Volume 1 / Part 2 — CHAPTER I. THE SIEGE. (continued 2)

In the evening there was a camp fire, an institution not unknown at Wimbledon in the early days of the Volunteer movement, when as yet the encampment was but small, and when Lord Elcho’s sonorous voice could be heard over the whole gathering. During peace time, there is a camp fire—or a gathering equivalent to it—once a week in every Prussian regiment, to which the married officers bring their good ladies, and whither also the “beauty and fashion” of the garrison town are invited. “Beauty and fashion” were represented in Retonfay by a few French crones of fabulous age, who confined their remarks to muttering “Mon Dieu” continuously, and who, I suspect, would gladly have poisoned the whole regiment if they could have done so without risk to themselves. But nevertheless we had our camp fire, and that, too, under quite imposing circumstances. The spot selected was a pretty meadow by the side of a stream, about two hundred yards from the village. An officer of taste, and with a capital eye for landscape gardening, had devoted himself from a very early hour in the morning to perfecting the arrangements. With a fatigue party, he had thrown a pretty rustic bridge across the stream, and lined the path leading to it with green boughs. With these, too, he had enclosed a large circle, with a smaller area close by for the band, and in the centre of the larger circle a great bonfire had been built, its foundation raised by the earth excavated from a trench dug around it. All the chairs in the village were collected, and most of the tables, and placed in picturesque confusion around this central point. The officers began to gather about five o’clock. They were all so smart that I felt ashamed of my old tweed shooting jacket and dilapidated wideawake. The parade coats had been dug out of the bottom of portmanteaus, and looked quite spruce and natty. Boots had been polished to a pitch that might have stimulated the admiration of Day and Martin. Spurs and buttons glittered brightly in the setting sun. Then our worthy colonel—Oberst von Dietzen-Hennig—made his appearance, accompanied by his staunch ally the major. The colonel, too, was evidently on ceremony, for he wore the sword which King Wilhelm had presented to him with his own hands the evening of one of the battles of the 1866 campaign. All rose to greet the commanding officer, and immediately that he was seated, the band struck up. So thoroughly was the affair managed, that an elaborately written programme of the music was laid on the colonel’s table, of which I took a copy. It may interest English readers to know what music a Prussian regimental band played, while the bass accompaniment was furnished by the roar of the guns over against us on the other side of the Moselle. Here is a copy of the programme:

Fest Overture Fischer.

An der schönen blauen Donau Walzer Strauss.

La Belle Amazone Loischhorn.

March Potpourri Bach.

Künstler Fest Quadrille Hermann.

Fanfare Militaire Ascher.

It was a very pretty sight. About forty officers were present, grouped picturesquely around the tables. Military servants circulated everywhere, serving the company with glasses of beer. The outside of the bough-enclosed circle was lined with the men of the various battalions, who crowded to the spot, under the attraction of the music. More hearty good fellowship could not be imagined. The colonel and the youngster who won his silver shoulder straps but the day before were on the most equal footing. In an interval of the music a young officer came into the circle who had just returned from the hospital at Düsseldorf, whither a bullet through the foot in the battle of the 31st August had sent him. Then he had been only a Feldwebel, but he had got his lieutenancy when lying on his back, and this was his first appearance among his comrades since his promotion. As he came forward the colonel rose and called for a bumper to the health of his gallant young friend. The young fellow bowed and blushed as all obeyed the chief’s order, following the draught with a cheer that must have been heard at St. Julien. Then the colonel was good enough to disarrange the programme for the introduction of “Rule Britannia” as a special token of consideration to the Englander present. By this time the darkness had begun to fall, and the bonfire was formally set fire to, the circle breaking up from the tables, and re-forming around its cheerful blaze. The band exhausted the programme, and took to playing song tunes, the officers chiming in lustily with their voices, and the men on the outskirts taking up the chorus. The scene was one in which a painter would have delighted—the bright wood-fire lighting up the faces of the circle around it, and ever and anon, as it shot up more brightly, dissipating the thick darkness beyond, and flashing on the faces of the men through the boughs. But no painter could give effect to what was to me the most weird phase of the affair—the measured thud of the cannonading sounding between every pause in the music or lull in the din of the conversation; and it was strange, too, to reflect that, as we sat here cheerily, we were still within the range of the great guns of St. Julien. I could not help thinking of the effect which a forty-two pound shell would have had had it fallen and exploded right in the heart of the bonfire. The good fellows of the 4th, however, troubled themselves with no such speculations. It was sufficient for them that St. Julien was quiet, and that the fire was cheery, the company good, and the beer reasonably plentiful, and palatable. In the course of the evening one of the captains gave a toast, which was received with intense enthusiasm—the health of the gallant comrades who had won the decoration of the Iron Cross. It was on the breast of at least half those who sat round the fire. When the cheering had subsided the band struck up the “Paris” march, a souvenir of 1813, in remembrance of which campaign the Iron Cross was first instituted. About half-past eight the colonel gave the toast of “Our Comrades of the Artillery,” in honour of some gentlemen of that service who were present, and then, after the band had played “God Save the King,” said good night, and went away to his supper. I followed him in a very short time, but when I came outside to smoke my cigar in the moonlight, before turning in among the straw, I could still hear the merry chorus down in the meadow by the camp-fire. It was then about eleven o’clock, and how long after the last of the roisterers may have kept it up I have not the slightest idea.

The foggy morning of the 7th October ushered in what turned out to be the most important and determined sortie made by Bazaine since the failure of the 31st of August. I know not whether the French gave to the affair a name; the Germans recognized it as the “Schlacht bei Maizières.” Battles there were in plenty in this bloody campaign that showed a larger total of killed and wounded; but the “Schlacht bei Maizières” made widows and orphans in the Fatherland far beyond proportion; for the men who bore the brunt of it were husbands and fathers,—the stout Landwehrmen of the Division Kummer. I had quitted Retonfay early in the grey morning with the intention of making the complete circuit of the environment of Metz before my return. The morning was extremely misty. As I reached the eminence at Poix I could barely see Mount St. Quentin above the fog in the valley, the sun’s rays striking upon its warm grey peak. It seemed as if a general armistice had been declared; even the forepost fire had dropped. Crossing the Moselle at Argancey, I made first for the Château of Amelange, and afterwards in a direction due Metz-ward, until I reached the furthest Feldwache at Maxe. Then I struck across the valley, inclining rather to the rear, first to Grandes and then to Petites Tapes, in both of which there lay only an under-officer’s guard of nine men; and avoiding Ladonchamps, by advice, I reached St. Rémy, where I found on duty the 59th Landwehr Regiment. Thence my journey lay still athwart the remotest foreposts to Norroy and Plesnois, the latter village being in the heart of the Bois de Saulny, and my road then lay straight southward on St. Hubert, on the south-west of Mount St. Quentin. I detail the different stages of this ride as it was right across the theatre of the afternoon’s fight, and because the quietude everywhere in the morning formed so strong a contrast to the sudden hurly-burly of the afternoon.

