After I had seen Lebœuf’s command taken over by the 1st Army Corps,

I returned towards Metz, meeting on my way a stream of straggling

soldiers who had missed their corps, and were staggering out under

loads of tents, blankets, and what not. The environs of the town were

very desolate and very filthy. Mud, raw horseflesh, burnt-out bivouac

fires, huts made of the branches of trees, old women, and skeleton

horses, were the leading characteristics. There was no difficulty in

getting into the town, where I found the shops all open, but with no

great show of edibles. Meat hung in the butchers’ shops, although it

was chiefly, if not altogether, horse; the cafés were crowded, and

there appeared no exhaustion in the stocks of the shops devoted to

the sale of any material. Tobacco was plentiful, wine, spirits, and

liqueurs in great abundance. Making my way to the Hôtel de l’Europe,

I found it crowded with French officers, and I also found there one

Englishman, Dr. Ward, of the International Society for the Succour

of the Wounded, who had just been decorated by the French military

authorities for his attention to the wounded; and two Americans, Dr.

Good, of the same society, and who had also been decorated; and Mr.

Eustis, a commercial gentleman, who had spent forty-eight days of the

siege in prison under suspicion of being a spy. The spy mania had raged

very strongly in Metz. Seventy-eight persons were arrested on suspicion

in one day. Eight in all I was told had been shot as convicted spies,

including the notorious Shieull, to whose adroitness and accurate

information the French believe Von Moltke was indebted for his

knowledge of the weakness of the French dispositions on the frontier,

and for the hint which he utilised into the successes at Wörth and

Weissenburg. The following is a statement of the tariff of prices for

food ruling in Metz three days before the capitulation, supplied by the

manager of the Hôtel de l’Europe:

Beef 8 francs per lb.

Horseflesh 10 centimes to 2 francs per lb.; “choice

horse,” the tender loin, fetches the latter price.

Eggs 1 franc each; have been 1f. 20c.

Fowls 20 francs each.

Pike (fish) 8 francs per lb.

Coffee 6 francs per lb.

Ham 8 francs per lb.

Cheese 40 francs per lb. (nominal, all done.)

Salt 5 francs per lb.

Geese, fat 65 francs per pair paid yesterday.

Oats 120 francs per sack of 200lb.

Chocolate 5 francs per lb.

Bread White, none since 16th October; brown,

4½ sous per lb.

Mutton None for two months.

Wine Plentiful, and old prices maintained;

bottle of champagne for 7 francs.

Notwithstanding these extraordinary prices, the tariff in the Hôtel de

l’Europe was much the same as usual. I dined there in the evening at

the _table d’hôte_ for seven francs, including half a bottle of wine.

Breakfast was _à la carte_, about seven francs; bottle of champagne,

seven francs. We had four courses for dinner, the waiter said none were

horseflesh, and it is not seemly to call even a waiter a liar. The

room was crowded with French officers. I dined at the same table with

Colonel Michel Ney, a nephew of the historical Marshal. He had received

some half-dozen sabre-wounds in the cavalry fight at Vionville, and

was only half recovered. At the same table also sat General Duplessis,

a French officer of distinction, who also had been severely wounded.

In the evening there was a tremendous rush of German officers into the

hotel, and quarters became impossible at any price. Forty officers

were sent bedless away from the Hôtel de l’Europe, and I was indebted

to a good-hearted American for half his bed. The French and German

officers fraternized a little in the _salle_ after dinner. At first

the Frenchmen were a little inclined to be sulky and reserved, but

the heartiness of the Germans soon thawed the ice, and the champagne

promoted the flow of kindly feeling. I was told that in the forenoon,

when the officers of the Imperial Guard said adieu to their men,

profuse tears were shed by both. There was no such emotion manifested

by Lebœuf’s corps.

In the afternoon of the 28th, when the news of the capitulation was

made known, there had been a sort of revolutionary riot in Metz. The

National Guards made a display of refusing to give up their arms,

ran to the Place d’Armes, where they congregated in large numbers

and several shots were fired. The cathedral rang the alarm hell and

the shops put their shutters up. The editor of one of the ultra

journals was the ring-leader; mounted on a white horse, with a pistol

in his hand, and others in his belt, he hounded on the mob to yell

for Bazaine’s blood. That distinguished person, however, with great

discretion, remained in his quarters in Ban St. Martin. The mob,

composed in a large proportion of civilians, laid hold of an officer

of the Imperial Guard, and holding pistols at his head, forced him to

carry in the front the Republican flag. A hint from the mayor that

the Germans would be sent for to put down the disturbance had its

effect after the gamins had roared themselves hoarse shouting “Vive la

République!”

It seemed it had not been until ten days before the capitulation that

the troops of Bazaine’s army were forbidden to enter the town of Metz.

Up till then they had circulated freely in the town, using the cafés,

and spending their money in the shops. Until six days before it, a

ration of bread of 100 grammes had been issued to each soldier. Since

then they had had no rations, except horseflesh. The townspeople had

been on bread rations as well as the troops, the rations consisting

of 200 grammes of brown bread. Those who were able paid for their

ration, the poor receiving it gratuitously. It surprised me that Metz

had been able to hold out so long. The place had not above 50,000

inhabitants, if so many, and with no previous warning it had supported

for seventy days a gross population of 230,000 mouths. These are the

official figures. The dearness of provisions had been progressive. For

instance, on the 16th of August butter had already reached the fancy

price of 4f. per pound. On the same day chickens ranged from 6f. to

8f. At the date of the capitulation, butter could not be procured at

any price, and the same might be said of chickens. Metz had certainly

not capitulated for want of munitions of war. The fortress had ample

supplies still left. Although Metz was an arsenal, no manufacture of

cannon or projectiles had gone on during the siege. There had been no

occasion for any such work, and if there had, the want of coals would

have presented an insuperable obstacle. Powder had, however, been made

in large quantities. All the coal used in Metz comes from Saarbrück,

and there had recently been great scarcity—so much so that an order had

been issued a week before the capitulation that the gas in the town

should be extinguished at seven o’clock, under a heavy penalty. Candles

were plentiful, and the deprivation was therefore not so seriously felt.

Of sick there were altogether, in and around Metz, on the date of the

capitulation, about 20,000 soldiers, of which about 9000 were wounded

men. The latter had chiefly been wounded in the sorties. Of the wounded

in the battles of Courcelles and Gravelotte most were either recovered

or dead. Very many mutilated men were to be seen in the streets.

Latterly almost every operation had ended fatally. Pyæmia, hospital

gangrene, and typhus had their sway on frames previously debilitated by

hardship and famine. Of hospital stores the greatest lack was in the

matter of leeches. For two of these Dr. Ward had on the previous day

paid 180 francs. His colleague was down with brain fever, and he paid

this wildly fancy price to save his life.

Three or four newspapers continued to be daily printed in Metz up to

the capitulation. Since no outside information had reached the town for

so long, the newspapers had chiefly concerned themselves with local

gossip, hopes, fears, and canards. A file of one of them was a curious

sight. The stock of paper had long run out, and the journals had been

printed one day on red paper, another on blue, a third on buff, and so

on—advertisement placard paper having necessarily been had resort to.

The last issue of one journal was printed on brown packing paper.

All the afternoon of the 29th, the division of General Kummer came

pouring into the town, with bands playing and colours flying. The great

Landwehrmen stared around them with undisguised curiosity at the nut

which they have found so hard to crack. The townsfolk jabbered among

themselves as the troops defiled, and there were not a few scowling

faces. What cared the Landwehrmen for the scowling faces? From the

slush and mire of Maizières and Ladonchamps they had come into a

reasonable prospect of beds and bottles of wine. They were quartered

for the most part in the Caserne du Génie, the Hôtel de Ville, and

other public buildings. The officers were in private houses. Ye gods!

with what zest did they devote themselves to champagne in the _salle_

of the hotel! Generals, lieutenants, Vice-feldwebels, all in the lump

were there, and one and all speaking after the German manner, at the

top of their voices—the din was deafening. The French officers cleared

off early to bed, all save two, who sat on moodily in a corner, pulling

their moustaches and drinking absinthe—the poison that has sapped the

virility of the French army.

Some officious patriots had made themselves busy during the night of

the 28th, with the statue of Marshal Fabert in the Place d’Armes. When

capitulation was first mooted, a wreath of immortelles and laurel was

woven round his head, and a flag stuck in his hand. On the morning of

the 29th, the Marshal appeared draped in a full suit of crape, with a

hole in it, through which was visible the inscription—the words which

the gallant Marshal addressed to Louis XIV:

Si pour empêcher qu’une place

que le Roi m’a confiée

ne tombât au pouvoir de l’ennemi,

il fallait mettre à la brêche

ma personne, ma famille et tout mon bien,

je ne balancerais pas un moment à le faire.

Bazaine had not quite the grit in him to act up to the programme

chalked out by the staunch old Marshal.

