"I wonder if she cares about that French fellow still?" thought Fritz to
himself when Madaleine had gone. "I don't believe she could have felt
for him much, from the manner in which she listened when I told her of
his death and the way she looked at that ring. Himmel! Would she
receive the news of my being shot in the same fashion, I wonder?"
Fritz, however, could not settle this momentous question satisfactorily
to his own mind just then; so he had, consequently, to leave the matter
to be decided at that blissful period when everybody thought that
"everything would come straight"--the period to which he had alluded at
the interesting instant when his slightly confidential conversation with
Madaleine was so inopportunely interrupted by the maladroit entrance of
Doctor Carl. In other words, "when the war should be over!" But, as
the worthy disciple of Aesculapius had sapiently remarked on the
occasion of his accidental interference with what might have been
otherwise a mutual understanding between the two, the war was not over
yet. The halcyon time had not arrived for the sword to be beaten into a
ploughshare, nor did there seem much prospect of such a happy
contingency in the near immediate future; for, although the contest had
already lasted three months--during which a series of terrible
engagements had invariably resulted in the defeat of the French--from
the commencement of the campaign to the capitulation of Metz, each
crushing disaster only seemed to have the effect of nerving the Gallic
race to fresh resistance and so prolong the struggle. Indeed, at the
beginning of November, 1870, with Paris laughing the idea of a siege to
scorn and new armies being rapidly organised, in the north at Saint
Quentin, in the west at Havre, and in the south at Orleans, the end of
the war appeared as far off as ever!
Fritz missed the attentions of his unwearying little nurse much, and his
convalescence did not progress so rapidly in consequence; but one
morning, some three weeks after the departure of the party of the
baroness' from Mezieres, he was agreeably surprised by Doctor Carl
giving him permission to rejoin his corps.
"I don't quite think you exactly strong enough yet, you know; but I've
received orders to clear out the hospitals here, sending forward all
such as are fit to their respective regiments, while those not
sufficiently recovered I am to invalid to Germany. Now, which is it to
be, Herr Lieutenant? I candidly don't believe you're quite up to the
mark for campaigning again yet; but still, perhaps, you would not like
being put on the shelf, and no doubt you'd gain strength from the change
of air as you moved on with the army. Which course will you select,
Herr Lieutenant? I give you the choice."
"To rejoin my regiment, certainly, doctor!" answered Fritz, without a
moment's hesitation. "I'm tired of doing nothing here, and I fancy I've
been well enough to move for the past fortnight."
"Ah, permit me to be the best judge of that, young man," said the other.
"No doubt you feel wonderfully strong just now! Can you lift this
chair, do you think, eh?"
"Certainly," replied Fritz, laying his hand on the slight little article
of furniture the doctor had pointed out with his cane, and which he
could have easily held up with one finger when in the possession of his
proper strength. He was quite indignant, indeed, with Doctor Carl for
suggesting such a feeble trial for him, as if he were a child; but, much
to his astonishment, he found that he was utterly unable to raise the
chair from the ground. Besides which, he quite panted after the
exertion, just as if he had been endeavouring to lift a ton weight!
"Ha, what did I say, Herr Lieutenant?" said the surgeon with a laugh.
"You will now allow, I suppose, that we doctors know best as to what is
good for our patients! But, come, you will not be wanted to raise or
carry about a greater weight than yourself until you come up with your
regiment, which is now with Manteuffel's division near Amiens, for, by
that time, you'll be yourself again. I'll now go and sign your
certificate and papers, so that you may get ready to start as soon as
you like."
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Fritz. "It is `Forwards' again--the very word puts
fresh life in me!" and, trying once more, he lifted the chair this time
with ease. "You see, Herr Doctor, I can do it now!"
"Ah, there's nothing like hope and will!" said the doctor, bustling out
of the room--which Fritz, unlike many poor victims of the war, had had
entirely to himself, instead of being only one amongst hundreds of
others in a crowded hospital ward. "By the time you join your comrades
again, you'll be double the man you were before you came under my care!"
"Thanks to you, dear doctor," shouted out Fritz after him in cordial
tones; and he then proceeded to overhaul his somewhat dilapidated
uniform to see whether it was in order for him to don once more.
On the termination of the siege of Metz, by its capitulation at the end
of October, the large German force which had been employed up till then
in the investment of Marshal Bazaine's entrenched camp before the
fortress, became released for other duties; thus enabling Von Moltke,
the great strategical head of the Teuton legions, to develop his plans
for the complete subjugation of the country.
In accordance, therefore, with these arrangements, two army corps, each
of some thirty thousand men, proceeded at once to aid the hosts
encircling Paris with fire and steel; while two more corps were led by
Prince Frederick Charles towards the south of France, where they arrived
in the nick of time to assist the Duke of Mecklenburgh and the defeated
Bavarians under Van der Tann in breaking up the formidable army of the
Loire commanded by Chanzy, which had very nearly succeeded in altering
the condition of the war; the remainder of the German investing force
from Metz were sent northwards, under Manteuffel, in the direction of
Brittany and the departments bordering on the English Channel, so as to
crush out all opposition there.