Near Plesnois my horse cast a shoe, and as the road was rugged I was rather in a fix, when there rode past a staff officer attached to the head-quarters of Baron Schüler von Senden, commanding the 2nd Division of the Landwehr. This gentleman was quartered in Maizières, and he most courteously invited me to return with him thither and be his guest for the night. On the return journey this gentleman gave me some information which contributed materially to an understanding of the events which followed. In the bombardment of the two previous days the position occupied by the batteries of German heavy guns had been at Frenecourt, near the commencement of the rise of the hills some distance to the south-west of Maizières. To speak more precisely, they were stationed on the low heights of Le Horiment, on the rising ground behind which there stood an observatory commanding the whole plain. But the Germans had batteries considerably to the front of Frenecourt. Six field batteries stood mid-way between it and Sennecourt, and on the 6th they had pushed forward a second battery as far as Sennecourt itself. From these several positions the bombardment of St. Eloy had been going forward intermittingly, and also a shell-fire into the village of Ladonchamps, some little distance nearer Metz than St. Rémy, on the line of railway. Till lately this village had been reckoned neutral territory, but on the 2nd October the French had seized it, and established a battery in front of it. The village itself had been burnt the same night by German shells, but still the French had retained the position, and the German fire in the intervening days had been partly directed to the dislodgment of the enemy from a position which was important, as the occupants of it could enfilade the whole front across the valley. On the 6th nearly a thousand shells had been thrown into Ladonchamps and the neighbourhood, and late in the evening the French had evacuated the shattered fragments of a once smiling village. The Germans had at once thrown forward troops in its direction, establishing their replis in its rear, and sending forward sergeants’ parties to occupy it and Grandes and Petites Tapes villages, to which its possession was the key. St. Rémy constituted the chief support, and here lay the 59th Regiment of the Landwehr. Maxe, close to the river, and considerably in advance, was occupied, as I already knew, by outposts detailed by the 10th Army Corps, from the other side of the Moselle. The two divisions of the Landwehr stretched right athwart the valley from the bridge at Argancey, where they touched the 10th Army Corps, to near Marange, where they met the 3rd Corps, and to the Landwehrmen was thus confided the duty of keeping the flat alluvial tract on the western bank of the Moselle. This was the substance of the information which my friend of the staff communicated to me on our ride to Maizières. Here I found the head-quarters of General von Kummer. About one o’clock I was sitting at lunch with two staff officers in an arbour in his garden, when the guns of the German batteries by Sennecourt began to give tongue. “Only a few Frenchmen loafing round Ladonchamps,” observed one of the officers. “There will be nothing serious to-day; there is too much mist in the valley.” Certainly it seemed as if he must be right. When I had been on the heights at Sennecourt I could not see the villages in the valley below, nor the Cathedral of Metz. Fort St. Quentin, our constant landmark, had been utterly invisible. But the roar of the guns grew louder and louder, and then came first one great boom, and then another, from the big guns lying behind at Frenecourt. The officers fidgeted, but still would not own that anything was the matter. But their nonchalance gave way when an aide-de-camp came up at the gallop, spreading the alarm everywhere as he went, and dashing on to the general’s quarters for instructions to guide the front. In five minutes more we were all in the saddle, and, after a short gallop, were looking out on the scene of action from the fringe of the wood in front of the Châteaux of Brieux and Amelange. That the reader may understand the tactics of Bazaine and the manner in which they were foiled, it will be necessary to give a brief description of the ground. From Metz to Maizières there is a long trough, with a flat bottom—the alluvial margin of the Moselle. This tract is about four English miles wide. On the west it is bounded by the heights I have already named, and nearer Metz by those of Norroy and Saulny. On the east it is bounded by a lower series of bluffs, on which stand the villages of Olgy and Malroy; but between them and the flat bottom runs the Moselle, infringing considerably on the flat expanse just opposite Olgy. Across this bottom, at the narrowest part thus formed, lies a series of villages—the two Tapes and St. Rémy, with Maxe and Ladonchamps respectively slightly to the east and west front. More or less, there were German troops in all those. The dispositions detailed to me by the staff officer had been substantially maintained. Bazaine had laid his scheme with great art. Covered by the dense fog, he had made his dispositions with such adroitness that when it lifted, a little past one, his arrangements were already all but complete. In the first instance, he directed a strong assault on Ladonchamps. The Landwehr outpost held the place as if they were 10,000 instead of 100 men, and the French sent their infantry swarming into it, while their artillery played upon it. “Only an attempt to re-occupy Ladonchamps,” quoth my friend of the staff, as he lit a fresh cigar; “the guns will teach them the folly of that, and we can go back to our arbour.” It seemed, truly, if any argument could be convincing, that the German artillery must be so. The white spurts of smoke were visible all round the valley. On the right front the batteries at Sennecourt were hard at work, and also others nearer us on the flat, while the great guns at Frenecourt were sending shells at a long range right over Ladonchamps in among the advancing French. Then, on our left, before Amelange, two other batteries were maintaining a semi-cross fire; and from the bluffs, on the other side of the Moselle, between Olgy and Malroy, the Prussian field artillery were also roaring. But my friend of the staff was not, for an hour or two at all events, to see the arbour. The attack on Ladonchamps was a diversion. Suddenly the villages of Grandes and Petites Tapes, of St. Rémy and Maxe were overwhelmed by a cataract of Frenchmen. The battalion of the 59th Landwehr which held St. Rémy would not fall back, as it should have done in common prudence, but stood up there in the street till the French having played upon it with their artillery, and rained on it chassepot and mitrailleuse bullets, finally pushed backwards the shattered remnant on to the chaussée by dint of sheer numbers. The Fusilier battalion of the 58th occupied Grandes Tapes, and it occupied Grandes Tapes when the fight was done, but the occupation consisted of the dead and the wounded. The battalion would not give ground, and may be said to have been annihilated as it stood, the men with their backs to the wall and their faces to the foe. It afterwards transpired that 300 men of this battalion were made prisoners, after a desperate resistance, and sent into Metz. The other battalions of the same regiment suffered terribly. So far, then, Bazaine had succeeded. He had re-occupied the chain of villages athwart the valley, and had got a few batteries of artillery out to their front to reply to the German fire. But the status quo he neither wished to, nor could retain. The German artillery, throwing its projectiles from three sides of the parallelogram, interfered with the realization of the latter conception. As regarded the former, it seemed clear that Bazaine would not have done what he had if he did not contemplate something more. That something, I have not the remotest doubt, was a sortie to establish connections with Thionville. His tactics were well conceived. From St. Rémy and the two Tapes he kept the German fire engrossed, both musketry and artillery. He sent forward from Grandes Tapes great swarms of tirailleurs, who fared extremely ill at the hands of Landwehr men. But, besides this, he massed in the rear what was, beyond all question, a very large force. There must have been nearly 20,000 in all on the bank of the Moselle, and under cover of the houses of Maxe. The head of this force he hurled forward to cut through the German cincture where it was weakest, close to the river. The moment was a critical one. Those regiments of the Landwehr which had not already been sent forward against the villages were too far to the westward to be in time to meet this attack as it ought to be met—directly face to face. But the 10th Army Corps had been crossing the pontoon bridge, and massing between the river and Amelange. Their general, Voight Rhetz, was in nominal command of the days operations, and he gave the order for several regiments to advance. It was a sight never to be forgotten. First came the Fusiliers, extending at a rapid run into skirmishing order, and covering the whole plain with their long thin lines. Then the dense columns of companies of the Grenadiers, the bands playing and the colours unfurled—unwonted sight. But all the work was not left wholly for the infantry to do. The artillery, for the moment, left the villages alone, and concentrated their fire on the advancing columns of the French by the Moselle. There was but little response from the French field artillery, but the sullen sides of St. Julien flashed out smoke and fire, and from the earthworks of St. Eloy came missiles at the shorter ranges. The mitrailleuse venomously sounded its angry whirr, making the skirmishers recoil nervously as they crossed the line of its fire, and tearing chasms in the fronts of the solid masses of which they were the forerunners. The artillery and the skirmishers were enough for the French. The dense columns staggered and then broke. Through my glass I could see a continuous sauve qui peut into the village of Maxe. But when they had once got stone and lime between them and the Germans, the French were obstinate and would go no further. In vain the German artillery pounded into the villages, advancing closer and closer in alternate order of batteries with a precision and rapidity that could not have been exceeded on Woolwich-common. That obstinate battery in front of Grandes Tapes would not cease, and the French tirailleurs still lined the chaussée in its front. By this time it was nearly four o’clock, and there was a lull on our side that seemed ominous. As we stood in this suspense a staff officer galloped along the front line with orders for a general advance to take the villages by storm. The attack he hurriedly told me was to consist of the four brigades of the Landwehr, with a division of the 10th Army Corps on the left and supporting. In a few minutes more the command came sounding along the line, and the men sprang from their cover and went forward with that steady quick step so characteristic of the German marching. The shells from the battery in front of Grandes Tapes tore through the line, the mitrailleuse and chassepot bullets poured against it their leaden hail, but still the Landwehr, silent and stern, went steadily to the front. The oldest veteran in the field was never in a more furious fire than that to which the centre of this line was exposed. General von Brandenstein, commanding the third brigade of the Landwehr, was shot down close to me, and several of his staff were wounded. At length the entrenchments were reached, behind which were lying the shattered remnants of the 59th and 58th Landwehr. The fraternisation consisted in the cry of “Hurrah Preussen!” and then “Vorwärts—immer vorwärts!” and the line threw itself to its front at a run. The gunners from the battery, brave men and stubborn, had barely time to run round the corner before the Landwehrmen were upon them. The guns they left perforce. In the villages the French made a last stand, but it had been better for them that they had run away at first. The Landwehrmen, with less of the conventional warrior in them than the Line, were not so much inclined to give quarter as are the professional soldiers. With many a Frenchman this afternoon the shrift consisted of a bayonet thrust. They fought like devils in the narrow ways of the villages, and used the mitrailleuses with rare judgment and effect. But then there came the steady inexorable stride forward of the Landwehr men, the bayonet lent force with that huge thigh and back power which is the leading characteristic in an athletic sense of the German physique, and the villages were cleared of all save victors, dead, and wounded.