Two or three days elapsed after the surrender of Metz before a regular

and reasonably quick postal service was established from the city, and

for any one to whom time was an object it was necessary to despatch

letters from Courcelles, the interim terminus of the railway. To reach

this point I quitted Metz early on the morning of the 30th October,

compelled to wriggle now right, now left, to circumvent the numerous

entrenchments still blocking up the main roads.

On my way from Colombey to Courcelles my track lay through the

prisoner-bivouac of the 2nd French Army Corps (Frossard’s). It was

a very miserable scene. The fires of the previous night had burnt

out, and the morning fires had not been lit. The miserable prisoners

lounged about in seeming utter despair, the fine rain wetting them

through and through, and keeping soft the mud with which their coats

were plastered. Some few had erected tents, but the great mass had

spent the night in the open standing round the fires, for to lie down

must have been impracticable. I saw a couple of corpses lying in the

ditch by the roadside, and was told that six or eight poor wretches

had succumbed to exhaustion and exposure during the bitter night. If

it was any consolation to the prisoners, their German guards were in

as miserable a plight as their captives. The chain of sentries posted

all round slouched backward and forward on their posts, and the fixed

corporal-schafts leaned gloomily on their weapons. In the road in

front of Ars Laquenexy a kind of market had been established, but the

dealers had hardly waked up under the tilts of the carts. They were

marketenders chiefly from the German frontier about Saarlouis, and

the bulk of their wares consisted of spirituous liquor. The French

prisoners were by no means short of money. All the cash in the bank

and military chest in Metz had been disbursed in paying up the troops’

arrears of pay, and there were plenty of francs in their pockets.

In Courcelles I saw the arrival of the first column of prisoners to be

sent down by the train to Saarbrück. There were 2000 of them, and five

trains, each containing the same number, were being despatched every

day. Poor fellows, they seemed very miserable, but they bore their

misery with a fortitude which filled me with respect. The rain poured

down upon them in a deluge as they stood in the road, which was a foot

deep in mud, of the consistency of pea-soup. Here they had to wait for

about an hour, while the arrangements for their transit were being

completed, and it was good to see the courtesy and quiet fortitude

which they manifested. I went among them in the mud. Everywhere the

poor fellows stepped aside with a half bow to let me pass. If one

accidentally jostled me, the “Pardon, Monsieur,” was prompt and warm. I

found these French prisoners here as ignorant as those whom I had seen

at Sedan. Some of the sergeants asked me for news of the outer world,

but the men seemed chiefly concerned to know whither they were going,

and what kind of country Germany was. I named several towns as among

their probable destination, leading cities of Germany, but very few had

more than heard of them, and knew nothing either of their magnitude or

of their locality. At last the prisoner-train was ready, some sixty

carriages packed as closely as the men could sit or stand. Several open

trucks had been brought into requisition, and it seemed to me as though

the men were actually stacked upon them, so thickly were they packed.

With a whistle the heavy train sluggishly set itself in motion, and

away it rolled with its freight of Frenchmen down what was once one of

the most charming valleys in France. The Frenchmen were prisoners on

their way to expatriation, the valley was a wilderness. On the ramparts

of St. Quentin, which from a distance overlooked the scene, paced the

square-built men with the brass-spiked helmets. The virgin fortress of

France, never till now profaned by the foot of an invader, was held by

the Landwehrmen, and the streets of the town echoed to the clash of

the German subaltern’s sword.

As I drove out across the glacis of Fort Belle Croix, I was struck with

the alteration which had taken place there since the previous day.

Then the whole expanse swarmed with life. Cavalrymen, artillerymen,

infantrymen, were blended in chaotic confusion, out of which it seemed

impossible to evolve order. Now the expanse lay blank and bare.

Cavalrymen, artillerymen, infantrymen, had been drafted off it. Nothing

was left but the mud and a few horses, too debilitated to be removed,

and dropping, even as I passed, into the slush out of which they should

never rise. There was a horse market in Metz on the 30th, or rather

just outside the gate. I imagine a good many horses changed hands to

which the parties who disposed of them would have had some difficulty

in proving a valid title. Prices ranged from a franc and a half up to

five pounds, but this latter was a fancy price, and only given for an

officer’s charger of breeding and substance.

After seeing the prisoner-train leave Courcelles, I drove away

northward, and after visiting the headquarter staff of the 7th Army

Corps at Puche, and my friends of the 4th regiment at Retonfay, went

into the lager of Lebœuf’s corps on the slope between Château-Gras

and Retonfay. It was getting towards evening by this time, and I was

in the right time for seeing the Frenchmen making their preparations

for bivouac. What splendid fellows they were to be sure at this kind

of work. Already the tents had a drain through each to carry off the

surface water. The great poplar trees on the chaussée—those that the

Germans had left standing—were falling fast. Those that the Germans had

felled the Frenchmen were chopping up into lengths, and carrying off

to the bivouac fire. Others stood round the bivouac fires or lay on

curious improvised beds, contrived with dexterously-placed stones to

keep their constructors out of the mud. In the blaze of the fires were

pots and saucepans; rather than part from a saucepan when he has once

secured it, I believe a French soldier would lose one of his boots.

The pots and saucepans were simmering merrily and emitting a fragrant

odour—whence it was derived I could not guess. The rations had been

meat and biscuit; nothing else save salt. The men had dug up again

the already thrice turned over potato fields and might have got a few

tubers. But potatoes, and meat, and biscuits were impotent to create

the pleasant odour, one of the recondite mysteries of French cookery.

The atmosphere after the capitulation was full of stories of the prices

paid in Metz during the siege for articles of food. Most of these were

to be taken _cum grano_, since the beleaguered, now that it was all

over, not unnaturally took a pleasure in piling on the agony. But the

one which I am going to narrate I had from an undeniable source, and I

give it as illustrative of the profligate frivolity among the wealthier

and more aristocratic officers, which has been one of the chief causes

of the ruin of the French army. There had been in Metz during the

siege a certain lady of the Parisian demi-monde, who had come to Metz

when the Emperor came, and could not get away when he retired _viâ_

Verdun to Châlons. Two officers of the Garde Impériale had been rivals

for this lady’s affections. The lady, it seemed, had a fanciful and

delicate appetite, and one day in the early part of the last month of

the siege she expressed a fervent wish to be regaled on turkey and

truffles. “Ah, you know that is an impossibility,” was the rejoinder

of one of the swains. “I don’t know that,” said the other, eager for

an opening; “I shall try what I can do.” The other, in his jealousy,

offered to bet 500 francs that he would not succeed, and the wager

was accepted. The officer came to the landlord of one of the hotels

and gave him the commission, adding that money was no object. The

head waiter went on a foraging expedition, and after two days’ search

brought the officer a turkey and truffles, with a little bill for a

thousand francs; so the gay guardsman won his bet and lost 500 francs.

As I was driving out to Courcelles my coachman quietly told me that his

wife and three children were starving. When we returned at night I went

with him to ascertain the circumstances for myself. He guided me into

a part of the town close to the middle branch of the Moselle, inhabited

only by the poorest of the poor. I had before then only been on the top

of the crust which overlay the misery caused by this siege. I had dined

and eaten dessert, I had called for wine, and lo it was forthcoming.

So far as concerned the hotels, the world seemed to wag very much as

its wont. I saw no ghastly faces in the streets pallid with want, as

were the faces of those citizens of Antwerp, who cheered the lean

Stadtholder when he swore to eat his boots before he would surrender.

But it was not because there were no pale faces and attenuated forms in

Metz that I did not see them in the streets, but because the miserable

ones cared not to make a parade of their misery. It was a sorry sight

the squalid room of the coachman presented. Of bread the family had

not had a morsel for three days; then they had received as ration two

pounds for six. One of the six—an infant two years old—wants rations no

more. The little body lay on two planks under the window, the victim of

bodily exhaustion, from deficient and improper food. How could a child

of two years survive on sinewy horseflesh, in scanty quantity, and on

a casual morsel of bread, the meal of which was mixed with sawdust and

chopped straw to make it eke out? All up and down the poverty-stricken

street the wretchedness was much the same. Horseflesh and want of salt

had killed off the children like flies. The mortality among the little

ones had been frightful. The elder children were covered with blotches

and scorbutic sores, caused by want of salt and of variety in their

food.

As regards the inhabitants of Metz itself, it seemed likely that the

misery would soon come to an end. There was no want of wealth in Metz,

and the rich citizens were reported to be public spirited. Now that

food could be bought, it was sure to be bought and distributed freely.

But no such amelioration was to be expected for the wretchedness—a

wretchedness almost without hope—of the villagers inhabiting the

country around Metz. They had nothing—not even a roof above them, in

the pittiless rain. Of their cottages nought was standing but the bare

walls, often pounded with shells. Their gardens were waste, their

cattle were gone, their furniture was wrecked, their straw was dung,

their fields lay fallow and studded with graves. A day spent in the

misery around Metz must have made as water a heart hard as the nether

millstone. But help came to the helpless. It will be long ere “the

Friends” will cease to be remembered by the simple peasant people whom

they helped through the ghastly slough of despond.