With this latter force marched the regiment of our friend Fritz, which
he was able to rejoin about the beginning of December at Amiens, where
were established the headquarters of General Manteuffel, the present
commander of the first army--"Old Blood and Iron."
Steinmetz having been shelved, it was said, on account of his age and
infirmities, he having fought at Waterloo, but more probably on account
of his rather lavish sacrifice of his men, especially at Gravelotte.
This force kept firm hold of Normandy with a strong hand, threatening
Dieppe and Havre on either side.
Fritz had a tedious journey to the front.
Partly by railway where practicable, and partly by roads that were
blocked by the heavy siege guns and waggon loads of ammunition going
forwards for the use of the force besieging Paris, the young lieutenant
made his way onwards in company with a reserve column of Landwehr
proceeding to fill up casualties in Manteuffel's ranks--the journey not
being rendered any the more agreeable by the frequent attacks suffered
from franc-tireurs when passing through the many woods and forests
encountered on the route, in addition to meeting straggling bands of the
enemy, who opposed the progress of the column the more vigorously as it
abandoned the main roads leading from the frontier and struck across
country.
It was not by any means a pleasure trip; but, putting all perils aside,
regarding them merely as the vicissitudes of a soldier's lot, what
impressed Fritz more than anything else was the ruin and devastation
which, following thus in the rear of a triumphant army, he everywhere
noticed.
The towns he entered on his way had most of their shops shut, and the
windows of the private houses were closed, as if in sympathy with a
national funeral, those which had been bombarded--and these were many--
having, besides, their streets blocked up with fallen masonry and
scattered beams of timber, their church steeples prostrate, and the
walls of buildings perforated with round shot and bursting shells that
had likewise burnt and demolished the roofs; while, in the more open
country, the farms and villages had been swept away as if with a
whirlwind of fire, only bare gables and blackened rafters staring up
into the clouds, like the skeletons of what were once happy homes. The
vineyards and fields and gardens around were destroyed and running to
waste in the most pitiful way, for every one connected with them, who
had formerly cherished and tended them with such care and attention, had
either been killed or else sought safety in flight to the cities, where
their refuge was equally precarious. Along the highway, the trees,
whose branches once gave such grateful shade to wayfarers, were now cut
down, only rows of hideous, half-consumed stumps remaining in their
stead; while here and there, as the scene of some great battle was
passed, great mounds like oblong bases of flattened pyramids rose above
the surface of the devastated plain--mounds under whose frozen surface
lay the mouldering bodies of thousands of brave men who had fallen on
the bloody field, their last resting-place unmarked by sepulchral cross
or monumental marble. Everywhere there was terrible evidence of the
effects of war and the price of that "glory" which, the poet sings
truly, "leads but to the grave!"
Fritz was sickened with it all; but, what struck his keen sense of
honour and honesty more, was the wholesale pillage and robbery permitted
by the German commanders to be exercised by their soldiery on the
defenceless peasantry of France. A cart which he overhauled, proceeding
back to the frontier, contained such wretched spoil as women's clothes,
a bale of coffee, a quantity of cheap engravings and chimney ornaments,
an old-fashioned kitchen clock, with an arm-chair--the pride of some
fireside corner--a quantity of copper, and several pairs of ear-rings,
such as are sold for a few sous in the Palais Royale!
The sight of this made his blood boil, and Fritz got into some trouble
with a colonel of Uhlans by ordering the contents of the cart to be at
once confiscated and burnt, the huckster being on the good books of that
officer--doubtless as a useful collector of curios!
It was a current report amongst the French at the time that the German
army was followed by a tribe of Jew speculators, who purchased from the
soldiers the plunder that they certainly could not themselves expect to
carry back to their own country; and this incident led Fritz to believe
the rumour well founded.
"Heavens, little mother," as he wrote home subsequently to Madame Dort,
after his experience of what went on at headquarters under his new
commander. "I do not fear the enemy; but the only thing which will do
us any harm, God willing that we come safely home, is that we shall not
be able to distinguish between mine and thine, the `meum' and `tuum'
taught us at school, for we shall be all thorough thieves; that is to
say, we are ordered to take--`requisition' they call it--everything that
we can find and that we can use. This does not confine itself alone to
food for the horses and people, but to every piece of portable property,
not an absolute fixture, which, if of any value, we are directed to
appropriate and `nail' fast!
"Through the desertion of most of the castles here in the neighbourhood
by their legitimate proprietors, the entry to all of them is open to us;
and now everything is taken out of them that is worth taking at all.
The wine-cellars in particular are searched; and I may say that our
division has drank more champagne on its own account than I ever
remember to have seen in the district of Champagne, when I visited it
last year before the war.
"In the second place, our light-fingered forces carry off all the horses
we can take with us; all toilet things, glasses, stockings, brushes,
boots and shoes, linen--in a word, everything is `stuck to!'