To the Landwehr must be conceded the honour of the fray. They it was who checked the rush of the French advance by holding the villages till they had not a man that could stand upright and fire the needle gun. To them also was entrusted the grand final advance which swept the French out of the villages. I had seen the German Line soldiers fight before this day. I had learned to believe that they could do aught any soldiers in the world could do. But it was not till now that I gauged the calibre of the Landwehr, how that in all things they were the equals of their brethren of the Line. Cool in the intrenchments, when they lay calmly in position, picking up the bullets that fell among them—resolute, indomitable, in their steady quick march forward, and then irresistible in the final rush with which they carried the villages—they were troops to delight the heart of a man with a soldierly instinct. Nothing was more observable than the cool manner in which the wounded went to the rear in the general advance—every man depending on himself if he could walk at all, declining the services of assistants to help him out of the fray. Nor were they slight wounds with which these gallant fellows struggled unaided to the rear. One, for instance, to whom I spoke, was shot right through the lungs, and at every step his breath came panting through the bullet-hole. It might be that he struggled on till he reached the straw in the court-yard of the Château of Amelange, where the doctors were toiling up to their elbows in blood; but I fear his was one of the many bodies that checkered the green fields behind the advance. Gallant fellows as they were, it went to one’s heart to see the Landwehr fight and die. Not like a linesman could they take their life in their hand and go down into the fray conscious that nobody would hunger because they fell. For every second Landwehrman that fell at Maizières there was a widow in the Fatherland, and, with children of my own around my hearth, my heart swelled to think of the number of unconscious orphans made that sunshiny autumn afternoon in the pleasant villages and the quiet plains of Deutchland. Pray God that, fight who may, there may be no more deadly battles in which the Landwehr shall have to take part. Not that, as it seemed to me, they dwelt upon the thought of Frau and Kinder. The hairy Kerl, with the grey in his beard, and who knew how many young birds were in his nest, went straight to the front as boldly as the sprightly young volunteer who had only a girl to weep for him if he fell. But they are a prayerful people those Germans, and I fancied, when the word “Vorwärts” came sounding through the ranks, that many a man bent his head for a moment into his hand, as if he were entering a church.

On my way to the rear, after the brunt of the fight was over, I looked into the court-yard of the Château of Amelange, where the doctors were hard at work. The men lay all around waiting for their turn, and smoking like so many lime-kilns. Here already by five o’clock there were quite two hundred wounded, and those in Amelange were but a handful compared to the gross number that had been wounded. The doctors, with shirt sleeves up and coat off, were toiling with blood-smeared hands with cool but nimble dexterity. One of them seemed something between a cannibal and a butcher as he looked up for a moment from a case with a bloody knife-blade between his teeth.

In the evening, postal celerity being an object, I left Maizières to ride to Courcelles. Immediately after crossing the pontoon bridge at Argancey, a detour became necessary. The German artillery was still firing in the moonlight from the heights above Olgy, and St. Julien was sluggishly throwing projectiles on to the tableland, seemingly to shut up their fire. All the ground in the rear of Charly and toward Fany was pitted with shells that had fallen and burst during the day. A brisk musketry fire was still going on in front of Chieulles and l’Orme, so quiet when I had ridden through them in the morning. The French, pouring down out of the Bois de Grimont, had made a feigned attack in considerable force up this valley, and the old women and children in Chieulles must have had their equanimity not a little disturbed. All I could hear as I rode through the villages was, that a good many had been killed and wounded; and I met a large ambulance train coming forward into the fire from out the village of Vremy. Poix had been shelled during the day, but all was now quiet there. A little further on I came to the rear of Servigny and Noisseville, from which I met my friends of the 4th returning singing triumphantly. The French from Mey and the slope in front of St. Julien had sent three battalions into Nouilly, and thence had attempted to storm the repli in front of Noisseville, but had been repulsed with considerable loss, the German artillery driving them out of Nouilly into the wood. I was in time to accompany a tentative advance of the German artillery along the chaussée right under the earthworks of Little Belle Croix, which was chiefly remarkable from the circumstance that St. Julien made no effort to arrest the operation. I afterwards learnt that there was further fighting in the early part of the night in front of St. Rémy, and that a battalion of the 81st had been forced to retake Ladonchamps at the bayonet point, losing in the task five officers and over one hundred men.

It is not difficult, I think, to form a tolerably correct opinion as to the plan of Bazaine’s tactics of the 7th. I am aware that the importance of this sortie has been belittled by testimony from the interior of Metz, but I have a habit of believing in what I see, and the evidence of eyesight was corroborated as well by prisoners taken in the affair as by conversations with responsible and well-informed men on the other side, after the capitulation of Metz. At the lowest estimate Bazaine must have had 100,000 men, who, so far as the defence of Metz was concerned, were superfluous, and, therefore, detrimental. A hundred thousand men will sooner consume a given quantity of provisions than will twenty thousand; and when the larger number reach starvation point, the surrender of everything—field troops, garrison, fortress, and town—must occur. But for their appreciation of this eventuality, nothing would have pleased the Germans better than to have opened a fair passage to Bazaine any hour in the twenty-four. He might have come outside the cordon and welcome with 100,000 men, and in the course of the following day, when he was holding a council of war, and debating, more Gallico, whether to march on Sedan or strike southward and cut the German communications, a hundred thousand Teutons and more would have fallen upon him from all points of the compass and smitten him hip and thigh. But if his field army had been chopped into fragments, the fortress of Metz, with its garrison left inside, would still have confronted the besiegers, and its reduction would have been postponed in proportion to the procrastination of the starvation point effected by the fewer mouths to feed. Of all this Bazaine, a capable man, whose merits, within certain limits, the Germans acknowledged frankly, could not have failed to be aware. He objected to capitulation simpliciter in the fortress, or to the alternative of capitulation or annihilation in the open field. But there lay the Moselle, beckoning him on to the half-way house of Thionville, and beyond Thionville, at the distance of a single forced march, lay the frontier. Oh! if he could only dash out through that vexatious cordon. True, across the broad plain lay the divisions of the Landwehr. A regular soldier himself, Bazaine had probably learned to despise the Garde Mobile with all the contempt of a veteran used to command veteran troops; and nothing was more natural than for a Frenchman to reason from a false analogy that, as the Garde Mobile, so were the Landwehr. The result gave him to digest his misconception as best he might. But the conception of Bazaine’s effort was creditable to his knowledge of the military art. While he made his grand effort against the Landwehr in the valley, he did his best to keep the other sections of the environing circle from finding leisure to concentrate in support of them. The attack on Vany, L’Orme, and Chieulles was well calculated to engross the 10th Army Corps; that from Mey on Noisseville and Servigny might well perform the same office with regard to the 1st Army Corps; the 7th Army Corps might be supposed to have their hands pretty well full with the sortie against Peltre, Mercy-le-Haut, and Ars-Laquenexy, and with luck this sortie, too, might get through as far as the depôt at Courcelles, and bring back of its abundance to the Gardes Nationaux, who were plying the big guns on the ramparts, and to the hungry citizens. The well-conceived feint against Ladonchamps was intended to keep the 3rd Army Corps in play, occupying as it did the slopes between the valley and the fort of Plappeville. And then—there was but the Landwehr to cope with, and surely 40,000 veteran French troops might crash through the lines of these citizen soldiers, weakened as those lines were by elongation across the whole plateau. Then, hey for Thionville! only ten miles off, where a secure lair might be had under the guns of that fortress while the columns caught their wind; and then, picking up by the way what superfluous troops there might be in its garrison, who could say what next for an army with no impedimenta? Had the design succeeded Metz would have been a tougher nut for the Germans to crack than ever, for their policy of starvation would have been seriously compromised.

