The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
Saarbrücken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be
like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at
warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally,
to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a
pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the
Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--drank their beer
placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked
drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use
at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line
every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little
result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in
the valley bounded by the Schönecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald
lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the
crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them
from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they
were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the
ground--an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively
hostility.
I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern
officers frequented the _table d'hôte_ and where quaint little Max, the
drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fraülein Sophie the
landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the
pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did
I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped
red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over
the great ice-pail, with its _chevaux de frise_ of long-necked
Niersteiner bottles--the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe
Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_;
quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and
as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay
young Adjutant von Zülow--he who one day brought in a prisoner from the
foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and
many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren,
or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt
of the casuals in Saarbrücken, including myself. Of the waifs and
strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the
great rendezvous was the Hôtel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading
from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a
free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its
inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly
George--type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a
word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save
the passport signed "Salisbury," and having not quite so much business
at the seat of war as he might have at the bottom of a coal-mine,
gravitates into danger with inevitable certainty, and stumbles through
all manner of difficulties and bothers by reason of a serene
good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool resolution before which
every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more compositely polyglot
cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half Dutchman, half German by
birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in temperament, speaking
with equal fluency the language of all four countries, and an
unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European languages besides? Then
there was the English student from Bonn, who had come down to the front
accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast, shaggy, self-willed,
and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his owner, and was so
much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account of him the
company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--was the
source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the many-sided
and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach
and yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of
the twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was
Küster, a German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham
Road; and Duff, a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of
nervousness and cool courage I ever met.
We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie
was that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty
saal before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the
strangers. The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen
with a bonny round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some
years older; and a brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from
Silesia on rather a strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her
_Bräutigam_ a young Feldwebel of the second battalion of the
Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The battalion quartered there was
under orders to join its first battalion at Saarbrücken, and young
Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and meet him there,
that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go on a campaign
from which he might not return. The arrangement was certainly a
charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was no
nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to
bed with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_
While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the
afternoon of the next day his battalion approached Saarbrücken and
bivouacked about two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to
welcome it; some bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the
drink-offering of potent Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole
inmates of the Hagen, delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The
German journalist, however, had a commission to find out young
Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss that awaited him two short miles
away. Right hearty fellows were the officers of the second
battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the smooth-faced junior
lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and bivouacking for a
fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled five miles.
Küster soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of his company
when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly smile,
and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any hostile
action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the colours
immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was Eckenstein's
reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then, after a
cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started in
triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she
met him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he
returned the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid
Hagen came out of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that
he would give us a supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The
good old pastor of the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been
engaged to perform the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair
whether he would or not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein,
their arms interlacing and whispering soft speeches which were not for
our ears. The table was covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the
champagne peculiar of the Hagen; and the speed with which the full
bottles were converted into "dead marines" was a caution to
teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave the health of the happy
couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in which half a dozen
languages were impartially intermixed so that all might understand at
least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off the honours
with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible dog of
Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor;
and after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had
met their fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein
to the Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.
Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of
the Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and
in the kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic
culinary operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty
low-necked blue dress, and the pastor in his cassock helped to the
diversity of colour. We had done shaking hands with the bride and
bridegroom after the ceremony, and were sitting down to the marriage
feast, when young Eckenstein started and made three strides to the open
window. His accustomed ear had caught a sound which none of us had
heard. It was the sharp peremptory note of the drum beating the alarm.
As it came nearer and could no longer be mistaken, the bright colour
went out from poor Minna's cheek and she clung with a brave touching
silence to her sister. In two minutes more Eckenstein had his helmet on
his head and his sword buckled on, and then he turned to say farewell
to his girl ere he left her for the battle. The parting was silent and
brief; but the faces of the two were more eloquent than words. Poor
Minna sat down by the window straining her eyes as Eckenstein, running
at speed, went his way to the rendezvous.
When I got up to the Bellevue the French were streaming in overwhelming
force down the slope of the Spicheren into the intervening valley. It
was a beautiful sight; but I am not going to describe it here. Ere an
hour was over the shells and chassepôt bullets were sweeping across the
Exercise Platz, and it was no longer a safe spot for a non-combatant
like myself. Before I got back into the Hagen after paying my bill at
the Rheinischer and fetching away my knapsack, the French guns were on
the Exercise Platz. I heard for the first time the angry screech of the
mitrailleuse and saw the hailstorm of its bullets spattering on the
pavement of the bridge. Somehow or other the whole of our little
coterie had found their way into the Hagen; by a sort of common
impulse, I imagine. The landlady was already in hysterics; the Vogt
girls were pale but plucky. Presently the shells began to fly. The
Prussians had a gun or two on the railway esplanade above us, the fire
of which the French began to return fiercely. Every shell that fell
short tumbled in or about the Hagen; and a company of the Hohenzollerns
was drawn up in the street in front of it, in trying to dislodge which
the French fire could not well miss the Hagen and the houses opposite.
