Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028337024 University Library Germans in France : 3 1924 028 337 024 THE GERMANS IN FRANCE. NOTES ON THE METHOD AND CONDUCT OF THE INVASION ; THE RELATIONS BETWEEN INVADERS AND INVADED ; AND THE MODERN USAGES OF WAR. uf SUTHERLAND EDWARDS. PARTLY REPRODUCED FROM THE " TIMES " {BY PERMISSION OF THE PROPRIETORS). LONDONh K STANFORD, 55 & 8, CHARING CROSS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. NATURE AND CHARACTER OF INVASIONS . . I II. INVADERS OR INVADED? l6 JII. COMPOSITION OF THE PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES 22 IV. ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY ... 38 V. AN OCCUPIED TOWN 48 VI. JOURNEY THROUGH AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT . 67 VII. INVASION OF A DISTRICT HELD BY THE ENEMY . . , 93 s VIII. SEDAN 126 IX. AFTER THE BATTLE 134 X. FRANCS-TIREURS AND THE RIGHT OF SELF- DEFENCE 151 XI. THE SIEGE OF STRASBURGH AND THE BOM- BARDMENT OF FORTIFIED TOWNS . . . 162 iv CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XII. OCCUPATION OF STRASBURGH 1 88 XIII. AN OCCUPIED LINE OF RAILWAY 202 XIV. ARTILLERY TRAINS 224 XV. OCCUPATION OF DESERTED DISTRICTS . . . 235 XVI. THEORETICALLY OCCUPIED DISTRICTS . . . 252 XVII. OCCUPATION OF ROUEN AND NORMANDY . . 263 XVIIL PRINCIPLES OF WAR LEGISLATION .... 28 1 XIX. THE MODERN USAGES OF WAR 288 APPENDICES. A. THE PRUSSIAN NEGOTIATORS AT SEDAN . . . 299 B. THE BOMBARDMENT OF FORTIFIED TOWNS . . 304 C. INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES IN THfe FIELD 307 THE GERMANS IN FRANCE. CHAPTER I. NATURE AND CHARACTER OF INVASIONS. |HE recent invasion of France by the Ger- mans differed not only in magnitude but in character, from all other invasions which had taken place in Europe since 1815. It must not be compared, then, with the invasion of the Crimea by the French and English, nor with the invasion of Lombardy by the French, nor with the invasion of Schleswig-Holstein by the Prussians and Austrians, nor even with the invasion of Austria and various German countries by the Prussians. The French and English, at war with Russia, did not enter any truly Russian country, but only occu- pied a portion of an outlying Tartar province ; the French, in invading the Austrian province of Lom- I 2 NATURE AND CHARACTER bardy, did so as the friends and liberators of the inhabitants ; the invaders, too, of Schleswig-Hol- stein arrived there in the character of liberators. Finally, the war of Prussia against Austria was not a national but a political war. In invading France, however, the Germans met, at every step, the men whose nation and govern- ment had challenged them to fight ; the men whose brothers and sons were actually in arms against them, not merely as conscripts but as national enemies. Such an invasion, with whatever degree of discipline it might be conducted, could not be otherwise than intolerable. In private life invasion is bad, enough even in its mildest form ; when, for instance, an unwished-for acquaintance calls and persists in staying. The case is worse when the visitor is a thoroughly un- desirable person, who, notwithstanding hints to the contrary, still remains. But the case is insufferable when the visitor or visitors are armed foes who come in a body ; march in without any of the usual forms of civility ; take possession by force ; eat the meal which has not been prepared for them, or, if no meal is ready,, cause one to be cooked ; clear the larder of food ;. empty the cellar of wine ; go to bed in the best bedrooms ; cause themselves, in the absence of ser- vants, to be waited upon by the master of the OF INVASIONS. 3 house ; and retire to rest, impressing upon him that he must have coffee ready for them next morning by five. That, however, is invasion in its mildest — its very mildest — form in time of war. Nor is the position of the invaders an enviable one. They know that their entertainer wishes them every possible evil. His demeanour may be sulky, servile, affable, with an effort, studiously cold. His secret prayer is, in every case, that plague, pestilence and famine, battle, murder, and, above all, sudden death may carry off those whom he is compelled to house, feed, and serve, and for whose safety, in the meanwhile, he is held per- sonally responsible. For to him these invaders, even if they behave with all possible consideration, are, none the less, intruders who have disturbed his peace, tax-gatherers who are unjustly levying tithes, bailiffs who are wrongfully devouring his substance, burglars who have broken into his house, brigands who only do not take his life because they are left free to deal as they please with his goods. Nevertheless, even between invaders and invaded not wholly unfriendly relations will sometimes spring up ; when, for instance, the invaders possess good feeling and the invaded good sense. Such a com- bination is sure to be rare ; but in this last inva- sion instances of it were to be met with. For the most part,_ however, there was no combination at I — 2 4 NATURE AND CHARACTER all — the antagonistic elements would not com- bine. The forcible introduction of Germans among Frenchmen produced all sorts of strange, grotesque, painful, and occasionally tragic results. In the following pages some such results will be found noted — less in logical order than in the order of time in which they presented themselves to the writer's observation. It will be seen, too, that the German commanders took great pains to conduct the invasion according to certain rules, which, for the most part, were published wherever and immediately their troops entered a fresh place. They carried with them a rough but regular system of government, and were followed by a large staff of officials, who established bureaus, and even started newspapers in the occu- pied towns. At the same time, no unattached camp-followers were tolerated along the line of march ; so that one frequent cause of demoraliza- tion to troops and danger to inhabitants, was, in the case of the German armies invading France, entirely avoided. At a later period, when invasion had become occupation, dealers of various kinds arrived, and, duly licensed, offered cigars and other manufactures for sale in the occupied towns ; but during the invasion, properly so called, every non- combatant who accompanied the armies (with the OF INVASIONS. S exception of a few privileged visitors) had fixed duties assigned to him; and even the unhappy French peasants who, with their carts and horses, were impressed into the service of the invaders, received numbers, and were duly ticketed and registered. Nevertheless, the commissariat arrange- ments were not found perfect during the war by the Prussians themselves — their own severest critics ; and changes before the war broke out had already been undertaken in connection with the body of marketenders, or sutlers, to which, among other extensions and reforms, a more decidedly military character will henceforth be given. A complete account, of the organization of the invasion in regard to civil as well as military mat- ters, including in particular the proclamations of all kinds published by the German authorities in France, would form a very valuable book; for which, however, it would be difficult to collect all the necessary materials. In the present volume I have only touched upon such features and results of the system as came directly beneath my notice ; and as the conduct of the Germans in France has been much criticised and often severely blamed, it may be interesting to see what they did, and in obedience to what rules. Then to determine the precise character of the invasion, it would be neces- sary to compare these rules with the rules observed 6 NATURE AND CHARACTER in previous invasions, and with those generally accepted by civilized nations in the present day. There exists no international military code for regulating the conduct of armies in the field, though there is a perfect understanding between nations, in regard to a few important points sure to arise when hostile armies are face to face. Thus it is generally agreed that soldiers who surrender shall, if possible, receive quarter,* and that the bearers of flags of truce shall not, if it can be avoided, be fired upon;-|- while it is expressly stipulated, by the terms of the St. Petersburgh^Convention, that ex- plosive bullets shall not be used ; and by those of the Geneva Convention, that surgeons and persons actually engaged in hospital service shall not be made prisoners. Moreover, by common consent, civilians offering no resistance, and conforming to the terms of authorized requisitions, are protected in person and property. Civilians, however, who take up arms against an invading army are, according to some military codes, treated as brigands ; while, by others, they are, under certain circumstances, re- garded as soldiers, and entitled, if captured, to be treated as prisoners of war. * See American Instructions, art. 60, in Appendix, t Ibid., art. 112, 113. OF INVASIONS. 7 The principles that prevail among civilized nations on these and similar points, have been observed and put together by various writers ; among others in recent times, by Professor Bluntschli,* of Heidel- berg, whose work on the "Law of Nations," published in 1868, contains the latest and most complete collection of rules — or, perhaps I should say, maxims — for, the guidance of combatant armies that has appeared. But cases occur in war for which Professor Bluntschli has not provided ; and some of the rules he puts forward — as, for ex- ample, that money contributions are not to be levied, that military " executions " are to be avoided, that hostages are not to be taken, and that a duly authorized rising en masse is to be considered a legitimate operation of defence — are disregarded by the government Professor Bluntschli serves. The German commanders who entered France in 1870 seem, for the most part, to have regulated their conduct towards the French by German his- torical precedents ; as, for instance, in the invasion of 1792, of which Gothe has left an admirable me- moir,t and in that of 18 14, of which a valuable documentary history was published, two years be- "Das moderne Volkerrecht." Von Dr. T. C. Bluntschli, Nordlingen, 1868. t Gothe's " Campaign of France." 8 NATURE AND CHARACTER fore the late war broke out, by M. Steenackers * New rules had, of course, to be introduced, to suit new circumstances (in 1814 there were no railways to break up, no telegraph wires to cut down— no cigars to include in the daily requisitions) ; but, in general, the principles on which the war of 1870 was carried on may be said to have been those ob- served in 1792 and in 1814. If the invasion of 1870 was conducted less harshly than previous in- vasions, that is to be accounted for, not by any modification of the German Laws of War, but by the general softening of manners during the last half century. As an indication of this change, it may be no- ticed that, for the last five-and-twenty years, cor- poral punishment has been unknown in the Prussian army. In 18 14, and for 30 years afterwards,-f it was freely administered ; and men who receive blows are generally the most ready to give them. In this last invasion, apart from military " execu- tions," violence towards individuals^-illegal vio- lence, that is to say^was almost unknown. On the other hand, the war, in a military point of view, was conducted with all possible severity — * " L'Invasion de 18 14 dans la Haute Marne." Par F. F. Steenackers, Membre du Conseil G^n^ral de la Haute Marne. Paris, 1868. + Restricted, 1845 ; suspended, 1848; abolished, 1852. OF INVASIONS. 9 or apparent severity ; for sharp action in war is not severity in the end. Thus the fortified towns attacked — except in the case, of Strasburgh, where the attempt failed, and of Metz, where the system was impracticable-r were reduced by "simple bombardment;" bom- bardment, (tjjat is to-jsay, not of the fortifications, but of the to^o^-itSelf.* As one of the results, howevgj;<-T5fthe " simple bombardment " system, town had to be entered by assault ; and that the vanquished were everywhere spared is suffi- ciently shown by the half million prisoners taken. In the proclamations affixed to the walls of oc- cupied villages and towns, reference was constantly made to the " Code Militaire de la Prusse," under which certain penalties were to be inflicted ; as, for instance, upon civilians taking up arms. I have not been able to find any such code. The Prussian Articles of War, the Prussian Book of Punishments (Strafgesetzbuch), are addressed to Prussian sol- diers alone ; who, for example, are warned not to maltreat civilians, or prisoners, in the enemy's country, but are, of course, not empowered to take the law into their own hands against enemies of any kind. In fact, the only government which has ever publicly issued a complete set of instructions for * See, on this subject, "Siege of Strasburgh," page 162. to NATURE AND CHARACTER regulating the conduct of its armies towards the enemy and the hostile civil population, is that of the United States. This species of code* was drawn up by Professor Lieber, submitted to and approved by a committee of officers, sanctioned by President Lincoln, and made public just before the commencement of hostilities between North and South. Its author seems to have foreseen every case demanding judicial treatment, every question requiring a prompt decision, every difficulty, of whatever kind, that could arise during war ; and, as a matter of fact, no case presented itself during the war of 1870 which had not been provided for in the American Instructions. Perhaps an excep- tion might be pointed out in regard to the offence — so difficult to bring home to an individual — of concealing, in an occupied district, arms or provi- sions for the enemy. Such offisnces were punished by the Americans during the civil war much as they were three years ago by the Germans in France. In America, the house in an occupied district found to contain stores for the enemy was sacked and burned.f In France, the village in an occupied district harbouring francs-tireurs, or, in- * " Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field. 1863." See Appendix C. t From a communication made to the Author by an American (Federal) general who carried out instructions to that effect. OF INVASIONS. II deed, troops of any kind making an attack by sur- prise, was burned, or, at least, set on fire. On one or two points the American rules are in direct opposition, or seeming opposition, to the Prussian. Thus, the former expressly tolerate a levy en masse — but under these conditions ; that it shall have been formally commanded by the government, and that it shall take place in a part of the country not yet occupied by the invader. The latter do not accord the civilian the right, un- der any circumstances, to take up arms. In order to be treated as a soldier, he must wear uniform, act under officers bearing commissions from the government, and belong to a corps carrying on regular operations of war ; must be a soldier, in fact. Moreover, the American Instructions (art. 8i) permit the employment of guerilla bands apart from the main body of the army, provided they be composed of regular soldiers, wearing the uniform of the army, and acting under officers ; nor would the Prussians deny to the operations of such bands — under the conditions prescribed by the American Instructions — the character of legitimate warfare. The Prussians, however, only recognize as warriors those who play the game of war according to Prus- sian rules; and their government — resembling, in that respect, every other government in Europe — 12 NATURE AND CHARACTER has not yet told the world what those rules really are. The American Instructions are distinguished by a liberal and humane spirit, and it is to be noticed that they contain all the essential points in regard to the neutrality of surgeons, the inviolability of hospitals, and so on, which were afterwards adopted by the Geneva Conference. Some few of the " in- structions," however, are not of universal applica- tion, and seem to have been drawn up with a spe- cial view to the interests of the Northern States. Thus, while one of them describes civilized warfare as " the kind of warfare carried on by Europeans and their descendants in other portions of the globe " (article 25), another sets forth that " the law of nations knows no distinction of colour" (art. 58), which might be made to justify the absolutely un- justifiable employment in European warfare of Turcos by the French, or of Tcherkesses by the Russians, or (retrospectively) of North American Indians by the English, in the war against Ihe American colonies ; a practice which, as every one knows, was indignantly condemned at the time by Lord Chatham in the British Parliament. The value of a general statement to the effect that "hostages are rare in the present age" (art. 54),* was shown by the fact that, during the * See Chapter entitled " The Usages of War." OF INVASIONS. 13 American war, hostages were repeatedly taken by the government which, in a platonic manner, had declared the practice all but obsolete. It is to be observed too, that the levy en masse, which, under certain conditions, the American instructions allow, was a means more likely to be adopted by the North than by the South. Generally, however, it is a means for the invaded alone ; and, as such, is universally condemned by invaders. It may be said that the Prussians condemn it everywhere. But, on its own territory, the Prussian, like every other government, approves and com- mands it. Not to speak of 1813, a general rising and arming of the local population was ordered in July, 1870,* when the French were expected to. land on the Prussian coast. Would General Vogel von Falkenstein, who decreed the levy, have per- mitted, without making reprisals, that all members of the coast population falling into the hands of the French should be shot as brigands .' Or are laws against civilians taking up arms, laws, not of principle, but of expediency ; to be applied abroad, to be ignored at home .' A remarkable conversation on this very subject between Prince Bismarck and M. Jules Favre is re- ported by the latter in his " Gouvernement de la * " Kolnische Zeitung," July 27, 1870, and Schlosser's " Geschichts Kalender, 1870," under the head of " July 26." 14 NATURE AND CHARACTER Defense Nationale,"* from which it appears that according to M. Favre the civilian has an absolute right to take up arms against invaders ; while ac- cording to Prince Bismarck, armed men subject to no regular discipline, cannot be recognized as soldiers, but are simply, "assassins." When M. Favre reminded Prince Bismarck that the Prussians had, as a nation, taken up arms against the French in 1813, the Prince replied: "Yes; but our trees preserve the traces of the inhabitants whom your generals hung upon them." The French, in fact, mistook the Prussian patriots of 181 3 for " assassins;" and the Prussians in 1870, made the same error, if error it was, in regard to the French. Similarly, Napoleon's generals, in Spain, executed members of guerilla bands as " assassins," which did not prevent Napoleon from ordering a levy en masse in France when the country was invaded by the allies in 18 14; nor Prince Schwarzenberg from treating as " assassins," or would-be " assassins," all who took part in it. Practically the Germans had nothing resembling a levy en masse to deal with in France during this last war. Neither had they in 1814 ; while in 1792 it was only after the Duke of Brunswick's army had begun its retreat that the peasants rose against it. So, as a rule, it will always be. The population * In the section entitled " Entrevue de Ferri^res.'' OF INVASIONS. 