The two grand blunders which defeated the scheme were the misconception on Bazaine’s part of the strength, prowess, and effective dispositions of the Landwehr, and the mistaken idea that his feints to the right and left would so engross the 10th and 3rd Army Corps as to prevent them from aiding the Landwehr to give him check on the plateau. His error on the former point must have come to him when he saw his regulars recoiling pell-mell from the Landwehrmen in the villages; the salvoes of artillery sent by the 10th Army Corps from Malroy, Olgy, and other heights on the east side of the Moselle, and by the 3rd Army Corps from Frenecourt, Sennecourt, and the heights above St. Rémy, all coigns of vantage on the bluffs on the western fringe of the valley, must have made him comprehend that a feigned attack, even if inconsiderable, was not capable of engrossing the full attention of a German Army Corps. The batteries on the positions I have named enfiladed him ruinously. Down the valley there tore a fierce direct fire from the batteries at Amelange and those in front of Brieux, which advanced by alternate batteries with as much coolness and precision as I have seen the troops of a cavalry regiment working in the Phœnix Park; while from the heights on either side came such a cross-fire that I was filled with respect for the troops of Bazaine, when I realised the fact that they waited for the infantry assault to dislodge them from their position. Add to Bazaine’s disadvantages that he was miserably short of field artillery, and the conclusion is obvious that he could not but have failed under the circumstances, while the deduction was no less patent that the frustration of any future attempt was equally inevitable.

On the morning of the 8th, the aspect of affairs was still threatening. It seemed as if the turn had come round of the 1st Army Corps on the east side of the environment. When the sun rose the French were seen accumulated in dense masses between Fort St. Julien and the village of Mey. Both St. Julien and les Bottes maintained a continuous if somewhat discursive cannonade, making the stones fly all about the village of Noisseville, whither I had hurried on the first alarm. From 7 A.M. till early in the forenoon, there came the din of warm artillery fire from the direction of Peltre and Mercy-le-Haut. At daylight the whole of our first and second lines were drawn forward in support of the first line, and the advance posts had fallen back. At nine a battery of German field-artillery opened on the French infantry from the angle of the church of Noisseville, and located in a cunning overbank emplacement, was not to be dislodged by all that St. Julien and les Bottes could do with that intent. About mid-day, however, a furious pelt of rain came down and washed the heart out of the French, if there had been any in them from the first. Gradually the forts, as the infantry retreated into their rear, gave up firing, after having thrown in the course of the morning over 100 shells into the fragments of the village of Noisseville. The fire gradually died away to the south, and about 2 P.M. came the order for the reserves and the artillery to return to quarters, and for the outposts to be reinstated in their old positions.

The rain which quenched the ardour of the French lasted with scarcely any intermission for forty-eight hours, and made its impression on the health of the besieging army. Bronchitis and diarrhœa were the chief complaints engendered; typhus, which soon after became almost an epidemic, now first gained serious head. One saw waggon load after waggon load of sick men going down to Courcelles. Much might have been done, that was not done, both by German organisation and by those other organisations set on foot through the liberality of nations sympathising with human suffering, to ease the hardships of those poor fellows. It would not have been difficult to have organised a cheap and serviceable ambulance service to have accommodated both sick and wounded. Around Metz, in the third line, there are everywhere practicable roads. District depôts might easily have been established, one, say, at Ste. Barbe, another at Olgy, a third somewhere behind Sennecourt, and a fourth at Gravelotte. To these depôts might have been consigned the sick and wounded Germans from the several regiments and brigades—the poor fellows whom I saw making long weary journeys to Courcelles, in springless country carts or on foot. Between each of these depôts there might have been a continuous service of vehicles resembling elongated Irish jaunting cars. Such vehicles are the true pattern of an ambulance. They would hold a man on either foot rest slightly broadened, two more on the seats, and one above the well in the centre. Four poles at each corner, with a tarpaulin, would make an efficient protection from the weather. Thus, by easy stages, and resting at intervals in the depôts, the sick and wounded might have been brought down in ease and comfort to Courcelles, whence the trains were ready to convey them to Germany. These hospital trains were the most complete things of the kind I had ever seen. The carriages were built on the American model, with entrance at either end. There were two tiers of beds down each side, three in each tier, and the beds had every appliance calculated to give comfort to the occupants. One carriage was devoted to the purposes of a laboratory, another formed a living and sleeping room for the volunteer attendants, and a third was a kitchen. To a callousness for suffering, which must be characterised as general, there were two exceptions which must be named. One was the German depôt at Courcelles, of which Baron Von Kramm was the life and soul, and which did an immensity of good without pretension. The Baron himself was one of the most energetic men I have ever met, and wrought day and night with the supremest contempt for the good things of this life. The other exception was the branch of the English ambulance, which had its head-quarters in Remilly, under the control of Mr. Austin Lee, a young gentleman endowed with unquestionable administrative talent and great energy; he was ably supported by his assistant, Captain Norman, and within the sphere of my own observation accomplished much really good work.

On the 11th, a French deserter from Metz was brought into Retonfay; he belonged to the 59th of the Line, and to the Army Corps of which Marshal Lebœuf had the command. His regiment, along with two others, was lying, he reported, on the slope on which stands the village of Vantoux, a little behind Mey. He told us that his desertion was a matter of arrangement with a large body of the soldiery. Lots had been drawn who should make the first attempt, and if the experiment succeeded, the others were to desert likewise. He dodged along the verge of the Bois de Grimont, and then came sneaking through the vine-bergs till he reached the German Feldwache behind Nouilly. Many Frenchmen were observed apparently watching his career. The man was an Alsatian, as, he said, were most of the men of his regiment, and he spoke German well. He said the French soldiers lying around Metz were tired of their lives. Nominally, the force to which he belonged lived under canvas, but the stench in the tents was so strong, by reason of cutaneous diseases among the men, that almost all slept in the open air. This for several days before must have been tantamount to sleeping in a water-butt. The skin disease was chiefly of a scorbutic character, caused by the want of vegetables, the absence of salt, and the almost exclusive living on horse-flesh. The poor fellow’s mouth and face were in a very bad state from scurvy. He stated that numbers of his fellows were similarly affected. The spirit of disaffection was, he reported, almost universal; even the Guards were tainted with it. Since the defeat of the 7th the troops had positively refused to make any more sorties, and it was with difficulty that the officers could prevail on the men to go upon outpost duty. Of bread, the deserter said, there was considerable scarcity, and the quality was bad; the quantity of rice served out was a tea-cup full per day between two men. This, with the bread, was all the food besides horseflesh the men had. They had eaten the horses of several cavalry regiments, and were now masticating battery horses.

Confined to quarters for several days, by an accident which befel me on the 10th October, I had leisure to note that inattention to sanitary conditions, which was the weak point in the otherwise almost perfect organisation of the German army. The French inhabitants around Metz were outer barbarians in this respect. The hamlet of Tully Veolan, as described in Waverley, was an elysium of cleanliness compared with the little French villages which everywhere dot the territory around the city, and in which were quartered the bulk of the besieging army. Before every door a large and venerable dunghill reeked; in the back cellars, and in the sties immediately behind the houses, dwelt colonies of swine, whose lairs, apparently, had not been purified within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. In dry, warm weather, these dunghills and pigsties impregnated the air with the pungent fumes of ammonia; in wet weather, their ooze percolated everywhere, and was indescribably fœtid. Thus the Germans were the inheritors of nuisances not of their own engendering. But they were by no means behindhand in the race of nuisance manufacturing. The entrails of slaughtered cattle, instead of being collected into one deep receptacle, and there buried deeply after having been strewed with quicklime, were strewed at random around the villages and in the gardens, with a little loose earth thrown over them, through the interstices of which a piece of paunch was often visible; and no disinfectants were used. Then the establishment of, and the enforcement of resort to, latrines, placed in suitable localities and assiduously disinfected, seemed to be almost wholly neglected, and the consequences were, a state of filth in the immediate vicinity of the houses, to allude to which further would compel the use of plainer phraseology than the reader might stomach. It is quite an erroneous belief that it is important only in warm weather to study sanitary conditions. Cold, raw weather, with fog, opens the pores of the human animal nearly as much as the most relaxing tropical climate, and is far more depressing to the spirits. Open pores, and dulled spirits, are the conditions exactly fitting a man for the reception of malarious particles floating in the air; and a heavy fog, when the ground sweats again, and the air is almost stagnant, is just the atmosphere in which one can hardly move without coming in contact with such particles.