A shell burst in the back-yard and the landlady fainted. Another came
crashing in through a first-floor window, and, bursting, knocked
several bedrooms into one. Then we thought it time to get the women
down into the cellar--rather a risky undertaking since the door of it
was in the backyard. However, we got them all down in safety and came
up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a
fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and,
bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of
cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as
another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the
long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of
splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration Küche on
the other side was in flames, so was the stable of the hotel to the
left rear. In this pleasing situation of affairs George produced a pack
of cards and coolly proposed a game of whist. Küster, de Liefde, and
Hyndman joined him; and the game proceeded amidst the crashing of the
projectiles. Silberer and myself took counsel together and agreed that
the occupation of the town by the French was only a question of a few
hours at latest. We were both correspondents; and although the French
would do us no harm our communications with our journals would
inevitably be stopped--a serious contingency to contemplate at the
beginning of a campaign. We both agreed that evacuation of the Hagen
was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the
esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were
falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However,
there was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and
saying good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth. To my disgust I
found that Silberer positively refused to make a rush of it. Although
an Austrian all his sympathies were Prussian, and he had the utmost
contempt for the French. In his broken language his invariable
appellation for them was "God-damned Hundsöhne!" and he would not run
before them at any price. I would have run right gladly at top-speed;
but I did not like to run when another man walked, and so he made me
saunter at the rate of two miles an hour till we got under shelter.
After a hot walk of several miles, we reached the Hôtel Till in the
village of Duttweiler. After all the French, although they might have
done so, did not occupy Saarbrücken; and towards evening our friends
came dropping into the Hôtel Till, singly or in pairs. Küster and
George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon--it was surprising to
see the coolness and composure of the girls. By nightfall we were all
reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly wounded
and whom a Saarbrücken doctor had kindly received into his house.
On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbrücken and the
desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which
was assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the
Exercise Platz height. Kameke rode up the winding road to the Bellevue;
then came the march across the broad valley and after much bloodshed
the final storm of the Spicheren, in which the 40th occupied about the
left centre of the Prussian advance. Three times did the blue wave
surge up the green steep, to be beaten back three times by the terrible
blast of fire that crashed down upon it from above. Yet a fourth time
it clambered up again, and this time it lipped the brink and poured
over the intrenchment at the top. But I am not describing the battle.
When it was over or at least when it had drifted away across the
farther plateau, I followed on in the broad wake of dying and dead
which the advance had left. The familiar faces of the Hohenzollerns
were all around me; but either still in death or writhing in the
torture of wounds. About the centre of the valley lay the genial
Hauptmann von Krehl, more silent than ever now, for a bullet had gone
right through that red head of his and he would never more quaff of the
Niersteiner; neither would Lieutenant von Klipphausen ever again stir
the blood of the sons of the Fatherland with the _Wacht am Rhein_; he
lay dead close by the first spur of the slope--what of him at least a
bursting shell had left. On a little flat half up sat quaint Dr.
Diestelkamp, like Mark Tapley jolly under difficulties; by his side lay
a man who had just bled to death as the good doctor explained to me.
While he had been applying the tourniquet under a hot fire his right
arm had been broken; and before he could pull himself up and go to the
rear another bullet had found its billet in his thigh. There the little
man sat, contentedly smoking till somebody would be good enough to come
and take him away. Von Zülow too--he of the gay laugh and sprightly
countenance--was on his back a little higher up, with a bullet through
the chest. I heard the ominous sound of the escaping air as I raised
him to give him a drink from my flask. What needs it to become diffuse
as to the terrible sights which that steep and the plateau above it
presented on this beautiful summer evening? It was farther to the
right, in ground more broken with gullies and ravines, that the second
battalion of the Hohenzollerns had gone up; and I wandered along there
among the carnage eking out the contents of my flask as far as I could,
and when the wounded had exhausted the brandy in it filling it up with
water and still toiling on in a task that seemed endless. At last, in a
sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy
ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried
as I ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but
think he was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel
was dead, shot through the throat. He had not been killed outright by
the fatal bullet; the track was apparent by the blood on the grass
along which he had crawled to the hawthorn tree against which I found
him. His head had fallen forward on his chest and his right hand was
pressed against his left breast. I saw something white in the hollow of
the hand and easily moved the arm for he was yet warm; it was the
photograph of the little girl he had married but three short days
before. The frank eyes looked up at me with a merry unconsciousness;
and the face of the photograph was spotted with the life-blood of the
young soldier.
I sent the death-token to Saarlouis by post to the young widow. I never
knew whether she received it, for all the address I had was Saarlouis.
Eckenstein I saw buried with two officers in a soldier's grave under
the hawthorn. Any one taking the ascent up the fourth ravine
Forbach-ward from the bluff of the Spicheren, may easily find it about
halfway up. It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude
inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste
Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."