perhaps not then.

Impatient of the inaction, it occurred to us on the morning of the

9th to start off in a southerly direction, inclining a little to the

rear, so that thus we should strike the head of the more southerly

advance. The place where we intersected the first east and west road

was a village called Igny-le-Jard. There were no Germans there, and

the villagers said they had seen none but a few scattered Uhlans. Our

road then lay through a fine forest, intersected with rides for hunting

purposes, and full of deer. At Mareaille, on its farther side, we

came upon an advanced infantry-post—there was nothing beyond except

cavalry, said the officer who commanded the handful of men. A few

miles farther to the south, and we reached the charming village of

Corbellieu, lying snugly by the little river Surmelin. In the environs

was a beautiful chateau, surrounded with grounds, everywhere adorned

with parterres of flowers, and intersected by artificial streams and

lakes, crossed by bridges of fanciful construction. For miles the road

lay through avenues of fine trees, on either side of which were rich

farms or beautiful villas. We had passed Corbellieu for some miles,

still edging rearward, when the towers of a castle became visible,

and soon we entered the pretty village of Montmort, at the end of

which, raised high over it on an eminence, partly natural and partly

artificial, stands the castle of the same name. At one time, I doubt

not, a castle of great strength must have occupied the summit of

the commanding eminence. The site is one which the castle-builders

of the middle ages must have thoroughly appreciated. From the wall

encircling the esplanade I dropped an apple sheer into the street,

two hundred feet below; a double moat surrounds the abrupt height,

the top of which is reached externally by winding paths; internally,

by a winding staircase up a turret built into the rock. The castle

itself is comparatively modern. It was the property and the residence

of the Marquis de Montmort, who, along with his daughter, had very

sensibly remained at home to receive the Germans instead of running

away into Paris. He had for his guests the head-quarters of a brigade

of the 5th Army Corps, the officers of which, in consideration of the

courtesy of the Marquis in doing the honours of his own house, exerted

all their efforts to prevent intrusion on his privacy and towards the

preservation of the amenities of the charming place.

Quitting Montmort we pushed on a few miles farther south to Etoges,

which is on the great road. No German sentries were posted outside of

it. We traversed it from one end to the other, and found it wholly

French. Having left our carriage at the village auberge, we strolled

towards a fine chateau in the environs, at the gate of which a

courteous French gentleman accosted us. He was the son of the owner

of the chateau, M. de Kirchener, son of an engineer officer who

distinguished himself greatly in the Prussian service in the campaigns

of 1813 and 1814. M. de Kirchener is himself married to a sister of

the Duchess de Montebello. The old gentleman himself came out to meet

us, in a little trepidation, and knotting around his waist as he came

a scarf of the “Succour for the Wounded” pattern. The father and son

courteously joined in urging our removal from the auberge to the more

pleasant quarters which the chateau afforded; and there we spent the

night with not a German soldier, so far as we knew, nearer to us than

the outposts outside Montmort. There were, however, German troops

nearer Paris than Etoges, two squadrons of cavalry having passed

through it in the morning.

Next morning (the 10th) we started westward for Montmirail, with intent

to traverse a district memorable in the first campaign of 1814 as that

in which, in a rapid series of battles within a very small space,

Napoleon destroyed the army of Blucher. Soon after quitting Etoges

we came upon the fine plain of Champ Aubert, on which was fought the

battle of the 10th February, 1814. A monument stands in the centre of

the battle-field, erected by “the Emperor Napoleon III.” A couple of

kilometres farther on we reached the village of Vauchamps, outside

which took place the battle of the same name on the 14th February,

in which Blucher’s discomfiture was consummated. Passing through the

pretty little town of Montmirail, we crossed a deep gorge and came out

on a noble plateau, almost on the verge of which stands a fine fluted

column, surmounted by a gilded eagle and bearing on its pedestal the

announcement, dated 15th August, 1866, that “this monument was erected

by the orders of the Emperor Napoleon III. to indicate the spot on

which stood the Emperor Napoleon I. when he directed the efforts of the

French army in the battle of Montmirail on the 11th February, 1814.” On

the other sides of this pretentious monument are the names of the other

victories:—Feb. 12th, Les Caquerets, Nesle, Château Thierry; Feb. 11th,

Montmirail, Marchais; Feb. 10th, Champ Aubert; Feb. 14th, Vauchamps.