The railway into Metz having been opened on the 30th, a convoy of

300 generals and superior officers went off at five o’clock in the

afternoon. On the 31st, at 10.30, a train left for Mayence, _viâ_

Nancy, for the accommodation of generals and chief staff officers. A

regular series of trains was organised on the 1st of November for

regimental officers. The first, leaving at 9.30, accommodated the

officers of the garrison; the second, at 1.30, for the officers of

the Imperial Guard, cavalry of the reserve, and engineers. At 1.30,

the officers of Canrobert’s corps (the 6th), and division of Forton.

At 4.15 a train took off the officers of the 2nd Corps (Frossard’s),

and the brigade Lapasset; and at 6.15, the 3rd Corps (Lebœuf’s). Great

consideration was invariably shown by the German authorities for the

officers, and careful arrangements were made for the wounded and sick

French, chiefly under the supervision of German doctors.

I spent the afternoon of the 31st in inspecting, so far as time would

permit, the fortifications of the town of Metz, and those constituting

its exterior defences. What I had already gathered concerning the

natural and artificial strength of the forts of St. Quentin, St.

Julien, Plappeville, St. Eloy, and Queleu I found more than borne out

by personal investigation. Whoever holds Metz holds an impregnable

fortress. Nothing can so much as get at the fortress of Metz proper

while the outworks hold out, and there is no reason that, properly

garrisoned and provisioned, they should not hold out for ever. It might

be possible to batter down St. Eloy or Queleu, the others cannot be

got at advantageously in any way on account of the strength of their

natural position. The weak point of the fortress is towards the east,

between Queleu and St. Julien; but the complement of the defence on

that side is made up by the “provisional” earthwork of les Bottes.

From what I heard I think it probable that the day after the 14th of

August, the Germans, if they had made a dash, and had been prepared

for severe losses, might have effected a lodgment in front of Fort

Belle Croix in this direction, and, indeed, if all tales were true,

might have pushed their way into the town itself. We all know how easy

it is to be wise after the event. The English army in the Crimea was

abused for not going straight into Sebastopol two days after the Alma,

instead of sitting down on the bleak plateau over against the fortress.

Had its leaders known the state of the fortifications, no doubt the

weary winter and the heaps of dead might have been spared to Britain.

So with the Germans before Metz. I was assured that so confident were

the French of success—so ridiculous did they think the idea that it

was possible to invest Metz—that it was not till after the battle of

Forbach that serious efforts had been made to place the fortress in an

efficient state of defence. The guns were not mounted till then behind

the embrasures. Les Bottes was unfinished—a mere heap of shapeless

earth. Even now it was not properly finished, and looked as slovenly

a piece of fortification work as I ever saw put out of hand by troops

who asserted they had engineers in their ranks. Nevertheless, it had

a front, and guns mounted on that front. The Germans, ever masterful

and prompt, would not, I was satisfied, delay long to alter les Bottes

from a “provisional” into a permanent fort. Subsequent events bore out

this anticipation; and, with their efficient and thorough system of

administration, Metz, if impregnable hitherto, will be henceforth, if

such a thing can be, doubly impregnable.

From what I learned, there had been a good deal more of huckstering

than patriotism among the civilian population of Metz. There was a

reason for the _émeute_ on the evening of the 28th. The wily burghers

had been keeping back their stores for a market, while their poorer

fellows hungered because of the high prices, and the army starved.

Horses were dying daily for want of forage; yet the Germans found

stores of hay and corn quietly stowed away in unlikely places. It was

the same with other articles of consumption, and the administration

seemed to have been either not strong enough or not cunning enough

to make everything forthcoming for the common good. Napoleon called

us a nation of shopkeepers, but I take leave to doubt whether our

shopkeepering idiosyncrasy would have developed itself in such a

manner. I could not help having a quiet chuckle at the douce burghers,

whose market Bazaine had spoiled. How they hated him for it! And they

spoke their minds right venomously after the French manner.

If one listened to all he heard, he was bound to accept the conclusion

that Bazaine was a renegade and traitor of the largest possible

calibre. It seemed, according to the gossip of the natives, savage

that their canny little scheme for putting money in their purses had

failed, that Bazaine nourished the design of having himself declared

Regent of France, and that he only relinquished this ambitious project

for the consideration of a fabulous subsidy, contributed I could

not exactly learn by whom. It was useless to point out to the angry

and disappointed cits that on the face of it this was rubbish, and

that Bazaine kept his upper lip straight and his face to the foe so

long as, and indeed longer than, he had an army capable of fighting,

marching, or standing up to be shot down. If he had had subordinates

honest and capable of co-operating with him, had he been unfettered at

the outset, and had the discipline and _moral_ of his army not been

deteriorated before he took the command of it, it might have been that

the chroniclers of this war would have had a different tale to tell.

It was with a deep interest that I listened at the table d’hôte the

same evening to the despondent remarks of a venerable French gentleman,

who had been a colonel at Waterloo. The old man had the water in his

eyes as he spoke of the depreciation in the character of the forces

of his country. The cause that had wrought the curse of deteriorated

discipline was, according to him, the pernicious itch for popularity

with which all the French superior officers were bitten. Canrobert, he

told me, had been the great initiator of this popularity-hunting fever.

In his rough, bluff way he used familiarly to appeal to the private

soldiers as “his children” whether their rations were what they liked,

and if an ill-conditioned fellow, thus encouraged, vented a grumble, he

would turn on the colonel and blow him up sky-high. One very pregnant

observation he made, a remark which I had thought of all the evening,

and doubly significant as coming from a Frenchman and an officer.

“Surely,” said I, “this will bring the French to their senses, and we

must have peace in a very short time. And just as surely that peace,” I

continued, “must be a permanent one, for the French army, with all its

craving for _la gloire_, must realise the fact that there is not much

in the way of _la gloire_ to be got by being greedy for the Rhine.”

“I don’t know,” said the old man, mournfully. “Logically you are

right, no doubt; but severe as the lesson has been, I question of

its effect. It is the officers of the French army who chiefly are

the clamourers—senseless and frothy clamourers—after _la gloire_.

They shrieked for war, enervated with lust and absinthe as they were,

ignorant of their duties, their minds uncultivated, and debilitated

with luxury. I fear they are too far gone, too utterly vitiated and

emasculated mentally, to be able to draw the conclusion from the

premises; and I should not be surprised if, a year hence, you may

hear the parole loafers who are swinging about the streets to-day,

yelling for war again, as unprepared to pursue it to success as they

were when this one was entered into, and as reckless and regardless of

consequences as they were then and are now.”

Just conceive what France must have come to when one of her _anciens

militaires_ could speak thus! That the officers of his army were, in

his opinion, so utterly spineless as to be unable to recognise the fact

that they had been beaten, the causes which had led to their defeat,

and the utter impossibility that unless they purged and lived cleanly

they could make even a fair fight of it against the cool-headed and

heavy-handed German! The whirligig of time brings round many curious

changes, but it is utterly outside the nature of things that Frenchmen

as they are, as I saw them in this war from day to day, can ever,

given what advantages they may, be a match in warfare for a people so

constituted as those which dwell in the Vaterland. The hot iron of

adversity brands deep, and has a wonderful power to cure ailments, but

if the surface is so calloused that the iron will not mark, how can the

beneficial result be achieved?

The old gentleman was specially severe on the Zouaves. When these

regiments were first constituted, he said the ranks were really full

of fighting men. But as their fame grew they became fashionable, and

then their ruin set in. The ranks were crowded by young sprigs who

had no other thought than a picturesque uniform, waxed moustaches, the

demi-monde, and absinthe; and the once stout and capable regiments had

lost their prowess and become enervated and flaccid. This view may be

exaggerated—the _ancien militaire_ of the table d’hôte was not the

first man that ever put forth the opinion that “the service is going

to the dogs, by Gad;” but it is in a measure confirmed by the events

of this war, in which the French infantry of the line displayed far

greater valour and patient endurance than the pet regiments.