Living as I did, with regimental, as contradistinguished from staff officers, I enjoyed considerable opportunities for estimating the thoroughness of the German system of military training and education. A German general ought to be a good despatch-writer, considering the training in this line which he must have undergone. He began to write despatches as soon as he acquired a separate command, were it only of half a company. The despatch system of the German army is perfect, and the compilation of an accurate and detailed narrative of each campaign ought to be very easy. Take an instance. From Retonfay, on the morning of the 12th October were transmitted to divisional head-quarters, the despatches from the 4th Regiment, recounting the doings of that contingent in the action of Noisseville, on the 31st of August and 1st of September. The colonel sent in his summary of the manœuvres of the three battalions under his command. The major of each battalion likewise made his report of the proceedings of his own battalion, and every captain or officer in command of a company, also sent forward a succinct statement of his company’s doings. These reports were accompanied by a chart on a large scale, showing the positions of the regiment at various periods of the battle, and drawn in this instance by a young lieutenant of our mess, the most accurate and rapid military topographist I have ever known. To be a practical draughtsman is imperative with every German officer. The puzzle with me was to find out what accomplishment is not imperative. The prickles which surround the rose of a commission are many and sharp, and, after all, the rose (at least in a nursery-gardening sense) is no great thing. Take the case, for instance, of my own especial comrade in the 4th, which presented no exceptional features. He came to the regiment from the gymnasium, in the capacity of avantageur. An avantageur is neither more nor less than a private soldier who aspires to a commission. On joining he had to pass an examination to demonstrate his general scholarship. For twelve months he served in the ranks, rising meanwhile to the non-commissioned rank of Vicefeldwebel, and then he went for a year to the military school. On leaving this, he had to pass an examination on everything relating to the art military, and then he came back to the regiment as a Degen fähnrich, that is to say, as the wearer of a sword without commissioned rank, for six months longer. The officers of the regiment then voted him eligible for a commission, and expressed their readiness, by the same vote, to accept him as a comrade and a credit to the service; this step being an indispensable prelude to a commission. Whereupon the King was graciously pleased to sign his commission as second lieutenant, a rank which he had contentedly held for six years, and may hold still, for aught I know to the contrary. He wore the medals for 1866; he had commanded the company for the last two months, because his seniors had been killed off; he was looking forward with hope to be a premier lieutenant in the course of another year, and a captain in perhaps ten more. His pay in war-time was about 11l. 10s. a month, in peace he had not much more than about half as much. And he was a thoroughly contented, even-minded, German gentleman, proud of the service, proud that he bore a commission in it, very hungry for the Iron Cross, fond of fun, and fonder still of work and fighting. I have simply cited him as a typical example; his fellows were as like him as peas. Who would not like to see a few peas of such a pod in the British army?

Reluctantly obliged to quit the front, as the result of the accident already alluded to, I spent the time from the 14th to the morning of the 18th invalided in Saarbrück. Having partially recovered, and reaching Remilly early in the forenoon of the 18th, I found ready to start five fourgons belonging to the English Ambulance Company. These were about to start for a journey round Metz, and I had the opportunity afforded me of a seat in one of the carriages. Our journey to Corny lay behind the foreposts through a chain of villages in the rear of the great bulk of the Prussian regiments in the south of Metz. As we passed Pontoy we emerged on the upland plateau lying to the south of Forts Queleu and St. Privat, and before us to the north lay those sulky-looking fortresses which refused to be enlivened even by the rays of the afternoon sun which fell full on their sullen sides. St. Privat was speaking with its great guns, firing in the direction of the Moselle, but close to us lay a German field battery in utter quiescence, sure token that nothing of importance was going on. At dusk we reached Corny, and applied to the Etappen Commandant for quarters. His answer was an imperative suggestion of the same character as that which the Gardes Mobiles made to Mr. Malet on his way from Paris to Meaux. We had no resource but to sleep under the beautiful stars. They were fortunately in our case visible, and we bivouacked not uncomfortably in an orchard outside the town, which was greatly preferable to finding harbour in any of the houses of Corny, infected as they were to the very ceiling with malignant typhus. A visit for purposes of information to the fine old château occupied by Prince Frederick Charles resulted in my being told that the parlementaire which came out a day or two previous had returned into Metz without any definite result, and that it was believed that Metz would now hold out to the bitter end. Further, that there was to be no change in the Prussian tactics. Still “masterly inactivity” was to be the policy, and the intelligence received from Metz of a reliable character was of a nature to indicate that this policy could not possibly, ere long, fail to effect the desired results. Prince Frederick Charles had been suffering seriously from dysentery, and was still far from fully recovered, but he was able to sit his horse, and he had never devolved his functions of commander-in-chief on any substitute.

Corny lies in a trough on the edge of the Moselle, shut out from even a distant view of Metz by two curious conical hills, which are part of the series of which the hill of Mousson and the range of St. Quentin and Plappeville are also summits. The peak nearest the river and also nearest Metz is known as the Mont St. Blaise. Its elevation is considerable, and its position renders it highly eligible as a look-out station. On its summit there was an observatory, and this observatory I visited on the morning of the 19th, notwithstanding the black looks of those in authority in Corny. The whole hilltop is honeycombed with artificial caves, formed, I suppose, in the old days, when the ruin on the summit was a castle inhabited by some magnate of Lorraine, who from his eyrie here dominated the beautiful plain before him, and the valley of the Moselle. Alongside of this ruin, and at an equal elevation, stands a lonely farmhouse, and in front of it the Germans had erected a wooden look-out post, open toward Metz, and mounted with a very powerful telescope. Not a man could move within the scope of vision that the action was not noted by the officer who constantly sat with his eye at this instrument. A series of telegraph wires from the several head-quarters of the different army corps converged into a little office in the rear of this look-out post, and the intentions of the French were thus known as soon as they proceeded to manifest them by action. The post was occupied by two officers belonging to the Second Army Corps—and they had at their disposal a detachment of soldiers to act as orderlies, messengers, &c. What a glorious view opened out before me as I stood on the little plateau in front of the ruin of the Castle of St. Blaise, and looked Metz-ward! On the left lay the narrow valley of the Moselle, with the slope of the vinebergs in front of Gorze rising beyond. At our feet, to the left, lay Ars-sur-Moselle, skirted by the railway, with the old Roman aqueduct spanning the Moselle with its antique arches, and the new road-bridge nearer Montigny, where is the junction of the railway lines from Nancy and from Saarbrück. A locomotive was dodging about the junction as I looked down upon it, and right before me stretched the rich and beautiful plain, variegated with green and brown and yellow, according to the tint of the crops and the foliage, and with the great twin tower of the Cathedral of Metz standing up defiantly in its centre. The river wound through the flat in three great stretches: one close under the frowning bulk of Mont St. Quentin, that sulked blackly across at us on the left front; the other twisting in a long half-loop far away to the right. As it seemed immediately under us, Fort St. Privat peeped spitefully out over the poplars surrounding the pretty village and château of Cuvry, and further to my right the grim earthwork front of Fort Queleu showed itself over the plain like a huge beaver-dam. The prospect was vast. Carrying the eye over the spires of the cathedral, I could see to the north of Metz the long link of the Moselle trending eastward toward Olgy and Malroy, and with the powerful telescope in position I could even discern St. Eloy and beyond it the blackened ruins of St. Rémy, Ladonchamps, and Grandes and Petites Tapes, where on the 7th I had seen the Landwehrmen die in their tracks rather than yield the post they held, although bidden thereto by an overwhelming number of enemies. It may be interesting to give the positions of the hostile forces as seen from this summit, since the status quo then visible was unaltered when the capitulation took place.

