Instructions caused me at this juncture to quit the advance upon Paris,

and I left Meaux on the morning of the 17th September. It may not be

altogether devoid of interest to recall the position of the German

armies on that day so far as accorded with my knowledge. The troops

had hourly been pouring to the front since first the 6th Army Corps

crossed the pile-bridge at Trilport. The object, it was already known,

was completely to invest the capital. The 5th Army Corps, with the

head-quarters of the Crown Prince, striking south from Coulommiers, was

pushing on through the villages to Chaulmes, and thence to Brie, on its

road to cross the Seine at Villeneuve St. George; the pontoon train was

in front between the field artillery and the infantry. The 5th might

have marched faster, but that it had to tarry till the 2nd Bavarian

Army Corps (still on the road from La Ferté) should have got up with

it, taking the more circuitous route through the villages of Montceaux,

Vanteuil, Boutigny, and so on to the great Melun road at Segy. The

5th and the Bavarians were then to push forward round in the direction

of Versailles; the interval between their right and the Marne to be

occupied by the 6th Army Corps. The destruction of the bridge over the

Marne at Lagny had occasioned some temporary inconvenience, but this

had already been remedied by the erection of a pontoon. The artillery

of the 6th Army Corps had all gone to the south front. General Vinoy,

with a field army, mostly consisting of regular troops, was reported by

the Uhlans to be outside the cordon of forts on the south of Paris; and

it seemed as if the 3rd Army might have to fight for its passage across

the Seine. The Saxons were in force at Dammartin, touching our right,

while the 4th Army Corps, the right wing of the Maas Army, was feeling

round the north side of Paris. The King was expected to move forward in

a few days, and occupy the château of Ferrières.

The bridges over the canals as I drove back to La Ferté on my return

journey had already been repaired, but the Marne was still crossed

by the pile bridge, although there was an alternative pontoon lower

down the stream. Some little distance on the Meaux side of La Ferté

I encountered the advance of the 2nd Bavarian Corps, and I had to

strike off to the right on the road to Montmirail, till I came to a

cross road, which brought me down again into the valley of the Seine

upon Nogent, right into the rear of the Bavarians. There were no

troops on this road, but it had been extensively traversed during

the few preceding days, and the people were only just beginning to

return to their homes. The villagers were very timid, and, I may add,

very hungry, all along it, but it was wonderful how little damage the

Germans had done during their transit. The poultry still strutted

about the road through the village, and there was hardly a broken pane

of glass to be seen. Furniture and valuables the people had secreted

before the troops had come upon them, and the chief injury seemed to

have been sustained by the straw stacks, upon which the men had drawn

freely to make beds wherewithal in the empty houses. Over Nogent the

wave had passed a little earlier, and the place had proportionately

recovered more. Meat, both beef and mutton, was hanging in the open

butcher’s shop. All the way to Château Thierry was visible the eager

desire of the peasantry and farmers to overtake temporarily arrested

agricultural labour. Except for the occasional traces of a bivouac and

now and then a broken down vine stem, there was no evidence that a vast

army had so recently traversed this road. The children played around

the doors beside the old crones at their knitting, the men and women

were in the fields working with a clumsy assiduity, and it seemed to

me not uncheerfully. The vine-pickers were in the vineyards, filling

their creels with the great clusters of somewhat over-ripe grapes;

but their number was, no doubt, smaller than had peace reigned in

the land. There were cattle in the pastures and horses at the plough

and between the shafts of the carts. I do not think any one not aware

of the fact could have gathered from outward appearance that anything

of exceptional importance had recently occurred in the beautiful and

smiling valley. In Château Thierry were a handful of Bavarian bullock

drivers and a few footsore infantrymen. The people of this beautiful

town had never forsook it in numbers so great as had the inhabitants of

some other places; nor had they any reason to repent of their courage.

Now it seemed as if they had fallen again into the somnolent routine

of a provincial town. The burghers gossiped on the pavement, the young

ladies promenaded in the avenues of noble trees, the lads squatted on

the brink of the Marne, angling with a lazy pertinacity. The Hôtel de

l’Eléphant was empty, changed indeed from that Elephant which I had

seen a few days before, when Von Tümpling’s staff were buzzing the

bottles in the _salle à manger_, and the cook was in a white heat at

the multiplicity of orders. The landlord, a gentleman himself of the

elephantine pattern, confided to me, with a sage wag of the head, that

he would be heartily glad to see _Messieurs les Prussiens_ come back to

stop as long as they could make it convenient, for they were the best

customers he had ever had, never grumbled, and invariably rejected red

wine for champagne, for which they paid promptly the price demanded.

At Dormans were a considerable number of Germans, but no regular

force—only sick and convalescents, and stragglers, chiefly belonging

to the 63rd Regiment. Neither here did I find any misery. The

disconsolateness of Madame at the hotel only proceeded from the

circumstance that she had a son in MacMahon’s Chasseurs de France, of

whose fate at Sedan she knew nothing. The shops were all open, and

the show in the windows was by no means despicable. Next morning, in

and about Ville en Tardenoise, I met and passed the whole of the 11th

Army Corps on its march to the front. The men looked fresh and well,

and the horses in capital condition; but the ranks were considerably

thinner than before that terrible struggle on to the plateau above

Floing. Rheims was occupied by a division of Bavarians and another of

Würtemburgers. Although this town had been in a state of remarkable

ferment on the occasion of the first entry of the Germans, it had got

used to the situation in a very short time, and now it looked as if the

German occupation was a thing from time immemorial. It was Sunday, and

citizens and Bavarians were streaming out of the noble old cathedral

and the various churches of the city in all the apparent friendliness

of fellow-worshippers. Among the poorer classes in Rheims there had

been considerable hardship, owing to the dearness of provisions and

the obligation incumbent on them of providing food for the soldiers

billeted on them. The German authorities had, however, averted further

distress from this source, by establishing a commissariat for troops

billeted on all those unable to support them.

Although the route between Rethel and Sedan had been traversed by a

large portion of the German host on its south-western march after

Sedan, the district, at least as far as Boulzicourt, seemed to have

either suffered very little, or to have recuperated with surprising

alacrity. As in the valley of the Marne, field operations were going on

briskly. Agricultural horses seemed plentiful, and I saw several great

herds of cattle in the flat water meadows. I felt a deep interest in

the portion of road between Flize and Sedan. I had traversed it several

times before—once on the day of the battle of Sedan, when a few scared

old women, sitting crouching by their black hearths amidst the crashing

of the cannonading, and an occasional scanty group of timid-eyed men

peeping out from behind the stone dykes, were the only evidences of

resident population in villages that bore the red-fresh impress of the

fangs of the war-dog.

The people were gradually coming back to Flize, Dom de Mesnil, and

Fernois, the three villages between Boulzicourt and Sedan. In Flize it

seemed that there must be plenty of wine, as well as plenty to drink

it, for the auberge was crammed with the blue blouses. The females of

the families had fallen into the old familiar way of sitting knitting

in the sunshine outside their doors. But many houses were still closed

up, and here and there the blackened skeleton of a roofless house, a

grim memorial of the hot shell-fire. Over against Donchery the peasants

were fishing the dead horses out of the Meuse, and burying them in

great holes. It is impossible to describe the emotions which almost

every step of this road called up in my mind—associated as it was with

events fixed so indelibly in my memory. Here was the little house at

which I had seen Napoleon alight from his carriage on the morning of

the 2nd September. A child was playing on the spot where the Emperor

and Bismarck sat in that earnest colloquy of theirs which I watched so

intently. A woman was spreading clothes on the path in the potato plot,

up and down which I had seen the ruined man moodily pacing as he tugged

his dishevelled moustache, after Bismarck had drawn the white cap with

the yellow band down over his eyes, and posted off to take counsel with

his master. To the left was the ruined railway bridge over the Meuse.

In my immediate front was the Château Bellevue, before which I had seen

the perturbed meeting of the monarchs—Napoleon bowing low to hide the

workings of his face; Wilhelm studying not to hide his emotion. Away

across the low alluvial plain and the sweep of the river, that ghastly

schlacht-feld sloped upward from the low bluffs,—now brown and bare,

but, when I saw it once before, a fearful space in which surged to and

fro, in the gaps of the white smoke, the heaving masses of maddened

combatants—when I saw it yet again a ghastly expanse of death, here

chequered with dead grey horses and gay-clad dead riders, there flecked

with the more sombre uniforms of the German soldiers lying thick where

the mitrailleuse hail had beaten them to the earth. Below it was the

island, with the château in its centre, on to which I had seen the

ceaseless stream of French prisoners pouring on the 3rd—the once-gay

gardens of the château now bare, and the trees stripped of their

foliage. And farther to my right lay Sedan itself, with the German

landwehr sentry on its ramparts; and farther to the right, Bazeilles of

ghastly memory.

The scene had changed since last I looked upon it. As I drove down

the gentle slope into Sedan I met the townspeople, male and female,

the Cook’s tourists, and the relic-hunting riff-raff of Belgium,

sauntering in dilettante fashion along the road, which three weeks

ago had a ghastly fringe of corpses. The relic-hunters were picking

up the knapsacks out of the ditch, and stealing the sword bayonets

that had been set up in lieu of tombstones. In the open space between

the enceinte and the minor fortifications stood the captured French

artillery—five long straight rows of cannons, seventy-five in each

row, besides numerous mitrailleuses and tumbrils. A single sentry did

duty over the vast park. In the moats, German soldiers were punting,

and from the bridges they were bobbing for weapons of war hidden by

the water, occasionally bringing to the surface the bloated corpses

of those who had erstwhile wielded these same weapons. All the shops

in the town were open, and business seemed tolerably brisk. That the

spirit of enterprise was not wholly dead was evinced by huge posters

announcing “an immense consignment of cigars,” and every _Débit de

tabac_ was doing a roaring trade. The convalescent wounded, with pallid

faces and thin limbs, were placidly sunning themselves on the steps of

the public buildings or tottering feebly about the streets. One young

sous-officer interested me greatly. The reader may have seen the matrix

of a branch covered by a round plaster of clay to prevent the canker

from getting into the heart of the tree. This quiet, pale-faced lad had

lost his left arm at the shoulder. It seemed to me that the shoulder

itself had been taken out close to the collar-bone, and the bandages

stood out just like the clay bole to which I have referred. He must

have made a very quick recovery to be able to walk about not three

weeks after a capital operation of this nature.