15 will not rise against invaders until the invaders are already defeated ; and it is then too late to enforce laws against civilians bearing arms. But, if only to remove occasions for sanguinary reprisals, there should and might be a law, clearly understood and generally accepted, on this and other points of warfare about which there is at present much igno- rance and consequent misunderstanding, to say nothing of positive disagreement. One necessary first step towards such a desirable result is to bring the questionable points to light ; and many such points which, among other matters of perhaps more general interest, came directly beneath the writer's notice during the late war, will be indicated in this volume. CHAPTER II. INVADERS OR INVADED ? VERY one, and especially every French- man, is astonished that the French Go- vernment should have thought, with the limited and uncertain resources at its disposal in July, 1870, of declaring war against such a for- midable military power as Prussia. The popular view of the matter in France, if not in Europe gene- rally, is that the Emperor Napoleon, with an army barely 300,000 strong, challengedapowerwhich could bring a million men into the field. That, no doubt, is the truth, but it is far from being all the truth. The million men could not be brought into the field forthwith, and as a matter of course ; and the Em- peror Napoleon reckoned on commencing hostilities with an army not of 300,000, but of 600,000 men. " We are only waiting now for your dispatch," wrote the Duke de Gramont to M. Benedetti on the INVADERS OR INVADED? 17 16th of July,* "to call in the 300,000 men who are ready to be called in. If the King will not advise the Prince of Hohenzollern to renounce, it is war immediately, and in a few days we are on the Rhine." There the French expected to meet a portion of the North German army, which, on a peace footing, was 300,000 strong. Preparations had already been made for sending a fleet to the North Sea,t and a Prussian army would be required, and was, in fact, formed, to guard against a landing. Then, whatever good understanding there might be between the Prussian and Bavarian Govern- ments, it was quite certain that the Prussians were not liked in Bavaria ; and even if the French were not quick enough to profit by this feeling, they might still count on the unfriendly, or at least doubtful attitude of Austria towards Prussia. On the latter head they were so little wrong, that the Crown Prinde, when the rest of his army was enter- ing France, thought it desirable to leave in Silesia the 6th or Silesian army corps, to watch the Austrian frontier. In the end it appeared that France had no more to expect from Austria than * " Ma Mission en Prusse," par Benedetti. t These preparations, however, had been mismanaged, as appears from the curious telegrams on the subject published in the " Papiers Secrets de I'Empire." 2 J 8 INVADERS OR INVADED f from her own navy, or from her own reserves for the army ; but it cannot all the same be said that the position of France was obviously hopeless when she declared war. The French did indeed underestimate both the quality and the numbers of the Prussian troops. " The Prussian army," said the Military Almanack for 1870, published at Metz, "is only a school for the landwehr. Of doubtful value for defensive pur- poses, it would be useless for an attack." Similarly they had overestimated their own mili- tary and naval strength ; and when, after war had been declared, the French army still made no sign, possible neutrals, possible allies become actual ene- mies. Austria, however, still maintained her de- meanour of unfriendly neutrality ; until at last, but not until after Worth and Spicheren, it became quite certain that the Austrian " corpse " of a few years before would make no alliance with the newly- made French cripple ; and the Silesian army corps marched after the rest of the Crown Prince's army, and joined it in plenty of time to take up a strategi- cal position near Sedan on the ist September. The French, then, if they had commenced the war as they originally intended to do, the morning after its actual declaration in the Chamber, would have had some slight chances in their favour, which, as it was, they missed ; and the long inactivity of INVADERS OR INVADED ? 19 Napoleon's army must, at least as regards a portion of it, be attributed less to its alleged unreadiness to take the field, than to a political check received by the French Government. Enough troops for the surprise meditated by the Duke de Gramont, could have been sent into Germany the day war was de- clared ; and arrangements were in fact made for crossing the frontier the day afterwards. It is believed that a march, or rather a passage by railway through Luxemburg, formed part of Marshal Niel's plan for a campaign against Ger- many, and on the 15th of July, the day war was effectively declared in the French Chamber, M. van Suylen, Minister of the Netherlands at Paris, was asked what his government would say to a brief violation of the Treaty of London. M. Jonas, diplomatic agent of Luxemburg at Paris, spoke to M. van Suylen on the same point, when the Dutch minister replied that the French might pass through the Grand Duchy but must not remain there. In any case, M. Jonas sent his secretary, M. Weber, to Luxemburg, where he arrived the next day (Satur- day, July 16), saying that his chief despaired of saving the neutralized territory from the violation contemplated^by France. The Luxemburg Govern- ment telegraphed to M. Jonas that they would send a representative to meet the French troops at the frontier, and protest against their entry ; and, more- 2—3 20 INVADERS OR INVADED f over, that they were about to make a formal appeal to the signatory powers of the Treaty of London. The commissary of the arrondissement through which the French troops would enter was instructed to meet them ; and he remained for that purpose at the frontier station of Bettingbourg, from Satur- day to Sunday. On Saturday, too, the French Vice Consul at Luxemburg, Baron de Cussy, ac- companied by the superior officials of the Chemin de Fer de I'Est (of which it must be remembered the administration was entirely French), went to the Luxemburg station to receive the expected invaders. Meanwhile, in reply to the remonstrances of the Luxemburg Government, the French minister of foreign affairs had telegraphed to say that France would respect the neutrality of Luxemburg if Prussia would do the same. Prussia, on her side, promised observance of the London Treaty, condi- tionally on its observance by France. At the same time Prussian workmen took up the rails and broke the railway bridge close to the frontier station of Wasserbillig, by which troops would pass moving from Thionville, through Luxemburg upon Treves. The line from Luxeniburg through Gouvy to Aix la Chapelle, by which, if the Duke de Gramont had been in a position to carry out his original idea, the French would also have profited, was not INVADERS OR INVADED* 21 interfered with ; and far from being surprised on the Rhine or even on the Moselle, it was not until nearly three weeks after the effective declaration of war* that the Prussians were seriously threatened on the Saar. * Col. Rustow assigns the same date — ^July 19th — to the reception of the official declaration of war and the issue of the order for mobilisation ; but the order for mobilisation was issued July i6th, the day after the effective declaration of war in the French Chamber. CHAPTER III. COMPOSITION OF THE PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. fHE most remarkable thing, in a social and historical sense, about the German inva- sion of France was that every class and condition of men took part in it. Indeed, about one-half of the invaders bearing arms were, until the order of mobilisation appeared, engaged in peaceful occupations. Without counting the land- wehr (upwards of 300,000) who did not march to Strasburgh, Metz, Paris, and the little fortresses in Alsace and Lorraine .until some time afterwards, the North German regular army of about 300,000 had forthwith to be increased by about 300,000 men of the reserve.* The men of from 23 to 27, • Baron Stoffel's correct numbers are 300,000, more or less, for each of the three great classes. Each = i per cent, of PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 23 who having finished their three years' service in the regular army, were still liable as reserve men to be recalled, went back to their old regiments, some from agriculture, some from industry and trade, some from mercantile, professional, and official pur- suits. Each man of the reserve as of the landwehr belongs to a regiment included in the army corps, recruited from and permanently established in the province to which, as a civilian, he belongs. Thus, to join his regiment, or, rather, his battalion,* he cannot have to travel far ; and he knows beforehand where his regiment is stationed and where he must apply for his arms and equipment. He joins, in fact, as he and the others about him are in the habit of joining for the manoeuvres in which annually, or once ift two years, reserve men the population. These, however, are not precisely the figures given by the Officier d'Etat-Major de I'Armde du Rhin, writing during the war, nor by Lieutenant Talbot (Analysis of Prussian Army), writing after the war. * The Prussian army is recruited and mobilised, not by re'giments but by battalions, and the whole of Germany (Ger- man empire) is now divided into seventeen army-corps dis- tricts, including each two divisional districts, including each two brigade districts, including each two regimental districts, including each three battalion districts. In every German village a board is exhibited inscribed in black and white with the number of the regiment and battalion to which the male inhabitants, with scarcely an exception, belong, or have belonged, or will belong. 24 COMPOSITION OF THE and regulars are exercised together. The great difference is that; this time, he will be longer out, that he will have to fire with ball instead of blank cartridge at a real instead of a sham enemy, and, when he has once passed the frontier, will be quar- tered not upon Germans but upon Frenchmen. In the Rhine province, which may be taken for an example as the Prussian province best known to Englishmen, a reserve man cultivating his vineyard in the neighbourhood of the Seven Mountains, would, on the order for mobilisation being issued, report himself to the burgomaster of some such place as Godesberg or Konigswinter, whence, with other reserve men, he would be sent on to Bonn, the chief town of the Circle, whence, with more reserves, he might be forwarded to Cologne, where we will suppose the head-quarters of his regiment or battalion to be. The Cologne battalions would find most of their reserve men at or near Cologne. So at Coblentz, head-quarters of the Eighth Corps ; so at Treves, head-quarters of the Fifteenth Division, which, with the Sixteenth Division, head-quarters at Cologne, makes up the Eighth or Rhenish Army Corps. With the head-quarters of the army corps at Coblentz and ditfisional head-quarters at Cologne and Treves, there are brigade head-quarters at PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 25 Cologne (i), Coblentz (i), and at Treves (2) ; while the eight infantry regiments comprised in the army corps (two regiments to each brigade, two brigades to each of the two divisions) have head- quarters at Cologne, Coblentz, Aix la Chapelle, Treves, and Saarlouis. The battalion of Sharp-Shooters (one to each army corps) is at Wetzlar. The four regiments forming the two cavalry brigades are partly in the same towns as the infantry regiments, partly at Bonn, Deutz, and Saarbrucken j and the artillery bri- gade has, according to the invariable rule, the same head-quarters as the army corps, and bears the same number. Thus it is designated 8th Artillery Brigade, and comprises two regiments, the 8th Field Artillery regiment, consisting of one horse detachment and three foot detachments, and the 8th Fortress Artillery {i.e. garrison artillery) re- giment. The army corps, then, is spread over the whole province to which it belongs ; and as each province has its little army, so each district, each important town has its regiment, which, war being declared, is increased to its full number by the addition of reserve men from the neighbourhood of the re- giment's head-quarters. The Prussians do not make each province, each district, contribute to the army its quota of horses 26 COMPOSITION OF THE as well as of men. The horses (like the men of the guard) are drawn from the whole country; but classification of some sort being necessary, they are classified by age in such a manner that in every squadron the age of each horse is indicated by the initial of its name. Thus, Paris, Priam, Perdita, are (1872) names of six year olds; Romulus,- Rei- nette, Robinson, of seven year olds ; while the rare initial Q (Quelle, Quaker, Quirinus)* is reserved for horses of one-year volunteers, of whom there are seldom more than half-a-dozen in the same squadron. It has been suggested that in a tho- roughly disciplined country this system might be extended to the human inhabitants of both sexes. Thus, a man's Christian name would at once point him out for service in this or that year's contingent ; and (as a minor advantage) there could be no mis- take as to the age of a well-authenticated Arabella being (1872) eighteen, that of a Bertha nineteen, that of a Clara twenty, and so on. Besides civilians who are once more soldiers, we must count among the invading forces of Prussia civilians who have finally ceased to be soldiers, civilians who are not yet old enough to be soldiers, civihans whose vocation forbids them to be soldiers, and some few civilians whose religion forbids abso- lutely the shedding of blood. * Names of horses in the 9th Prussian Hussars. PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 27 There are retired officers, for instance, who have become Johanniters, or Knights of the Prussian Protestant Order of St. John. This order exists quite independently of the Geneva Convention ; but, in tending the wounded, the Johanniters profit by its stipulations, and exhibit, on their left arm,, the red cross on a white ground adopted as its symbol. There are civil surgeons, too, who, having completed their military service, have volunteered to share the labours of the army-surgeons in the field, and who receive the rank and pay of army- surgeons on engaging to serve throughout the war. Then there were students of the universities, who had not yet commenced their military ser- vice, and who went to the war as helps to the Johanniters, or, in the case of .medical students, as dressers. This class of young men was, if any- thing, too numerously represented, not precisely on the field of battle, but in the neighbourhood. There is a German word, "bummler," signifying something between a flineur and a viveur — a jovial sort of Bohemian ; and during the war a type manifested itself to which the appropriate name of " Schlactbummler " — "War-Bohemian," or "Bohe- mian of the battle-field " — was given. Then there were priests, pastors, brethren of various religious orders, ecclesiastical students, 28 COMPOSITION OF THE who, as such, are free from the general obligation to serve in the army ; and regimental sick-bearers, or " Kranken-trager," recruited largely from among the Mennonites, of East Prussia, whose faith con- demns all bloodshed, and who are appointed by a wise and practical government to take part in heal- ing the wounds they dare not help to make. With the exception of mediatized princes, only sons of widows, theological students, and Men- nonites, every Prussian of twenty in fit bodily con- dition, and riot incapacitated by crime, must enter the army ; and if his bodily condition be not ab- solutely fit, in a high military point of view, he may still be taken, as a workman, according to the craft he has learned ; or he may be employed in the field-telegraph service, or in the field post- office, or in the commissariat department. The Prussian system of universal service has the advantage of imparting manliness to the whole population ; for the actual performance of military duty develops virile qualities more certainly even than the playing of cricket. One of its provisions, moreover, has the effect of raising the educational standard of the country ; inasmuch as a young man who can pass a prescribed examination, or who rises in his gymnasium to the first or second class, is allowed to fulfil his military obligations by serving in the ranks, at his own cost, nominally for PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. a9 one year, actually for eight or ten months. Such service, in the arm and regiment of the volunteer's own choice, forms a useful and most agreeable holiday for a young man of twenty, which few would care to miss. It need not even (in time of peace) interfere with the studies of those who are really studious; for the one-year volunteer lives where he pleases, and messes where he pleases — usually with his fellow - volunteers ; and after spending a few hours every morning in the bar- rack-yard, or, if a cavalry volunteer, in the bar- rack-yard and riding-school, has the rest of the day to himself. On the other hand, though I am not competent to decide, on my own judgment, whether the threcr years' system produces the best possible soldiers, I am inclined to think, from the opinions, recorded or acted upon, of those whose competence is un- deniable, that it does nothing of the kind. Baron Stoffel, an ardent admirer of the Prussian military system, reported to his government that the best men in the Prussian army were the line-soldiers of the third year, and the reserve men of the first — the men, that is to say, who were performing their third year's service, and those who had just com- pleted it. According, then, to Baron Stoffel, the Prussian army would be more formidable if it con- tained a greater number of men of, at least, from 30 COMPOSITION OF THE two to three years' service in the line. The Prussian military authorities are, apparently, of the same opinion, or they would not, as they, in fact, do, encourage cavalry soldiers and non-commis- sioned officers generally to re-enlist. However, universal military service is the funda- mental principle of the Prussian military and po- litical system ; and Marshal Bazaine was not far wrong when, on the 20th of July, 1870, he tele- graphed from Metz to Paris, saying : " The Prus- sians are putting cripples into the public offices, and sending all their able-bodied men from eighteen to thirty-six to the frontier."* Civil officials of all kinds followed the army, in- cluding, in particular, financial and legal officials, and officials of the postal service. Every etappen- commandant, moreover, who, as the troops pushed forward, established a new post for the maintenance of communications, was accompanied by a medical and judicial officer, and, as a first step, provided for accidents and offences by organizing a hospital and a prison. The etappen-commandant was, indeed, an emi- nently useful personage in the invasion ; and, when no one could as yet say who would be the invaders and who the invaded, it was upon him that the * Papiers secrets de I'Empire. PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 31 first important duties fell in connexion with the movement of troops towards the frontier. In a great war waged by Prussia all the active forces of the nation are engaged ; and there is significance in the fact that the central commission for arranging the transport of troops by rail included among its members representatives, not only of the general staff and of the ministry of war, but also of the ministry of the interior, and ministry of commerce.