To begin at the now well-known Mercy-le-Haut. Opposite this point the French were in force in front of Grigy, from which position they, on the previous night, had burnt the remaining houses of Peltre. Working westward, the French foreposts were in Bevoye, Magny, in front of Montigny, and thence across the Moselle, at Moulins-les-Metz, which had been burnt about a fortnight previously. From Moulins the forepost line ran up toward St. Hubert, between St. Ruffine and Chazelles, hence in front of Scy through the valley close under Mont St. Quentin to Lessy, and thence northward with a slight sweep allowed by Plappeville to Lorry, and thence to Vigneulles and Woippy. The completion of the circle I have already detailed. The German foreposts, commencing from the right, stood at Peltre, and thence westward in front of St. Thiebauldt, and in la Papeterie (opposite Magny). Then there was a sweep comparatively close to Metz, as the Moselle was neared, and the Teuton foreposts stood impudently at Frescaty, whence the sentries must have been able almost to discern the complexions of the gunners in St. Privat. The line crossed the Moselle to Vaux, considerably in front of Ars-sur-Moselle, and then made a dart forward to Jussy, right under the guns of St. Quentin. Longeau, where there was a battery of 12-pounders, continued the chain to Chatel St. Germain. Across the plateau and the wood of Chatel ran the links of the strong forepost chain, giving a wide berth to the big guns of Plappeville, behind Lorry, through the Bois de Vigneulles to Saulny, from Saulny, still further north-east, to Villers-le-Plesnois, and so by Norroy to the bloodstained Ladonchamps, and the villages whose names are known in connection with the combat of the 7th, to the Moselle at Maxe.

So much for the positions of the two hostile armies in this portion of the investiture. A few words now as to the position of the French inside their outposts yet outside the town of Metz, the gates of which were sealed to Bazaine’s army as rigorously as was the road to liberty. The French had in all, in the environed space and outside Metz, four great lagers or camps. The first and probably the largest was on the slope of Mont St. Quentin, looking toward Mont St. Blaise. I could see the rows of tents athwart and athwart the slope, past the village of Scy, and stretching almost down to Chazelles. Another great camp almost joined the first at Longeville, a village on the west bank of the Moselle, and this lager straggled up the river margin first to Ban St. Martin, where Bazaine had his head-quarters, and so on to the north as far as Devant-les-Ponts. A third camp was in front of St. Julien, toward Vantoux, Vallieres, &c., concerning which detailed information has already been given. The fourth camp was around Borny and Grigy. Besides those camps of soldiers there seemed two great collections of sick, so far as I could discern through the telescope of the observatory. One of those was placed on the esplanade of the town of Metz, and along the river brink. I saw the sick being carried about on stretchers, and the curtains of the tents looped up to give air to the inmates. Another great sick camp seemed to be on the Island of Sauley, where it was believed the cases of typhus fever were as much as possible isolated.

After quitting Corny on the 19th, our way lay across the river by Noveant, the means of transit being a pontoon bridge. Just outside Corny we came on a graveyard, which the Germans had improvised for the bodies of those who had died in the hospitals there, whether from sickness or wounds. They were burying the dead now in deal coffins, but the coffins were put in the ground with very scant ceremony. I saw a fatigue party putting a couple into a hole, the coffins lying on the grass while the men dug their receptacle.

Gorze was very much changed for the better since the last time I had visited it in the days of blood. From the summit of the great convent on the hill there still was flying the hospital flag; but under it lay few or no wounded men. The hotel was tenanted by the cheery officers of the staff of Prince Louis of Hesse, who commanded the troops lying in the town, consisting of several regiments of Hessian men, with the lion instead of the eagle on their helmets. The inhabitants had all come back to their houses, and lived not alone on amicable, but seemingly on cordial terms with the stalwart Hessians billeted upon them. Madame of the hotel, who in August had moved about in a stolid apathy of despair, utterly disregarding any questions that might be put to her, and with hardly energy enough to wring her hands, was now blithe and sprightly, moving about briskly in response to the requirements of her numerous guests. The stains that blood had made on the floors were still visible—indelible probably while the boarding lasts, but Madame’s despair was much more evanescent, and with her return to good spirits the landlady’s instinct of charging stiff prices had returned. In August, when I asked her whether I should pay her anything for the quasi shelter I had had for the night under her roof, she only stared blankly in my face, and I could not get an answer from her. Now, when I asked her whether she could give me a bottle of good wine, she eagerly replied in the affirmative, and placed before me a really good bottle of Muscat, for which she put on, with a smiling face, the fancy price of twelve francs.

The road from Gorze to Rezonville consists, first of an ascent through a narrow gorge into a corner of the Bois de Vionville, and then it traverses the plain in a line with the close of the battle of Vionville on the 16th of August. On the bleak October forenoon all that we saw in the way of traces of the fights of August were the many graves and occasional heaps of the débris of the battle-field. But another sense than that of sight bore testimony to tokens of carnage. Every grave-heap had beside it an eccentric tombstone in the shape of a barrel of chloride of lime; yet, notwithstanding this disinfectant, the taint in the air was unmistakable and indescribably fœtid. In the village of Rezonville were still some of the more severely wounded, and the doctors were heartily glad to see the stores which the English ambulance fourgons contained. At Rezonville the troops were Hessians, belonging to the 7th Army Corps. After a short halt, to enable Mr. Lee to distribute his stores judiciously, we pressed on to Gravelotte, where we were most cordially received by the officers of a battery of artillery quartered there. Afterwards we were permitted to go on to the foreposts in front of Chatel St. Germain, looking over to Fort St. Julien. The chain of sentries stood just where it had done on the morning of the 20th of August, looking down into the intervening valley. The French had a large cavalry forepost in the bottom of the valley. On the slope around the pretty village of Scy lay the white tents of the French camp which I had seen on the previous day from the top of Mont St. Blaise. Walking some half a mile in the direction of the Moselle, we came presently on a promontory that juts out into the valley, and commands a view of the whole country. It seemed that at our very feet lay the huge pile of the Cathedral; the tin on its spires flashing up in a watery ray of the morning sun, and the great mass casting a dark shadow across the Place d’Armes. On the Isle of Sauley we could see the “isolated” crawling about the river’s edge, and between the ramparts and the great southern camp a locomotive was at work on the railway.

As we walked back from the extreme foreposts we passed many rifle-pits on the crest of the rising ground forming the sentry-line, and also a regularly-constructed battery, with earthworks in front and casemates and magazine in the rear. On the platform were mounted six 12-pounders, and in the rear, near Chatel, were several batteries of field artillery. The 12-pounders looked across at Fort St. Julien in the most impudent manner imaginable, as if to say, “Your fortress exists only on our sufferance; we could blow you to little pieces with a round or two if we chose, but we prefer leaving you alone, out of our tender mercy.” And St. Quentin, on its part, seemed to look across at the 12-pounders with something of a risus sardonicus on its grim grey features.

Returning to Gravelotte, we set out for the completion of our design to make the circuit of the Prussian position. Our road lay past the blackened ruins of Malmaison, in which, on the afternoon of the 18th of August, 200 French wounded were burnt, by shells fired from French guns. The smell in the shell, which was all that remained of a once large mansion, was horrible. The tiles had fallen in and hidden the charred corpses of the miserables who perished in the conflagration; but here and there projected a ghastly blackened hand, or a gartered leg swathed in discoloured red cloth. The place was one vast horrible grave, never to be thought of without a shudder. In a lonely upland valley we came upon the forlorn and ruined hamlet of Champenoise, utterly burnt out, smashed and pounded in all directions with shells, pitted all over with the dents of chassepot bullets, and its precincts full of mounds, below which lay, side by side, defenders and captors. Further to the north, in the rear of Amanvilliers, was a twin battery to the one at Gravelotte, very daintily constructed, and fenced round with chevaux de frise, and I rather think some pleasant little surprises in the shape of mines. From Amanvilliers the road trended away to the left to avoid the entrenchments in the vicinity of the foreposts at Saulny, and presently reached the village of Jerusalem. Lying in a sequestered and somewhat isolated tract, few students of war literature have heard much about this tiny namesake of the great Hebrew city of antiquity. Nevertheless, it was the scene of a terrible conflict on the evening of the 18th of August. It had its Titus in General von Pape, but there was no Josephus to chronicle the episodes of the fray. Yet as eloquently as any pen could have described them were they indicated now by the silent yet expressive grave-tokens sown thickly all round the little spot, whose ruin was so utter that it might, to complete the parallel with its namesake of old, have been sown with salt.