The siege of Metz, to watch which was my new duty, had virtually begun

on that woeful day for the French arms when the ravine of Gravelotte

was stormed, and Bazaine, baulked in his last desperate effort to keep

hold of any of the main roads leading Parisward from Metz, was hurled

back under the guns of Fort St. Quentin. On the day after Gravelotte,

the soldiers of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz had begun, in

the prompt and thorough German manner, to girdle the environs of Metz

with a series of defensive earthworks, linked together by a continuous

cincture of entrenchment, so well contrived and so formidable as to

reduce to a minimum the apparent discrepancy in strength between a vast

army free to make its concentrations on any selected point, and a host

more numerous, indeed, but necessarily attenuated as regarded any one

point by reason of the immensity of the circle around the radius-border

of which it had to show an unbroken front. That there was a time,

during which Bazaine could have hewed his way through this girdle, if

he had commenced his effort with discretion, and prosecuted it with

daring energy and regardlessness of loss, it does not appear that in

the nature of things there can be any reasonable doubt. What effect

his emancipation would have produced, had it been effected soon after

Gravelotte, is a question involving considerations so various that,

in such a work as this, I may be excused referring to them in detail.

But it is obvious that had Bazaine been a leader of originality,

self-reliance, promptness, and boldness, instead of, as I estimate him,

an honest, rather sluggish man, thankful to get his initiative from

some one else, instead of ready to take his own initiative—a military

formalist mainly, distracted between his political and his military

obligations, and utterly unversed in the rare art of regalvanising

beaten troops,—had Bazaine been another sort of man, he might surely

have seriously complicated von Moltke’s strategy.[3] Suppose that he

had cut his way out in the obviously most eligible direction, somewhere

between Plappeville and Maizières les Metz, and marched at the pace

of the first Napoleon on the track of the Maas army. The Germans can

march, but they cannot fly; the hot energy of the Red Prince could not

have accomplished the impossibility of drawing in from the fringe of

the wide circle an army strong enough to give Bazaine battle before

he had won the start by several marches. It was the Maas army which

met MacMahon in the teeth at Buzancy and Nouart as he came lumbering

through the Argonne into the Maas valley; the third army had swung

round, not in time to head him, but to take him on the right flank,

extended in dishevelled march all along the valley. But if Bazaine had

been close on the track of the Crown Prince of Saxony, the latter would

have been in a vice. He could not have fought facing both ways. Had

he elected to arrest MacMahon, Bazaine would have been upon him from

behind; had he faced about and met Bazaine, the cannon of MacMahon

would have been roaring on his new rear. His position, in fact, would

have been untenable; and it seems plain that the only course open to

him would have been to slip out of the _crux_ to the southward, and

thus to have allowed the coalescence of the army of Châlons and the

army from Metz. The outcome of a junction so formidable it would be

folly to attempt to define. The French situation would still have

been precarious—perhaps nearly as bad as it was the day before Sedan.

For on three sides three German armies would still have hemmed it in,

and there was nothing behind it but the frontier. On the other hand,

there would surely have been much possible to an army of 300,000 men,

supposing the troops in good fighting heart, and the generals worth the

skin of an orange.

But Bazaine lay supine behind his forts till he got his initiative

in the shape of the plan to co-operate with MacMahon. It seems clear

that the planners of that general’s disastrous expedition contemplated

that his march would be bloodless till he should have reached the

north-western flank of the army environing Metz. Letters from Metz,

intercepted by the besiegers, bore testimony to the fact that MacMahon

was expected to make his appearance in that vicinity about the 30th

of August. The signal for the Metz army was to have been three bombs

fired in the air by MacMahon, and then a sortie was to be made at the

same moment that the army of Châlons was to fall on the German rear.

It is actually the case that Bazaine was cautioned against allowing

the guns of the fortress to have too much elevation when fired in

support of the sortie, to obviate the risk of the projectiles falling

in the co-operating army on the further side of the Germans. But

MacMahon had other fish to fry, and the three rockets never flashed

into Metz the signal for co-operative action; so on the 31st, in

blind bewilderment, Bazaine made his first great sortie, and made it

in the direction in which success would have been most difficult to

compass—in the direction of the north-east, the church spire of St.

Barbe being seemingly his landmark. Apart from the actual difficulties

to be encountered on unfavourable ground and against exceptionally

strong opposing works, the selection of this direction for such a

sortie seems simply inexplicable, unless Bazaine contemplated, not a

junction with MacMahon, but a bold push into the Rhine provinces—a

conception no admirer has ever dreamt of attributing to him. MacMahon

was expected from the north-west. Bazaine, had he cut through on

the north-east, would have had to march to the junction round a

third of the circumference of the compass, giving time for a German

concentration in the path of his circuitous march. But he failed to

break out: it may have been for want of persistency, a faculty in

which he seems to have been weak; it may have been that he recognised

what the Germans contend was recognisable, that the longer he tried

the worse he would fail; and after this effort, while his chances of

extrication diminished daily, his prospects, were he once outside, grew

more and more precarious. He seems in a great measure to have accepted

his fate, and solaced himself with the reflection that, at all events,

he was keeping from other work the great armies which constituted his

besiegers. That not a man of those might be judged superfluous, he

made sorties from time to time during the month of September, not of a

character suggesting an attempt to break out, but in force enough to

convince the makers of his toils that the ropes by which the captive

elephant was bound were not a whit too strong. No doubt, too, although

I believe Bazaine to have been a perfectly honest and loyal Frenchman,

he was hampered in his generalship by political considerations—of all

trammels the most ruinous to daring action. The last of these partial

sorties, most of which seem to have had supplies for their object, took

place on the 28th of September, the day before I reached the front, and

from the Germans engaged in it I gleaned some particulars respecting it.

The German foreposts occupied, in no great strength, the village of

Colombey, where there are three large châteaux, in the upper stories

of which there had been left by the inhabitants a considerable store

of grain. They had taken refuge in Metz, and probably acquainted the

French of the existence of these stores. Anyhow, in the afternoon of

the 28th the French, in large numbers, and covered by the artillery of

Fort St. Julien, made a dash at Colombey, their advance followed by

a number of empty waggons. For once they surprised the comparatively

weak German foreposts, and drove them out of Colombey. Covering their

operations by throwing forward tirailleurs into the woods to the front

and towards La Planchette, they filled the waggons with the grain

and started them on the return journey. But, meanwhile, the Prussian

artillery had come to the front, and the shells fell thick among the

Frenchmen in Colombey and the convoy on the road. The former scuttled

back in great haste under the guns of St. Julien; the waggons went on

at a gallop, but out of thirty-six only fourteen succeeded in getting

safe off. The rest were arrested _in transitu_ by the influence which

the Prussian shells exercised on the animals which drew the waggons—an

influence which manifested itself in limbs blown in a variety of

directions. There was no great loss in killed or wounded on either

side. A captain of the 44th Regiment was killed under circumstances

which were a disgrace to civilized warfare. When his detachment

was in retreat he fell wounded severely, but not mortally. His men

placed him in shelter, and then left him as they fell back. When they

recovered the village, they found the corpse of their captain mangled

barbarously—his fingers cut off for the sake of the rings he wore, and

his throat cut from ear to ear. I found the Germans justly incensed at

this atrocity.

The cargo which the train carried that left Saarbrück on the morning

of the 29th of September, was of a sufficiently diversified character.

There were country-women, with great tubs of butter, which they were

taking up to the front to find a good market; officers and soldiers,

new men and convalescents, both from sickness and wounds, on their way

to join and re-join their regiments; Saarbrück merchants going up for

orders; a few Englishmen, who nourished the idea that the fighting

was chronically in progress just outside the station at Courcelles,

and that, by walking a pace or two, they would be able to command a

bird’s-eye view of the whole affair; marketenders, who had been making

investments; and a few Frenchmen on their way to the intermediate

towns, who were doing their best to seem as German as possible. Our

way to Forbach lay through a corner of the ground on which was fought

the battle of Spicheren, and, as the train passed through the woods

near Schönecken, I saw not a few graves of the men who had fallen

in the fierce fight of the 6th of August. Near St. Avold we passed

the débris of the train which had been shattered in a collision that

brought death to several French prisoners, and at this town also we

found a large depôt of military stores and provender. There was a still

larger depôt at Falquemont, where also were collected a quantity of

artillery waggons captured from the French at Gravelotte. The station

at Courcelles was a sight. It was a centre from which radiated in

every direction long lines of waggons of every description, carrying

stores of all kinds to the different army posts, north, south, east,

and west. All around the deserted little village itself are great herds

of cattle, piles of stores, whole pyramids of medical comforts, and

long lines of sick and relay horses. The bustle was immense, and yet

everything seemed orderly. There was of course an Etappen Commando

in the station, but the worthy lieutenant who represented the said

Etappen Commando knew nothing whatever about anything. All he could or

would tell me was that Prince Frederick Charles’ headquarters were at

Corny, on the Moselle, to the south of Metz, but he did not know the

distance. He had no waggons, no horses, very little temper, and less

time to gossip. The circumstances were sufficiently unpromising. One

might as well look for quartern loaves in the kennel of Fleet-street as

for quarters in or around Courcelles; and the field-post, the only and

that a precarious means of getting to Corny, did not leave till three

in the morning. I took the resolution of pursuing the policy out of

which I often found luck eventuate, of going straight to the front till

the foreposts would let me go no further. Striking northward then, and

inclining westward from Courcelles, I passed in succession through the

villages of Laquenexy, Marsilly, Ogy, and St. Agnan. All these I found

occupied by troops, constituting the second investing line environing

the fortress and town of Metz.