* An executive commission, composed of army and railway officials, issued orders, in accordance with the rules laid down by the central commis- sion ; line commissions sat at each starting-point, and superintended the transport of troops along the particular line to which they were attached ; and etappen-commissions, presided over by etap- pen-commandants, sat at the starting-points and at each of the resting-points along the line, and attended to the emb'arkment and disembarkment of troops, and all details connected therewith. The chief resting-points were fixed at intervals of eight hours ; a battalion of infantry, or a squadron of cavalry, was sent by each train ; and it was part * See the " Order in regard to the Transport of large bodies of troops, 1866 [spring of that year] and 1869," in which, as regards fundamental points, this organization is already prescribed, 32 COMPOSITION OF THE of the duty of the etappen-commandant to see that the trains arrived and started at the proper time, and that at the appointed stations food was ready for the men and forage for the horses. The most important etapes were the " Anfangs- ort-Etappe," or " ^tape " (to adopt the original French word) " of the starting-place " — such as Coblentz, where, on the 26th July, the first army was concentrated ; and the chief ^tape, " Haupt Etape," at the nearest important station to the. scene -of active operations — as Amiens, head-quar- ters of the first army during the greater part of the winter campaign. One of these stations might be called the " Home Station," the other the "tHead- Quarters' Station." At the principal stations along the line the etappen-commandant, who was usually a colonel, or perhaps a major — at inferior stations a major or a captain — had attached to him a platz-major, or town-major, capable of replacing him, and perform- . ing, in the meanwhile, the duties of chief clerk ; a commissariat officer, a medical officer, a judicial officer, a post-office clerk, and a railway official. The number of Stapes in the district occupied by an army corps naturally varied. But there were, on the average, about eight etappen-commandants to each army corps; and each army corps had attached to it an inspector, whose duty it was to PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 33 visit periodically the etapes, or stations, included in the district occupied by the army corps, while each army had an inspector-general, who similarly visited and reported on the etapes included in the whole district occupied by the army. Both these inspectors were general officers. Besides such adjuncts as a prison, a hospital, a soup-kitchen, and a refreshment-room, the office of the etappen-commandant included everywhere a post-office, and, above all, a telegraph-office ; for, even in fully occupied districts, a train was- never sent on until a telegram had been received to say that the line was clear. The greatest trouble of the etappen-commandant was often with stragglers and casual invalids. " To have provisions ready for the starving prisoners of Metz as they came in a thousand at a time, was nothing," an etappen-commandant once said to me, " compared to the worry of having to attend to the little unforeseen wants of men arrived late or gone astray who had to be' sent on to their regi- ments, and men fallen sick who were unable to con- tinue their journey." Everything had been prepared for, say, one thousand men ; but the arrival of one thousand and fifty put everything out of order. At the beginning of the campaign the work of the etappen-commandants was comparatively easy, or at least simple. They were overworked ; but all 3 34 COMPOSITION OF THE they had to do was to forward convoys in one di- rection, and through their own country towards the frontier. At first the return trains were empty; then they came back full of wounded men; then with wounded in some carriages, prisoners in others, and in such numbers that altogether the railways may be said to have brought during the war almost as nlany men into Germany as they took out of it. The first I saw of the war was a train full of wounded soldiers at Saarburg, on the Treves and Saarbriicken line. As I walked into the station the train passed out, followed by the sorrowful gaze of a long line of women, many of whom were weeping, because they had seen some friend lying among the wounded ; while others were sobbing, because look- ing for a friend they had failed even among the wounded to find him. One of the divisions of the provincial corps had been in action almost on its own ground ; indeed it was the 40th Regiment belonging to this corps (the 8th Rhenish), and mainly recruited in the Saar district, that, at the battle of the 6th, after immense losses, took the Spicheren heights ; and it was the 9th Regiment of Hussars, with head-quarters at Treves, that led the pursuit and captured the enemy's baggage. Of course the news of such incidents as these excites special interest, and enthusiasm in the localities where the regiments engaged have been recruited, PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 35 and where their depdt battalion or squadron still remains. I had arrived at Saarburg directly from ultra Galilean Luxemburg, full of the belief general in those parts that the French had occupied Saar- brucken, and, advancing, were about to invest Saarlouis. Preparations had indeed been made for defending the place. The ditches had been filled, and the country around inundated. At Saarlouis, a late cavalry officer and actual Johanniter, of moderate acquirements in English, left the train to speak to a friend who had been wounded, and was waiting to get on to Treves. " My friend was first blessed " [blesse] " in the eye, and now he is shooted in the leg," he said, on his return ; " but he has killed many men, and when his wounds are repaired he begins again." This pleasing delusion that they have killed many men, when all they have done has been to fire many shots is, I believe, very general with soldiers. The fact, however, is, that with each new improve- ment in fire-arms, the number of shots fired to each man hit becomes greater. In primitive times, when men fought hand to hand, every blow told ; then arrows were introduced, and, fired from afar, proved less fatal, blow for blow, than clubs used at close quarters ; and to jump to modern times, the infantry of the present day, with chassepdts and needle guns, 3—2 36 COMPOSITION OF THE do not kill so many men with the same number of shots as the infantry of the last century with the old-fashioned musket. With the old musket it was calculated that one bullet in sixty was effective. With the needle gun the German papers say that in the last war one shot in 250 killed or wounded. The explanation of this seeming anomaly is, I sup- pose, that as arms become more perfect, troops open fire at a greater distance, and make a greater use of entrenchments and all sorts of cover, natural and artificial. At the beginning of the late war the French counted much on the superiority of their arms ; and one object of the highly demonstrative but practi- cally ineffective attack made at Saarbrucken, on the 2nd of August, seemed to be to inspire the French army and France generally with confidence in the mitrailleuse. The Charivari had already published an engraving in which a soldier, turning the handle of a mitrailleuse, was represented as sweeping the field of battle with his murderous machine, and looking in vain, after a few minutes' grinding, for one remaining enemy. Spectators on the French side before Saarbrucken fancied that, through the smoke, they had really seen some such effect as this. The mitrailleuse at Saarbrucken, like the chassep6t at Mentana, "did wonders" — in the columns of the French papers ; and one corre- PRUSSIAN INVADING FORCES. 37 spondent narrated, not without sadness, how a whole " battalion" had disappeared when the fire of a mitrailleuse was turned upon it. In fact, a company of the 40th Regiment, finding itself thus maltreated, did disappear beneath a bridge, but actively, not passively, and with a view to cover. CHAPTER IV. ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. I HE passage of the frontier, between Saar- bruck and Forbach, on the 8th of August, was a noteworthy but by no means a noisy affair ; indeed, apart from the call to arms, neither drum nor bugle, nor any sort of musical instrument, was heard, as hussars in light blue and red, dragoons of all colours, cuirassiers with steel glistening over tunics of white cloth, lancers with banners furled, in token, not of having struck, but of an intention to strike, cavalry of all kinds, passed from the main street up the streets at right angles to it, gained the heights on and before which the recent battles had been fought, and made for Forbach. The infantry, marching strongly and steadily forward in long snake-like columns, looked far better than any one would have imagined who knew the ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. 39 Prussian private from his deportment as an indi- vidual, and in time of peace alone. A Prussian soldier, walking with a perhaps military, but cer- tainly stiff and awkward gait, covered with a helmet evidently not made to measure, looks something like a Roman in a burlesque. But see Prussian infantry moving in masses, or, better still, drawn up in order of battle, and there is nothing comic in their appearance, while there is, probably, much that is Roman. •When two modern nations engage in a great war, it is customary to compare them to two ancient nations in the same predicament. Napoleon I. likened France at war with England to Rome at war with Carthage. The Germans besieging Paris reminded Professor Mommsen of the virtuous Goths besieging dissolute Rome. The Germans victorious over the French, are to Professor Curtius Greeks victorious over Persians. It would suit neither French nor Germans to compare France and Ger- many to Greece and Rome, for that would be to recognise military and methodical superiority on the one side, artistic superiority on the other, and each combatant considers itself the superior of the other in all respects. The French, however, have certainly some of the characteristic qualities and defects of the Greeks ; and not only do the Prus- sians possess Roman virtues, but Prussia, from her 40 ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNNRY. origin, has nourished Roman aspirations. When the Prussians reproach the French with their want of method, the French might reply to them that in their methodical training the Prussians re- semble the youths of Rome, " learning by long cal- culations to subdivide an as into a hundred parts." But figures, on the other hand, according to a Ger- man saying, "govern the world;" and to rule the nations is the goal of Prussian ambition, as pro- claimed in the famous Virgilian lines, adopted as the motto of the Prussian State, and inscribed in letters of gold over the principal gate of the old capital, where I remember reading them nearly a dozen years ago, wondering at the time how a second-rate -power could venture to entertain such ideas. To return from Konigsberg to Saarbriicken, and from 1862 to 1870, the Roman or Prussian infantry have gone on, and artillery ammunition- waggons, provisions carried in carts, and live self- transporting provisions in the shape of oxen, are following. Then more troops ; then, after the destructive columns, the sanitary columns, and, finally, what may be called the spiritual columns. Infantry to perforate the foe, artillery to smash him, ca,valry to lacerate him, and at the same time, knights hospitallers, bearing the red-and-white cross of neutrality, to drag him from the field of ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. 41 death ; sisters of mercy to tend him, doctors to cure him, or, if it be too late for that, priests to save his soul. The sanitary and spiritual columns gave almost a religious aspect to the warlike procession, which, as it moved away over the hills, looked here and there, when the red crosses of the sick-bearers, and the black-and-white dresses of the sisters of mercy, struck the eye, more like a procession of pilgrims approaching a holy shrine than of soldiers invading a hostile country. Besides the sisters in black and white, there was a corps of sisters who wore dark, slate-coloured dresses and white hoods with butterfly wings, and, like the krankentrager, displayed round the left arm the red cross on a white ground. All the sisters marched on foot, each little company pre- ceded by a priest or pastor. When the troops had fairly quitted the town and reached the hills outside, they were joined by other troops from neighbouring encampments, as, in an unbroken line, the main body made its way towards Forbach. Parties of cavalry kept the heights on the left, and patrolled the forests on the right ; the krankentrager went across the hills, where numbers of the dead were still lying, and whence the last of the wounded had only that morning been removed. The heights commanding the town, which the 42 ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. French had occupied for some days after the affair of the 2nd, looked now like the scene of a recent picnic. Here a bottle, there a piece of paper, which might have enveloped sandwiches or the butter-brod of the country ; there the remains of a wood fire ; there the lid of a tin pot ; then more remains of wood fires, more lids of tin pots, and broken bottles innumerable— the sort of debris that one sees on a racecourse the day after the race, an idea which is again suggested by a number of sticks still remain- ing in the ground at a distance of fifty or sixty yards ahead on the way to the Spicheren heights. These are not sticks, however, they are needle- guns ; and approaching them one passes from false indications of peace to true indications of war. Where these five needle-guns are planted in the earth (with bayonets for roots) five Prussian soldiers have fallen. The men are buried ; but their arms, for this day at least, are to be left here. A few yards ahead there are three more of these needle- plants ; then nine, then a dozen ; then close to a ridge, where the Prussian assailants had thought they would find cover, but failed to do so, some twenty or thirty. The military geology of the Spicheren heights can be clearly understood. After the first needle-gun region, the region of Prussian knapsacks and accoutrements ; then the region of the Prussian dead, whom the " dead-buriers," under ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. 43 the direction of the " sick-bearers," have not yet been able to remove ; then the first line of French dead, lying thick behind the natural and artificial entrenchments which, to the last moment, protected them as they shot down, or drove back regiment after regiment of the advancing, rising Prussians ; then Prussians and French lying mingled together on the summit of the mount ; then more French than Prussians ; then French alone. As on war maps the position of the armies is indicated by different- coloured flags, so on the field of battle, the position of regiments and portions of regiments is shown by the different-coloured uniforms of the slain. The frontier line passed through the battle-field, and the first house the troops came to on the other side was a type of ruin. It had received a crush- ing blow on the roof, it was shot-marked all over, it had had its windows knocked in, and one of its sides had been terribly battered. The first occupied house in the first occupied district was not worth occupying ; and the disconsolate Frenchwoman to whom it belonged sat on the doorstep of her dilapi- dated inn, the image of desolation. At Forbach, the first small town, all the shops were shut, most of the cafes and hotels had been converted into hospitals and there were no French, except prisoners under escort, to be seen in the streets. The behaviour of the Prussians in such 44 ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. inns and hotels as were still kept open, was studi- ously courteous; but already a French peasant was said to have fired at a Prussian soldier ; and a proclamation, signed by General Zastrow, was to be seen on the walls, warning the inhabitants of the penalty with which such offences, and all offences of a lesser degree, but of the same kind, would be visited. By its side was the celebrated proclama- tion from the King of Prussia, in which his Majesty announced to the invaded population that he made war upon " the French troops, and not upon peace- able citizens." This historical document — so often misquoted — ran literally as follows : — " We, William, King of Prussia, make known the following to all the inhabitants of the French terri- tories occupied by the German armies : — "The Emperor Napoleon having attacked by land and by sea the German nation, which desired and desires to live in peace with the French people, I have taken the command of the German armies, and have been led by military events to pass the frontiers of France. I make war upon French soldiers, not upon French citizens. The latter will therefore continue to enjoy entire security for their persons and property, so long as they do not them- selves deprive me by hostile enterprises against the ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. 45 German troops of the right of granting them vay protection. " The generals commanding the different corps will determine by special dispositions, which will be made known to the public, the measures to be taken against communes or persons putting them- selves in contradiction with the usages of war. They will regulate in the same manner all that relates to the requisitions which may be thought necessary for the wants of the troops, and they will fix the rate of exchange for German and French money, in order to facilitate individual transactions between the troops and the inhabitants. " William." The invasion of Lorraine followed by only two days that of Alsace, into which the army of the Crown Prince had made forcible entry, through Weissenburg, on the 4th of August. A week afterwards, when Marshal Bazaine's army still stood between the Prussians and Metz, and when General von Werder had, as yet, scarcely begun to invest Strasburg, Alsace and Lorraine were separated from the rest of France, and placed definitively under a German administration. They were not quite conquered ; but they were already annexed. On the 14th of August, Count Bismarck-Bohlen was appointed Governor-General of Alsace, and 46 ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. Count Bonin of Lorraine. On the 26th, President von Kiihlwetter was appointed Civil Commissary of Alsace, and the Marquis de Villers of Lorraine. On the 30th, Counts Luxburgh and Tauffkirchen commenced their functions as Prefects, the former of Alsace, the latter of Lorraine. On the 4th of September, Dr. Harless, Director of the State Archives at Diisseldorf, and Assistant-Director Dr. Pfannenschmid, were sent by order of the Director of the Prussian Archives, Dr. Max-Duncker, to Nancy, in order to examine the archives first of Lorraine and afterwards of Alsace. Finally, on the 8th of October, ten days after the fall of Stras- burg, the seat of the general government of Alsace, was established in that city. The fact, too, may be here noted that, without waiting for the result of the battles about to be fought near Metz, the Prussians — or rather the Saxon railway engineer company of the 4th army • — commenced, on the 12th of August, the railway, " turning " Metz, by a line from Remilly to Pont-a- Mousson ; and that, on the 19th of August, Herr Stephan, General Director of the Post -Office, arrived to superintend the postal arrangements in the conquered provinces ; under which the inhabi- tants were enabled to send post-cards and open letters, treating briefly of private and personal matters, to French prisoners in Germany, and from town to town in the occupied territory. ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY. 47 Another important object, with which Herr Stephan is said to have arrived in the occupied provinces, was to verify the accounts of the French postmasters, and to see that the cash in hand, which, as government money fell at once to the invaders, corresponded to the entries in the books. Thus the Prussians took not only military, but administrative, possession of all Alsace and more of Lorraine than they meant to keep, immediately after the battles of Worth and Spicheren. CHAPTER V. AN OCCUPIED TOWN. iURING the Prussian manoeuvres of each autumn, one or more army corps invade and occupy a province which really be- longs to some other army corps ; and thus, in time of peace, the Prussians study, not only the main business of war, which undoubtedly is fighting, but also that very important branch of the art which con- sists in finding convenient quarters and plentiful sup- plies. In Prussia, every householder is obliged to keep a certificated register of the number of men his house will hold in time of peace, and the number during war — that is to say, under pressure ; and though they cannot force their neighbours to imitate them in this respect, the Prussians possess lists of the quartering accommodation afforded, not indeed by every house, but by every town in the countries bordering on their own. AN OCCUPIED TOWN. . 