"The officers, I may add, are no exception to the private soldiers, but
steal in their proper precedence, appropriating whatever objects of art
or pictures of value they can find in the mansions we visit in these
archaeological tours of ours. Only yesterday, the adjutant of my
regiment, a noble by birth, but I am sorry to say not a gentleman either
by manners or moral demeanour, came to me and said, `Fritz Dort, do me
the favour to steal for me all the loot you can bring me. We will at
all events show Moltke that he has not sent us into this war for
nothing.' Of course, this being an order from a superior officer, I
could not say anything but `At your command, your highness!' But what
will come of it all only God knows! I'm afraid, when there is nothing
left to lay our hands on, we will begin to appropriate the goods and
chattels of each other; although, little mother, I will endeavour to
keep my fingers clean, if only for your sake!"
Fritz, however, soon had something more exciting to think about than the
morals of his comrades; for, only a few days after he joined his
regiment, he went into action again at the battle of Amiens, when the
Germans drove back Faidherbe's "army of the north," routing them with
much slaughter, and taking many prisoners, besides thirteen cannon. A
French regiment of marines was ridden down by a body of German Hussars,
who were almost decimated by the charge--which resembled that of
Balaclava, the "sea soldiers" standing behind entrenchments with their
guns.
Later on, too, Fritz was in a more memorable engagement. It occurred on
the morning of the 23rd of December at Pont Noyelles, where the army of
General Manteuffel, numbering about fifty thousand men with some forty
guns, attacked a force of almost double the strength, commanded by
Faidherbe, the last of the generals on whom the French relied outside of
Paris. The two armies confronted each other from opposing heights,
separated by the valley of the Somme and a small, winding stream, which
falls into the larger river at Daours, on the right and left banks of
which the contending forces were respectively aligned; and the combat
opened about eleven o'clock in the forenoon with a heavy cannonade,
under cover of which the German tirailleurs smartly advanced and took
possession of several small villages, although the French shortly
afterwards drove them out of these at the point of the bayonet,
exhibiting great gallantry. In the evening, both armies rested in the
same positions they had occupied at the commencement of the fight; but,
although the French greatly outnumbered their antagonists, being
especially superior in artillery, the fire of which had considerably
thinned the German ranks, they did nothing the whole of the succeeding
day. On the contrary, they rested in a state of complete inactivity,
when, if they had but pushed forwards, they might have compelled the
retreat of Manteuffel.
The next morning was that of Christmas Day.
Fritz could not but remember it, in spite of his surroundings, for he
received a small parcel by the field post, containing some warm woollen
socks knitted by Lorischen's own fair fingers, and sent to him in order
"to prevent his appropriating those of the poor French peasantry," as he
had intimated might be the case with him in his last letter home, should
he be in need of such necessaries and not have any of his own. His good
mother, too, did not forget him, nor did a certain young lady who
resided at Darmstadt.
It was the morning of Christmas Day; but not withstanding its holy and
peaceful associations, Fritz and every one else in Manteuffel's army
corps expected that the anniversary would be celebrated in blood. Judge
of their surprise, however, when, as the day advanced, the vedettes and
outposts they sent ahead returned with the strange intelligence that the
enemy had abandoned the highly advantageous ground they had selected on
Pont Noyelles, retiring on Arras.
The news was almost too good to be true; but, nevertheless, the German
cavalry were soon on the alert, pursuing the retreating force and
slaughtering thousands in the chase--thus Christmas Day was passed!
The new year opened with more fighting for Fritz; for, on the 2nd of
January, occurred the battle of Bapaume, and on the 19th of the same
month the more disastrous engagement for the French of Saint Quentin,
which finally crumbled up "the army of the north" under Faidherbe, which
at one time almost looked as if it would have succeeded in raising the
siege of Paris, by diverting the attention of the encircling force.
However, in neither of these actions did Fritz either get wounded or
gain additional promotion; and from thence, up to the close of the war,
his life in the invaded country was uneventful and without interest.
Yes, to him; for he was longing to return home.
"Going to the war" had lost all its excitement for him, the carnage of
the past months and the sorrowful scenes he had witnessed having fairly
satiated him with "glory" and all the horrors which follow in its train.
Now, he was fairly hungering for home, and the quiet of the old
household at Lubeck with his "little mother" and Lorischen--not
forgetting Mouser, to make home more homelike and enjoyable, for Fritz
thought how he would have to teach Gelert, who had likewise escaped
scathless throughout the remainder of the campaign in the north of
France, to be on friendly terms with the old nurse's pet cat.
He was thinking of some one else too; for, lately, the letters of
Madaleine had stopped, although she had previously corresponded with him
regularly. He could not make out the reason for her silence. One
despatch might certainly have been lost in transmission through the
field post; but for three or four--as would have been the case if she
had responded in due course to his effusions, which were written off to
Darmstadt each week without fail--to miss on the journey, was simply
impossible!
Some treachery must be at work; or else, Madaleine was ill; or, she had
changed her mind towards him.
Which of these reasons caused her silence?
It was probably, he thought, the former which he had to thank for his
anxiety; and the cause, he was certain, was the baroness. What
blessings he heaped on her devoted head!
It was in this frame of mind that Fritz awaited the end of the war.