All the district was dotted over with the graves of the battle fought

by Steinmetz on the 14th of August, and of men who had fallen in the

various forepost fights. From Courcelles the scene was one of utter

barrenness and desolation, wastes traversed everywhere by tracks of

waggons, chequered by abandoned bivouacs, the leafy bowers of which,

plastered with mud, stood forlorn and unused, all the troops having

been got under cover except the foreposts who necessarily had to

remain in the open. Very few of the inhabitants still remained in the

district, and of these the plight was very miserable. Agricultural

occupations were at a standstill; the vineyards, traversed by waggon

roads and cut in two by entrenchments, were utterly ruined. The houses

were wrecks, many of them wholly or partially burned by fires kindled

by the shells. In Courcelles, the only living thing not German was

a mongrel dog which stuck to his kennel when his owner ran away.

The Germans had christened him “Courcelles,” and the time-serving

rogue was already more than half German—traitor that he was. In the

forepost village of Montoy, which I visited the same evening, I found a

considerable number of inhabitants. One old woman sat placidly before

the door knitting stockings, while the troops lined the entrenchment

just in her front. I suppose she had got so used to shells and

bullets that she did not mind them, or it might be that her despair

had culminated in a sort of apathy of equanimity. The poor country

folks and villagers around Metz were in cases so miserable that it

seemed they must inevitably starve the moment that the Germans should

withdraw. Though they had horses, and though the bullets had not been

sweeping their farms, yet last autumn they durst not put a spade or

a plough into the ground. Every field holds the “sacred and precious

seed” that will germinate never till the last trumpet sounds. It is

right comforting to know that good friends—Friends in more than the

mere name—came to the aid of these poor wretches, with a promptness,

tenderness, and efficiency characteristic of a sect that ever prefer

acting to speaking. But this is anticipating. From St. Agnan I

proceeded two kilometres, still in a north-westerly direction, till I

reached the village of Flanville, where lay the 4th Regiment of East

Prussian Infantry, forming part of the 2nd division of the 1st Army

Corps. The regimental staff was comfortably located in a pleasant

château, and liking the looks of the place and the friendly ways of

the officers, I asked permission to attach myself for the time to the

regiment, a civility which was frankly and unhesitatingly granted.

I was informally taken on the strength, the good old Oberst made me

free of his modest table, the officers of No. 6 company, right hearty

fellows all, assigned me six feet by four of straw in the corner of

the drawing-room, in which there was not a scrap of furniture but a

grand piano, on which a sequence of voluntaries, sometimes accompanied

by singing, sometimes by dancing, seemed constantly going on, and

everybody was anxious to show attention to the Englander who had

strayed on to the foreposts. In the afternoon Lieutenant Werth, the

officer in command of the 6th company (vice the Hauptmann shot on the

31st of August), accompanied me on a ride round a considerable radius

of the eastern forepost circuit, and the lucidity of his explanations

enabled me to arrive at what I afterwards found was a correct idea of

the position, as it was in the end of September.

Next the Moselle, and eastward therefrom, the 8th Army Corps kept watch

and ward, its left on Ars-sur-Moselle, its right interlacing, at the

village of Magny, with the 7th Army Corps. From Magny the 7th held

the line of environment lying in the village of Peltre, the château

and house of Mercy-la-Haut, shattered and burnt, and on as far as Ars

Laquenexy. It had foreposts and _Feldwachen_ a little further forward,

but not so far as they had been a few days previously, when the

foreposts were at La Grange aux Bois. The left of the 1st Army Corps

lay in Colombey, which was also considerably burnt, feeling the right

of the 7th in Mercy-la-Haut. Its second line extended to the northward

in the villages of Ogy, Flanville, Retonfay, Château Gras, and Ste.

Barbe. The first line lay in Coincy, Montoy, Noisseville, Servigny, and

Failly. The whole of this latter line was within range of the big guns

of the great Metz outwork of St. Julien, which occupies the summit of

a mamelon. Between the first and second line there was an interval of

only about a mile. To the front there lay, first, the foreposts, then

the _Feldwachen_, and lastly the single sentries, within 1,500 yards

of St. Julien. The first line occupied a section of the continuous

entrenchment which ran right round Metz. All the villages were roughly

fortified by barricades, _chevaux-de-frise_, &c.; holes had been broken

through all the houses for firing, and, indeed, every village formed a

very respectable, if rough and ready fortress. The foreposts lay either

in single houses, also well fortified by entrenchments and barricades,

or in the field behind earthworks of no inconsiderable magnitude. The

_Feldwachen_ chiefly occupied woods or the gardens of châteaux. A

_Feldwache_ which may be taken as typical, I noticed in the village of

Lauvallière on the route to Saarlouis, two kilometres nearer Metz than

Montoy. Here lay two companies, arms piled close at hand, and ready

for a sortie from the enemy at a moment’s warning. To the left, in

the hamlet of la Plancette, was another _Feldwache_ in a deep ravine.

Here I had to dismount and walk up the slope beyond to the knoll on

which the solitary sentry kept his watch within point-blank range of a

chassepot bullet from the French works at the hamlet of Belle Croix.

We could see with the naked eye the Frenchmen moving about the forts

of les Bottes and St. Julien, and circulating about the environs both

of them and of the town, while the great eminence of Mont St. Quentin,

with its mass of fortifications on the summit, shut in the scene,

dominating the whole valley from the further side of the Moselle. All

the front was pitted over with the craters of shells. The men of one

of the regiments were erecting quite a permanent barrack of wood, the

sides covered with earth, behind an isolated brewery a little way in

the rear of Lauvallière. Further north, Noisseville was densely filled

with German troops; Nouilly, which lies between it and St. Julien, was

neutral ground, occupied by neither army, while the French were in

force in Mey and Vantoux, villages still nearer the fortress. We went

forward to the edge of a wood near Mey, accompanied by two Prussian

patrols, and got a warning to go back in the shape of a sharp fusilade

from out a garden in the environs of Mey. To complete the narrative

of the localities, the environment was taken up on the right of the

1st Army Corps by the Landwehr Division, consisting of three brigades,

each six battalions strong, under the command of General von Kummer.

They covered at that time the ground round nearly to the Moselle on

the north, but were afterwards moved to the other side of the stream,

changing places with the 10th Army Corps. The General commanding the

1st Army Corps, his Excellency von Manteuffel, lay in Ste. Barbe, a

little to our north rear. Our immediate commander was General von

Pritselwitz, the chief of the Second Division of the First Army Corps,

who had his quarters two kilometres behind us, in the little village of

Puche, where likewise was the Feldpost.

Even so early as the time of which I am writing, deserters and the

German prisoners whom Bazaine had sent back, concurred in representing

the condition of the troops inside and around Metz as being very bad

in the matter of food. They were represented as living chiefly on

horseflesh, and as having neither flour, rice, nor salt—the latter

want being the subject of much complaint. The discipline of the troops

was said to be good, and the morale of a character very different to

that of the disorganised horde who threw down their arms at Sedan.

But the German returned prisoners united in abusing the domineering

greed of the French officers, who cared nothing comparatively for

their men, provided their own wants were satisfied. This selfishness

seems forcibly to have struck the honest Germans, used as they are to

treatment so different.

It could not fail to strike even the most cursory observer that the

alertness and completeness of the German forepost system was a great

feature of the army, and one of the leading causes of its success. At

night the _Feldwache_ always went forward to the post occupied during

the day by the farthest outlying sentry. Here it broke right and left

into small picquets, leaving a strong nucleus in the centre. The

front, at a distance of 200 or 300 yards, was continually traversed by

cavalry patrols, who often rode right in among the sleeping Frenchmen,

whose system of night vigilance was not brilliant. Then there would

be a pistol shot and a round of wild chassepot firing in the dark,

and the daring Uhlan would dash out through the red legs, back to

his supports. Writing of chassepots, it may be noted that the German

forepost troops were by this time extensively armed with these weapons

to enable them to cope on equal terms with the French tirailleurs. Of

the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Regiment seventy-five men were so armed,

or rather seventy-five chassepots were in use and were transferred

from _Feldwache_ to _Feldwache_, as the changes of guard were made.

This seemed to settle the question as to the relative merits of the

Chassepot and the Zundnadelgewehr in the eyes of the Germans.

On the evening of September 29th it was officially made known to the

troops that the French were constructing three bridges across the

Moselle to the westward of Fort St. Julien, it was believed with a

view to a sortie in the direction of Maison Rouge and Woippy. About

four o’clock next morning the sky became brilliantly illuminated with

the shells under the fire of which they attempted to carry out their

design, and with the return fire with which the German artillery met

it. In the thick darkness the effect as seen from our position (about

four miles away) was magnificent. Between the louder crashes of the

cannon was heard the sharper rattle of the musketry fire, singly and in

volleys. The firing became fainter towards six o’clock, and by seven

had died away altogether—the presumption being that the French attempt

had been baulked, and this we afterwards learned was the case. A few

days previously the garrison of Thionville had surprised and captured

a German provision train, which was carried into that fortress. The

food being more needed in Metz than in Thionville, it was anticipated

that an effort would be made to fight the train through the German

environment into the beleaguered fortress. In all probability the

affair of this morning was a diversion intended to facilitate this

movement. The Germans, however, were fully alive to the contingency,

and they succeeded in foiling the attempt.

I found that the Germans were in possession of detailed drawings

and full particulars of the French troops lying around Metz, the

correctness of which I was afterwards able to verify. Bazaine’s

forces—that is to say, the army driven back on Metz after the battle

of Gravelotte—were not permitted to enter the town of Metz. The whole

army was encamped on the slopes of the outlying fortifications either

of the town or of the outlying strongholds, in the intervening country,

and in the various villages which still remained in the possession of

the French. The forts were garrisoned by Mobiles and National Guards.