One might have been surprised on entering Metz for the first time since

the capitulation how little sickness was apparently existing in the

town. One strolled on to the Place Royale, and there saw the streets

of railway waggons, which in the early days had been brought into the

town from the station—300 of them—and diverted from the carriage of

luggage or merchandise to be hospitals for the reception of the sick

and wounded. Here and there a convalescent limped about on crutches,

or a pallid-faced man glided past, from whom you instinctively

shrank with a curious feeling that the taint of the fever must be

hanging about him still. But of sweeping pestilence there seemed no

traces. One had to look for the deadly sickness in quiet corners in

the little improvised hospitals, where there were only a few cases,

or in the neglected villages around the town where hygiene had been

comparatively neglected. There it was and there alone, where you could

find forms which you were told were those of men, but passed out of

all recognition as such, discoloured and bloated in the last stages of

the foul black small-pox. It might be that you chanced on a lazarette

into which the terrible demon of hospital gangrene had entered and

fixed his relentless fang, never to be withdrawn till the earth should

have been heaped on his victim. A few cases of this terrible disorder,

and only a few, I saw. Not alone was the sense of sight called into

requisition; no cordial in Metz seemed to have the virtue of washing

the horribly fœtid odour out of my throat, where it stuck as if it were

something solid. I trust no reader will ever be called to look upon the

corpse of one who has died of pyæmia. One took his life in his hand

going among such spectacles. Here is a house in the Isle de Saulcy in

which there are five sick men and two corpses. There is a doctor with

them—a lone man, for the very women, with their tender hearts hardened

by the terror of the dread infection, have run away. The doctor is a

mere youth in years, but there is grey already in his hair, and he

tells me that the last six weeks have made him feel as an old man. With

every breath he inhales he risks his life nearly as much as if he held

his fist into the cage of a cobra capella. What words can describe

the colour of these semicomatose forms which he handles so tenderly?

Have they been blown up in an explosion, and had their skins dusted

over to ease the smart of the burn, and to hide the swarthy brand of

the powder? No, they are the victims of a far worse misfortune. They

lie smitten to the marrow with the terrible _Typhus exanthematicus_,

the floury typhus, which is happily so rare that many a respectable

and capable general practitioner in Britain has never heard of it.

The flour which the exanthematicus powders on the skin of its victim,

seldom washes off. Almost invariably face and flour dust are alike

hidden in the grave.

The railway station outside the Porte Serpenoise of Metz was a curious

sight. It was the depôt of all the vast train of that Corps-Francs

organized by the Chemin de fer de l’Est, with a military constitution,

and having a material that had cost fifteen millions of francs. The

corps numbered 1200 men, and they, with all their material, their

bridges, their stalls, their waggons, their pontoons, and their vast

timber blocks, were destined to act as the pioneers of the French army

on its march “à Berlin,” and to repair the damage to the communications

wrought by the Germans, falling back beaten and demoralised across the

Rhine on their capital. There was a bridge here in pieces, specially

constructed to be thrown across the Rhine. The bridge had never quitted

the locality where it was constructed. It was the prize of the army

that had not only kept the watch fast and true on the German Rhine,

but that was standing sentry on the Moselle, the Marne, the Seine,

and the Loire. And to-day in the drizzle of the small rain, the bold

Corps-Francs were slowly jogging it on the prisoner-train towards the

Rhine which they had thought to approach in array so different.

Many a day it will take Metz to recover from the handiwork of the

men who undertook to defend it. The tourist who in the early summer

came to this virgin queen of the Moselle might have noticed outside

the fortifications a belt of buildings about half an English mile in

breadth. The trim villas of the wealthy citizens had stood here in the

dainty gardens; the pretentious house of the mayor had been here behind

its red-brick walls. There had been snug little cottages _ornées_,

where dwelt ladies, about whose antecedents few knew anything, but

who had fair faces and who dressed magnificently. Not one stone now

remained upon another of all the villas, the mansions, the cottages.

All was blank desolation. Here and there the stump of a fountain,

erstwhile standing in a pretty garden, asserted itself disconsolately,

its once superincumbent Cupid or Neptune half battered into the mud.

The ground was churned into slush by the tread of many footsteps, and

fetid odours blew over it from the dead horses that were rotting on its

surface. This belt of desolation was the _zone militaire_ of Metz—the

space outside the fortifications, where buildings were allowed to be

erected solely on the condition that if it should be necessary at any

time for military exigencies to destroy them, the owners should not

be entitled to claim compensation. The military exigency came in July

last, and now the portly mayor might bite his thumb, and the owners of

the villas and the cottages grope about the ruins for salvage, for no

consolation was forthcoming for them in the shape of compensation.

On the 1st of November I continued my investigations as to the

condition of the French sick who had been left by the capitulation as

a legacy to the Germans. In those inquiries I derived great assistance

from the courteous kindness of Dr. Leithold, of the division of General

Kummer, on whom devolved the supervision of all the medical and

sanitary arrangements. Dr. Leithold had in all inherited about 19,000

sick men, among whom were included only sixty German prisoners—all the

rest were Frenchmen. This included the sick in the field hospitals

and the various forts. The diseases chiefly raging were typhus and

dysentery, the latter with a strong tendency to assume the phase of

the former. There were not many cases, however, of spotted or floury

typhus. Small-pox was far from rare, and in not a few cases it was

of the most virulent form. A good deal of scurvy was also existing.

I fancy that a great quantity of scurvy cases of a mild type had not

been allowed to enter the hospitals, for of the prisoners in the

lager by Retonfay I saw a considerable number bearing the evidences

of suffering from this disease. With the good and varied rations now

being distributed, a disease which had been superinduced by their

absence was sure soon to disappear. In order at once to clear for the

occupation of troops the barracks in Metz, hitherto used as hospitals,

and to provide a change into higher and purer air, all the sick able to

move were being sent out into the highlying forts surrounding the town.

This step, it was hoped, would stimulate healthy action in systems

which had become low, degenerate, and stagnant, and good nourishment,

which was being provided with a lavish hand, would naturally co-operate

greatly in the setting up of this healthy action. His Excellency von

Kummer deserves to be held in honour by all humanity for the prompt

and solicitous arrangements which he caused to be instituted for

relieving the pressure on the sick of the pre-capitulation condition

of things. A great bakery of white bread was at once set up in the

Caserne des Chasseurs, and orders were circulated that all medical

officers in charge of lazarettes should have carte blanche to make

requisitions for bread. Stores were hurried in of coffee, chocolate,

soup extract, and other comforts, and by Sunday morning there were very

few sick who were not the better of the advent of the Germans. Prior

to the establishment of the regular system of supply, the Berliner

Hülfsverein, represented by Herren Adolph Schwabe and E. Minlos, was,

with the English Ambulance, among the first to commence a distribution

of comforts. Britons may be glad to know that they too helped towards

the Liebesgaben with which were packed the fourgons of the Berliner

Hülfsverein, since the British National Society helped its funds with a

donation of 1000_l._, the administration of which was confided to Mr.

Schwabe. As General von Senden and his staff entered the town a scene

occurred, pathetic enough in one aspect to move the deepest sympathies

of those who love the Fatherland and its children, and yet not without

a certain grotesqueness that only affords another illustration of the

narrow gap which exists between tears and laughter. As the General rode

down the Rue de la Prison Militaire, he passed the prison of the Maison

d’Arrêt, where the German prisoners taken on the 7th at Maizières were

confined. As the Landwehrmen on that day had met the foe with shouts of

“Hurrah Preussen!” and “Immer vorwärts!” so now, gaunt, hollow-eyed,

and squalid, the great gallant fellows cheered their countrymen as

they came on. The cheer was hardly so full-volumed as when it had

echoed through the gables of Ladonchamps; scanty rations exclusively

of horseflesh were not quite the class of feeding off which to cheer

lustily. But von Senden, not unfamiliar with the cheers of his Landwehr

men, heard the “Hurrah Preussen!” from behind the bars, and, halting,

called out to his Kinder to know how they fared. The hungry men told

their plight, and the general turning to the Intendant who rode behind

him, asked when he could have food up for the wants of the prisoned

Landwehrmen. “Not for an hour at least,” was the reply. Then von Senden

turned to Mr. Schwabe, the bearer of the Liebesgaben, and asked whether

he could do nothing till the Intendant got up his column. The fourgons

of the Berliner Hülfsverein were not a furlong behind, and they came up

at the trot. The bread tumbled out of the waggons, and in at the prison

windows. But the waggons contained other provender than bread, and the

question was asked of the prisoners as they munched their bread, what

relish they would have to it. Who that knows the German palate but can

anticipate the reply. “Haben Sie Wurst?” was the response, as if from

one man, and then from behind came a piping voice, it must have been an

epicurean boy who spoke—“Oder Schinken?” Wurst is the German sausage,

suggestive to the British mind of trichinæ, and other nameless horrors,

but dearer to the German heart than any other edible. Then they got

cigars—the prisoners—and von Senden and the Berliner Hülfsverein passed

on, the former to take up his head-quarters, the latter to distribute

their arrowroot, tea, woollen garments, winter beds, biscuits, and what

not of Liebesgaben to the wretched French sick.