49 All the Prussians, then, had to do on entering French villages and towns, was to quarter them- selves on the inhabitants, as they are in the habit of doing in their own country ; writing in chalk on the door of each house, the number of soldiers provided for within. The houses of Prussian villages during the marching season are marked in a similar manner. But there was this important difference in regard to supplies. Requisitions issued by the Germans in their own country during the autumn campaigns, are addressed to the local authorities, who pay those executing the requisitions, and get repaid out of the state exchequer. In France also (when there was time and opportunity for doing things in an orderly manner), the requisitions were addressed to the mayor, and by him given out to private individuals ; then it was for the person executing the requisitions to obtain payment from the mayor, who generally did pay in whole or in part out of the local funds, looking, on behalf of his commune, to the state for future indemnification. An idea somehow got abroad when the Germans first entered France, that it was they who were, on the conclusion of peace, to redeem the requisition papers. This supposition may have had its origin in the fact, that during the invasion of 1792, the requisitions issued by the Duke of Brunswick's 4 so AN OCCUPIED TOWN. army were made out in the name of Louis the Sixteenth, and not, as during the invasion of 1870, in that of the German commanders.* The re- quisition papers of 1870 served, like those of 18 14 and 1815, to show (in the absence of receipts, which in small transactions were not invariably given) precisely what the persons executing them had been " required " to supply. Requisitions were issued for every imaginable thing, in great quantities and small. Horses, oxen, sheep, were taken by requisition ; and I have seen a requisition paper (dishonoured) for six eggs. Requisitions were often made out for coffins, and a boot-jack is said to have been somewhere procured by the same simple means. Horse shoes were constantly the object of requisitions ; indeed, along the great lines of march the blacksmiths were everywhere impressed into the Prussian service. In the time of Frederick the Great, the Prussian soldier on a campaign received two pounds of bread a day, and two pounds of meat a week, " which," says Frederick, " the poor soldier well deserves for his troubles and fatigues."t If those were his full deserts then, he gets more than his deserts now ; for proclamations exhibited in all the occupied towns announced that soldiers quartered upon * Gothe's " Campaign of France." t Frederick the Great's " Instructions aux Officiers,'' etc. AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 51 inhabitants were to receive daily " 750 grammes of bread, 500 grammes of meat,* 250 grammes of bacon, 30 grammes of coffee, 60 grammes of to- bacco or 5 cigars, half a litre of wine or a litre of beer or one tenth part of a litre of brandyy Indi- viduals, especially in the country, were often called upon in a direct manner, to furnish what was wanted ; but requisitions for supplies on a large scale, whether of food, wine, horses, carts, or no matter what, were addressed to the authorities, who summoned the inhabitants, and distributed the order among them. The only officers who possessed the right of issuing requisitions, were generals and commanders of detached corps ; and the rule was, that when objects "requisitioned" were supplied, receipts should be given. Numerous requisitions were no doubt executed in pure loss ; while, on the other hand, some ingenious Frenchmen are, said to have obtained payment from the authorities, not only on account of requisition papers, but also for the receipts corresponding to them. For the requisition system, to have worked at its best, the French ought to have known beforehand that they were going to be invaded, and under what conditions. The Prussians certainly announced, in many of the towns they entered, that receipts would be given ; * 500 granunes = i lb. i^ oz. avoirdupois. 4—2 S3 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. and they made a general announcement to that effect on crossing the frontier. But in country places this formality could not always be gone through ; and numbers of unfortunate peasants, on receiving requisitions, contented themselves with executing them, never dreaming that they would, under any circumstances, receive payment for their produce and their cattle. The billeting arrangements were, under the di- rection of the mayor, based on the amount of taxes paid by each householder. The houses of fugitives were, justly, the first to be filled ; and the mayors were, often unjustly, accused of sparing their friends and overwhelming their enemies with lodgers. In some places the inhabitants, unless they were with- out means, boarded the Prussian soldiers absolutely at their own expense. In others they sent in their accounts to the mairie ; so that the householder, with twenty men to support, paid, theoretically, no more (except that his future taxes would be pro- portionately higher) than the householder who had only to feed one or two. In country houses where, the ordinary resources having been exhausted, it was difficult to get pro- visions, the Prussians often furnished their own supplies — supplies, that is to say, which had become their own by virtue of requisition. To attract supplies, they were sometimes obliged to offer AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 53 money; and they received supplies — above all, oxen and corn^— from Germany. It has been said that they might have furnished their commissariat entirely from their own country; but, even had they desired to do so, they would certainly have found it impossible. Railway conveyance is a very slow process in war-time ; and numbers of oxen died on the journey ; while the corn, on the other hand, often came in alive, and 'might be seen sprouting through the sacks. At hotels, where, perhaps, the entire staff of an army corps would be quartered, the bill for food and wine (lodging, both in hotels and in private houses, was counted as nothing) went to the mayor. At an hotel in one of the largest cities occupied, the bill sent in daily to the mairie amounted on the average to 2000 francs. The hotel-keeper told me that, from time to time, he received sums of money on account. The mayor in the meanwhile taxed his charges, allowing (for example) seven francs for champagne when the bill said ten. Officers not officially quartered at hotels, but going there of their own free will to breakfast or dine paid for what they ordered in the usual manner ; and probably, on the whole, the hotel-keepers were not great losers by the invasion. If, as sometimes happened, soldiers were quar- tered on indigent persons, the mairie paid for the S4 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. rations at the optional rate fixed by the Prussians, of two francs a day per man. It is held that invaders are entitled to claim from the invaded lodging, food and drink, fuel, clothing, and carriage * Prussian soldiers, however, always start for a campaign in new clothes, which are cheap (the Prussian uniform is the cheapest in all Europe) but strong ; and though they requisitioned a con- siderable quantity of cloth at Elbceuf, Louviers, and other manufacturing towns in Normandy, I do not think the enemy was called upon, as a rule, to dress them. Boots, however, were requisitioned in large numbers wherever they could be obtained. So also, but less numerously, were socks ;-f- and it was a common practice, late in the campaign, to order a general horse-show on entering a new town. Then suitable animals were selected, and requisition papers stating their value, as estimated by Prussian officers appointed for that duty, given in their stead. Peasants with their carts, some with one, some with two horses, according to the terms of the requisition, had to fetch and carry provisions, and * Bluntschli. f General Fridherbe, in his " Campagne de I'Armde du Nord," is much struck by the soUcitude shown by General Von Goben, in a cited " Order of the Day," on the subject of socks for his soldiers. AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 55 convey whatever had to be conveyed from 'point to point; and long files of country carts might be seen early every morning in the occupied towns, waiting for orders from head-quarters. The drivers, while actively employed, received food from the Prussians, and charged their day's work to the mairie, which was expected to make good all losses suffered through the execution of requisitions. But even in an invasion conducted with such uniform success as that which attended the last invasion of France by the Prussians, it is not always possible to be methodical ; and I believe my un- systematic account of the manner in which the invaders carried on their operations with a view to board and lodging, is already more systematic than were the operations themselves. If troops entered a village or town late in the evening, they did not always knock up the mayor, but entered the first houses they found vacant, or not vacant. Some- times, when there was no time to go to the mairie, and troops came crowding into a town in large masses — though the rule, however, was to halt them outside until all the billeting arrangements had been completed — the ofificers counted the windows of the houses, and by the number of windows regulated the number of lodgers. Often, too, when food was urgently wanted, no time could be allowed for formalities ; and many a S6 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. gratuitously served meal was eaten for which no requisition paper was given at all. Still, the art of living on the invaded country was practised as much as possible on fixed principles; and, in theory, nothing was taken for which a receipt, in some shape, was not given. After a time, inhabitants who had witnessed the passage through their town of more than one body of troops, got to understand perfectly the terms on which they were bound to receive them. They would sometimes decline to execute requisitions of an informal character, and said, if soldiers entered the houses without billeting orders, " Why don't they go to the mairie for their tickets .'" In the country, however, peasants who had in- formal requisitions presented to them, were often afraid to complain. "You ought to go to the ofificer in command," I have more than once heard it suggested in such cases. " What is the use ?" was the invariable reply. "The officer who is here to-day may go away to-morrow, and if any one gets into trouble through us, it is we who shall suffer for it in the end." One of the sharpest things I heard of in the way of requisitions, was told me at Aumale, near Amiens, where a local butcher had, first, an ox taken from him by requisition out of a field in which it was grazing ; secondly, was " required " AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 57 to kill the ox — his own ox, as he still persisted in calling it; and, thirdly, was called on in a friendly but business-like way, to say what he would give for the horns and skin, which were ultimately knocked down to him for the nominal sum of five francs. Similarly, on a more heroic scale. General von Goben, in temporary occupation of Dieppe, seized the tobacco factory, which, as a government build- ing, was lawful " prize of war,"* and, not being able to raise money on it by any other means, threatened to burn it down unless the municipality bought it back for 75,000 francs. Thus the Prussians received 75,000 francs from Dieppe, while still ranking Dieppe among the towns which had not yet been called upon to pay a regular war contribution. I must not forget to mention one very remark- able practice which, until the last Prussian invasion of France, had never been heard of in the history of invasions. In important towns where the occu- pation was complete, and likely to last some time, the invaders requisitioned printing-offices, type, panting presses, and the services of printers and compositors. The printing-office of the principal local journal was militarily occupied, and the director of the establishment ordered' to set up a Not, however, by the American Instructions (art. 31). 58 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. newspaper, for which "copy" was supplied by official journalists in the service of the invaders. As a newspaper is nothing without readers, they, or at least subscribers, were also "requisi- tioned." Thus every cafd, every public office still remaining open, had to take one or more copies. " Fas est et ab hoste doceri" might have been the motto of these journals, in which the French were constantly reminded of their national failings, of the hopelessness of the contest in which they were engaged, and so on. To talk politics to a man when he is down is a sin against the human spirit, and some of the preachings administered to the French through Prusso-French journals, in which the writers argued at ease, knowing well that no one could answer them, were highly grotesque. One of the favourite subjects of satire in this journalism by requisition was the title of " capital of civilization" given to Paris — a title not invented by the French, but by the Germans themselves. It was, at least, no Frenchman who wrote of that city — " Paris is not simply the capital of France, but of the whole civilized world, and the rendezvous of its intellectual notabilities. Assembled here is all that is great by love or hatred, by feeling or thought, by knowledge or power, by happiness or unhappiness, by the future or by the past."* * Heinrich Heine's " Sammtliche Werke, achter Band (Franzosische Zustande)," p. loi. AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 59 While disparaging everything French, these journals, by a curious and somewhat bewildering fiction, were put forward as the work of Frenchmen ; and one had sometimes to read a passage twice before understanding that " our" troops (who had just been ignominiously defeated) were the troops of France, and that the " enemy" (who had once more gained a glorious victory) was the army of Germany. The main purpose, however, for which journals, written in French for French readers by Prussians at war with France, were established was not only reasonable but laudable. They were the official mediums for communicating to the inhabi- tants of the occupied towns the rules and regula- tions under which the town was governed, together with cautions, warnings, list of penalties, and decrees of all kinds. Besides "requiring" lodging, food, and drink, clothing, carriage, and the printing of newspapers, the Prussians levied contributions in money. On what political or military principle these sums were raised, or according to what scale, I cannot say ; except indeed that towns offering resistance or throwing obstacles in the way of the invaders were heavily fined, while peaceful and well-behaved towns which the invaders wished to reward, or at least to spare, were not called upon to make any 6o AN OCCUPIED TOWN. money payments. Dieppe (apart from the redemp- tion money paid for the confiscated tobacco manu- factory) was fined ;if 2000 for a few shots fired from the deck of a French steamer at some Prussian dragoons riding along the beach. Rouen, on the other hand, was held free from money contribu- tions of all kinds until the armistice, when they were levied everywhere. Fortified towns, too, which had been severely bombarded, were, in some cases at least, released from the payment of contri- butions ; for instance (to keep within the sphere of my own experience) Strasburg, out of commisera- tion for its sufferings ; and Peronne, probably from the same motive, but ostensibly " as a mark of respect for the courage of its defenders." According to some authorities, contributions are levied by way of commutation, in lieu of the right to plunder ; but the right or custom of plundering having been abandoned, except in specific cases as a punishment, no commutation of that " right" can well be recognised. The true theory, I fancy, is that contributions are taken in lieu of taxes no longer payable to the invaded government ; and it is perhaps held that the invaded may be justly called upon to furnish pay for the invader's troops. Bluntschli strongly condemns the levying of contri- butions, though the practice is expressly recog- AN OCCUPIED TOWN.. 6i. nized by the American Articles,* which he for the most part adopts. One very certain efifect of the contribution system is to crush the occupied portion of the country, and make its inhabitants long for peace. But the impoverishment of Chalons and Nancy did not help to bring Bordeaux to terms ; and war is such a crushing misfortune in itself that the suffer- ings it inevitably causes need scarcely be increased by the imposition of arbitrary fines. In occupied towns officials receive no salaries, professional men no fees. The law courts are closed. Holders of house property can get no rent. Holders of land can neither get rent, nor can they cultivate the soil, nor sell their crops. The State Funds pay no dividends, or if they do, all communi- cation between occupied and unoccupied districts being broken off, the dividends cannot be touched. Railway dividends are equally intangible, and perhaps the line on which the shareholder has especially counted is in the hand of the enemy. Banks will make no advances — bankers, indeed like nearly all persons with money in hand, having disappeared. On the other hand, a few journeymen and doers of odd jobs may be actual gainers by the invasion, • American Instructions (art. 37). 