Bazaine’s head-quarters were at Ban St. Martin, outside the town, and

around him lay the camp of the Imperial Guards. Opposite us on the

east side lay the 3rd Army Corps of the French army—Lebœuf’s corps.

Its forepost nearest us was in the wood in front of Mey, and the chain

extended southward to the front of the hamlet Belle Croix. The mass of

the corps lay to the rear. Within the previous few days a considerable

camp had been established on the slope of St. Julien, looking toward

us. We could see the white tents, and the red-legged gentlemen

strolling about them. Their patrols, mounted and on foot, were wont to

cross our front so near that the countenances of the men could be made

out with the glass. The German _Feldwachen_ could have picked them off

quite easily if they had chosen; but there was an order against firing

at small detached parties. The French did not show the same civility.

A single man could not show himself on the advance line without being

blazed at by a regular volley, which seldom, however, took any effect,

the firing being so wild. The guard changing was wont to be a great

time for a waste of French powder and shot all along the line, and the

field guns at Little Belle Croix made a point of spitefully throwing a

few shells on the brewery on the great chaussée constituting the chief

forepost on our right front.

When the French made a sortie, Lieutenant Werth informed me, their

scheme of advance was very characteristic. They scuttled out from the

shelter of the fortresses in the loosest skirmishing order and with

great rapidity till they had reached intermediate spaces sheltered

from the German fire, whether by woods or by the configuration of the

ground. In those they accumulated their masses, and came forward in

dense columns. But they had never, save on the great sortie of the 31st

of August, and at Colombey on the 28th September, succeeded in getting

to close quarters with the first line of the Germans. The artillery of

the latter came into play with its deadly practice, and then there was

no alternative but a rapid retreat. Their demonstrations were always

accompanied by a cannonade from Belle Croix and St. Julien, but seldom

by the discharge of field artillery. This latter circumstance had led

the Germans to the conclusion that the French were short of ammunition

for their field guns, and this seemed probable, looking to the lavish

use they made of them at Gravelotte. There must have been artillery of

great calibre in the forts, for Lieutenant Werth pointed out to me, by

Lauvallière, lying in the ditch, a huge shell, which could not have

been less than a 72-pounder. It was unexploded, a fact noticeable of a

large proportion of the French shells.

The losses that had been suffered by some of the regiments of the 1st

Army Corps since it had come within hail of Metz were stupendous. On

the 14th August, and in the minor fights of the 30th and 31st of the

same month, and those during the course of September, the 4th Regiment

lost (killed and wounded) 35 officers out of a total of 60, and 1,000

men out of 3,000. The 45th Regiment, lying in its vicinity, had lost

yet more of its officers. Out of 60 no fewer than 42 had fallen. The

result had been that a large number of Vicefeldwebels and several

sergeants had received commissions. As these were comparatively

inexperienced in their new duties, they were daily receiving assiduous

instructions from their seniors. These informal lectures were highly

interesting—not a few officers of the British service would have

greatly benefited by attending them. The troops also were drilled

daily, notwithstanding their position in front of the enemy. On the

morning of the 30th I watched a whole battalion at skirmishing drill,

and a right pretty sight it was. The recruits that had come forward

since the beginning of the war spent hours daily in perfecting their

drill, and the efficiency of the whole army was sedulously maintained

at the highest pitch.

I was present the same morning at the very interesting ceremony of the

distribution to the 4th Regiment of the iron crosses awarded to members

of it for valour in the field. The ceremony took place at Puche, the

head-quarters of the general of division, who personally distributed

the crosses in the presence of the officers of the regiment. The band

played the old regimental air, the “Hohenfriedberg,” and the colours

were on the ground. The gallant 4th had earned no fewer than twenty

crosses already, and the award seemed to have been made with the most

rigid impartiality, the men taking their full share of the coveted

distinction with their officers. The 4th is one of the old regiments

of the Prussian service, and its annals record a long and gallant

career. Its regimental march, the name of which I have just mentioned,

is secured to it by a special royal order in remembrance of the valour

which it displayed at the battle of Hohenfriedberg, fought in 1745.

To understand the means of defence which the French army enclosed in

Metz had to keep wherewithal the Germans at bay, a detailed description

of the remarkable fortifications with which the virginity of La Pucelle

was guarded may not be out of place. Although Metz is no longer French,

these works still exist in their entirety, to say nothing of their

having been strengthened, and therefore respecting them the present

tense may be used.

The town of Metz, with the great Cathedral, lies for the most part

on the east side of a branch of the Moselle, which forks off from

the main stream near La Grange aux Dames, and forms the islands of

Chambière, and lower down of Sauley and St. Simphorien. A large suburb,

however, stands on the first of these islands. The inner fortifications

surround the town continuously, with the exception of one gap to the

southward, which is covered efficiently by the branch of the Moselle

which divides the islands of Sauley and St. Simphorien. On the north

of the Ile de Chambière are two important forts on the inner line, one

at the north-western angle of the enceinte, the other detached in the

plain of the island, but connected with the enceinte by a covered way.

On the south of the inner line are the Redoubt du Pate to the east, and

the Lunette d’Arcon to the west, both connected with the enceinte by a

covered way. The western side of the inner line is covered by the great

Fort Moselle on the farther side of the main stream of the Moselle, a

double crown work of immense strength and magnitude, inclosing great

magazines and arsenals. To the south of it the bastion of Ile de Sauley

sends out a long spur of fortifications, which crosses the Moselle, and

terminates in a redoubt on the farther side. Nor is the eastern side

of the inner line less strongly protected. In front of the enceinte

looms the great double crown work of Belle Croix, to the full as large

as Fort Moselle, and more highly favoured by its natural position. To

the south of it stands Fort Gisors, a minor detached fortification

which serves to complete the circuit of connection with the Redoubt du

Pate on the south. Thus the town of Metz is, in fact, environed by two

lines of fortifications, the continuous enceinte with its bastions and

what I may term the outer cordon of the inner circle having intimate

connection with the enceinte.

Of themselves these defences would make the place all but

impregnable, but they are by no means the most important defences of

this extraordinary fortress. There is an outer circle of detached

fortifications, each of which is the complement of the other, and of

which no one can be assailed without the assailant laying his account

to be enfiladed by at least two of the others. Let me begin with these

at the Moselle, on the north of the town at La Grange aux Dames, and

work round, proceeding first in an easterly direction. After climbing

the bank of the stream we come to the chaussée leading to Bouzonville,

and crossing it we almost immediately come on the great glacis of

Fort St. Julien. This is an outlying fort of the first magnitude,

covering the whole of the round summit of a natural eminence, and

having on three sides a natural glacis, therefore of great extent. It

lies about two English miles from Metz, in a north-easterly direction;

and a little to the north-east of it is the Monastery and wood of

Grimont, the former of which Bazaine’s engineers had scientifically

diverted from ecclesiastical to military purposes. About a mile and

a half due south of St. Julien, and about a mile due east from Fort

Belle Croix, is Fort les Bottes, a great bog-backed structure chiefly

of earth, which was thrown up as a precautionary measure, either

immediately before or immediately after the outbreak of the war. The

Germans, I believe, are engaged in altering it from a “provisional” to

a temporary fort. Its position is very important as a link between St.

Julien and Fort Queleu on the south. It stands a little to the south

of the great chaussée from Metz to Saarlouis and Saarbrück, while as

yet the bisection has not taken place. Forward about a mile from les

Bottes, and on the chaussée just before it bisects, is a hamlet named

Belle-Croix, which must not, however, be confounded with the fort of

the same name. Here, also, the French had strong earthworks mounted

with guns, but these, for the most part at least, were field artillery,

and paucity of ammunition kept them tolerably quiet. About a mile and a

half south of Fort les Bottes, and about the same distance from Metz,

is Fort Queleu, also an important structure, dominating the main road

to Strasburg and the adjoining flat country as far as the telegraph on

the elevated ground before Mercy-le-Haut. Turning now westward, and

inclining to the south, we come to Fort St. Privat, at a distance of

about two and a half miles both from Fort Queleu and Metz. Its value

consists in the command it has of the eastern side of the valley of

the Moselle, of the road from Nancy, and of the railway lines which

converge behind it. Leaving it, we come to the Moselle again, this

time on the south-west side of the town, and striking up nearly due

north, we have nothing in the shape of permanent fortifications,

although during the siege there were several temporary batteries, till

we climb the great hump, on the top of which stands Fort St. Quentin,

the greatest outwork of Metz. St. Quentin is a complete fortress in

itself; it could hold out were all its neighbours taken, and it may

safely be termed impregnable, looking at the combined strength of

its natural position and its skilfully devised fortifications. Not

only does it dominate the country to the south, south-west, west, and

north-west, but it frowns outward to the east, and its great guns would

play an important part in the defence against an attack on the inner

fortifications of Metz. North-west of it, about a mile on the top

of the bluffs, lies Fort Plappeville, or les Carrières, the natural

position of which is not so strong as that of St. Quentin, because

the elevation on which it stands is not isolated, while it is open in

the rear, and therefore requires St. Quentin as the complement of its

defence, a defect the Germans are remedying. It acts as a defence over

a great tract of country to the west, and keeps a besieging force at a

respectful distance, so that it cannot reach the edge of the bluffs and

pitch projectiles down into Metz. Due north from Metz, about two miles,

and standing in the middle of the plain, bounded by the Thionville

Railway on the west, and the Moselle on the east, lies the improvised

work of St. Eloy, the last and not the least important of the outworks

of Metz. Its province is in combination with St. Julien to take care

of the valley of the Moselle to the northward, and to dominate the

great road to Thionville. All these fortifications (except the little

Belle-Croix) were furnished with heavy guns of position, and the French

had no lack of ammunition for the use of those great fortress guns,

although field artillery ammunition might have been short. Besides

their field artillery, the Germans had two or three batteries of siege

12-pounders on the western side of the Moselle, and I am not aware that

during the siege they had either any more numerous or more formidable

siege artillery on the ground. Their quiescently defensive, or rather

obstructive, position, then, was dictated by sound military conditions,

since a blockade answered exactly the purpose they had in view, viz.,

to reduce the place by famine.