Quitting the plateau lying to the north-west of Fort Plappeville, we drove through a great wood, chiefly of underbrush, and suddenly came out on a bluff overhanging the valley of the Moselle. Our point was just before Feves, and the view was glorious. Moy before us in the valley, one could easily trace the line of the German foreposts stretching across to the river; nearer to Metz again was the French line, and behind it the white tents of the camps, with columns of troops moving about in the interval. We could see the zig-zags of Fort Moselle, and of the enceinte surrounding the town. At Feves, just below us, and in a splendid position, was a battery of 12-pounders, the same that I had seen speaking to such good purpose on the afternoon of the 7th. Getting down into the valley, we crossed the Thionville road, and struck for the temporary wooden barracks erected on the railway to the right front of Maizières, in which was quartered the Fusilier battalion of the 81st Regiment, which had distinguished itself in Ladonchamps on the night of the 7th. In front of the Baracken was another battery of 12-pounders, and on the other side of Maizières, before the Chateau of Amelange, stood yet another. We crossed the river at Hautconcourt, and came down to Charly in the gloaming. Next morning I quitted my good friends of the fourgons, and struck across for my old comrades of the 4th Regiment, whom I found quartered in Château Gras, a little village some half-mile to the north rear of Retonfay.

Among the “kent faces” that greeted me after my absence I missed one or two whom I had learnt to reckon friends. The adjutant of the battalion, a joyous lad fresh from the schools, a youngster of eighteen summers, had succumbed to the hardships of the situation. The marrow was not “set” in the growing boy’s bones, and where seasoned men found it not an easy matter to keep sickness from assailing them with success, the dart had penetrated through his green frame, and he had been compelled to go back to the Fatherland, a shattered veteran ere he had attained his full stature. I missed, too, another face, that of a lieutenant, whose determination to consider himself well while as yet the fever had not left him, I had respected in one sense, while in another I had deprecated. Wounded in the fight by Noisseville on the 1st of September, he had been sent back to St. Wendel, where in the lazarette fever had laid hold of him. His wound healed, and the fever in part abated, the soldier lusted to be again with his comrades in the forefront of the battle, and he had quitted the lazarette while as yet the dregs of the fever had not been eliminated from his frame. On the day of his arrival he lay beside me on the straw, with the alternate cold and hot fits working their will of him, and then I told him that his return had been premature. My words were made good by the fact that two days after the doctor had peremptorily insisted on his return to St. Wendel, and so he had gained nothing by his enterprise save another strain on his constitution.

A friend had kindly kept for me a little diary of the siege events on this face which had occurred since my retirement to Saarbruck, but they were of so little importance as not to call for reproduction. The only actual sortie made by the French troops, and that in comparatively small numbers, had been on the 16th, in the direction of the Brewery. Of course they were driven back. They could have hoped for nothing else. All the damage they did was to shoot through the chest the Feldwebel of the 6th Company. King Wilhelm had no better non-commissioned officer in all his vast army. Strauss smoked his cigar while the doctor cut the bullet out of his back, the lieutenant beside whom he was shot holding him up while the operation was being performed. Then he quietly squared up his company-book, and counting the money in his hands (the Feldwebel is the pay-sergeant of the company), handed everything over to his successor in right trim, and went away philosophically in the waggon to a lazarette. Deserters had become so numerous as to engender a suspicion that there was a design for depleting the garrison by this device, and so eking out the stores of food. A few deserters are useful, and not to be discouraged. Assume that none of them speak the truth; King David tells us that “all men are liars,” and yet from our fellow-men’s utterances we contrive to extract some grains of truth. In like manner a little wheat can be winnowed out of the chaff of a deserter’s farragos, and one or two are acceptable. But now that their name was legion, the order had been issued to receive no more bodies of deserters into the lines, but to send them back whence they came by the powerful argument of the needle-gun. How was it that so many of the deserters were drunk when they came in? Was strong drink on tap in the outposts round Metz, or were the men dosed for the attempt? The latter hypothesis might seem to be borne out by the fact, of which I was assured, not by French prisoners alone, but by German doctors who had administered to the French wounded, that the French tirailleurs who pushed so boldly to the front at Maizières on the 7th were all full of brandy. Ichabod! Ichabod! How had the glory departed from the French arms when the leaders were compelled to infuse Dutch courage into their soldiers! The French were the readiest to scorn the Russian serf-soldier because, when he came up through the fog wreaths on the morning of Inkermann, his sluggish pulses had been quickened by corn-schnaps. Now, it seemed that they found the same unsoldier-like stimulant requisite in their own case.

I have heard Count Bismarck compared to an elephant’s trunk, as one for whom nothing was too great or too small. But Bismarck was not the only German in this war who looked after all little matters as well as the great. I was much amused by an item in one of the orders of the day from Prince Frederick Charles’s head-quarters. It was to the effect that whereas an unprincipled rascal of a Hamburg cigar merchant had been selling boxes of cigars to the troops, the upper tier of which consisted of good weeds while the lower ones were unmitigated trash, the military authorities of any place where this astute gentleman should present himself, were enjoined to lay hold of him and transmit him to the head-quarters at Corny. At such an entry one may smile, but I defy him to refrain from respecting the all-pervading care and watchfulness which took cognisance of such a matter as this. In such care and watchfulness lay the root of much of the Prussian success. A campaign is not made victorious by dint of fighting alone; success more than half depends on efficient organisation, even as regards seeming trifles.

Château Gras must have been a beautiful village before the tide of war came and strewed sand and shingle over its charms. A fine old chateau is the principal building in it, the noble garden of which had been very little injured, while the furniture had also suffered very little. In a room on the ground floor the books still stood on the long ranges of shelves upon the wail. So careful were the Germans to prevent injury to property that on the door of every room occupied by them was pasted an inventory of its contents, for which the successive occupants were held responsible, just as in a barrack at home. The chateau till lately had been a large Feldlazarette, occupied by the wounded of the fights before Noisseville of the 31st of August and 1st of September. The smell of the chloride of lime was still so powerful in the beautiful rooms that some of the officers preferred more modest quarters in the houses of the village. When the owner of the chateau came back he must have shuddered at the legacy the war had left him. Of the wounded in the great lazarette, not a few had succumbed before the grim king of terrors. In a quiet corner of the garden, looking out through the trees on to St. Julien, St. Quentin, les Bottes, and the great towers of the cathedral in the centre of the plain, is a graveyard, where lie those who died of their wounds in the lazarette. It is prettily enclosed with a wooden paling. The one great grave, over 100 yards in length, is banked up with green sods, and the surface trimly raked. It is flanked up by a great wooden cross bearing the simple inscription:—“Hier ruhen 285 Preussische und 5 Französische tapfere Krieger.” There are besides several graves of officers, which are adorned with box-wood crosses planted in the soil and with wreaths of immortelles.

By the 25th of October the symptoms grew more and more pronounced of a speedy ending to the siege, apart altogether from the accounts of negociations which we had from line to head-quarters. On the night of the 24th I had a conversation with a deserter whose information seemed of considerable exactitude and apparent truthfulness. He spoke of a rapid and continuous diminution in the rations served out to the troops, and of increasing irregularity in the supply. Eight days back the bread ration had been half a pound a day for each man; now it was reduced to four ounces, and there was difficulty in procuring this morsel. The man understood that the Imperial Guards who lay around Bazaine at Ban St. Martin, received rather more food than the other troops, and they were used by reason of their superior discipline and their greater contentment as a means of keeping in some semblance of order the line regiments. To each peloton a live horse was given per day, but the man described the brutes as consisting of little else than bones and hide. There can be little wonder that the number of sick was greatly on the increase under such circumstances. Out of 800 men of which this man’s battalion consisted, 200 were sick and unfit for duty. Those who were nominally able men were, he said, in a state of great weakness, and certainly his own appearance corroborated this statement.