62 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. At Metz, soon after the capitulation, the Prussian authorities offered five francs a day to working bakers, who in ordinary times gained two francs a day only. A porter received five francs, a stable- man five francs. These, however, were exceptional cases, and on the working-classes generally foreign invasion has an absolutely pauperising effect. In a commercial city all business but that of petty trade is brought to a standstill. In a manu- facturing city all factories are of necessity shut up. Whole classes of the population are deprived of the means of living, and men and women ordinarily in the receipt of good wages are reduced to beggary, and may be seen asking for alms. In some French towns, where in particular branches of trade (glove-making, lace-making, and so on) much female labour is employed, numbers of young girls were turned loose upon the streets. In the great manufacturing town of Rouen, the streets were full all day of workmen without work, who had* to be supported at the public cost. Imagine Manchester during the cotton famine, entirely cut off from the rest of England, and some idea will be formed of the sufferings of a city like Rouen, occupied by a foreign army. Rouen, as before said, was for some time spared in the matter of contributions, and at Rouen, Rheims, and else- where the Prussians did their best to get the factories AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 63 re-opened. They offered facilities for the arrival of cotton and coal, and at Rheims threatened to take the factories into their own hands if the proprietors would not carry them on. But they could not tell the manufacturers what to do with their goods after producing them ; and in that condition of things it was as illogical as it was cruel to strike Rheims, among so many other towns, with a money contribution. Requisitions, with such immense armies as Prussia moves, are indispensable, and the levying of contributions is often, no doubt, a con- venient means of raising ready money for the pur- chase of those additional supplies which, even in the most perfectly organized invasions, must be paid for, or they would often not be forthcoming. I believe, all the same, and as a general rule, nothing would be easier than to dispense, until the signing of peace, with money contributions. To facilitate regular purchases in the occupied towns, tables of exchange were published, declaring the currency value at which German money was to be received. The Prussians, with perfect fairness, counted eight silber-groschen as the equivalent of a franc, and 3 fr. 75 cent, as the equivalent of a thaler. The shopkeepers in the occupied French towns charged what they pleased for their goods, but at some of the hotels — notably those of Versailles — an arrangement was made with the proprietor by 64 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. which he engaged to supply Prussian officers with breakfast at from two to three francs a head, and dinner at from three to four francs a head, accord- ing to the character of the hotel. The printed conditions, including a stipulated number of dishes, were exhibited in the public dining-room ; and extra dishes and extra wines (anything, that is to say, beyond the regulation half-bottle of ordinaire), had to be paid for according to the list of prices in the carte. During the first few days of occupation the shops usually remained closed, and in some^of the hotels and caf^s the plate seemed to have entirely dis- appeared. But after a time, when it was seen that no such thing as pillage need be apprehended, the shops reopened, and the forks and. spoons came back. In towns which had been occupied some days, or perhaps I should say some weeks, a closed shop was often the exception, especially in the principal streets, where officers, with money in their pockets, chiefly congregated. Soldiers, then, are billeted on the inhabitants, and have to be fed ; the peasants of the neighbour- hood are impressed as drivers, and, if necessary, as grave-diggers ; requisitions are issued ; contribu- tions are levied ; the invaders' money is made legally current, and, at the same tinje, regulations AN OCCUPIED TOWN. 65 as to the general conduct of the inhabitants are published in the form of proclamations. They must give up their arms. They must, at a certain hour, put out their lights ; in case of dis- turbance at night they must show lights in all their windows. They must hold no communication with " the enemy," or with any person in the un- occupied part of the country. They must not act voluntarily as guides to the enemy. If called upon to act as guides to the occupying troops, they will mislead them at their peril. If they must not join the hostile army, still less must they form ' bands on their own account. They must not cut the telegraph, or injure the railway ; and the penalty for disobedience in every case is death. If the railway or telegraph is injured, and the offender cannot be discovered, a fine is imposed on the town, or commune; and if the fine," or the usual money contribution, be not forthcoming, hostages are taken and detained until it is paid. Let the townspeople, however, remain tranquil ; let all in their neighbourhood remain tranquil ; let them furnish the requisitions demanded from them, and help the local authorities to pay the money contribution ; and their lives and persons will be safe, and their property protected. Nothing is sadder than the position of a con- quered population. Every minute of their life is S 66 AN OCCUPIED TOWN. full of the most bitter humiliation ; but, at the same time, those who maintain that the German invasion was not conducted in a more humane spirit, and, as a matter of fact, in a more humane manner than all previL->us invasions uf the same vast character, show that they have not studied the history of previous invasions, nor the general laws and customs of invaders. CHAPTER VI. JOURNEY THROUGH AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. |AVING given a general account of the system of occupation, I will now describe my experiences during a journey made towards the end of August, 1870, from the neigh- bourhood of Metz to the neighbourhood of Sedan, through occupied and newly invaded territory. The district from which I started was fully occu- pied, not to say annexed ; and, already, one. or two innkeepers by the wayside were mean enough to display the black-and-white flag of Prussia. But innkeepers, it may be said, are cosmopolitan ; and these newly-made Prussians had, of course, a tri- colour concealed somewhere in case of a reverse. At a village unknown to fame I stopped to dine, or, at least, to eat. The inn, from which the sign had been carefully removed (good wine needs nc S— 2 68 JOURNEY THROUGH bush when invading troops are passing) was by its personnel singularly well adapted to the existing situation, the innkeeper being a Frenchman, the innkeeper's wife a Prussian. Between them they seemed to have got on comparatively well. They began by saying that they had been plundered of everything ; but it soon appeared that this state- ment was exaggerated, and at the sight of money, and, above all, French money, the innkeeper's in- stincts asserted themselves. The husband, perhaps out of compliment to his wife, declared himself the uncompromising enemy of all Germans. They would be caught in a trap, he said, before long. General Frossard, who was trh inalin, had, in the first place, drawn them away from Saarbriick into France ; and Marshal Bazaine, who was one of the greatest tacticians of modern times, had succeeded, notwithstanding the superior force opposed to him, in getting his troops into Metz, where they would be quite at home and would have a good time of it, while the foolish Prussians would be encamped outside in the wet and cold. However, when they had been repulsed, I had only to remember his house ; and whatever he might have to say to the Prussians, the Russians, the Hungarians, and all the rest of them, he would take care that nothing happened to me. The enemy, he declared, had taken all the live stock they could find. He could AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 69 give me no milk, because there were no longer any cows. He should be unable to plough his land, because he had no horses. There was not a horse in the village, so that there could be no ploughing, no sowing, no harvest next year ; nothing but famine. As for the bits of paper given in acknow- ledgment of the things taken — the " requisitions," as they were called — he looked upon them as worthless. At all events, no money could be raised upon them ; and numbers of poor people would be ruined before the time of redemption arrived. He considered that it would have been better policy on the part of the French not to have allowed the Prussians to come into France at all. He, for his part, had done his best to prevent them, not personally, but through a substitute, whom he had bought to replace his son, now a tradesman in Paris. The substitute, who had cost him 2,400 francs, had performed wonders on the field of battle, and at Forbach had been badly wounded. At Faulquemont, where I proposed to pass the night, every inn was crowded with troops. I suc- ceeded, however, at the railway hotel in getting some bread- and wine for myself, some bread for my horse (all the oats and hay in the place had been s,eized by the troops), and permission to sleep in the dining-room on chairs. Here the people of 70 JOURNEY THROUGH the house had been thoroughly plundered. The officers, they said, had behaved well, but the soldiers had cleared out all the cupboards, closets, and chests of drawers in the rooms they had occu- pied. " Not to speak of hams, tongues, wine, and spirits," said the landlady, "they have stolen my linen, my handkerchiefs, and, worst of all, my wed- ding shawl." She added, however, that the colonel commanding the regiment to which the culprits belonged had done his best to discover them, and had told her that if she cnuld point them out he would punish them severely and make them re- store as much as possible of what they had stolen. But one soldier is so much like another, and there are so many soldiers quartered every day in the same house, that to identify the offenders was im- possible. At this inn the great complaint was quite as much of the trouble given as of the things taken. The officers, in fact, the night I spent there, did not go to bed until two in the morning, and the soldiers were up and about three hours afterwards. For breakfast nothing could be had but black coffee and bread. Of milk, seeing that the cows had been captured, it was impossible to get a drop. However, some officers who had been sleeping in the railway carriages at the neighbour- ing station dropped in about seven, and by means of requisitions obtained a little meat and a few AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 71 eggs from the village. The innkeeper had nothing whatever to offer — even his bread and his coffee were now gone. His inn, apparently a desirable place to put up at when it is maintained on a peace footing, had degenerated into a sort of tavern, where people bringing their own food could get it cooked. " Three eggs for the captain ; he likes them hard," cried an infantry soldier, coming into the kitchen and sternly depositing them on a dresser. "The Colonel sends this meat," said a Hussar, exhibiting some kind of flesh, which he carried in his hand, " and wishes for it as soon as it is cooked." " What meat is it ?" asked the cook. " Das weiss ich nicht, Madame" answered the Hussar. On examination it was declared to be a slice of cow, and, being assimilated to beefsteak, was treated accordingly. FromFaulquemont I went to Remilly.in the neigh- bourhood of Metz, and in close prciximity to the operations then being carried on against that city. At Remilly all the inns and all the inn stables were occupied ; but horses cjuld be taken out and fed in the market-place, and a hospitable welcome was given to travellers at the houses reserved for the Sisters of Mercy, who mercifully treated me to half a pint of broth, hot, with salt, in a tumbler. No wounded had yet reached them ; and in the fulness of their benevolence they would not allow me to 72 JOURNEY THROUGH plead that, being in a sound condition of body, I had no right even to taste the preparation which they insisted on my swallowing. The road from Remilly to Pont-a-Mousson was marked by the newly-constructed Prussian tele- graph. Proceeding along this road I met the waggons of the 8th Army Corps going back empty, and several hundred country carts. Each of the carts — army- waggons and peasant- carts alike — bore the name of the corps to which it belonged, and the number of the driver. The driver also carried a numbered badge in his hat, corresponding to the number inscribed on the cart. The private carts were the property of the French peasants in charge of them ; and it was the fact, no doubt, of French peasants having been impressed for drivers' ser- vice in the Prussian army that gave rise to the report circulated in the French papers of their having been forced to join the Prussian army — a monstrously absurd fiction which, nevertheless, like many absurd fictions, was not without some species of foundation. In the fields by the side of the road more peasants were working, under the direction of military engineers, at the railway which afterwards connected Remilly with Pont-i-Mousson. At the cross-road where the sign-post marked i8 kilometres to Metz, 21 kilometres to Pont-a- Mousson, several hundred men were doing navi- AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 73 gators' work ; .and the trees were cut down all along the road for sleepers. The Prussians, or rather the Saxons, had brought their own rails, and a survey was said to have been made privately three years before, immediately after the settlement of the Luxemburg question, which, as the Prussians, equally with the French, understood, was not a settlement of the general question between France and Prussia. The road between Remilly and Pont-a-Mousson was lined with orchards, and towards Pont-a-Mousson with vineyards. Considering that the apples were ripe, it seemed marvellous that the orchards should have been respected as they had been. As to the grapes, which were well within reach, they were in reality "too green." At Pont-a-Mousson, several of the hotel-keepers had taken to flight. At the Hdtel de France, which was still open, and still applied to the ordinary purposes of an hotel, the landlady had nothing, literally nothing, to offer. Then, relenting, she thought she had a piece of German sausage left ; and the landlady's daughter, in a moment of forget- fulness, revealed the fact that there were some pigs' feet in the larder. Another guest had extorted the promise of an egg, and a few minutes afterwards a waiter or waitress entered a dining-room crowded with hungry visitors, and called out, " Which is the 74 JOURNEY THROUGH gentleman who was promised the &^g, which is the gentleman who was promised the pigs' feet, and which is the gentleman who was promised the slice of German sausage ?" I asserted that the two latter gentlemen were «but one, and though not readily believed, triumphed in the end. A proclamation on the walls of Pont-a-Mousson, issued the moment possession was taken, promised security to the inhabitants on the following con- ditions : — I. All arms to be given up at the Mairie iwithin two hours, each arm labelled with the name of the owner, so that it might be resti. 'red him at some future period. It was added that after the expira- tion of two hours patrols would visit every house, when, if arms were discovered, the occupier would be treated " with all the severity of military law." 2. No groups to be formed in the streets. 3. Shut- ters to be kept open, blinds drawn up. 4. The in- habitants to supply troops marching through the town with water. 5. No impediment to be offered to the advance of troops. " Any one offering im- pediments of any kind," concluded the proclama- tion, '' will be at once taken and shot." It was not thought necessary to visit the houses ; and it was, indeed, improbable, in the face of such a proclama- tion, that any arms would be retained. Most, however, of the population capable of bearing arms had disappeared before the arrival of the French, AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 75 and it may be presumed that they did not leave their arms behind. 0\ the few shops which still remained open nearly all were devoted to the sale of articles of ornament or luxury — such things as officers would be likely to buy, and would not be likely to pay for with " requisitions." You could purchase gloves, or pastry, or wine, or cigars ; but the haberdashers', tailors', butchers', bakers', and ironmongers' shops were all closed. The hairdressers, too, kept open, and one of them seemed to be doing rather a brisk business. A Westphalian infantry soldier came into the shop while I was there, and requested me quite gravely to say that he wished to have his hair curled. The Frenchman, who had just been telling me that all the German troops were savages, that they had stolen several boxes of cigars from a room in which he had put some of them to sleep (I can believe that of them), and that he thoroughly de- spised them, became positively frantic on hearing that the pu' ir Westphalian wanted to have his hair curled. The Prussians had taken his curling irons, the Prussians had taken his charcoal, he protested. Besides, for a si )ldier on a campaign to think even of having his hair curled was insufferable, and he ended by declaring (in French) that for fifty cen- times he w> luld clip the Westphalian's hair to the roots. Either because the fifty centimes were not 76 JOURNEY THROUGH forthcoming, or for some other reason, this threat was not executed. The doors of the closed houses and the walls of the open ones were all chalked with the number of officers, under-officers, soldiers, or horses allotted to each. On one door, beneath a magnificent painted inscription, setting forth that "Madame Bf^rot, midwife, receives boarders," the billeting officer had recklessly added, "seven men and thirteen horses." At the Mairie two new proclamations had just appeared. One was from the mayor himself, who made mention of some " regrettable incident " which had occurred, and conjured his "dear fellow- citizens " to take care that such a thing did not occur again. " You hear me, you understand me," he continued. " Remember that by the usages of war no injury is done to peaceful populations, while violent and hostile populations are treated with the utmost rigour." A proclamation from the Military Commandant warned all whom it might concern against interfering with the Prussian telegraphs, and imposed a fine of from 2,000 to 10,000 francs on all communes in which any sort of injury might be done to them, the fines to be apportioned among the landowners. After passing the night at Pont-a-Mousson, I was awakened the next morning by a variety of sounds. AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 77 In the room next to mine the landlady's daughter was whispering on the piano, in the faintest possible pianissimo, the Marseillaise. In the court-yard just beneath my bedroom window, some thirty coach- men were disputing about the French equivalents for certain German words. "If you want bread," said one of them, who spoke like an oracle, say, ' Donnez moi pan ;' if you want water, ' Donnes moi eau ;' if you want meat, 'Donnez moi viand;' if you want wine, ' Donnez moi vine! " " And if you want coffee ?" asked one of the pupils. "If you want coffee," replied the professor, "you say, 'Donnez moi caffe ;' but as there is none even for the officers, you needn't trouble yourself; you won't get any." I found at breakfast that the oracular coach- man had spoken only too truly. There was no coffee for any one. " If we had known you were coming," said the attendant, in the style of a comedy soubrette, to an officer who was very urgent on the subject, " we would have laid in a stock. We will do so next time, for I suppose we shall see you again. Only send word beforehand, and I can answer for one thing — you will not find me here." To keep an hotel in an invaded city is doubtless not the most pleasant occupation in the world. The running to and fro is perpetual; everything is 78 JOURNEY THROUGH turned upside down ; there is a general dearth of provisions, and four or five times a day absolute famine declares itself. The hotel at Pont-i-Mousson was governed by- whatever the feminine equivalent may be for a tri- umvirate. At the entrance to the kitchen, knitting stockings, sat a benevolent grandmother, who might almost have remembered the invasion of 1792. In the kitchen presided an amiable mother, whose memory probably dated from the revolution of 1830 ; and the dining-room was occasionally visited by a charming daughter, who certainly could not have recollected the coup d'etat of 1S51. The mother showed me a communication she had re- ceived from four Prussian officers, very young men, fresh from the cadet school, whom, looking upon them as motherless children, she had invited to tea the night before, and who, leaving too early in the morning to wish her good-bye, wrote her a most polite letter, thanking her for her hospitality, and expressing all sorts of kind wishes for her and her daughter's happiness. At St. Mihiel, on the road from Pont-a-Mousson to Bar-le-Duc, a proclamation informed the inhabit- ants that in case of an alarm being given at night, a light must be shown in the window of every House, and that if this order was not complied with, "grave misfortunes might befall the town, and AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 79 especially those persons who set the order at defi- ance." Between Pont-^-Mousson and St. Mihiel I had met 600 or 700 French prisoners, for the most part in plain clothes, possibly Francs-tireurs, more probably Gardes Mobiles, who had not yet had time to get their uniforms. A notice exhibited on the walls of St. Mihiel, set forth that Francs-tireurs or other persons bearing arms, but not wearing uniforms, so as to distinguish them from the civil population, were, by the " Prussian laws of war," punishable with death. In the principal street of St. Mihiel I saw some more prisoners, in white blouses, strung together by the elbows, their rifles placed in a cart which followed them. Much in- dignation Wcis expressed by the lookers-on at respectable young men, "some of them sons of landed proprietors and bankers," being treated like criminals. But the fact was the prisoners were being marched through a town under a very small escort, and they might possibly have escaped, or attempted to escape, if the precautions taken had been omitted. " What a shame,'' said a Bavarian officer who was a spectator of the scene, " to employ such pretended soldiers at all. They can do no good in the field, and if we are to be attacked by peasants, or persons in the costume of peasants, we shall be unable to distinguish the offensive from the inoffensive part of the population,. and the latter will suffer." In the 8o JOURNEY THROUGH hotel a dark, sleepy, almond-eyed young lady, who resided in Algeria, and seemed to have become slightly Algerianized, was remarking that she had come to France on a visit of