None of the villages around Metz are very large, and Flanville is

one of the smallest of them—consisting of a few hovels huddled by

the side of a country road, under the lee of two large châteaux.

Small as it was, it had to accommodate the whole of a battalion of

the 4th. The men were packed closely in the houses, occupying lofts,

passages, sheds, and every other available shred of cover. The officers

occupied the two châteaux, both of which had been beautiful residences

before war had laid them waste. The colonels château still had its

garden undestroyed—in this autumn time a paradise of sweet-scented

flowers, with here a fountain, and there a leafy bower. Our château

had sustained harder fortune. A company of men, as well as a number

of officers occupied its spacious chambers; on the lawn outside were

stacked the needle-guns, ready for immediate use, and the flower-beds

had been trodden down almost beyond the power of recognition. A

Corporalschaft occupied the conservatory, and the flower-garden was a

drill ground. The château had been pelted by the French in the battle

of the 1st of September—it was still inside the range of their guns—and

the roof had been shattered by shells. We occupied the drawing-room,

in which were two great mirrors reaching to the roof. The one over the

mantel-piece had been penetrated by a bullet exactly in the centre, and

fantastically starred in all directions. Here is a sketch written on

the spot, of the manner of our daily life, when the gentlemen over the

way did not happen to be bellicose.

“In the grey morning, unless we have been previously roused by firing

on the front, the soldier servants come into our drawing-room bedroom,

bringing the morning coffee. Long before, the soldiers on the other

side of the partition have been stirring, and they are the merriest,

the most noisy set of Kerle imaginable. After coffee, drill begins.

The young soldiers are at the goose-step in the flower-garden; the

older hands practising skirmishing by companies in the neighbouring

vineyards. At nine comes appel—a kind of parade without arms, at which

the clothes and accoutrements of the men are carefully inspected. The

appel only takes place occasionally, but the under officers have a

minor appel every day, at each of which in turn there is an inspection

of a separate article. Now it is arms, now boots, now cloaks—the under

officer is responsible for the condition of his Schaft or squad, and

he takes care he shall not incur a reprimand through any want of

vigilance. After appel the officers breakfast. The feeding is homely,

and eaten in a homely fashion—clean plates, or plates of any kind, not

being plentiful, and the glass-ware decidedly deficient. But there

never wants a hearty appetite; and for a guest like myself, a hearty

welcome and a frank kindliness that I never can forget. Breakfast

over, comes an interval of visiting, gossiping, and beer drinking, for

we have our own marketender on the lawn, and Saarbrück is only forty

miles away. Some write, some read, others sleep; it is astonishing how

much sleep it takes to tire some people. The men employ themselves

in tailoring, in seeing to the rations, in conducting the cooking of

the dinner, and in smoking in the bright sunshine. Dinner is rather a

discursive meal; you imagine you have finished it when you have eaten

of the rice, the soup, and the mincemeat in your own particular room,

but going the round you find another mess devoting their attention

to plums and schinken, and you join in of course. Then you go a

little farther, and find the inmates of another room topping off with

chocolate or coffee and a _petit verre_. Of course you are asked to

partake, and equally of course you do so. After dinner is the siesta.

The quarters are then as quiet as in the dead of night. In an hour or

two a sprightly officer awakens, and assiduously devotes himself to the

stirring up of his more drowsy brother officers. A pack of cards comes

to the surface somehow, and presently the round table is surrounded

by a circle of card-players, the game proceeding with a considerable

amount of noise, owing to a habit most Germans have of all speaking at

once, each at the top of his voice. Those who are not at the card-table

stroll out to visit the brother officer who is on the _repli_, drop in

upon the worthy major and colonel, whom they find placidly smoking in

their beautiful garden, or watch Fort St. Julien and the French tents

through their glasses. Deep as the interest may be in the game which is

being played at the card-table, that and all other local interest fades

into nothing at the appearance of the Underofficer who has been over to

head-quarters to the Feldpost. It is good to watch the countenances as

the letters, hurriedly opened, are being pored over with eager faces.

The eyes of the portly Dantzic premier-lieutenant on the sofa become

strangely moist as the crumpled fuchsia and rosebud drop out of his

letter, the fragrance still clinging about them as when they had been

placed there as a love token from the children he has left at home.

What is that which the handsome young lieutenant hurriedly clutches as

it falls out of the envelope, and pushes inside his tunic on the side

next his heart? I don’t think it is a bill from his tailor. He would

not smile so if it were a dunning letter he was reading, and the most

gushing man is not addicted to the practice of stealthily kissing a

letter from his tailor ere he consigns it to his breast-pocket. Depend

upon it the lieutenant is happy in the knowledge that the girl of his

heart, far away on the shores of the Baltic, has not forgotten him.

The domestic side of the German character comes out very strong in

this interval of letter-reading. Nearly all the officers of the 4th

are from the same district, and the letter of one officer commonly

contains messages to others who at home are friends and neighbours. I

was amused to-day by the amazed delight of a grizzled officer who must

have seen close on fifty years, when he looked at the superscription

of one of his letters. ‘_Gott in Himmel!_ its from the old mother,’

he cried. Then came quite a gush of interest as to the age of the old

lady, and when he told us with some pride that she was close on ninety,

the ‘Donnerwetters’ were many and hearty. After the letters come the

perusal of the newspapers and gossiping as to their contents, and the

probable designs of Bismarck—it is always Bismarck who is named. When

darkness falls we have music and dancing. One of our volunteers is a

brilliant instrumentalist, and he comes down from his lofty abode near

the roof, and plays our piano in the drawing-room. Now it is ‘Die Wacht

am Rhein,’ the officers chiming in with the words, and the men on the

farther side of the partition and out in the environs taking up the

strain, till the volume of sound must sweep over the glades and the

ruined vineyards to the French field watches outside Belle-Croix and

St. Julien. Now it is a waltz which the young volunteer plays, and then

the spectacle would greatly delight Mr. Spurgeon, who is an advocate

for male dancing with male. A nimble young officer, who, if he were not

a gallant fellow with medals on his breast, would have made a capital

dancing-master, treats us to a burlesque rendering of the cancan,

and the music gets into the head of a rotund officer of middle-age,

who executes the most fantastic capers with a suppleness, and at the

same time a gravity, that sets everybody in a roar. He infects the

rest, and for the time one might imagine he was in the company of a

congregation of dancing dervishes. But we must not keep the men awake,

and, in truth, nobody cares to be a late sitter himself. By ten o’clock

we are all in bed, the whole place wrapped in slumber, save the

sentries who surround us with a cordon through which a mouse could not

creep. No more could a mouse creep into or out of Metz. The sentries’

orders are precise to allow nobody to pass through after nightfall

on any pretext whatever. Last night an officer and myself, who had

been out on the foreposts, allowed darkness to overtake us before our

return. As we approached the chain of sentries, the stern ‘halt’ came

to us through the darkness. ‘Officer,’ was the reply, but it availed

nothing—notwithstanding that the sentry belonged to the officer’s

own regiment. We had to stand till a party came to conduct us to the

guard, and then the officer went back and praised the sentry for the

creditable manner in which he had done his duty.”

After dark on the night of the 1st October the 4th Regiment marched

forward into the first line, occupying the village of Noisseville,

a position sufficiently far advanced to make its occupation very

ticklish work. The village was within easy range of the shell fire,

either from St. Julien or Fort les Bottes, while the field guns at the

little Belle-Croix were, so to speak, just over the way. The village

constituted part and parcel of the line of the German entrenchments;

every cottage was a stronghold; in every street, alley, and gap was

an earthwork. About 300 yards to our right front, in the bottom of a

rather abrupt valley was the village of Nouilly, belonging to neither

side. Just outside of it, on the French side, and to the north-west,

begins the Bois de Mey, on the southern edge of which lies the village

of the same name, occupied by the French. The wood swarmed with their

tirailleurs; we could see their red breeches through the trees, and

they also acquainted us with their presence by firing occasionally at

our patrols when they imagined they came too near the wood.

At night I went on the farthest _Feldwache_ on our front, just behind

the village of Nouilly, and remained there during the night with the

lieutenant in command. As soon as he relieved his predecessors, he

threw forward a sergeant’s party into Nouilly, with orders to hold it

till daylight. About one o’clock in the morning our cavalry patrols,

supported by an infantry detachment, felt their way to the edge of

the Bois de Mey, and there encountered a fierce but wild discharge of

musketry. They fell back on the sergeant’s party at Nouilly, who held

the place till they could discern the advance of large detachments of

French troops. The shots had stirred up the three battalions lying in

and around Mey, and they had come out on the rampage to annihilate the

patrols and whatever else should come in their way. The German sergeant

in Nouilly, however, quietly fell back on his supporting _Feldwache_,

where the lieutenant stood fast till he could see the Frenchmen

swarming into Nouilly, and then fell back on the _repli_, which in turn

supported the _Feldwache_. It did one good to see the coolness of the

officer, a young lieutenant, not to all appearance over twenty-five,

but who wore the ’66 medal. I asked him why, looking at the seeming

strength of the approaching force, he did not give a general alarm.