At Montmirail we passed through the advance brigade of the 5th Army

Corps, which we had seen in Montmort the day before. The previous day

had been a rest day, and the troops were fresh and thoroughly in good

condition and spirits. About six miles in front of Montmirail, at a

village called Vieuxmaisons, we found the battalion quartering itself

which constituted the vanguard. There was nothing beyond except a few

cavalry outposts, and although it was ascertained that there were no

French troops in the immediate front, there was reason to believe, the

officer told us, that there were detached little parties rancorously

scouring the country, who might be more awkward customers for people

like ourselves to encounter than regular soldiery. His advice coincided

with our own opinion that we had got to the end of our tether on this

lower road. There would be a further advance next day, no doubt, but

in the meantime Vieuxmaisons afforded nothing whatever calculated to

sustain life, it having borne the brunt of a squadron of hussars on the

previous night. The officers of the 58th, a fine Silesian regiment,

made us heartily welcome to a share of their rations, but thought it

advisable to regain the valley of the Marne. So with a hearty farewell

to the good fellows of the Posener Regiment, we struck across the

low sierras to Château Thierry, crossing as we did so the scene of

the battle of Nesle and close to Château Thierry the battle-field of

the same name, where Napoleon annihilated the remains of the corps

of Sacken, which he had beaten previously at Montmirail; and on our

arrival found that Von Tümpling’s head-quarters had come on into

Château Thierry in the course of the afternoon. Château Thierry was

taken and retaken several times, and three times sacked in the campaign

of 1814, but had long lost the traces of its early misfortunes. On

the occasion of the present visit of the Prussians there was no sack,

and, indeed, very little scarcity. The people had for the most part

stayed at home, and, disregarding the lies of the French newspapers

as to the conduct of the German troops, had laid in goodly stores

of eatables and drinkables, for which they found a ready market, at

no doubt remunerative prices. A sagacious citizen told me he would

not at all mind if the Prussians were to stop a month in the place,

for they were far better customers than French soldiers, and most of

the population seemed to be much of his mind. The officers chiefly

frequented the Café du Midi, close to the Hôtel de l’Eléphant on the

esplanade, and consumed their beer and coffee much as if they had been

in the Fatherland. In this place I saw the first manifestation of a

feeling of impotent insolence on the part of Frenchmen. As most readers

are doubtless aware, it is the custom in Germany to bow to the company

on entering a café, and to remain uncovered while the stay lasts.

While the café was at its fullest two young Frenchmen of the town

entered with some noise, and without any recognition of the company

laid hold of cues and monopolised the only billiard-table. At first

they were unobserved by the German officers, but their loud laughter

and exclamations presently attracted attention. Each wore his cap

cocked on his head, and they two were the only covered persons in the

room. A German lieutenant quietly arose, and removing the cap of one

of them made him a bow, quietly said, “Pardon, Monsieur,” hung the cap

on a peg, and sat down. The young fellow looked as if he would fain be

angry if he dared, but thought better of it, and went on with his game.

His companion did not take the hint, but cocked his cap all the more

defiantly, and I heard him whisper to his companion that he would not

have stood the insult if offered to himself. A German officer sitting

near me heard this too. He got up, walked solemnly to the Frenchman,

took off his cap, chucked it out of the door, looked the Frenchman

in the face for a minute, and then went back to his seat. The young

fellow made a lame attempt to explain that he wore his cap because he

had a cold, but nobody noticed him, and the pair went off, looking as

impudent as they thought was safe.

On the 12th the head-quarters of the 6th Corps moved forward to the

village of Nogent l’Artaud; but as several regiments had gone forward,

we did so too, in hopes of being able to spend the night in La Ferté

sous Jouarre. From Nogent the valley of the Marne is exceptionally

beautiful and fertile. The villages are plentiful and full of good

houses, lavishly decked with flowers, and every slope is covered with

vineyards. At times the valley is so narrow that there is room only

for the river and the road, and the railway has to betake itself into

a tunnel; then it widens into a charming flat on which lies a pretty

village. I do not think that I ever saw a more beautiful village, both

externally and internally, than Charly, about two miles west of Nogent.

Almost all the houses were villas, and they stood embowered among trees

amid a wealth of flowers. The soldiers, of which the place was full,

seemed imbued with the influence of its beauty, and respected its

amenity as far as was possible. From Charly we went forward to Croutes,

and then on to Luzancy, where we found the 51st Regiment quartered,

and then we knew that there was no La Ferté for us that night. The

51st constitute the extreme infantry advance, and whenever one saw it

one might be sure there is nothing further but a handful of horsemen.