pleasure, and that the result had not been what she had expected. A few days before she had left Toul, irt the immediate neighbourhood, to see some friends at St. Mihiel, and now Toul was inves'ted, and she could not get back. It was scarcely a hardship, however, for this young lady not to be able to get back to Toul, for the place had already been once bombarded ; and an attempt had even been made to take it by escalade. Bar-le-Duc is remarkable for a great many things, but what chiefly struck me on entering ftie town was the proclamation of the mayor, issued, it would seem, immediately before the arrival of the Prussians, when their scouts were already in sight. " We are informed," it began, "that Prussian scouts are ap- proaching. As our town is entirely open, it would be useless, and might even prove dangerous, to de- fend it." The citizens of Bar-le-Duc were accord- ingly exhorted to " close their ranks, and support a temporary misfortune with prudence, calmness, and manly resignation." How they hated the Prussians and all who ac- companied them ! " The first who came behaved very well," said a member of what is called the AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 8i ■"gentler" sex, "and we were almost sorry when they went away. We told them that if by chance they came back wounded, we would attend to them and nurse them, and do anything for them. But as fresh bodies of troops arrive, they become worse and worse, and now if they are driven back, and if ■any of them want to come in here, we will kick them out like dogs, wounded or not." The sentiments expressed by this amiable young person may not have been those of all her fellow- citizens, but , I think she only uttered what others thought and felt. The citizens of Bar-le-Duc seemed *' good haters," and nothing but a'sense of powerless- ness could have prevented them from doing the dead- liest injury 'to the foe. They were, no doubt, right in saying that the invaders from mild had become harsh. The explanation of that is verj' simple. The first invaders were much feared, and every one "was astonished and delighted to find that they were better than the reputation which had preceded them. Everything they wanted was given freely and willingly, and the people of Bar-le-Duc came to the conclusion that a Prussian invasion was not, after all, such a terrible thing as they had imagined. But when the second body of invaders arrived they ■were not quite so pleased — they had had enough of it ; nor were the Prussians (or the Bavarians, for I don't Icnow which arrived first) pleased when they found 6 82 JOURNEY THROUGH that what had been given liberally to the first- comers was — for the sufficient reason that it had been given — refused to them. Of course the thing became worse and worse as it proceeded. As the inhabitants were more pressed the invaders showed themselves more pressing, and in a short time the situation became intolerable. On Sunday, the morning after my arrival at Bar-le-Duc, I went to the Roman Catholic church of Notre Dame, where I found that, whether from a secret understanding or from an instinctive feeling of propriety common to all, every woman, with the exception of the peasantry, was attired in deep black — black dresses, black bonnets, black veils, black shawls, black gloves. It was like Warsaw during the insurrection. The interior of Notre Dame de Bar-le-Duc is chiefly remarkable for an admirable series of bronzes representing the inci- dents of the Via Dolorosa ; and it seemed, from the great number of persons praying around it, that a mystical signification was attached to No. 9 of the series : " Jesus falls for the third time." The high town of Bar-le-Duc, the old habitation and possession of the Dukes of Bar, stands, as becomes a feudal stronghold, on a lofty eminence, from which the vine-clad hills of the surrounding country may be seen for miles on all sides. Bar- le-Duc is further distinguished (to descend a little) AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 83 ts cafe, called " Le Cafe des Oiseaux," which it be called the coffeehouse of birds, beasts, s, reptiles, flowers, plants, minerals, and coins. a most curious combination of the museum cafe ; or, rather, it is a very complete museum a cafe in the middle. " Drink, but learn," it have been the motto of the man who founded nd when once it was established, every rich in- tant of Bar-le-Duc made some kind of addition le collection. The place, when I visited it, was 'ded with Prussian and Bavarian soldiers, who led very much astonished, and were slightly ived, if they looked upon this as a specimen of ich cafds in general. All the Prussian minis- and generals who passed through Bar-le-Duc sd the Cafe des Oiseaux. Count Bismarck tea there one night ; and the Crown Prince, came in at the same time, was seen to order drink a clioppe of beer. it what, above all, gives fame to Bar-le-Duc is reserves. Every dealer in the town— including watchmaker and one ironmonger — sells " con- ss de Bar-le-Duc;" and every one who visits :own buys some of the little pots in which they sold. All the ladies of the Prussian Royal ily had had boxes of " Confitures de Bar-le- " sent to them ; and Count Bismarck himself :ht a box. " He passes all the same," said the 6—2 84 JOURNEY THROUGH confectioner from whom the purchase was made, " for a man qui n'aime pas les douceurs." As at Pont-a-Mousson, every one at Bar-le-Duc dealing in mere luxuries kept his shop open. A bookseller, too, offered his wares for sale, but I could see nothing ■ in his window except copies of the " Marseillaise," bought largely by the Prussian soldiers, and a work, written probably by a native of Bar-le-Duc, which bore this curious and comprehensive title, " The Art of Living Cheaply, of Preventing Inundations, and of Creating Incalculable Riches." The head-quarters of his Majesty had only just moved from Bar-le-Duc to Clermont, and already a telegraph was constructed along the line. The single telegraph wire was, in fact, a clue by which the progress of head-quarters might have been fol- lowed from the very beginning of the invasion. The townspeople believed the army was still advancing towards Chalons. " Yet the carts," said an observant hotel-keeper, "have been ordered this morning north- wards, to Clermont," a route I accordingly took. The trees which lined the road all the way on each side served the purpose admirably of telegraph posts ; but all the trees which stood in the way of the wires had, of course, to be cut down, and they had been felled by thousands. Half way between Bar-le-Duc and Clermont I met a solitary peasant, got him to bring my horse AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 85 some water, and was asked in return to tell him "what had happened since the taking of Berlin." I told him first of all that I had not heard of the taking of Berlin, when he assured me that it had been, captured by the French fleet operating on the Spree, that the thing was the common talk of the village, and (he added in a whisper) had become known through a letter dropped by a Prussian officer, in which a friend wrote to him, " You will be sorry to hear that Berlin has fallen into the hands of the French." At another village I was stopped by some peasants, who said that, seeing I was not in uni- form, they imagined I was going to the army in order to make peace, in which case they implored me to make it on any terms, so that " requisitions" might no longer be served upon them. They were "exhausted," they were "crucified," and could stand it no longer. Even in the matter of requi- sitions they were cheated; for, instead of being furnished with the signature and stamp of the mayor, the papers given to them bore the signature of some Prussian officer only. They complained further that the Prussians had taken all their cattle and drunk all their wine, besides which they had killed more animals than was necessary, and had broken bottles and tapped casks without any neces- sity at all. The innkeeper had suffered like every 86 JOURNEY THROUGH one else. He had taken his sign down, which, how- ever, had done him very little good, since he, like the rest of them, had had soldiers quartered upon him, and had had his substance entirely devoured. At Clermont I found nothing remarkable, except a very original old woman, mother of the land- lady of the hotel, who asked me in confidence whether there was to be any pillaging, and, if so, when it was going to begin. I assured her that there was no likelihood of any house in the place being either pillaged or burnt ; at which she ex- pressed herself much relieved. Pillage, she ob- served, was the great thing to be dreaded in war. She had seen three revolutions, and at each revo- lution there had been a little pillage, and sometimes a great deal. She thought an invasion was the same sort of thing as a revolution, except, of course, that you saw more troops in an invasion and less fighting. Just then a herd of oxen began to pass, whose appearance caused her much more alarm than that of the troops had done. " Oh, my child 1" she called out to her daughter, " look at those wild animals with horns like lances ! I have seen many fearful things these last three days, but this is the fearfullest sight of all." The animals which inspired her with so much terror were simply oxen of remarkable beauty and of Hungarian breed. It was a herd about eight AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 87 hundred strong, attached to the Saxon Army Corps. The driver in chief had accompanied them all the way from Saxony on foot, and seemed delighted when I complimented him on the appearance of his beasts. They were a little tired, but were very beautiful, and had all milk-white coats, black senti- mental eyes fringed with black eyelashes, and white horns of prodigious length, tipped at the tapering ends with black. From Clermont his Majesty proceeded through Varennes to Buzancy. At the Hotel du Grand Monarque, where Louis XVI. is generally, but erro- neously, supposed to have been arrested, still exists, and a very good hotel it is, kept by Madame Gauthier and her daughters — a kind and cultivated family, by no means unknown to literature. Thus Victor Hugo has mentioned the H6tel du Grand Monarque and the Gauthier family in his book of " Travels to and along the Rhine ;" and Alexandre Dumas has given a whole chapter to them in his ■" Route de 'Varennes." The little girls of five and six years old, whom Victor Hugo saw at the Hotel du Grand Monarque, were young women when Alex- andre Dumas made their acquaintance ; and one of them is now married, and has herself a child eight ■or ten years old, and was, when I saw her, in a constant state of anxiety about her husband, an officer in the administrative department of Ba- 88 JOURNEY THROUGH zaine's army. At Varennes all the clocks had stopped ; and a servant at the hotel to whom I spoke on the subject attributed the general stoppage to some malevolent influence exercised by the Prus- sians. \ The fact was, people in the towns occupied by the Prussian troops got_so worried, so terrified, so utterly perplexed, that they took no note of the day of the month, the day of the week, or of the time of day. It mattered very little to them what o'clock it was. Why, then, should they wind their clocks up .'' The hour which they remembered above all, and were not likely to forget, was that in which the Prussians first appeared among them. The Hotel du Grand Monarque, where dinner was prepared for Louis XVI. eight days running, but which he never reached, has existed since the reign of Louis XIV. He, of course, was the ori- ginal " Grand Monarque." His likeness formed the sign of the inn, and it has been replaced at each subsequent accession by the portrait of the new sovereign. There was a hiatus, naturally, in the series of signs when the Revolution broke out. But the head of the reigning " Grand Monarque" re-appeared with the Restoration, and the old cus- tom of placing the hotel under the visible auspices of the reigning prince was kept up until the flight of Louis-Philippe. In 1848, however, some silly Republicans painted out the head of the last AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 89. of the French kings; and Madame Gauthier — an amiable cynic — determined, in view of the insta- bility of the French throne, to leave the sign as the Republican had left it. Accordingly, the sign of the Grand Monarque was, when I saw it, and no doubt is, at the present moment, a blank. Besides the sign which had represented in succes- sion so many "grand monarchs," Madame Gauthier possesses another interesting historical curiosity — a collection of assignats framed and glazed. It was, of course, suggested to her to form a companion picture by framing and glazing a number of Prussian -requisitions. The delusive notion was at that time entertained that the requisitions were a sort of promissory note which the Prussians might or might not take up at the end of the war. A great denouncer of requisitions who came into the kitchen of the hotel (which, as in many country hotels in France, seemed to be used as a general reception-room) expressed his regret that the newspapers in all the occupied districts had been ■ stopped. Otherwise, he said, he could, though only a peasant, have written a few |)hrases in the local journal which would have made the Prussians themselves tremble. I invited him to communicate the awe-inspiring words to me ; and at last, after much pressing, he confided to me that what he longed so to proclaim to the world was this : " That 90 , JOURNEY THROUGH nothing like the present invasion had been seen since the days of Attila." The poor fellow was indignant, and had suffered losses, and I believe he was originally from the neighbourhood of Chalons, where Attila still figures in the local guide-books. I could not help thinking of him when some months afterwards I met almost the same phrase, and quite the same idea, in the Quarterly Review. "The desolation which followed in the train of the armies of Attila," says the writer of an article on the " Political Les- sons of the War," " could not have been worse than that which marks the track of the Prussian armies,"* from which it might be inferred that Attila 's armies slew no unoffending inhabitants, burned no un- offending villages, destroyed no crops, devastated no fields, and even respected the fruit on the fruit trees. From Saarbrucken to Pont-a-Mousson, along the line of march, followed by portions of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th armies, and from Pont-a-Mousson through St. Mihiel and Bar-le-Duc towards Sedan along the line of march followed by the Bavarians of the 3rd army, no " desolation," and nothing resem- bling destruction was to be seen up to the imme- diate neighbourhood of Beaumont ; whence, to Raucourt, to Remilly, and straight on to Bazeilles and Sedan, the whole countiy was a battle-field. * Quarterly Review, Jan., 1871. AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. 91 Later in the campaign, discipline may in some measure have given way ; the spirit of reprisals was introduced, and the character of the war degene- rated, as must always be the case when hostilities are prolonged beyond a certain time, and armies are extended over an immense tract of country. But there was nothing in the condition of the districts traversed by the Prussians to suggest Attila either at the beginning or at the end of the campaign. Alexandre Dumas, in his " Route de Varennes," tells us, with his usual candour, that on arriving at Varennes he was received in a somewhat reproach- ful manner by Madame Gauthier's daughters. " Nicely we have been scolded for you !" one of them said. " Why for me ?" asked the novelist. " Because," exclaimed the young lady, " we used to steal candle-ends to read your books upstairs, after we had been told to shut them up and go to bed." I resolved to do the same — not, that is to say, to steal candle-ends, but to read Dumas's " Route de Varennes," at least for a short time before going to bed. It was imprudent ; but the book was very interesting, and if there is a place and time for reading books — the place and time for reading the " Route de Varennes," was at Varennes, and at the 93 AN OCCUPIED DISTRICT. Grand Monarque, after talking to Madame Gauthier and her daughters about Dumas and his visit to their hotel. Dumas had given Madame Gauthier half-a-dozen copies of his work, and I prevailed upon her the next morning to let me take one, as a memento of her kind hospitality in war time, and of the occasion generally. Beneath her name she wrote this date : " Le 30 Aout, 1870 : Annee memorable 1" " Jour memorable ' she might also have written, for a few hours later the Prussians and Bavarians began at Beaumont the fighting which only ended two days afterwards at Sedan. It has since been pointed out by some observer of curious coinci- dences that the 30th of August, 1870, was the hundredth anniversary of Hegel's birthday. The centenary of the historical philosopher who had pointed to the coming predominance of Germany in Europe, and the moral and military means by which it would be brought about, was to have been celebrated that day at the German Universities. But war broke out, and it was commemorated in a more striking manner by Saxons, Bavarians, Wur- temburghers, and Prussians, on French battlefields. CHAPTER VII. INVASION OF A DISTRICT HELD BY THE ENEMY. [|UTSIDE Varennes, on the road to Buzancy, I passed a camp full, as usual, of pic- turesque and grotesque sights — an ox's liead stuck on a pole, a cuirassier plucking a fowl, a party of uhlans roasting a goose over a wood fire ; in the background a number of huts in the form of bowers, constructed with branches torn from the trees in the adjacent forest. The Prus- sians do not burden themselves with canvas and poles, but improvise their huts out of any materials at hand, as they want them, and their camp archi- tecture is often admirable. At Buzancy I rested for a time at an hotel, with next to nothing in it. An interesting personage, however, soon entered — an officer of one of the cavalry regiments of the Prussian Guard — who said that he was very hungry, that he had not eaten 94 INVASION OF A DISTRICT meat for two days, and that now he could not get even a piece of bread. I had just secured the last loaf, and made over half of it to him. Fortunately, too, I had brought some cold meat with me, which I also transferred. The hungry officer, having par- tially satisfied the cravings of his stomach, began to curse his luck, saying that his regiment was once more put in reserve, that there would be a great battle that very day, and that he should see nothing of it, inasmuch as no reserves could possibly be wanted. He had been out on a reconnaissance the evening before (Monday, August 29), and knew every position held by the French. They were 120,000 strong. But the German armies ready to deal with them were 240,000 strong — eight army corps, he counted, reckoning them at their full strength — and the French, unless they could con- centrate their attack on a portion of this immense force, had not even a temporary chance. The King, commanding in chief, would be with the centre, the Crown Prince of Prussia with the left, the Crown Prince of Saxony with the right. The battle, he thought, would begin about three o'clock, and it was now nearly one. Just then thetroopswhich,forthelast hour had been pouring through the town on the road to La Besace, quickened their pace. Several batteries of artillery HELD BY THE ENEMY. 