Various statements appeared to have been made within the last day or two by the French generals to their troops, to keep them from falling into utter despondency. Another deserter brought out a cock and bull story about a general order, to the effect that the Empress was to arrive in Metz on the 25th, and to assume the supreme power, and that then on the next day the whole army was to march away to the north by permission of the Germans. The authorities seemed to interpret these and kindred statements as giving intimation of a sortie in force towards the north on the 26th. The line to the north of Metz on both sides of the river was accordingly greatly strengthened, and the troops in the third line all round were called out at five o’clock in the morning of that day, in positions enabling them to act efficiently as reserves and supports for the first and second lines. These precautions were no doubt wise, yet on the face of things it seemed that a sortie was physically impossible. It had rained with hardly any intermission for three days, and was still raining. Except where the macadam of the chaussées afforded a hard bottom under the mud, it was impossible to traverse the country on foot. One floundered helplessly in the slippery stuff till he got to a deeper place than usual, and then had to struggle vehemently to prevent himself from sticking outright. No regiment could have kept its formation in ground so holding; and to move artillery or train, except on the macadamised roads, must have been utterly impossible. Following the caution of the Germans, I rode round early to Malroy to be on the ground, if anything, contrary to my belief, should take place; but the alarm, as I had anticipated, turned out to be false.

The 26th October was a great day with us in Château-Gras. Metz had not quite capitulated. There had been no sortie. The rain was coming down unceasingly, and the country was one huge slush. But nevertheless, I repeat, it was a great day with us. It was our doctor’s birthday, and there was no reason why we should not keep it, while the generals were finishing the more serious business. Our doctor was a man unknown to fame, but he deserved it more than many a man who has earned it. He was of the fighting jolly style of medico; although his business was to cure wounds, he had no objection, but the contrary, to cut out work for himself. If you had met him in Cork, you would unhesitatingly have set him down as a native, with his merry black eyes, wide laughing mouth, and—how shall I put it delicately?—his nose with the Hibernian bend. And it was the birthday of this excellent fellow.

I could not make out in the morning why appel was hurried over so rapidly; but I was soon to learn. The adjutant tucked my arm under his, and marched me off into the chateau. Of the salle the officers had made a mess-room, and it was into this fine apartment that the adjutant guided me about ten o’clock in the morning. We were one and all, it seemed, the guests of the doctor on this the anniversary of his natal morn. Nor was the doctor hospitable without the means. A certain good lady, calling him husband, and dwelling in Königsberg, had not forgotten the day, and, as a birthday present, had sent her good man a great chest. The sum total of the contents of that chest, the world through me can never know. The enumeration I heard indeed, but I lost the tally when the doctor was about half through with it. Suffice it to say that the table groaned under a load of delicacies. I had seen a telegram from Berlin, to the effect that the troops before Metz were living on mutton. The telegraphist would have opened his eyes had he dropped in this morning. There was Schinken and boiled ham, there was a German sausage, as big as the good heart of the doctor’s wife, there was a snug little barrel of sardellen, pickled with bay leaves; there was German gingerbread and rusks; there was fresh butter, and there was compot of plums, and I don’t know what all else. Then, for drink, there was the choice of Malaga and claret, rum, brandy, Hamburg bitters, and absinthe, and a hearty welcome to season all. We had a curious way of eating in the foreposts, what may be styled, a miscellaneous manner of feeding. Sausage, gingerbread, sardines, and compot, were seen on one plate at once, and served to season one another in a very impartial way. I don’t think the doctor could reasonably have complained of the appetites which were brought to his feast. He had one appetite of which he could have had no anticipation. Just as we were in the middle of the feast, a miserable devil of a French deserter was brought in from the foreposts. I never before saw the wolfish glare of absolute hunger darting from a man’s eyes. Wet, dirty, half-rotten, seemingly from scurvy, with puffed lips, and hollow cheeks, this gaunt spectacle of a man devoured the food with his great staring eyes. He could not reply to any questions, so concentrated was he upon his gaze at the meaty ham-bone, and when the Hauptmann threw it to him, it positively made one shudder to see the dog-like style in which he fell a-worrying of it. When all, including, I hope, the poor wretch in the lobby, had eaten their fill, the senior Hauptmann called for full glasses, and in a neat speech proposed the doctor’s health. The doctor was very waggish in his reply. He suggested we should dedicate a bumper to St. Julien and les Bottes, because they had been courteous enough not to intervene to the detriment of the crockeryware, and expressed, further, a fervent wish that Bazaine were making one of the company. By twelve o’clock the doctor was drunk out—that is, his stores were—but a happy thought struck a lieutenant concerning a barrel of beer which he had in his room. This was fetched, and its contents went the way of the doctor’s stores.

As we broke up, I heard the word go round that there would be a “picnic” in the evening. One is apt to associate the idea of a picnic with leafy glades, blue muslin, bad champagne, and lobster salad. None of these agréments had we in Château Gras. The rain was falling fast, the winter wind was blowing bitterly, and the idea of a picnic seemed about as wild as would have been the suggestion of an oratory. But nevertheless the “picnic” came off, although not quite according to my preconceived notions of this institution. It was an indoor picnic; in point of fact, it took place in the hall where the doctor gave his breakfast. It was on the mutual co-operation principle—everybody was expected to bring something. My contribution was a box of sardines, a lump of butter, and a bottle of rum. I am afraid this was not quite up to the general mark; but what I had I gave—I could no more. I stood in the lobby awhile, watching the arrivals and their several contributions. One Hauptmann was accompanied by his servant carrying half-a-dozen of red wine, a lieutenant had a leg of mutton and a bag full of sugar under his cloak. The hall looked quite civilised. On the great round table in the centre stood an actual moderator lamp, with a painted shade atop of it, its pedestal resting on a mat. Talk of war times, here was refinement with a vengeance. A great wood fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth, and the glasses—somewhat nondescript in shape and size, it is true—sparkled on the board. After a brief pause, the first service of tipple was brought in, contained in a white soup tureen and an antique china vase. The drink was very good. I regret being unable to furnish the recipe for its composition. I may state, however, that among the ingredients were red wine, white wine, rum, cognac, schnapps, cloves, and cinnamon; of the proportions of each I could learn nothing. I incline to the opinion that a “stock” pot with the red wine was put on, and, as contributions came in, that they were emptied into the pot promiscuously.

For about two hours conversation, alternated with story-telling, was the order of the evening. The talk fell once upon the causes of the French defeats, and after various explanations had been started, a sententious premier lieutenant, who had not previously opened his mouth, struck in with this original illustration and very sound theory:—“The chief rabbi of the Dantzic Jews had taken a new house, and his flock determined to stock his wine butt for him. An evening was set apart for the affair, and one after another the Jews went down into the cellar, and emptied each his bottle into the big vat. When the rabbi came next day to draw off his dinner wine, he found there was nothing in the cask but water. Each and every Jew had said to himself, that one bottle of water could never be noticed in so great a quantity of wine, and all acting up to this, the rabbi had not got a drop of wine in his butt. Now it was just the same with the French army. One soldier said to himself that it would not matter a copper if he sneaked away—in so great a multitude he would not be missed. But the devil of it was, that one and all took this line of reasoning, and the result was that nobody was left to look our battalions in the face.” Everybody laughed at the premier lieutenant’s quaint illustration, and then we had a stand-up supper at the sideboard. That finished, singing was the order of the evening. It surprised me not a little when one of the officers struck up “My hearts in the Highlands,” and almost all were able to chime, not alone with the tune, but the words. The doctor treated us to a composition of his own, composed to illustrate passing events, for the burden of it was—“The Bois de Grimont oh!” The Bois de Grimont was the wood out of which the French sharp-shooters so persistently peppered away at our foreposts. Encouraged by the success of this effort, he gave us another song pour l’occasion, the chorus of which mixed up “Mercy-le-Haut,” and “Ter Teufel,” in some mysterious manner. It may interest the British music-hall patrons to know that a translation of “The Captain with the whiskers” is one of the chiefest favourites with the German officers. They rattle away at its lively chorus with great delight. We had it to-night over and over again. At ten o’clock the “stock” pot being empty, we broke up with great joviality, and betook ourselves each unto his respective straw.