Luzancy, a very little place, was full to repletion. We returned,

therefore, to Croutes, and found as much crowding there; so, instead of

retracing our steps to Nogent, we crossed the Marne and made for the

railway station of Nanteuil-Saacy, which we saw opposite with a couple

of houses beside it. One of the houses was deserted and stripped. In

the other we found a man and his wife, but the lady was doing her

duty by her country in this its hour of need by adding a unit to its

population. In these circumstances we took up our quarters in the

waiting-room of the station, sleeping on the seats, and lighting our

fire to boil our coffee-water with a basketful of used tickets. Next

morning we came on to La Ferté in advance of head-quarters.

The white fog so characteristic of the Marne valley was still hanging

over the pretty town of La Ferté, when, about half-past four in the

morning of Wednesday the 14th, we drove over the quaint old bridge on

our road forward to Meaux. All round lay the 6th Army Corps, the honest

fellows still slumbering soundly in the semi-darkness. As we drove

forward through the fog, there were but few signs of our having been

preceded by any large body of men. As day broke, the soft roadsides

showed tokens of having been trodden by cavalry, and the hoof-prints

had not been beaten out, as they invariably were, when infantry men

had come tramping after the horsemen. Seven miles beyond La Ferté,

still in the thick fog, we reached the village of Trilport, about

three miles from Meaux, and here were a few men of the 51st, and a

slender guard in front of the Mairie. The sentry shouted something

unintelligible as we passed him—it was not “Halt!” and so we did not

care to pull up. But when we had traversed quite half the fine bridge

which forms a continuation of the little town, a “Halt!” in loud and

peremptory tones, came from a dim figure half obscured by the fog.

It came again still sharper and louder as we continued to advance,

our horse having a good deal of way on him. Then the figure stretched

out an arm, and, snatching the bridle, sent the animal back on his

haunches, shouting as he did so, “Donnerwetter! can’t you see the

bridge is down?” Down it certainly was, and very near down were we,

too, in the fog. The arch nearest Meaux, one of considerable span, had

been utterly shattered by gunpowder, and the débris lay in the water,

creating quite a tempestuous little rapid. As we were thanking and

questioning the sentry, a gust of wind suddenly swept the fog away, and

there became visible, two hundred yards or so up stream, the wreck of

the fine railway bridge, all three arches of which had been blown up.

Gaunt and grim stood the shattered arches in the sombre light of the

morning, contrasting strangely in the sullen ruin of their appearance

with the busy scene in the intervening space. The pioneers of the 6th

Corps were just finishing a bridge which they had hastily improvised.

A pontoon train was hourly expected, but meanwhile the pioneers with

their axes had constructed a very creditable pile bridge. Now they were

causewaying the approaches to the timber platform with grassy sods

sliced from the bank. It was good to see the system and purpose with

which everyone worked. An officer stood by formally to superintend

operations, but he seldom needed to take the cigar from his mouth to

utter an order. The division of labour principle was carried out to

its fullest extent, and the result was speed, order, and efficiency.

As a special favour, this gentleman permitted our carriage to cross

before the bridge was quite finished, and in advance of a battery of

artillery, the horses of which were champing their bits with impatience

at the halt in the chill morning air.