95 went by at a rapid trot, the infantry standing aside to make way for them. Then a battalion of in- fantry marched hurriedly past without knapsacks, the knapsacks being driven after them in carts. Ammunition waggons followed and to some extent blocked up the road, so that for the moment it was no use my attempting to get on. I accordingly remained for the next quarter of an hour talking to the officer who had been out on a reconnaissance. He said he was very sorry to take the whole of my cold meat, but he was so hungry, and war had somewhat demoralized him, so that he now often found himself doing things which in strict polite- ness he, perhaps, ought not to do. I assured him that I had had an excellent breakfast, and, more- over (little knowing what I was talking about !), that I should be able to buy whatever I wanted at the next village. I promised to dine with him some day in Berlin (it was difficult, under the cir- cumstances, to fix the day), and he then got on horseback and rode off to his regiment, encamped somewhere at the back of Buzancy, while I drove forward after the advancing troops, who, in the most obliging manner, made way for me to pass them. I had not gone 20 yards before, on turning a corner, I heard the sound of artillery. The ac- tion had already begun. After about ten minutes the reports became fainter and fainter, and then 96 INVASION OF A DISTRICT altogether ceased. But the action had not yet finished. The road along which the troops were moving runs directly north from Buzancy to Raucourt, passing through the village of La Besace, which is •distant from Raucourt some three miles. About half a mile on the Buzancy side of La Besace is a branch road leading to the right, and almost at right angles, towards the large village or small town -of Beaumont, distant from the Buzancy-Besace- Rau- court road about a mile and a half. As I ap- proached La Besace I heard, and could see the ■effects of, heavy firing around Beaumont, which at one time was so enveloped in smoke that it was thought to be on fire. The road leading eastwards, to the right — from within half a mile of La Besace towards Beaumont — had already been taken from the French (a portion of De Failly's corps) by the 1st Bavarians, acting in support of the 4th Prus- sians, who, passing through a wood, had surprised the enemy. The road, as I saw the next morning, was lined on both sides with bodies, the Germans, for the most part, lying on the side nearest Bu- zancy, the French on the side nearest Raucourt. The latter, driven from the road, now had re- treated, some in the direction of Raucourt and Mouzon, and some towards Beaumont itself. HELD BY THE ENEMY. 97 They were pursued in both directions, and those who had gone towards Bearurnont were followed into the place, which was at the same time attacked along another line of road leading to the same point, and, after a severe struggle, occupied by the Prussians, or Bavarians and Prussians com- bined. The French made a desperate stand at the entrance to the village, firing from windows, from behind walls, and taking advantage of every possible species of cover; and, after retiring into the market-place, renewed the contest, of which I found terrible traces the next day in the thick groups and long lines of dead, in the number of wounded men in the hospitals, or lying in carts ready to be conveyed to some less crowded place.. The village of Beaumont formed the principal point at the extreme right of the French, who,, before the action had lasted very long, had been driven from the two roads which connect Beaumont with the road from Buzancy, through La Besace, to- Raucourt; driven in and then out of Beaumont, and driven again from Beaumont on the other side by Saxon and Prussian troops, who were now pushing them towards Mouzon and also towards Raucourt, or some point between Raucourt and La Besace. The object, then, of the Bavarians who were moving in a straight line from Buzancy to La. 7 98 INVASION OF A DISTRICT Besace was first to drive the French from the neigh- bourhood of La Besace, and then to wait for the French, who were being urged westward — from right to left — by the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, and catch them as they passed in front. " They are certainly in a nice position," said a Bavarian Artillery officer, whose acquaintance I had made, as he advanced with his battery towards La Besace. "I would not be in MacMahon's place for something. Which ever way he goes we shall have him within range. We can drive him from point to point, as in a hunt, until he is compelled to move in the direction we wish him to take. He is beaten on the right, and will have to come in front of us directly. If he passes us he will meet the Crown Prince, so that one way or the other he is sure to be disposed of" Just then my friend's regiment was ordered on, and started at a trot. I had promised to look for his battery, which was not likely, he thought, to go very far ahead, and soon afterwards got out and walked, telling the coachman to wait as near as pos- sible to La Besace, from which the French must now have retired, pressed by Bavarian infantry. Some squadrons of Bavarian Chevau-ldgers were sent in pursuit, but could not have followed very far. The artillery remained silent. Infantry were now sent up the hills in front and on HELD BY THE ENEMY. 99 both sides of us, and soon the heights were covered ■with them in every direction. The extreme ridges on each side, close to the woods, were occupied by- cavalry ; and artillery was posted on all the promi- nent points and in a continuous line on a hill in the very front of the position. After all these prepara- tions had been made for the reception of the French they sti^l did not appear. At last Prussian, or rather Bavarian, patience could stand it no longer. Infantry in skirmishing order was sent forward, the artillery retaining for the most part their previous positions. As new available points, however, pre- sented themselves, guns were brought up and placed on them ; and, once more, all the heights were covered. The cavalry, still moving, kept close to the woods by which the position was hemmed in. The whole country around La Besace and between La Besace and Raucourt is a succession of hills and dales. Here and there the hills are very high, and the dales deep valleys ; and the hills in many parts are thickly wooded. But the general character of the country for miles around in every direction is ■quite uniform in its picturesque variety ; and it was open to the weaker side either to defend itself on the heights, or to seek the shelter of the woods, or to endeavour to march unobserved along the lines of valleys. Instead of trying only one of these courses, they, perhaps, meant to adopt all three. 7—2 loo INVASION OF A DISTRICT At all events the Bavarian cavalry continued to observe the woods ; the Bavarian infantry went down into the valleys and up the hills on the other side ; and, a few minutes afterwards, the Bavarian artillery began to throw shells into a not very dis- tant hollow on the left. The French, against whom these missiles were directed, must have been recently in the neighbourhood of the Crown Princ^. These were not the French whose arrival had been so anxiously looked for ; but soon afterwards another body of French appeared from the right, and these being the troops which had long been expected from Beaumont and its vicinity, they were at once attacked, the infantry firing at them from the crests of the hills, the artillery firing at them obliquely over the heads of the infantry advancing to support the first line, the cavalry leaving them alone, except by threatening them,'which, I sup- pose, had the effect of keeping them together. Between the two bodies 'of French — two separate parallelograms with red trousers, afiixed in a not altogether irremovable manner, to the side of a hill — and the Prussians who were posted on the hill opposite, with any number of regiments in sup- port and in reserve at their back, the distance across the intervening valley must have been nearly equal to the extreme range of the chassepot and Werder — the Werder being the rifle with which the HELD BY THE ENEMy . loi Bavarians were armed, a i-ifle much superior to the needle-gun. ^ The firing could not have been very- effective in a purely physical sense on either side. It kept the French moving, however, and in a few minutes the Bavarians followed them into the valley and drove them up and over the hill beyond. My object being to see as much as possible at the least possible risk, I remained a little behind the crest of the hill down which the Bavarian skirmishers were pushing forward, and then, as the French continued to retreat, heard for the first time the hissing of the chassepot bullets, which fell about -me, and, what was worse, beyond me, so that the further I re- treated the more chance (within limits) there seemed to be of getting under the French fire. Here was a proof, and a very impressive one, of what Prussian officers had often told me, that the French when they got flurried — and they had reason to feel* nervous on this particular occasion — fired high in the air without waiting to take aim. If there had been a dense body of troops on the ground where I was standing, a certain number of men would, of course, Jiave been hit; but of a thick line of skirmishers much nearer the French, not one in the course of several minutes seemed to have been touched. I had been assured that the French artillery fire was not so good even as their musketry fire ; so, all ihings considered, I thought the safest and most 102 INVASION OF A DISTRICT interesting place for me would be at the back of the battery commanded by the Bavarian captain of artillery before mentioned. His regiment, the first of the first division of the First Bavarian Army Corps, was behind me, firing in two different di- rections, high above the heads of the infantry, and I observed that the French artillery fire in reply never by any chance reached its address. I was- taking a circuitous route, in order to get to the back of the fifth battery, when, coming down the hill from which a portion of the said artillery regiment was operating, a battalion of the regiment which had furnished the skirmishers, now a couple of hundred yards ahead, appeared. A general who, as I afterwards learned, commanded the brigade to which this regiment belonged rode at the head of the battalion ; and as I could see that my plain clothes had attracted his attention, I walked up to- him, and was at once asked to explain my presence on the field of battle. The explanation was soon given, and quite understood, but not accepted as perfectly satisfactory. " Of course, I carried a pass from the military- authorities ?" I replied that I had a passport (which the general declined to look at, saying that passports, were worthless on the battle-field), and the positive promise of a pass which I might almost say was. HELD BY THE ENEMY. 103 waiting for me at the office of the general staff. King's head-quarters. I had, in fact, been follow- ing his Majesty's head-quarters for days without ever reaching them. At Buzancy they were just half-an-hour ahead ; and on the road to La Besace I passed the carriages of the King, Prince Karl (easily recognisable by the black man sitting beside the coachman on the box). Count Bismarck, General Moltke, General Roon, and other princes, ministers, and generals, who had mounted their horses and gone on to some high ground a mile or so behind where I was then standing to see the attack on Beaumont. The Bavarian general justly observed that be- tween a pass and the promise of a pass there was a certain difference, and charged me with having shown a " want of foresight " in getting into the position I at that moment occupied. He added that he was bound to ask me whether I carried arms, and put the question twice, reminding me the second time that if after being called upon to give up any arms I might have about me I failed to do so, I rendered myself liable to the punishment of death. I assured the general that my only arm was an opera-glass, and he suggested that I should remain with the battalion, now marching past us, until the end of the action, after which he would send me to head-quarters., It was a suggestion 104 INVASION OF A DISTRICT which I could not very well have refused to adopt, and I assured the general that I should be only too glad to accompany the battalion to which I thus found myself temporarily attached. " These men," he said a few minutes afterwards, pointing to two sergeants who had some duty assigned to them in connection with the staff, " will keep near you, and I have told them that all you have to do is not to go away from the battalion." I found the sergeants, who marched on each side of me, pleasant companions enough. One of them seemed to take a purely picturesque view of war. Among other things, he described, in glowing colours, the encampment at Frochswiller the night after the battle — a church burning on one side, a village on the other, camp fires in all directions, the moon shining, the bands playing, the soldiers rejoicing, and, in contrast to all this, the field covered with heaps of dead and wounded. " What do you think of that .''" he asked, as the shells from the batteries which I had failed to reach flew high above us towards the retiring French. I said (out of compliment to the Bavarian artillery) that it was "terrible," to which he re- plied that it was not " terrible " at all ; that, on the contrary, it was very beautiful ; and to lookers-on in our position the fire from the artillery on the heights behind us was, in fact, as harmless as a display of fireworks. HELD BY THE ENEMY. 105 The reader knows that Prussian and Bavarian shells are fitted with percussion fuses, so that they do not, as sometimes happens with shells bearing time fuses, burst in the air. What really did astonish me was the unruffled calmness of the Bavarian artillerymen, who, placed just beyond chassep6t range, fired at the French advancing, or trying to advance, from the left, as coolly as in an exercise ground* ■ No order to " cease smoking " had been issued ; and the drivers still puffed away at their long porcelain pipes, as though the business they were engaged upon was of the most ordinary kind. Well or ill, wounding or wounded, killing or all but killed, German soldiers will still smoke. The lightness and compactness of the pieces (four-pounders, firing nine-pound elongated shells), and the rapidity and ease with which they were moved from point to point over difficult ground seemed to me very re- markable. The artillery officers, with whom I had entered into conversation just before the advance from Beaumont towards Raucourt, had told me that there could be no doubt as to the superiority of their artillery over that of the French ; but what they seemed to attach more importance to was the superiority of their shells, which burst where they fell, or at least where they struck, provided, that is to say, they did not fall on soft ground. The French shells burst, they said, only at 1800 and .io5 INVASION OF A DISTRICT 2200 metres, and they claimed to be able to avoid the French range. The sergeant now suggested to me that if I wanted to see the war thoroughly, and to go first on one side, then on the other (a plan which he evi- dently thought I had been endeavouring to carry out), I ought to get a Geneva badge, which he erroneously imagined would enable me to pass freely from title Germans to the French, from the French to the Germans. We had not marched far, when the captain of one of the companies, after asking the two sergeants who I was, and where I had come from, told me his name, and called my attention to some earth- works on the top of a hill we were about to ascend. Here MacMahon was supposed to have made a great stan,d (only MacMahon was not present), and the position, on the summit of a steep slope a hundred yards from one end to the other, was in- deed a strong one. Behind the embankments thrown up by the French, broken accoutrements, exploded shells, and on the embankment holes where the shells had struck were to be seen ; but neither dead nor wounded. The wounded had pro- bably been carried down to the French field hospital at La Besace — we were then just passing it, leaving it on our left ; or the retiring French had borne off both dead and wounded in their carts. HELD BY THE ENEMY. 107 At this moment a staff officer rode up to my sergeants, and told them that several men had just fallen in the company on our right, and had crawled into the wood, and that they had better attend to them. The sergeants, however, did nothing of the kind ; and the lover of the pictur- esque assured me that the proper time for attend- ing to the wounded was not during but after the battle. Besides, they were advancing, and though there was an ambulance waggon attached to the battalion, it only carried medical stores, and there were no stretchers ; so it seemed to me that, unless they were picked up by the rear-guard, the unfor- tunate wounded men would have to lie where they had been struck down until the next morning. In the meanwhile the staff-officer had disappeared. Let me here remark that none of the volunteer civilian attendants on the wounded are allowed to come on the field of battle while fighting is going on. Soldiers bearing the red-cross badge carry them off (when they do carry them off), and I found that the sergeant who had a taste for the pictur- esque, was furnished with the emblem of neutrality, but, disdaining to wear it, kept it in his pocket, and shouldered a rifle instead. Soon afterwards a party of soldiers bearing poles and canvas came up from the rear, and said as they passed between the company I was with and the io8 INVASION OF A DISTRICT one following it, towards the wood on our right, where more wounded had taken refuge, how much they wished that, instead of poles, they had been allowed to carry rifles like the others. I dare say it was a very good sign in a military point of view ; but, however that may be, the troops I was accom- panying had a taste for fighting and a dislike for hospital duty. The rule, I ^Delieve, in regard to soldiers appointed to carry off the wounded, is that they shall not put on the badge until they have thrown aside the rifle. If they are not wanted for ambulance service they continue their duty as fighting men, and in that case do not, of course, exhibit the badge.* Artillery now came up from one of the hills behind us, and, taking up a new position on a ridge in front, opened fire. We passed down into the valley, a thick line of skirmishers driving the French, not straight up the hill opposite, but round the corner to the right. On our left, where the musketry and artillery fire had, during the last few minutes, become hotter and hotter, we suddenly heard a loud cheer, which, it was thought, signified * On this subject see the order from General Von Goben, cited by General Faideherbe in his " Campagne de I'Armde du Nord," setting forth that soldiers occasionally employed to ■carry off the ■wounded are not to wear badges when engaged as combatants, &c. (p. 113). HELD BY THE ENEMY. 109. a charge. But the hills prevented us from seeing.. Then there was another more prolonged cheer, a partial cessation of firing, and it could be under- stood that the infantry had conquered some important position ; probably, too, they had cap- tured guns, of which a large number were taken in the course of the day. Night was now approaching, and when we reached the next ridge, and a battery, hurrying up the slope, halted, and prepared to fire on a mass of troops, which could only be seen very indistinctly in the distance, one of the officers looked at them through his glass, and said they were not French at all, they were Bavarians or Prussians, who had crept round the hill in pursuit of the French, " Where are the red trousers .