The apparatus for this purpose was complete. A fusee thrown into the

bonfire on the edge of the _repli_ post would have got 40,000 men under

arms in ten minutes, and the artillery galloping to the front in a

quarter of an hour. But it was exactly the responsibility of such a

general disturbance that prevented him from crying “Wolf”—although, to

my judgment, there seemed cause enough. The event proved how wisely

Lieutenant von Verzin had learned to calculate contingencies. The

French were content temporarily to occupy Nouilly, and after a brief

stay fell back on their original position at Mey. But if he refrained

from giving the alarm, he did not allow a single precaution to escape

him. His company was extended in skirmishing order on both sides of the

post, ready to retard the French advance should it have taken place. As

it was, a great number of shots were exchanged, but no harm was done on

either side.

Around the church of Noisseville there was a _repli_ post, continually

occupied by a company. The church itself, by the way, is, or rather I

fear I must say was, a very interesting structure. Of great age and

considerable architectural pretensions, it had been pounded with shells

more severely than any building I have ever seen. The French had

pelted it on one side, the Germans on the other. The steeple had been

originally square, now it was roughly round; there were great gaps in

the walls and holes in the roof, and the birds were singing merrily

in the half ruined structure. The _curé_ had remained by his church,

and, strange to say, his residence had escaped with very little damage.

The colonel of the 4th was his guest, or rather he was the colonel’s

guest, for he had nothing to eat but what was purveyed by our worthy

_Oberst_. The good _curé_ spoke German fluently, and got a kindly

salute from everybody; he took the firing very coolly, and seemed in

remarkably good spirits, all things considered. But to return to the

_repli_ round the shattered church. The 6th Company found it on the

2nd, and I found my way into Lieutenant Werth’s shanty after coming

back from the _Feldwache_ in the grey dawn. Till about one o’clock all

was quiet—the men lay about on the straw, smoking or sleeping, and the

cavalry videttes, 100 yards to our front, circled leisurely. Suddenly

there came a spattering chassepot fire from the riflemen on the little

Belle Croix directed against an infantry party which was beating

the foreground. The bullets came whistling over the _repli_ post as

Lieutenant Werth and myself jumped up to see what was the matter. One

hit the ground a little to our front, ricochetted between us, and

lodged in the arm of a soldier who was lying down a little in our

rear. The order was for all to get under cover immediately, but Werth

had some difficulty in getting obeyed, so eager were his fellows to

see what was going on. He himself stood coolly exposed as the bullets

came whistling by, minding them no more than if they had been so many

buzzing flies. Firing with the French is infectious, and it was taken

up all along the line as far as Mey, for what reason it was impossible

to say. The Germans did not think it worth while to reply, and the

videttes phlegmatically continued their circling. In about an hour the

French fire died away, having occasioned no casualty, save the wound to

the man in our _repli_.

On the night of the 2nd of October a detachment of the 4th did a

little job in the way of fire-raising. The neutral village of Nouilly,

immediately to the front of Noisseville, has already been mentioned;

it contained—or, at least, was believed to contain—considerable stores

of provisions, which, however, were so secreted in the cellars and

elsewhere, that the Prussians could not discover them. The inhabitants,

however, had for the most part taken refuge in Metz, and it was natural

that they should inform their military countrymen of the whereabouts

of the provisions. It was equally natural that men on short commons

should do their best to obtain all the food they could, from whatever

source; and it is believed that when the French patrols had temporarily

occupied Nouilly the night before, they succeeded in carrying away

with them some stores. The place lay so directly under the fire of

Forts St. Julien and les Bottes that it was not tenable permanently by

the Germans, and, therefore, there was no resource but to burn it.

A little after eight o’clock in the evening I was sitting at supper

with Lieutenants von Hosius and Fischer, of the 5th Company of the

2nd Battalion of the 4th regiment. The quarters these good gentlemen

occupied would hardly have been considered eligible by a London

working-man looking for lodgings. The house had been burnt out twice,

and the bare walls were now roofed in with a few planks loosely covered

with straw. Door and window were both gone, but their place was not

inefficiently supplied with blankets. There happened to be left a

tolerably decent table, and one side of the apartment was littered

with straw for a bed. We ate rather promiscuously on the foreposts

round Metz. If anyone had anything exceptionally good for supper it

was sure to ooze out, and then the fortunate man had an exceptional

number of callers who “dropped in promiscuous” just as the dainty dish

was upon the table. The dainty dish on this occasion consisted of salt

herrings boiled with onions, and washed down with beer warmed with

meal, lard, and schnaps. Lieutenant Fischer understood no English, but

had a faculty for expressing his meaning pantomimically in a manner

which I never saw equalled. As a linguist Mr. von Hosius had a great

superiority over his comrade. He knew some English. It is true his

knowledge was not of a varied character. So far as ever I learned it

was confined to “Good night,” with which he was wont to take delight in

saluting me about five in the morning, and a verse of “Lucy Long,” with

which he invariably essayed to follow up the conversation. Between the

salt herrings, my German, Mr. Fischer’s pantomime, and Mr. von Hosius’s

“Lucy Long,” we were getting on as well as could be expected, when a

feldwebel entered with an order for Lieutenant von Hosius, which the

latter read aloud:—

“Lieutenant von Hosius will parade at nine o’clock with 15 volunteers

of his company, and will proceed forward to burn the village of

Nouilly.”

Von Hosius was fond of salt herrings, and fond, too, of an opportunity

of distinguishing himself. The Iron Cross for Valour was already in his

button-hole. There were still herrings on the plate, and the hour was

only half-past eight. Fischer, by his direction, went outside to call

for volunteers, while he finished the herrings. The men lay about in a

couple of dismantled rooms, and in the garden at the back of the house.

“Volunteers to burn a village!” roared Fischer, into the midst of the

sleeping Kerle. Had he thrown a bomb among them he could not have

caused a more instantaneous and universal start. Volunteers! He wanted

fifteen, and here was the whole company round him like bees. He picked

his fifteen, taking the men who had no wives at home in the Fatherland,

and then came back to see if the mulled beer was done. By this time

von Hosius had demolished the last of the herrings, and as time was

short was setting about getting ready in the most systematic manner.

Having pulled on his long boots, he pulled out of his portmanteau the

little dagger which every officer wore to ward off the vultures of the

battle-field in case of being wounded, and shoved his “Adams” revolver

into his belt. Then, with a final glass of the composite beer, he

sallied out to the spot where his little band was drawn waiting for

him, and gave them a word or two of advice and precaution.

In truth, the undertaking was a most dangerous one. It partook, indeed,

not a little of the nature of a forlorn hope. A few hundred yards in

the rear of Nouilly we, it is true, had a _Feldwache_, but the French

were nearer it on the other side by Mey and the Bois de Grimont, and

had strong temptations for entering it by night. It might be that he

might encounter a force of French inside the village. In that case, of

what service would be his fifteen volunteers? It was almost certain

that, if this contingency should not occur, the party would encounter

a fierce foe in the execution of their task, and it was probable that

on their return they would be shelled both by St. Quentin and les

Bottes. I left Hosius giving his order, and went on to the _repli_

ground, through which he had to pass to get across the wine berg, and

down into the valley in which Nouilly lies. In a few minutes came the

measured tread of the little party, marching at the German quick step,

which is faster than that of any army I know. Von Hosius as he passed

hailed me laughingly with a parting “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long,” and then

disappeared in the darkness. For a while we could hear the crashing of

the little band through the vines, and then came the hoarse challenge

of the _Feldwache_ rear sentry. Then all became quiet. The group by

the watchfire in the _repli_ gave sufficient evidence of the ticklish

character of the enterprise. For a few minutes the officer in command

of the _repli_ and myself were the only persons who enjoyed its genial

warmth. Then through the gloom came stalking the major, and, after

a long look towards Nouilly, he squatted silently down by our side.

Presently another form appeared, that of the genial colonel himself,

who had been moved to forsake the society of the _curé_ to come and see

what success von Hosius should meet with. I don’t know exactly how they

came, but in half an hour nearly all the officers of the battalion were

around the bright wood fire. Everybody tried to appear unconcerned,

but it was equally certain everybody was fidgety. The regiment had

never yet failed in any duty assigned it, and if it failed now? Nobody

liked to broach the subject, but I could see it was uppermost in the

mind of all. And von Hosius was a tantalisingly long time in putting

us out of our suspense. An hour had gone—Nouilly was but ten minutes

forward from Noisseville—and the colonel’s nervousness was undisguised

as he hacked at the burning log with his naked sword, and drove his

spur into the leg of his chair. The major had taken to walking up and

down the inside of the entrenchment, and only the adjutant exhibited a

thorough nonchalance, but then he was very sleepy.

The vigilant lieutenant of the _repli_ gave a smothered shout, and we

all sprang to our feet. Flame-coloured smoke at last and plenty of

it. But surely, suggested the major, it really cannot be so far away

as that. Why that lowering smoke is on the other side of the Bois de

Grimont, and must be a private bonfire of the French—not the one which

von Hosius was to fire. It was too true, the alarm was a false one.

The colonel sat down again moodily, and the major began to mutter

something that seemed to me very like swearing. As for the adjutant

he went to sleep, and I very nearly followed his example. One thing

was favourable, the dead silence that reigned in the valley. It was

evident that von Hosius had encountered no French in the place, else

the rattle of the musketry would have been heard long ere now, and the

battalion, which was standing to its arms at the various company posts,

would have been lining the entrenchment with the needle-guns poked over

the earthwork.

Another half hour of suspense, and then a loud “Ha!” simultaneously

from the lieutenant on duty and the sentry. This time it was Nouilly,

and no mistake. Von Hosius had taken his time, that he might do his

work thoroughly. Not from one isolated house, but in six places at

once, belched out the long streaks of flame against the black darkness,

and the separate fires made as much haste to connect themselves as ever

did commanders who were eager to feel their supports right and left. In

ten minutes the whole place was in one grand blaze, the church steeple

standing up in the midst of the sea of flame, as if it had round its

turret the old motto of the Scottish Kirk, “_Nec tamen consumebatur_.”