On returning to the Hôtel de l’Europe, after a round of the hospitals,

I found in the _salle_ an officer from Retonfay who had ridden in to

tell me that the General in command of the brigade had sent to desire

me to call upon him. It was very well calling on generals if one went

of his own accord, but a summons to attend was calculated to make

one nervous. Had I been writing of the positions without sufficient

discretion, I anxiously asked of myself, or had any order been issued

to forbid correspondents from frequenting the foreposts? Speculation

was useless, and I went straight out in the moonlight to the big

château inhabited by the General, in the outskirts of Retonfay. There

was no frown on the features of the gallant old Pole; my portion

was a warm grip of the hand, and a cordial salutation. The General,

instead of having a wigging for me, wished to ask a favour of the

journal I represented. The General’s children are half English, his

wife is an English lady, and his mother-in-law, who, to judge from

the enthusiastic manner in which the General spoke of her, is utterly

unlike mothers-in-law in general, had thoughtfully sent her fighting

son-in-law a box of concentrated soups all the way from a western

suburb of London. The gift had moved the General to tender thanks, if

he might, through the columns of an English journal, and to make of

the box of soups a peg on which to hang a compliment to the British

nation. The General pondered, as he ate his soup, on the form which

this communication should take, apologising to me for his silence from

the circumstance that he desired “to make a little wit.” When he had

got to the salad, he found the spirit move him, and he dictated as

follows:—“I thank you, dear grandmamma, for your delicious soups; the

vermicelli and the tail ox are delicious. The North German Ambassador

has made a mistake when he said that the English nation has only

manifested a warm-heartedness towards the French. As I eat my dinner,

I am a witness to the contrary.—Your loving son,—Von Zglinitzki,

Major-General.” The good General slightly distorted the relation

existing between him and the relative he desired to address; but I

supposed he had taken the word from his children.

On the 2nd of November the whole of the 10th Army Corps defiled through

Metz on its southward march towards Troyes. Its General, Voight Rhetz,

sat in the saddle in the Place Royale, with Kummer beside him, and a

background formed of the trucks devoted to hospital purposes. On the

other side of the broad thoroughfare stood groups of French officers

looking on critically as the men went past with whom they had so often

been engaged. To have seen the different regiments pass the saluting

point with everything about them as neat as if they had come out of

barracks, you would never have thought they could have been doing

forepost work and fighting for two months. Fresh, stout, clean, and

supple, the great stalwart fellows came past with the German quick

step in one long continuous stream for two hours, and long before all

had passed the Frenchmen had sunk into a dull silence that seemed to

betoken acquiescence in an inevitable fate. There was no cheering or

singing; the bands played as they passed the General, but the “Wacht

am Rhein” was kept for the country roads. Besides the 10th, the 3rd

Army Corps was on the march for Troyes. The 7th for the present was to

remain in Metz; the 2nd had started Paris-ward before the capitulation;

and the 1st, after seeing off the last of the prisoners, was destined

for the northern march toward Lille and Amiens, along with the 8th

Corps. General Kummer, leaving the commandership of the town for an

active command, was succeeded by General von Löwenfeld. General Kummer,

during his brief tenure of a very difficult and delicate office, had

earned a well-deserved popularity. His urbanity and consideration to

the French officers were appreciated warmly by them all, and not a few

of them referred to the subject in my hearing with deep feeling. I have

omitted to mention before, that when the report of the capitulation

became spread abroad throughout the army on the evening of the 28th

Oct., a great number of regimental officers had a sort of caucus

meeting, in which they discussed the matter. Universal indignation at

the conduct of Bazaine was expressed, and it having been estimated that

the officers present were able to rely on the fidelity of a following

of some 25,000 men, it was resolved that a desperate effort should be

made that same night to cut a way through the German lines. The meeting

separated, and one of its members came to the Hôtel de l’Europe, where,

over a bottle of champagne, he made his last will and testament, and

with a tear in his eye, committed it to his friend my informant, and

went forth with set teeth on his desperate emprise. Next morning he

came back to breakfast, blythe as a bird, and reclaimed his will. It

seemed there had been a miscalculation. Instead of the following of

25,000 men on which the officers had relied, they could not get a man

to follow them. The realisation of the misconception prevented the

attempt being made.

I never tired of passing my time in watching the Place Royale and

the Esplanade, on which were quartered the wounded. On the former

were the railway car hospitals, on the latter are fine roomy tents,

holding twelve men each comfortably. What a variety of mutilations

you noticed among the convalescents. Men who had lost a leg, others a

foot, others an arm; the gamut of mutilation was run up and down till

you almost expected to see a man walking about without a head. It was

a listless, weary promenade which these unfortunates executed. Some

few formed little groups for conversation, and others made belief to

play at a kind of outdoor billiards on a wooden frame on the ground,

but most patrolled languidly backwards and forwards, with a dejected

listlessness that was the more painful to witness because it is so

un-Frenchlike. I suppose they must have been tired of the promenade

at the top of the Esplanade over against the river, for there were

seldom more than a few there. And yet the view from it is one of which

I think it must take a long time to get weary. If I could think the

inhabitants of the Esplanade possessed of so much depth of feeling, I

would fain have imagined that they shun the promenade on the ramparts

that the sight of so much of beauty lost to France might not wound

them too poignantly. Behind, among the tents, are the statues, and the

still bright flower-beds. In front, at one’s feet, are the outworks,

and then the broad stream of the river, with the fertile meadows of

Simphorien beyond. On the right, across the stream, is the Isle de

Sauley, the island of the weeping willows, with its powder-magazines

all but hidden among the graceful willows and the tall poplars. On the

left is the citadel, with its green earthworks and glacis, and beyond

the beautiful suburb of Montigny, with the bend of the stream farther

on ending in the railway bridge, the horizon to the south, bounded by

the range of heights, of which the highest is Mont St. Blaise, with its

ruined château and the Observatory, from which I had looked down on the

plain and city. Over St. Simphorien is the other branch of the Moselle,

fringed by the nestling villages of Moulin, St. Ruffine, Ban St.

Martin, and Devant-les-Ponts, wearing a very peaceful aspect but for

the absence of smoke from the chimneys. Over them towers abruptly the

rugged Mont St. Quentin, with the vineyards on its shoulders, lovingly

hugging the white villages, then the bare interval of red scarp, and

then the summit, crowned by the great spreading fortress, its warm grey

tint brought out in the slanting sunbeams. Well may St. Quentin be

called “the eagle of Metz,” soaring over the valley, as it does, up in

the very sky. Alas! for France and Metz, the wings of the eagle were

shorn. On its ramparts there was an eagle still, it is true, but it was

the eagle on the helmet of the Prussian sentry, who as he paused in

his beat, and looked down on what a week before deserved the name its

inhabitants so fondly gave it, “La Pucelle,” may be trying how he can

adapt the German song, “Oh Strassburg, oh Strassburg, Du wunderschön

stadt,” to the new conquest. Verily, it is a wonderful city, a city for

the possession of which to stake everything and to fight to the last

man and the last ditch. Now that the German army had seen it—few who

have not studied him know what an instinctive eye the German soldier

has for the beauties of nature—he would not be a discreet man who

should have suggested that the prize should be let slip. Nothing so

much strengthened Bismarck’s hand in his demand for Lorraine, as the

opportunity the German army had for seeing and admiring Metz.

The very heavens seemed to smile on the capture of la Pucelle. For

days before Bazaine had sent in his capitulation it had seemed as if a

repetition of the deluge of Noah was in progress. All the low country

was inundated; where the waters had not yet reached, the ground was a

thin, spongy, quagmire of mud. On the day that the Germans marched in

and the French marched out, the heavens still wept copiously, as if in

lamentation over a spectacle so full of woe for France. But when the

German sentry had taken his post on the gates, and when the black and

white flag floated out over the huge brown works of Plappeville, out

came the sun in a joyous radiance. As if by magic, the waters abated.

On St. Simphorien, where but the day before the dove could have found

no rest for the sole of her foot, an army might now have manœuvred.

The mud dried up, and the roads become hard again—those wonderful

roads that stubbornly resisted deterioration by the grinding wheels

of the cannon and proviant columns, and which ought of themselves to

prevent the name of the Third Napoleon, their constructor, from being

held in execration by the French. Under the bracing influence of the

bright sun and the frosty wind, everybody and everything seemed to

regain cheerfulness. The French prisoners yet remaining in Retonfay

had somehow got the mud off their clothes, and with the mud had gone

the moodiness. The German troops had heel-balled the eagle on their

helmets, and polished after a fashion the long boots that for days

before had been caked with successive layers of mud. The townspeople,

in all their sullenness, felt and yielded to the influence of the

fine weather. The ladies of the place, of whom hitherto we had only

caught glimpses as a pretty face peered out from behind a window-blind,

came out into the streets, and tripped along, daintily booted and

delicately gloved, among the dashing German subalterns, who might

have been excused for glances of undisguised admiration, and among

the throng of common soldiers, who seemed unimpressible, but were as

courteously civil as if they had served an apprenticeship as masters of

the ceremonies. Metz seemed to have no objection to any amount of what

it no doubt considered the mammon of unrighteousness in the shape of

Prussian thalers. All the shops were open, and had got stocked with a

rapidity that might have been accounted for either by concealed stores

or by wonderful enterprise in getting supplies speedily from Saarbrück

or Nancy. The cafés swarmed with German officers, with French officers,

with French civilians. It was already two days since the departure of

the last train had been notified for the conveyance of French officers

to Germany, but there must still have been close on 1800 of them left

in Metz. I suppose the greater proportion of them must have been on the

sick or convalescent list, but I saw comparatively few who appeared

seriously ailing. The diverse propensities of the two armies in the

matter of drinking could be seen at a glance by a visit to a café.