The broken bridges on the Marne, at Trilport, were not the only

obstacles which the French engineers had attempted to interpose between

the Germans and Meaux. There was the tunnel at Nanteuil, a really

serious impediment. Had all the French operations on this line been

as thorough as this, the German advance would have been materially

delayed. But in other cases the engineers must either have been

consummately stupid or have built largely on a supposititious stupidity

on the part of the Germans. When they destroyed the bridges in the

direct line, they invariably left standing some convenient substitute

capable of being utilised by the easy expedient of going a few hundred

yards either right or left. Thus a mile beyond the Trilport ruin a

bridge on the canal had also been destroyed. But a wily Uhlan had

ridden down the towing-path till he came to a handy if rather narrow

wooden structure, about half a mile to the left, and then come back

on to the chaussée, and chalked on a convenient post the laconic but

intelligible word “Links.” “Links” (left) we went accordingly, crossed

the canal, and reached the outskirts of Meaux, where there was another

bridge down. This time the direction was “Rechts,” and obedience to

it soon brought us into the town, where there were nothing as yet but

a regiment of hussars and a few sergeants that had come on in advance

to take up quarters in the town and the neighbouring villages for the

troops. In the course of the afternoon the greater part of the 6th

Army Corps arrived in the neighbourhood of Meaux; comparatively few

men, however, being quartered in the town itself, in anticipation

of the accommodation requisite for Royal head-quarters, which were

expected from Château Thierry next day. General von Tümpling had

his head-quarters at Quincy Segy, a little village with a beautiful

château, about six kilometres to the south of Meaux, but divided from

it by a more serious obstacle than the trivial distance, in the shape

of a destroyed bridge on a branch of the canal. A Jäger regiment formed

the infantry foreposts in a line of villages, the centre of which was

Claye, about five miles to the front; and the 8th and 9th Regiments of

hussars were on patrol and vedette duty out to the front of the Jägers.

They had pushed reconnaissances as near to Paris as the village of

Gagny, close under Fort Nogent, and their report was that there was

no French force outside the ring of forts. But there had been a few

trifling skirmishes between detachments of French cavalry covering

the engineers in their work of destruction, and the German patrols.

Two or three German dragoons had been shot and a few French prisoners

taken. And the 5th Army Corps’ advance guard lay around Coulommiers,

considerably to the left rear. To the north, and also rather in the

rear, was the bulk of the Maas army, but its cavalry were reported

to have pushed patrols on the north-west, close up to Gonesse and

Montmorency.

On the morning of the 16th, while riding out to the cavalry foreposts

in company with a hussar officer, we suddenly came, on the great road

in front of Claye, on a little posse of French lancers, following a

civilian who carried a white flag. On the top of a little knoll the

lancers halted, and then retreated, leaving the “parlementaire” to come

forward alone. When he came within hail, it turned out that he was

the Second Secretary of the British Legation in Paris, and the bearer

of a communication from Lord Lyons to Count Bismarck. He got a mount

from one of the hussars, who vacated his saddle for the purpose, and

was escorted into the camp by a sergeant and a couple of men. Great

interest was naturally excited among the German troops when the news

spread of the advent of a “parlementaire.” A report had been current

a couple of days before that the defence of Paris was abandoned, and

although that had been contradicted, a wide-spread belief existed

that the Parisians were not prepared when confronted with the actual

realities of a siege, to let the matter go to extremities. The arrival

of the English secretary was accepted as in support of this view, and

everybody was anxious for the King and Bismarck to come on toward the

front. The Royal head-quarters arrived early in the afternoon of the

same day, and I learned, however, in the course of the evening, from

a reliable source, that Mr. Malet was the bearer of a communication

emanating, in the first instance, from Lord Granville, having for its

object that proposal relative to mediation which led to the historical

interviews at Ferrières, which Jules Favre terminated by futile

gasconade.

Mr. Malet was courteous enough to give a few details regarding the

condition of Paris, and the incidents of his journey from the capital

to the German foreposts. He described Paris as being in a seething

and excited condition, with divided councils, and a huge mass of

pseudo-soldiery, the individual bravery of each individual component

part of which might be unquestionable, but the general discipline of

which was so loose and flaccid as almost to disentitle, in his opinion,

the body of semi-armed men to the appellation of soldiers. He had spent

a night on his road, and the Gardes Mobiles where he halted had made

the cheerful suggestion that he should sleep “under the beautiful

stars.” Mr. Malet, reserving the question whether he would have any

objection to sleep “under the beautiful stars,” if they were visible,

pointed out the fact that they were not, and requested other sleeping

accommodation than that afforded by the earth as a mattress and the

sky as a canopy. This he ultimately obtained, his escort sleeping in

the adjoining shed. He saw evidences of the most flagrant disregard

of discipline on the part of the troops lying outside the defences of

Paris. The men coolly refused to get up and take their turn of duty on

guard when ordered to do so by their officers, although, to judge from

appearances, there would have been no hesitation had the order been

to get up and go into action. It says not a little for Trochu that he

could have constructed a measurably serviceable army out of materials

so unpromising.

Mr. Malet returned towards Paris next morning, leaving in the same

way as he had come, under an escort of German hussars. Those who

knew the nature of the risk he ran felt considerable apprehension

for his safety. In the course of the morning the French had fired

upon two flags of truce, and it was just a chance if Mr. Malet

should be recognized. However, he got among the defenders of Paris

without detriment, and, as we afterwards learnt, reached the British

Embassy—there was yet a British Embassy in Paris—in safety.

PART II.

METZ.

CHAPTER I.

THE SIEGE.