But, church steeple as it was, it had not the attribute of the burning

bush, and a whole pyrotechnic display of sparks bore testimony to its

fall. Here and there against the flame could be seen a human figure

in frantic flight; and on a bluff just outside the village I saw in

the strong light a woman standing wringing her hands. These were the

innocent victims of war, the victims not of the Germans, but of him in

whose ears the poor serfs would three months ago have shouted “Vive

l’Empereur.”

Presently we heard again the crashing through the vine-brake, and our

outpost sentry challenge. The watchword was returned in the hearty

voice of von Hosius, and in five minutes more the little party was

inside the entrenchment of the _repli_. Von Hosius, of rather a portly

figure, was panting with the exertion of climbing the vine-hill, but he

found breath enough to greet me with “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long.” The affair

had been singularly successful. The duty had been executed without the

necessity of exchanging a single shot. The village, which burnt till

five next morning, had been so effectually fired that all the stores

which it might have contained must have been burnt; and so coolly had

the enterprise been gone about, that a respectable old horse which was

found in one of the stables of the village was led back in triumph, as

a trophy. I suppose the French held their fire because they did not

know whither to direct it. To have shelled Nouilly would only have been

to play into the hands of the Prussians, and the destroying party might

have come from Servigny, Noisseville, or Montoy. I lay down among the

straw, and went to sleep with the echo of “Miss Lucy, Lucy Long” still

haunting my ears.

On the foreposts we came to look upon the fortresses environing the

town of Metz, much as the Naples people regard and talk of Mount

Vesuvius when that mountain is in an uneasy condition. During all the

3rd of October St. Julien had been quiet. St. Quentin had not emitted

a single puff of smoke, and les Bottes might have been a flower-garden

tended by pretty girls. The same calm reigned on the morning of the

4th up till eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and the martial population

of Noisseville were taking it as easy as discipline would permit. To

the left of the Brewery, an isolated house on the chaussée, a little

in rear of Lauvallière and parallel with Noisseville on the south,

a large body of troops were engaged in constructing large wooden

barracks just in rear of the entrenchment line. These were being built

for the accommodation of the troops holding the post of the Brewery,

which had been reduced to ruins by the many bombardments which it had

undergone. The French in les Bottes could see the progress of this

work and the number of the men engaged in it; and the idea seemed to

strike them that it might not be out of place to attempt to interrupt

the building operations. Anyhow, they commenced rather a fierce shell

fire on the unfinished barracks, and also on the unfortunate Brewery,

under the shelter of which the working party was withdrawn when the

first grenade came hurtling over the trees. The Brewery must by this

time have been thoroughly well used to the visitation of shells, and

there was this consolation for it, that had it been exploded bodily

it could not have been ruined much more utterly than it already was.

All that it was good for was that the heap of stones which once had

composed a rather imposing structure afforded a kind of shelter for

troops drawn up in its rear. But even this office the Brewery was now

rendered incapable of performing. The shells sent its loose stones

flying in all directions, and it was thus that several men were

wounded. The contagion of firing was communicated by les Bottes to

the foreposts. These began blazing away at each other in a very level

fashion, the Germans replying to the French fire with the chassepots,

the use of which they had been practising sedulously for the last few

days. Everybody had got so much used to this intermittent outpost

fire that the only notice it met with was a whistle occasionally from

some soldier moving about our village when a bullet went singing past

him, or hit the wall a yard or two above his head. From firing at the

wooden barracks and the Brewery, les Bottes took it into its head to

throw a few shells into Servigny, the village to our right, and then

St. Julien chimed in with its great cannon balls. Noisseville occupied

an intermediate position between the Brewery and Servigny; but up till

about one o’clock it had unaccountably escaped the polite attentions

of the two French forts. About that hour, however, a great cannon-ball

came whistling across from St. Julien, crashed through the wall of

a house in which most of the officers were quartered, and tumbled in

among the stacked arms in an open space in the street, making a hole

in which a horse might have been buried. Nobody was hurt; but the

paymaster was nearly smothered with the débris which fell from the wall

through which the great ball passed. Les Bottes followed St. Julien’s

example in firing into Noisseville, the latter projecting 42lb. and

64lb. shells, the former confining himself to cannon-balls. It was a

great waste of powder and shot. Nobody was hurt, and all the effect

was that a village already for the most part burnt and in ruins was

destroyed a little more. The church was terribly wrecked by the cannon

of St. Julien. Already the exterior had been knocked out of shape,

but the inside retained much of its original integrity. A shell from

St. Julien crashed right through the altar, and brought the cross on

to the pavement in splinters. The fragment of a shell from les Bottes

shivered a beautiful marble monument, splitting it right up the centre,

and cutting in two the commemoration of the merits of a respectable

defunct villager. The Virgin Mary, as she stood in marble against the

wall, had a limb amputated, and was otherwise dismembered; and if the

pastor had been in the pulpit when another shell struck it he would

never have preached more. So hot became the cross-fire from the two

fortresses that it was judged advisable to withdraw the troops out of

the village a few hundred yards to the rear. The _Feldwachen_ were

of course left in their positions, as also were two companies in the

_repli_ by the church; but the rest fell back into an orchard behind

the village. It was great fun, in a sense, to be here and listen to

the French pelting the village, under the idea, no doubt, that it was

full of Prussian troops. We could hear the crashing of the rafters and

the smashing of the walls as the huge projectiles tore through them,

the shells exploding as they struck, and sending into the air a cloud

of fragments. All this time the musketry fire on the foreposts was

unceasing along a large portion of the line, and anyone dropping in

casually upon the scene would have imagined quite an important battle

was in progress. So little was this the case that the troops supporting

Noisseville and lying in Flanville and Retonfay were not put under

arms. The whole affair was an utterly useless ignition of powder, and

its only effect was to suspend for the day the construction of the

wooden barracks. When the firing had ceased we came back into the

village, and several found that the quarters which they had quitted

at one o’clock were no longer in existence at five. A few houses more

or less ground to powder in Noisseville was, however, quite a trifle

when the whole village might have been called a ruin. It surprised me

to observe with what extraordinary force some of the projectiles had

fallen. In a field beyond the church there was a hole in the earth

that might almost have served as the shaft of a mine. It marked the

spot where had fallen a shell from les Bottes. The pioneers dug it out

in the evening. They had to go to a depth of about six feet. The huge

ugly affair had not exploded, and two men extricated it gently, and

bore it in triumph, quite a little procession following, to lay it at

the feet of the colonel. The shell was reckoned to be 110-pounder. Just

fancy a missile of this magnitude striking a man full in the chest!

It would hurl him in little pieces in all directions. Or fancy it

exploding in the centre of a group, or in the heart of a column, and

scattering its great skin, an inch and a half thickness of metal, in a

shower of morsels, each about two inches square.

During the night, as I was told in the morning, les Bottes and St.

Julien renewed the firing on Noisseville. I confess to sleeping so

soundly, that I was in blessed ignorance of the circumstance, but when

I turned out in the morning I fell into a hole that was the crater of

an exploded shell, about two paces from the place where once there

had been a door. Several other shells fell in the immediate vicinity,

and the poor church got another blow or two. The 4th Regiment, on

the morning of the 5th October, was relieved by the 44th Regiment,

from Retonfay, with whom it exchanged quarters. Retonfay is a squalid

village, which was included in the second line of environment. Close to

it was a fine château, inhabited for the time by General Zglinitzky,

who commanded the brigade. It was the turn of the 4th for a spell on

rest, and the officers who, in the front line, were not at liberty to

quit their commands for an hour, were now comparatively at large for

the time. As soon as we reached Retonfay, and had taken up quarters,

one of them was kind enough to accompany me in a ride as far as the

Moselle, on the north side of Metz. We everywhere traversed the extreme

edges of the foreposts, and the ride was a very interesting one. From

Retonfay we struck the first line at the unfortunate Servigny—that once

pretty village, at which St. Julien seemed to have so especial a spite.

There was not much of Servigny to speak of—a few gable ends of walls,

and here and there the walls of a house without a roof. A battalion

of the 45th contrived somehow to find quarters among the ruins, and a

few villagers still wandered about in a ghostly fashion. From Servigny

we passed over a considerable ridge, to the charming village of Poix,

lying snugly at the opening of a valley which tends downward toward

the Moselle. This village is surrounded in all directions by beautiful

villas, the summer residences of the wealthier inhabitants of Metz. An

isolated suburb near the top of the ridge had suffered severely from

the fire of St. Julien—indeed, occasional shells were bursting in it

as we passed, but the village itself had not been much injured, and

the German troops dad respected its amenities in a very surprising

manner. A Division General dwelt amid roses and honeysuckles, in one of

the principal chateaux, built in rustic Elizabethan, and beautifully

furnished—the Feldpost inhabited the gardener’s rustic lodge in the

grounds. Vremy lies a little to the rear in the bottom of the valley,

which here assumes the character of a gorge, and the road compels a

detour into it, which was repaid us by the observation of the admirable

manner in which its houses and churchyard walls had been converted into

defensive works, thoroughly blocking up the gorge. Leaving Vremy, and

the hospitable officers who dwelt therein, we rode down the valley to

Failly, a considerable village, in which, until a few days previous,

had been the head-quarters of General Kummer, commanding the Landwehr,

now gone across the Moselle. From Failly there is a direct road to the

Moselle at Malroy, but, by a slight detour, the opportunity offered

itself of getting very close to the Bois de Grimont, which was full of

French troops, and of inspecting, at a comparatively short distance,

the fortress of St. Julien. An officer in Failly told us laughingly,

that there were two very beautiful young women in Villiers l’Orme,

the village which is so near to the Bois de Grimont, and I am not

certain that this information did not operate with my companion as an

additional argument for visiting the place. L’Orme is a very prettily

situated little village, just on the edge of the tableland on which

stand Grimont and St. Julien. We saw nothing of the beautiful maidens,

but the place was full of inhabitants, and the children were playing

merrily about, quite regardless, to all appearance, of the fact that

the place is within three hundred yards of the French outposts. L’Orme

was unoccupied by the Germans during the day. At night a small party,

under the command of an under officer, was wont to go forward, and

take up a position behind it. Occasionally, stragglers from the French

outposts visited it, we were told, in search of food. From the shelter

of one of its houses, we could see quite easily with the naked eye, the

French outposts—the men cooking or lying down, and the sentries walking

to and fro. Behind was the forest, and then the Monastery of Grimont,

while over the whole of the quiet little scene, St. Julien frowned

grimly, casting forward his dark shadow in the afternoon sunlight.