The German officer, trim, neat, buttoned up to the throat, dressed as

regimentally as if on parade, and with a carriage that might suggest

his having swallowed a ramrod, entered, saluted the room all round with

a stiff-necked bow and a chink together of his spurred heels; then

stalked to a seat, and called for a “Glas Bier.” The French officer,

his frogged and furred undress pilot coat open at the throat, and

showing a slice of shirt-collar and of front—a dickey, for aught I

know—and with the invariably white or brightly-coloured cravat, thrown

loosely round his neck, lounged in with his hands in his pockets,

nodded to a friend, tumbled in a heap on to a settee—if he ever

swallowed a ramrod the gastric juice must have made pulp of it long

ago—and called for a _petit verre_ of cognac or absinthe. He took his

tipple neat, fiery as it is. As the German plunged his moustache into

the froth of his beer flagon, he gave one the idea that he was drinking

because he had thirst and wanted to quench it. It was impossible to

think the same of the Frenchman as he took a sip out of the little

glass, and rolled the spirit round his mouth and under his tongue with

as much gusto as if it had been a sin.

As I was strolling on the Esplanade, on the morning of the 4th, I met

a comfortable-looking old gentleman, in gaiters and woollen gloves.

A remark as to the scenery served as a mutual introduction, and he

told me he was an old officer of artillery who, during the greater

part of the siege, had held the position of Commandant of Fort Queleu,

and who, when capitulation seemed imminent, had returned to the civil

life, out of which the siege had temporarily called him, so as to

escape expatriation as a prisoner of war. The good old gentleman spoke

very frankly as to the events of the siege, and had no hesitation in

speaking his mind as to Marshal Bazaine, and the motives by which, from

first to last, he had been actuated. When the Army of the Rhine first

fell back around the fortifications of Metz, after the battle of the

18th of August, instead of making efforts which he thought undoubtedly

would have been successful, to push onward for a junction with the rest

of the French forces, Bazaine’s explanation to his principal officers

for his policy was to the effect that the forts of Metz were in a

defensive condition so backward that he dared not, consistently with

his duty to France and his impression as to the importance of Metz as

the premier fortress of the Empire, abandon it in its then inchoate

condition to a defence to be carried on solely by its garrison. In

this view the commander of Fort Queleu declared that he completely

coincided. Comparatively trivial efforts would, he believed, have

sufficed to reduce Metz immediately after the 18th of August, had

there been no army to support the garrison, and to strengthen the

fortifications, and had the Germans taken immediate advantage of the

state of weakness. Bazaine, he continued, with a zeal and industry

beyond all praise, had put the forts into a state of efficient defence

by the end of the month. It was then, according to my informant’s

views, that his presence for the first time became _de trop_ in Metz,

and then it was that he ought, with all the vigour he could exert, to

have burst through the German cordon and got at large. That he could

have done this, whether in prosecution of the temporarily energetic

sortie which lasted over two days—31st August and 1st September—in the

direction of Nosseville, Servigny, and St. Barbe, or in the better

line down the valley of the Moselle, my interlocutor had no doubt;

and it is fair to him to mention that I found many German officers

who could not conscientiously differ from this view. After the middle

of September, however, Bazaine’s position, in view of breaking-out

tactics, had become hopeless. Sickness was decimating his ranks; his

troops had already eaten deep into the means for transporting artillery

and train. I asked the old commandant how, in his opinion, it was

that Bazaine did not strike a decisive blow for extrication after his

presence in Metz for good had ceased. The reply, to my thinking, was

very pregnant. Bazaine, a capable general, a gallant man, and a sincere

patriot, hung balanced between two stools. Instead of looking with a

single eye to his duties as a military commander, he became distracted

with political complications. In the early days he was studying the

interests of the Emperor, and the means of conserving for Imperialistic

uses the army under his command. Later on, the poison of personal

ambition had impregnated the system of the hitherto straightforward

soldier. He had nourished dreams of seeing himself Regent of France,

and made ducks and drakes of his reputation without attaining the

personal _quid pro quo_ he hankered after.

What a strange kaleidoscopic scene in those early post-capitulation

times did the great room of the Hôtel de l’Europe present from day

to day! Yesterday it had been thronged by officers of the 7th Army

Corps; to-day it was the 8th; on the morrow it would be the turn of

the first to snatch a glass of the “sparkling” before the route is

taken for the champagneless villages on the line of march. As I sit in

my quiet corner, there comes clinking and clattering in a divisional

staff; hussars blue, hussars green, hussars red, hussars brown, and

hussars black—the last with the grinning death’s head and the crossed

thigh-bones in silver on the busbies. All are speaking at once, most

at the top of their voices, and the clamour is for champagne, of which

400 bottles were drunk in one day in the room in which I sit. If I

had the portrait edition of the _Almanach de Gotha_, I might identify

the bearers of some of the proudest names in the Fatherland; for the

wearers of the showy uniforms are many of them princes and poins. Of

Grafs and Freiherrs, the crop is too large to take any account of.

This young slip of a lad with the pale face and the slight moustache

is of the blood royal of Russia, and not many removes off the throne

of the Czar. He is studying the art of war, attached to the staff of

General Manteuffel. If grim Nicholas—he of the Roman nose and strong

jaw—were alive to-day, with what interest would he be watching this

contest, and how searching would be his questioning of his young

kinsman on his return to the banks of the Neva! Who is this straight,

square man, stiff of figure and massive of head, that comes quietly

into the room alone? All rise respectfully as the door frames, as in

a picture, that powerful figure. The sparse hair on the face is but

slightly grizzled; surely the man with the few medals on his broad

breast, and the simple General’s star at his button-hole cannot be

a personage of great distinction. You may search in vain the roll

of the German army to find a name more honoured or more deserving

of honour. The big quiet man is General von Göben, the commander of

the 8th Army Corps, the youngest commander of an army corps in the

Prussian service, the one who has seen the most fighting. So gluttonous

is he for fighting, that when there was peace within the borders of

the Fatherland this modern Bayard was fighting in the fierce internal

strifes of Spain. In this war he has borne the brunt of the hardest

fighting. At Spicheren he had relieved Kamecke of the command; on the

rugged slope of Gorze, and in the thickets of the Bois des Genivaux,

he saw full many of his Rhinelanders go down. Von Göben seats himself

beside a burly officer with a bushy beard, clad in the white and green

of the Cuirassiers. The pallor of the big officer’s face contrasts

markedly with his jetty beard. Well may he be pale. A furrow of that

field at the north of Vionville soaked in not a little of his blood

as he lay there on the night of the 16th of August, a chassepot ball

in his chest and a sword-cut across that hard, bullet head of his. It

was he who led the Cuirassiers, diminished from a strong regiment to

a weak squadron in that last death-charge against the French battery.

He took the cigar out of his mouth to shout the “Vorwärts,” and then

sat down in his saddle and spurred the big bay into a charging gallop.

It was his luck and his hard head, he tells you, that pulled him

through when so many of his brother officers fell to rise no more.

And now he is a Rittmeister, no less, and has a good chance of the

order _pour merite_. At a side-table there sit together an Oberst of

reserve Uhlans, and a quiet little officer in a general’s uniform. The

chubby Oberst ought to have an army corps at least, if, indeed, he

should not supersede von Moltke, to judge of the energetic and fluent

manner in which he is demonstrating how a battle should be won to the

quiet little taciturn man beside him, who has a queer half comical

look in those grey eyes of his. The Oberst is, to use a vulgar phrase,

teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. The little General commands a

division, and has before to-day directed the operations of an army.

He is the author of a standard work on military strategy; whereas the

Oberst for the last dozen years has been tilling his acres away in

Pomerania. Nearer to me is a group of subalterns of a Hohenzollern

regiment, the youngsters drinking Rhine wine when all others in the

room are votaries of champagne. The Hohenzollerns affect “a deep deep

draught of the good Rhine wine,” for they are a Rhineland Regiment, and

it has always been a regimental tradition to stick to the Rudesheim.

In the group is a blithe young face I know right well. Many a hearty

clink of glasses has passed between us, not a few mornings have we

patrolled together the foreposts in the valley on the French side of

Saarbrück. Under the silky moustache you may faintly trace two slight

weals. How they came there is a story. The lad was among the foremost

up the steep of the Spicheren-berg. So difficult was the climb that he

had to take to his hands and knees, and, as you may see a butcher do,

he stuck his sword between his teeth. Like a silly fellow, he turned

the edge inwards instead of outwards, and when, after his manner, he

took to roaring “Vorwärts,” the keen blade enlarged the naturally by no

means diminutive orifice of his mouth. At another table sits Kummer,

the chief of the Landwehr men, with a certain Landwehr, fatherly look

about himself. In the corner opposite me is the sole group out of

uniform. Two are the almoners of the Berliner Hülfsverein, the third is

Professor Kollmann, of Munich, who has thrown aside the toga and the

doctor’s cap to take the charge of a lazarette. The fourth is, what

think you?—a lady. In the military history of Europe the name of von

Alten is not unknown to fame. It can be unfamiliar to no student of

Waterloo literature. The male von Altens of to-day are all soldiers,

and the lady at the table with the Professor is their sister, and a

sick nurse in an hospital at Chalons. In the salons of Berlin there was

no fairer face than that of Agnes von Alten; now the salons know it no

more; but when the soldier awakes from out of his delirium, or when

the chloroform-influence leaves him after an operation, he finds her

bending over him in tender solicitude. There are those, I fancy, in the

gay staff coats at the centre table, who would gladly hail a wound if

they could only choose their nurse.

The forenoon of the 5th I devoted to a careful examination of the

French line of defence which opposed the German environment on the

west. A description of its characteristics may, I fear, be but dull

reading, but I do not feel myself entitled on that account to refrain

from writing it, looking at the fact that the salient points of this

line of defence probably disappeared within a few weeks after, and

that some details with regard to it may not be useless in a humble

way to the Alison or the Kinglake of this stupendous war. Crossing

the river and the Thionville Railroad, on which a train of repairing

materials was moving forward with a tentative slowness that reminded

me of a Highland pony’s movements in a bog, I traversed a flat expanse

of considerable size, which had been occupied as the French Guards’

camp, and then passed through Ban St. Martin, noticing on the way

the château in which Bazaine had had his head-quarters. The abrupt

rise of St. Quentin began two steps after I had cleared the lanes of

Ban St. Martin. Looking at this hill from where you will, you cannot

question its steepness; but how steep it is on the face looking towards

the town is only to be appreciated by whoever essays to climb it on

a frosty morning, when the air is rarefied, and when the ground has

yielded its hardness caused by the frost into superficial slipperiness

caused by the sun’s heat. There was no road but a faint footpath

through the vineyards, which soon broke into what may be called a spray

of still tinier tracks, and then utterly disappeared. As I toiled

slowly and laboriously up the slippery steep, it became apparent to

me that a position such as that of Fort St. Quentin, so advantageous

because of its isolation and the great area which its height allows

it to dominate, may yet have elements of weakness caused by its very

isolation and height. Looking upward as I clambered, I could see no

grim earthworks on the crest, no cannon mouths depressed so as to sweep

this ascent. The hill shoulders up very steeply for three-fourths its

height, and then “tumbles home” so rapidly to the summit on which

stands the fort, that its base, as well as the lower steeps, are

protected from the fire of the fort by the convexity of the more upland

configuration. This fire could not be brought to bear upon these spaces

directly, no matter by what expedient, and if once, therefore, an

enemy’s force could get across the outside area swept by the guns of

the fort, it might nestle snugly, if audaciously, right under the lee

of the fortress, keeping itself safe much in the same manner as we read

of a nigger sticking on the back of a crocodile while the monster snaps

his jaws and lashes his tail to no purpose. All that St. Quentin could

do in the way of dislodgment must be by an indirect and plunging fire,

and the bay of safety is so close, that its artillery essaying any such

fire would have to fire at an elevation closely approaching to the

perpendicularly upwards. But a glance backward as one climbs forcibly

impresses on one the care and skill with which the several parts of

the defence of Metz are made to dovetail one into the other. Where the

configuration of the ground draws the teeth of St. Quentin, the bare

tusks of the citadel of Metz show themselves dangerously. Its guns look

across the Simphorien on to the alluvial plateau of Ban St. Martin and

the lower steeps of Mont St. Quentin, and change the “bay of safety”

into a position utterly untenable, while the batteries of Montigny

and Longeville, one face pointing up the river, the other athwart it,

opposed at once a direct and enfilading fire to any body of troops

rash enough to essay the path leading to this same untenable bay of

safety. Nor was this all that has been done to guard this access, and

to negative the feasibility of this place of lodgment. Out of the round

shoulder of Mont St. Quentin, just where the “tumbling home” begins,

there rises an abrupt, isolated peak, a kind of junior Mont St. Quentin

in itself. On the summit of this Bazaine’s engineers had knocked up a

hasty, but most useful outwork. A strong loopholed palisading enclosed

bomb-proof subterranean quarters for about half a battalion, and there

were evidences that on the top of this bomb-proof a couple of pieces

of artillery had been mounted. From the slits in the palisading the

infantry men standing on the tread could have searched with the muzzles

of their chassepots the “bay of safety,” while the shells from the

depressed pieces of artillery could have torn down through the steeps

of the vineyards, or pelted into the pretty châteaux and snug cottages

of Ban St. Martin in the level bottom.

Traversing the interval between this useful outwork, and the almost

upright substructure of granite blocks which forms the eastern

foundation of Fort St. Quentin, I came upon a deep cutting, crossed

by a foot-bridge. At the bottom of the cutting was a railway worked by

wire ropes. At the summit of the incline, a little to my right, was the

house of the stationary engine that had puffed so assiduously during

the siege, but that was now silent and deserted. On the left the track

seemed to tumble over a precipice into the valley of the Moselle, near

to Longeville—the declivity must in truth be very steep. This line,

used for the transport of building materials and munitions of war for

Fort St. Quentin, and a continuation of which had performed the same

function for Fort Plappeville, was constructed, it may be interesting

for railway readers to know, on the same gauge as the well-known

Festiniog line. It must have been of extraordinary importance during

the building and siege operations. Crossing the flying bridge of the

railway, I climbed up on to the plateau on which stands the fort,

through a perfect litter of chassepot guns and chassepot ammunitions,

which had been strewed there by the French troops to whom the order had

been given to lay down their arms within the fortification. I skirted

its left, making for the brow of the mount, looking out over against

the plateau of St. Hubert and Châtel St. Germain, anxious, as on the

morning of the 19th of August I had seen the French army lying on this

brow, to see how from it the Prussian position must have appeared.

Fort St. Quentin by no means occupies the whole of the summit of the

hill of the same name. It stands on an almost imperceptibly raised

space on the extreme verge of the eastern extremity. To the westward

extends a rugged flat of about a mile in length, by half as much in

breadth. The appearance the hill presents was as if some Titan of old

had shaved off flat its pointed top, and then strewed boulders over

the surface. These boulders, as well as the space between them, are

now covered with a short, half-heathy sward. It was then on this flat

that the French had sought refuge when at daylight on the 19th of

August we looked out from the miserable bivouac on the blood-stained

field of Gravelotte, and saw their white tents between us and the dull

heavy mass of Fort St. Quentin, as if for safety they were throwing

their bare arms around the protecting fortress. On the flat were yet

visible the traces of the trenches they had dug around the tents, and

their _al fresco_ kitchen fires had left their marks on the sward. I

was not a little surprised on pressing forward to the edge of this

flat to find its margin bordered by a substantial and systematically

constructed entrenchment. This line of entrenchment sprang up the

steep side of the hill between the top and the village of Scy, which

is just outside its cordon. If constructed at all during the siege, it

must have been made in the early days. The face was banked up with an

earthen slope now grass grown; inside was the inner face of an upright

wall of stones uncemented by mortar. This entrenchment was regularly

constructed with salient and re-entering angles, and with bastion-like

projections at intervals, for sweeping the face laterally. Close behind

were, at intervals, bomb-proof half-underground constructions for the

protection of troops not actually lining the entrenchment, and that

it was not meant as a place of occasional resort, but was habitually

held by defenders, was evidenced by the durable construction of the

kitchens, as well as by other less savoury tokens of the continuous

presence of troops. In the rear of the bomb-proofs, at frequent

intervals, were the earthworks thrown up for batteries. Encircling, as

this entrenchment did, the extreme edge of the plateau, its defenders

could look right down into the valley below, as well as across at the

lower and less abrupt heights opposite which constitute the fringe of

the plateau of St. Hubert; and with proper appliances and moderate

determination, could, to all appearance, have prevented anything from

living in, much less successfully traversing, that valley, to make an

assault. This defence work of the summit of Mont St. Quentin, which

may be called the key of Metz, presented an appearance so formidable

as to seem almost to reduce into a superfluity the great fort in its

rear; although of course the utility of the latter became obvious for

all round firing at long ranges in co-operation with the other forts

for the protection of Metz. This line ran away, still as strong as

ever, down into the dip between the summit of Mont St. Quentin and the

longer hog-backed ridge of Plappeville. As it came on upon the latter,

instead of climbing directly up the face and so passing close under the

greater fortification, it took a sweep westward, skirting the eminence

near its base, and was continued right round to the northern front of

Plappeville, putting an effectual check upon any sudden surprise from

the Bois de Châtel or the Bois de Saulny.