L’Orme had wonderfully escaped the ravages of war. Both parties seemed

to have agreed to respect it, probably on account of the number of

villagers who still continued to reside in it. I was told that not a

single shell had been fired into the village. But while we were there,

the shells were flying over our heads towards Vany and Charly, and it

seemed strange to see the children playing in the street, the girls

driving home the cows, and the old women placidly spinning in front of

their doors, when the missiles were whistling through the air above

their heads.

The French might have respected l’Orme, but they assuredly had no such

tenderness for anybody happening to traverse the space which intervenes

between l’Orme and Chieulles. The track led athwart an open field, with

a hedge in the rear, and the French posts lined the wood continuously,

at a distance of about five hundred yards. The distance is about half

a mile, and, unless we chose to make a very considerable detour, there

was no alternative but to run the gauntlet. My military friend went

first, at a brisk hand canter. He had hardly shown his horse’s head

beyond the cover of the houses of l’Orme, when the Frenchmen commenced

saluting him with chassepot bullets. I followed at a short interval,

and as the bullets became thicker and faster, our canter became a

gallop. The horses were fresh, and also desperately timid; ever as a

bullet whistled past them, and cut the twigs in the hedge, they gave a

bound and a shy that necessitated very close adhesion to the pigskin.

I was by no means sorry when we got into Chieulles, a village a little

farther retired from the point-blank range of fire, and which had also,

by mutual consent, been held as a neutral territory. There were in it

plenty of inhabitants, who seemed to have got quite familiarised to

their strange position, and carried on their ordinary avocations as

if the war were miles away. The village is rather a large one, and

contains several considerable buildings. From it our road lay to the

left rear, to a _Feldwache_ outside the village of Vany, and then into

the village itself. The French outposts gave us one parting salute

as we sallied out of Chieulles, and this evoked a response from the

_Feldwache_ for which we were making. We left the hostile outposts

firing away at each other very briskly, and rode forward, accompanied

by a cavalry officer, into Charly, a beautiful village, containing

many châteaux, and standing embowered amidst orchards. Here one of

the points of the battle of the 31st August was contested with great

desperation. All around the village the graves lay thick, now German,

now French. The bayonet had been at work that day in the environs of

Charly, and in one of its alleys took place a fierce and long-continued

hand-to-hand contest. It was very pretty to see how tastefully the

German troops had decorated the graves of their dead comrades. They had

made them up with turf, and planted flowers and shrubs on the ridge,

while at the head of each stood a wooden cross, on which was painted

the name and rank of him who lay below. The French graves were not thus

tended, but neither were they neglected. Brave soldiers never draw

distinctions between the last resting-places of foes and friends. The

graves of the French had been surrounded by hedges of shrubs, and the

cross had been set up at the head of each.

From Charly we rode on to Malroy, a considerable village lying on the

Moselle, about two miles north of Fort St. Julien. It was necessary,

however, to ride up the stream some distance to find the first

pontoon bridge crossing it at Argancey. Some distance higher up, at

Hautconcourt, there was another pontoon bridge, and close to it, at

Ennery, a very large depôt of provisions and stores for the supply of

the northern portion of the besieging army. Immediately on crossing

the Moselle, we came among the Landwehr men. “These men need not fear

comparison with the finest regiments of the regular army,” that was

my first remark to my companion. So far as I could discern, the only

distinction lay in the fact that the Landwehr had more hair on their

faces, as a general rule, than the line troops. About eight-and-twenty

to two-and-thirty seemed the general age of the Landwehr men; and as

regards a martial carriage they would not suffer alongside the Guards.

Riding leisurely back by a more circuitous route than that we had

pursued in going, we were near Failly when the sun disappeared in a

glorious setting behind the yellow crest of St. Quentin. Hardly had it

disappeared when a flash came from out of the shadow over against St.

Agathe. The roar of a heavy gun came booming across the valley, and

the sound had not died away before there was another flash and another

roar. In five minutes the whole slope for a distance of nearly a mile

and a half was lit up by continual flashes of artillery fire. Then the

batteries of St. Eloy took up the reply, with a slower but steady fire

of its heavy guns, their roar coming to us deadened by the thick fog

which was rising from the Moselle. The sight in the growing darkness

was indescribably grand. We sat on horseback on the summit of the ridge

at Poix, watching and listening, till St. Julien thought fit to chime

in on his own account, and his big shells gave us notice to quit the

ridge by the suburb of Poix on which we were standing. About eight

o’clock we returned to Retonfay, on the plateau before which we found

the brigade-general, and nearly all the officers of the battalions

lying there, standing watching and listening to the gun-fire. Soon

after eight it began to slacken, and presently died away altogether;

all through the night both St. Julien and les Bottes kept the German

lines on the alert by an occasional reminder, consisting of a 64-lb.

shell.

The 6th was a quiet day on the east side, although the din came to us

of a continuous bombardment from the other side of the Moselle to the

north side. By special request of the troops stationed in Retonfay,

there was divine service in the morning in a meadow in the village. The

division chaplain officiated, and the brigadier-general was present

with his staff. It was a fine sight to see the six battalions,

numbering as many thousand men, drawn up in a hollow square, with the

clergyman and the regimental band in the centre. The service commenced

with a hymn, in which all the troops joined with fervour. Then the

minister preached a kind of informal sermon. He selected no Scripture

text, his text was the duty of a Christian soldier in war time. His

words evidently came from the heart, and as evidently went to the

heart. When he spoke of the friends at home longing for tidings from

the front and yet half afraid to hear them lest they should learn that

the loved one had fallen in battle, many were the heads bent down on

the manly chests, and many a gallant soldier held his hand before his

eyes to hide the starting tear. It was remarkable what an effect the

chaplain’s words had in stimulating correspondence when the service

was over. Round each Feldwebel there was quite a little crowd eager

to obtain the “Correspondence Karte” on which the troops mostly wrote

their brief epistles, and the post corporal had enough to do to carry

the great bag with which he went over to the Feldpost in Flanville. A

little after the service I was sitting with the paymaster and another

officer, when a knock came to the door, and there entered a great

hulking fellow from Dantzic, who sheepishly asked the paymaster to

accommodate him with paper money for his bullion. How much do you think

he had? Why, counting pfennigs and a queer collection of kreutzers,

he could make up just one thaler, and this huge remittance the great

honest manly fellow wished to send to the Frau away on the shore of the

Baltic. It was only three shillings, but it was the last stiver the man

had, and he would go without his glass of beer till next pay day came

round. Fancy an English soldier coming to his officer with a handful of

half-pence for conversion into paper money! But a German regiment is

one great brotherhood, and the paymaster pocketed the coppers and gave

the man the paper thaler with a kindly word and look, for has he not a

Frau of his own in Königsberg, whose portrait lies against that broad

chest of his?

In the evening there was a camp fire, an institution not unknown at

Wimbledon in the early days of the Volunteer movement, when as yet

the encampment was but small, and when Lord Elcho’s sonorous voice

could be heard over the whole gathering. During peace time, there

is a camp fire—or a gathering equivalent to it—once a week in every

Prussian regiment, to which the married officers bring their good

ladies, and whither also the “beauty and fashion” of the garrison

town are invited. “Beauty and fashion” were represented in Retonfay

by a few French crones of fabulous age, who confined their remarks to

muttering “Mon Dieu” continuously, and who, I suspect, would gladly

have poisoned the whole regiment if they could have done so without

risk to themselves. But nevertheless we had our camp fire, and that,

too, under quite imposing circumstances. The spot selected was a

pretty meadow by the side of a stream, about two hundred yards from

the village. An officer of taste, and with a capital eye for landscape

gardening, had devoted himself from a very early hour in the morning

to perfecting the arrangements. With a fatigue party, he had thrown a

pretty rustic bridge across the stream, and lined the path leading to

it with green boughs. With these, too, he had enclosed a large circle,

with a smaller area close by for the band, and in the centre of the

larger circle a great bonfire had been built, its foundation raised

by the earth excavated from a trench dug around it. All the chairs

in the village were collected, and most of the tables, and placed in

picturesque confusion around this central point. The officers began to

gather about five o’clock. They were all so smart that I felt ashamed

of my old tweed shooting jacket and dilapidated wideawake. The parade

coats had been dug out of the bottom of portmanteaus, and looked

quite spruce and natty. Boots had been polished to a pitch that might

have stimulated the admiration of Day and Martin. Spurs and buttons

glittered brightly in the setting sun. Then our worthy colonel—Oberst

von Dietzen-Hennig—made his appearance, accompanied by his staunch ally

the major. The colonel, too, was evidently on ceremony, for he wore the

sword which King Wilhelm had presented to him with his own hands the

evening of one of the battles of the 1866 campaign. All rose to greet

the commanding officer, and immediately that he was seated, the band

struck up. So thoroughly was the affair managed, that an elaborately

written programme of the music was laid on the colonel’s table, of

which I took a copy. It may interest English readers to know what music

a Prussian regimental band played, while the bass accompaniment was

furnished by the roar of the guns over against us on the other side of

the Moselle. Here is a copy of the programme:

Fest Overture Fischer.

An der schönen blauen Donau Walzer Strauss.

La Belle Amazone Loischhorn.

March Potpourri Bach.

Künstler Fest Quadrille Hermann.

Fanfare Militaire Ascher.