How deceptive are appearances! From the shattered hamlet of St.

Hubert, on the grand chaussée, I had looked over to St. Quentin on

the morning of the 19th August, and had thought I could have knocked

at the gates of the fort after a short half-hour’s walk. Now, looking

from St. Quentin to St. Hubert, I could barely see the ruined hamlet,

and the poplar trees on the chaussée stood up against the horizon.

Yet the distance could not have been so great after all, since a shot

from Fort St. Quentin on the morning I refer to had killed two German

soldiers mounted at the hamlet on the chaussée. Now on the horizon

were visible the long low huts which the Germans had erected as their

temporary barracks. Much closer on the left, and near the chaussée,

where it passes through Roserieulles on its way into the Moselle

valley, I noticed the trim square earthwork, so completely constructed

as to have been sodded up with turf, of a German battery. In this

battery had stood the 12-pounder guns which had burned the village

of Moulin les Metz in the early days of October. What the gunners in

St. Quentin were thinking of to allow the erection of this earthwork

in such a position I could not comprehend. To pound it to pieces they

need scarcely have taken the trouble to elevate the muzzles of the

great guns on the top of the casemates. A steady cannonade must have

made its construction too arduous for the Germans, not given, save in

rare instances, to squander lives wantonly. Nay, more, at a quarter

of a mile closer still, at La Maison Blanche, just behind Longeau,

there stood an impudent little affair of an improvised battery, thrown

up for a few field pieces. I wondered if the gunners there, whose

lives were not worth five minutes’ purchase had St. Quentin been in

earnest to dislodge the cocky little concern, ever sent a six-pound

shell flying across the valley at the big guns of the fort, in mere

bravado. Quitting the entrenchment, I plunged down the slope, about

midway between the villages of Lessy and Scy. Now I was among what

had been the French outposts, guarding the country roads and the hill

paths. The inartistic character of the field defences, on the French

side, surprised me not a little. There was a trench across the path

with the earth thrown up on the farther side, and that was all. There

was no cover for retreat, there were no means of pouring in a cross

fire, there was no continuation of the cordon of entrenchment, so

as to give cover for a thin line of riflemen connecting the posts.

It was the same with the position for a field watch in front of

Plappeville, between the entrenchments and the Bois de Châtel. The

half-moon ditch and paltry earthen breastwork stood there utterly

isolated and disconnected. Under a hot fire from the adjacent wood,

no relief could have reached it, nor could its occupants have fallen

back on their supports in the inner entrenchments, without ruinous

loss. It was another story when, having crossed the bottom, I came upon

the German foreposts on the opposite slope. On one side of the narrow

path there looked down on me a venomous little work, behind which some

half-a-dozen marksmen might have stood. Half-a-dozen paces forward, on

the other side, there was a duplicate. It made one uncomfortable, even

in the solitude, to move about in the continual consciousness that,

look which way one might, there was one of these posts looking one all

but full in the face, while at least a couple of others were squinting

at one on the flanks. Then right in front came an obstruction of

felled trees, then the _chevaux de frise_ of vineyard stakes stuck in

the ground, and last of all the deep trench across the road, with its

substantial parapet running away on either side in an unbroken cordon.

It was not one road that was so protected on the German side, but all.

A comparison of the field works of the rival armies impressed me, in

short, with the conviction that the French works were constructed by

soldiers, the German by engineers; and this surprised me the more,

because the engineering ability displayed on the part of the French in

the choice of sites for the forts, and in their construction, was of a

very high order, an opinion, I am sure, which will be confirmed by our

highest military critics.

Hark! I hear the quiet tramp of the German infantrymen marching down

the narrow street. It is the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps on

its way through Metz. Ha! here comes the 45th, fresh, clean, and

confident. Can you see any gaps in those dense files of fours, although

it was the 45th that furnished the 285 _tapfere Krieger_ that lie in

one long grave in the quiet garden by Château Gras? No, the depôt

of the 45th has given over 1400 recruits to the Regiment which it

feeds, and if more are wanted (and more were wanted), I doubt not

the depôt is equal to the demand. And here comes the sister regiment

of the brigade, the gallant 5th, the blood of whose linesmen ran in

the gutters of Servigny in that “Schlacht bei Noisseville” on the

afternoon of the 31st August. Here is the dashing Hauptmann, who one

night, having sitten a little in the sun before it went down, took it

into his head to pay a visit to the fair maidens of Villiers l’Orme.

The Hauptmann lost his way, and only found it when he was under the

nose of a French field watch. He lost, too, his horse, and had a

night’s rest in the open in the vine-berg; but he does not look much

the worse for it, does he? Crash! bang! Surely I know that tune! It is

the old “Hohenfriedburg.” Faugh-a-ballagh there for the fighting 4th.

If the obstruction consisted of men with arms in their hands, instead

of a posse of _gamins_, the 4th would do their own work in the way of

Faugh-a-ballagh. At the head of the brigade rides General Zglinitski,

full, let us hope, of “vermicelli and tail ox.” He looks quite fresh

and rosy. I wish his “grandmamma” could see him as he jogs through the

Port de France. Ha! here comes the good Oberst, with the cares of that

horrible lager of French prisoners off his mind; and now he is on the

road again with a reasonable prospect of a fight. Behind him comes the

1st Battalion, marching splendidly; the houses echo again to their firm

tread; and the 2nd Battalion follows, with the portly Mecklenburgher

Major at its head, and young von Verzen, his adjutant, by his side.

Here comes Puttkamer, “the good old man,” as we used to call him,

who speaks English with a Scotch accent, because he learnt it from

a certain Jessie of northern extraction. What do I hear? Can it be?

Yes; it is the familiar, although still far-off, salutation of “Miss

Lucy, Lucy Long.” Verily there is von Hosius in the flesh, and a good

deal of that same, too. At his heels his Scotch terrier “Phipps,” and

by his side his trusty Fïscher, adept at pantomime and lover of salt

herrings. “_Kommen Sie mit?_” is the hearty question that greets me on

every side. _Ach nein_, worse luck, old friends. To the 2nd succeeds

the Fusilier Battalion, with the stalwart senior Hauptmann at its head,

its major is detached on another command. Company after company passes

me, the honest Kerle in the ranks grinning a kindly greeting to one

who had shared with them their roughs and smooths, chiefly the former,

goodness knows, for not a few weeks. Near the tail of all comes the

11th Company, my own, with stately Ertmann marching in its front. There

is a little darn on the right breast of his coat; you would scarcely

guess, to see his sturdy step and upright carriage, that it marks the

spot where entered the bullet that went through him on the 14th of

August. _Mein leiber Werth_, best of chums! truest of comrades! Shall

we ever meet again, I wonder? And as I live, here is Feldwebel Strauss

mended again after that unlucky bullet at the Brewery, and with the

company account-book sticking out of his breast as of old. They turn

the corner over the bridge, and my Metz friends are out of sight. Good

luck and plenty of fighting be their lot wheresoever the fortune of war

may carry them, and a glad home-coming when the _Friede_ comes at last!

END OF VOL. I.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Gustave von Alvensleben who commanded the 4th Corps is a full

general.

[2] I observe it has been asserted that the French in those earlier

battles did not resort to rifle-pits. Anybody asserting this who was

in sight of the operations must have been stone-blind. I have been in

dozens of them. The story of 800 and odd corpses having been found in

one after the battle of the 14th of August must have been a “goak”

perpetrated by some youngster on the staff eager to feed Germany

with sensationalism. There were two varieties of what the Germans

call schützen-graben. Of one the churchyard at Point du Jour is a

good example—a triangle surrounded with a low wall, which had been

loopholed, and with a trench inside for additional cover. The other

pattern consisted of a small half-moon excavation—the convexity toward

the enemy—the earth from the hole breasted up in front, over which the

marksmen fired in a kneeling position. The maximum garrison of one of

these rifle-pits must have been about twelve men, half of them firing

while the other half rested behind the shelter. To have packed throngs

of men into large rifle-pits would simply have been to provide so many

charnel-houses. Doubtless numbers of the little half-moons are still to

the fore on the battle-fields. It is easy to tell the French works from

the German by the objective of their convexity. The Germans, however,

converted many of them.

[3] I give no heed to the balderdash written about Bazaine’s

abandonment to sensual indulgence, of which I have been unable to find

a scintilla of unprejudiced and impartial confirmation.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and

inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Inconsistent hyphenations have been left as is.

Page 17. “petty” replaced by “pretty”.

Page 93. “eft” replaced by “left”.

Page 315. The scanned image was of poor quality for the phrase “About a mile and a half due south of”.

Page 433. The scanned image was of poor quality for the phrase most likely to be “top of the crust”.

Page 463. ““Vorwärts,’” replaced by ““Vorwärts,”” Divine

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