-'" he asked. Some thought they could recognize the red trousers. Others declared it was impossible to do so ; and in the end the French, if French they were, got the benefit of the doubt. It was eight o'clock. The affair was at an end. I had seen the last three or four hours of it, and was told that the battalion I had accompanied, which seemed to me to have lost some eight or ten men, had, in fact, lost twenty, of whom, however, only three were killed outright. The captain, who had called my attention to the earthworks on one of the hills, told me that we had reached a village close to Raucourt, 110 INVASION OF A DISTRICT and that if he could get quarters in a house he would ask me to share them with him. This officer was mounted on a remarkable animal, which crawled up and down steep places like a cat. It was a peasant's horse, he said, which he had bought just after the declaration of war, when captains of infantry in the Bavarian service were for the first time ordered to ride. He thought the order quite reasonable, seeing that to command a company of 250 men effectively on foot was all but impossible ; but as Austria, where the Bavarians generally bought their horses, was now closed to them in that respect by the laws of neutrality, many officers, himself among the number, had not known where to turn at a moment's notice for a horse qualified to perform the duties of a hard campaign. The peasant's horse, however, had shown himself well up to his work, and had taken kindly to the sound of artillery from the very first. His master left me to get the animal some hay — oats there were none — and he promised, some time in the course of the night, to procure me a piece of bread. " I would offer you some soup," he added, '• but we have not an ox in the place. We have made a forced march to-day, and have left our herd and all our provisions miles in the rear." It soon appeared that there was no chance of any officer possessing only the rank of captain HELD BY THE ENEMY. in getting a bed that night in the village. The village was only large enough to give accommodation to the superior officers, and the captains had all to sleep on the ground in the open air, like their men. Even the modest luxury of straw was denied them. When we had reached the ground chosen for the encampment — a spacious valley, thickly wooded on one of its slopes — a party of men were sent into the forest to cut fagots, and fires were soon lighted everywhere around us, except on the heights, where, on each side, a troop of unfortunate Uhlans could for a time be dimly discerned. The Uhlans sent down word that they were very thirsty and wanted' water, and water was taken to them, but I am afraid that night they had very little food. The infantry soldiers round the camp fires were, in the meanwhile, roasting apples gathered in a neighbouring orchard, and potatoes dug from the very field in which we were encamped. Some of them, too, made soups and curious messes out of flour, rice, potatoes, pepper, salt, and water. Not one of them had a morsel of bread. I was more fortunate, for the friendly captain, as he had pro- mised, brought m"e a piece, telling me at the same time that he had sent into the village to " requiriren'^ some sheep, and that mutton might be expected before long. How I should have pitied the unfortunate villagers 112 INVASION OF A DISTRICT if I had heard but their side of the story ! As it was, I confess that I fully sympathized with those by whom the requisitions were issued. The Ba- varians had been marching since eight in the morn- ing. They had done a good twenty miles. They had been at Beaumont, and the battalion whose fortunes I was sharing had been for the last two hours under a light fire, which might, however, at any moment have become heavy. In any case they had eaten nothing since eight in the morning, and it was now nine at night. I began to understand that there were circum- stances under which some pressure might justifiably be exercised by the invaders upon the invaded. If, for instance, the invader wants food and the invaded refuses it, or declares he has none, the invader has a right to look in cupboards and drawers for what he needs ; and if the invaded has foolishly run away, leaving his cupboards, drawers, and wine cellar locked up, the invader has a right to break them open. All the stories of pillage told me had, on examination, resolved themselves into that sort of thing. Troops, famished, exhausted, and at the same time excited by battle,' arrive at a village from which the panic-stricken residents have fled. The troops help themselves ; and what else are they to do 1 I had not hitherto met with any instances of wanton destruction done by them. Smashed HELD BY THE ENEMY. 113 cellar doors, larders, of which the secrecy had been violated, had been shown to me ; but all that can be said to such sights is, " Why were not the doors left open ? Why did not the owners of the occupied houses remain to receive the requisition papers which would have been given if there had been any one to ask for them ?" But let me return ^ mes moutons, which, after we had been encamped about an hour, announced their arrival by a bleating that was listened to with general delight. In about half an hour they were killed, skinned, cut up, roasted, and eaten. Some soldiers, it is true, took their mutton stewed ; but for the most part the pieces of meat were stuck on long, improvised skewers, and the skewers held over the fire until the meat was done. More for the sake of experience than from any strong desire to taste the so lately palpitating flesh, I took my fair share of mutton like every one else, and it was very good indeed. The never-to-be-suificiently thanked captain ap- peared while the repast was going on with a flask of Bordeaux, which he insisted on my accepting He had taken the bidon which contained the wine from a Turco at the battle of Frochswiller, and a very superior bidon it was; not merely a bottle, such as the Prussians carry, but a bottle with a glass attached. The Prussians may be superior in 8 114 INVASION OF A DISTRICT respect to artillery, but the French possess, iin doubtedly, the best drinking flasks. The captain also brought me half a dozen of the most detestable cigars. He had " required " them, he said, in a French, village, and knew they were bad, but he had no others. Among soldiers, how- ever, one cigar is as good as another ; and I gained popularity and a good place near the fire by a judicious distribution of these, to me, unsmokable weeds. I was indebted to the kindness of the same officer for a mackintosh, a very useful protector against the dampness of the night, and one of those quarters of a tente d'abri which each French soldier carries with, him, and, when hard pressed by the enemy, throws away. Let me here mention that the mackintosh worn by the German officers bears with it this disad- vantage : it enables the enemy's riflemen to dis- tinguish the officers from the men. It keeps off water, but attracts fire. Fortunately, there was no rain. There was a little «mist, but the night, on the whole, was fine, and the moon shone beautifully. Talking and laughing went on until about half-past one ; and most of us, including myself, were up again at half- past three. The cold was so acute at that hour, there was no resisting it. I got up for the simple purpose of thawing my toes at one of the fires HELD BY THE ENEMY. 115 still burning, and I soon found half the camp occupied in the same manner. It was a strange sight. Eight or ten tall, gaunt-looking men encir- cling each fire — the flare, the smoke, the grotesque shadows, the contrast of light and darkness round the various groups making up a picture of the most fantastic kind. At half-past four I could just make out the forms of the Uhlans and their horses on the heights. Each lancer was standing by the side of his horse with his lance resting on the ground. Of course, no fires had been lighted on these heights, the first duty of the Uhlans being to see without being seen. I cannot say whether they had slept during the night, but I know that before five in the morning they mounted their horses and slowly descended the hills, gained the high road, and passed through the village at a trot. A regiment of Chevau-l^gers (of which neither the men nor the horses were light) followed, also at a trot. Then, at the same pace, more Uhlans, then Horse Artillery, then Chevau- 16gers again ; all hurrying through Raucourt at the heels of the French, whom they had only lost sight of the night before, when it was physically impos- sible to see them. From Raucourt they reached Remilly — a couple of miles north of Raucourt, and a couple of miles south of Bazeilles. I remarked that the uniform of the Bavarian 8—2 ii6 INVASION OF A DISTRICT - Chevau-ldgers was very like that of some regiments, of Cuirassiers in the French army, and was there- upon told the story, which I had already heard from one of the Bavarian artillery officers, of the destruction of one of several regiments of French' Cuirassiers at the battle of Worth. The j said regiment found itself at 800 yards' distance from some Bavarian batteries, and, encouraged by the fact of the artillerymen not firing, approached nearer and nearer. The Bavarians mistook them' for one of their own regiments, a delusion which the continued advance of the French rendered more and more natural. Probably the French imagined that the Bavarian gunners had no more ammunition. They continued, in any case, to go forward until, when they were within 300 yards,, the colonel turned round and gave the order to- charge. Then for the first time the officer com- manding the Bavarian batteries saw the black horsehair tail which hangs down from the helmet of the French Cuirassier. He fired point-blank into the regiment, fired a second time into its re- mains, and, in a few minutes, men and horses, almost to the last, were destroyed. The colonel, unhorsed, but not wounded, was made prisoner and taken to Munich, where he fell into a state of melancholy, and gradually lost his reason. It was six, and coffee was made. It was not HELD BY THE ENEMY. 117 good. Madame Veuve Gauthier, of the H6tel du Grand Monarque at Varennes, who, even in time of war, makes the best coffee in Europe, would have condemned it. But it was hot ; and heat, not ilavour, was what we wanted. At seven I wished the captain who had shown me so much true hospitaUty good-bye, and went to see the divisional general from whom I hoped to obtain a pass to his Majesty's head-quarters. The picturesque-loving sergeant accompanied me to the general's head-quarters, which were at Raucourt. As I was leaving the camp I overtook a French peasant, who was being marched out be- tween two soldiers with fixed bayonets. The poor man had been taken from his home the night before and made to serve as guide when it was already dark, and convenient camping ground was wanted. No one had done him the least harm, but he was in a state of abject terror, and believed ' that the men with fixed bayonets were taking him out to shoot him because he was a Frenchman and they Germans. I did my best to reassure him, and as soon as he felt convinced that he was not going to be murdered he burst into tears and, speaking of himself as though he were a bottle of wine, exclaimed, " I am an eighteen-hundred-and- ten man, I am !" (" Je suis de Vannh dix-huit-cent- dix, moi !"), by which he meant that he was sixty ii8 INVASION OF A DISTRICT years of age, and that if the Bavarians wanted a guide they might have taken a youth, and not a sexagenarian. Only the youths had disappeared^ and if soldiers are tired and want to get quietly to bed on the hard ground they must take the first serviceable guide they can find. The general of division, a most courteous old gentleman, was amused when he heard under what circumstances I had come to pass the night in the Bavarian camp. He said he hoped I had not found it very unpleasant, and I told him, in good faith, that I had never spent a more interesting night in my life. He could not give a pass himself, but the chief of his staff, he assured me, would do so. Accordingly, I went to see the chief of the staff. The chief of the staff, however, said I must get it from the chief of some Prussian corps. All he could do was to direct me to the general of the 5 th Army Corps, whose head-quarters were at La Besace. (The left of the ist Bavarians and the right of the sth Prussian Corps were close together at La Besace on the afternoon of the 30th.) Downstairs I found the members of the divisional staff at breakfast, and was asked to join them. I was told that the Emperor Napoleon had been in the very house and room I was sitting in, the after- noon before. Douay's, and part of De Failly's corps, much diminished during the retreat, had HELD B V THE EN EM Y. 119 passed through. Raucourt; and the little town — in the public buildings, in the private houses, and in the open streets — was full of wounded Frenchmen. There were no wounded Bavarians to be seen. They had been left behind. Besides, as I had my- self witnessed, the Bavarians in this pursuit had given much and taken little. That is to say, they had taken little in one sense. They had, however, captured several batteries, and a certain number of prisoners. The breakfast went, off pleasantly enough, ex- cept that, as new guests arrived, a little difficulty arose about the coffee. We were, I believe, in the house of the mayor; and the Bavarian officers begged him and his wife to b.ring some more cafe au lait, but in vain. They declared it was all gone. " Try the caf^ close by," said the officers ; but the caf^ had been turned into a hospital, and the proprietor had been out of coffee since the previous afternoon. " Are there no grocers .'" they inquired. . Yes, but the grocers had no coffee, no sugar, no anything. " You must get coffee somehow or other," was urged at last ; but the only reply was, that no coffee could possibly be obtained. Then one Bavarian officer said to another, " Do I20 INVASION OF A DISTRICT you think the Prussians would stand this sort of thing ?" " Certainly not," answered the other. " When the Prussians order anything, they take no denial. The fact is, we are a great deal too gentle with the inhabitants. If we could only bring ourselves to treat them as the Prussians do, there would not be all this fuss about a little cafe, au lait." Ultimately, on a harsher tone being assumed, more cafe au lait was produced ; which seemed to prove the truth of ^vhat the Bavarians had been saying. If they had insisted a little more strongly they would have had it sooner. " Are you the gentleman who has kindly con- sented to act as guide .'" said an officer who now came in, and who, it appeared, had to march some troops to Remilly, opposite Bazeilles. I explained that I was in need of a guide myself, and soon afterwards took my leave. Infantry — the Leib regiment and two battalions of Chasseurs — were now moving towards Remilly. The cavalry had gone on before. The artillery, or, at least, a portion of it, I found still drawn up in a plain close to the road at the back of Raucourt ; that is to say, on the side next La Besace. The Bavarian officers thought it odd that the retreating French had sent on their cavalry ahead —even as the Bavarians pursuing them naturally HELD BY THE ENEMY. 121 had done. MacMahon's cavalry had passed through Raucourt a clear day before the last of his infantry ; and it was said that the last division of his infantry, belonging to Douay's army corps, had somehow got separated from its artillery — probably the Bavarians had taken it. It must be remem- bered, however, that, on the 30th, MacMahon's army was not retreating but advancing upon Montmedy, when the 5th Corps, placed at Beau- mont to cover the advance, was surprised. The whole of MacMahon's army (including even some of the disbanded troops of the Sth corps), which, as a body, was driven across the Meuse at and near Mouzon, had passed through or close to Raucourt ; and the only German troops the in- habitants of Raucourt had hitherto seen were the 1st Bavarians, who had been in possession since the evening before. The townspeople — as always when the first invaders enter — were much terrified ; but I could see nothing in the conduct of the Ba- varians to justify alarm. As turning back from Raucourt, I walked to- wards the head-quarters of the Sth Army Corps, at La Besace, I found the number of dead on the slopes leading from the heights, across which we had marched the afternoon before, down to the high road much greater than I had expected. Certainly, the dead were not lying thick together. 122 INVASION OF A DISTRICT as I afterwards saw them at Beaumont ; but every fifty yards or so there was a corpse or a little group of corpses, and that along a line nearly three miles in length. I did not go up the heights, where the greatest losses must have occurred, but hurried on to La Besace, where I found, not the general com- manding the Sth Army Corps, but, what was even more important, the carriage I had left near Besace the afternoon before. The coachman, a well-disciplined Prussian, ex- plained that, since he had been told to stay there, there he had stayed. In the meanwhile he had seen horrible' sights. The Bavarians had come to the inn where he had put up the horses, and had taken away everything they could find — bread, meat, wine, eggs, poultry, and pigs. They had left the woman who kept the inn absolutely nothing — not even a piece of bread. A few minutes after- wards the poor woman appeared, and, coming to- wards me, held out some money and asked me if I would mind selling her something to eat. I had nothing but that half loaf which I had wisely re- frained from ceding to the hungry cavalry officer at Buzancy — that half loaf which is proverbially better than no bread. I gave her a piece of it,, when she burst into tears, and called up another woman, with whom she shared her portion. I was. just going to seek the head-quarters, when a tired. HELD BY THE ENEMY. 123 foot-sore soldier of one of the Bavarian regiments still marching towards Raucourt, limped up to the carriage, and seeing me with a piece of bread in my hand pulled out a two-sous piece and asked me to take it and give him some bread in exchange. He had no more right to the bread than half-a-dozen other soldiers, who, attracted by the sight of food, now came towards me, and surrounded me like fowls waiting to be fed. But I could not divide half a pound of bread between seven ; and these seven had no more claim to be relieved than any other seven or seventy or seven hundred in the same regiment. However, I had only been ap- pealed to by one, and to him I gave the longed-for remnant of a loaf, telling him not to show it to his comrades, or they would be pestering- me for what I had not got, and could not in that village, by any possibility, obtain. Thfe soldier said he was very grateful, and he certainly was much pleased. He had been marching, he assured me, since daybreak that morning and during the whole of the previous day, and, having had scarcely anything to eat, was quite exhausted. The innkeeper had ignobly fled, and it was the very fact of his having done so that had exposed his family to such harsh treatment. The inn- keeper's daughter, a naive, hitherto well-fed young lady, of more courage than her papa, boasted that 124 INVASION OF A DISTRICT she was the only girl who had remained in the vil- lage after the passage of the French the day before. I asked her whether any of the Bavarians had behaved rudely to her. No, she said, she should like to see them ; the first who tried would receive " unjoli sotifflet." General Kirchbach was not at home, but an officer of his staff gave me a species of pass to enable me to get to the head-quarters of the King, -which had now gone back fromBuzancy toVarennes. On the floor of the house where the general had established his head-quarters I found a " requisi- tion" for six eggs in the following terms: — "Requis, pour I'dtat-major du Cinquifeme Corps d'Armee, six ceufs. — Lieutenant , La Besace, Aug. 30, 1870." Returning to Raucourt, I met in the main street close to the house where we had breakfasted, the excellent correspondent of a Vienna paper engaged in angry conversation with a Bavarian staff officer, who, it appeared, objected to his remaining with the troops. The Austrian correspondent exhibited his pass, and threatened to address a complaint to the ■" Head-Quarter Staff of the Entire Army," whence he had obtained it. " But what do you want here ?" the officer per- sisted. "I did want," answered the military critic, "to HELD BY THE ENEMY. 125- describe the bravery of the Bavarian troops against the French ; but, if you continue your present con- duct, I shall only be able to speak of the courage of a Bavarian captain against an Austrian news- paper correspondent." Or, in other words, " If you don't let me see the performance I will cut you up in my paper, and the people of Vienna will know what to think of you." It had struck me that the argument was too strong for undiluted use ; but my Austrian friend, to whom I made a brief representation on the sub- ject in English, assured me it was just the thing; and some hours later he was still at Raucourt pre- paring to move with the troops towards Remilly in our immediate neighbourhood, whence the Bava- rians were now cannonading Bazeilles. CHAPTER VIII. SEDAN. |HE disposition of the German forces at Sedan was, in principle, the same as at Beaumont — where, in fact, the battle finished at Sedan was commenced. In the battle of the 30th, the Bavarians, forming the left wing of the force engaged, acted in close support of the 4th Prussian Corps, who commenced the attack at Beaumont ; as, in the battle of the 1st, the Bava- rians themselves began the attack some eight miles north-west of Beaumont, before Bazeilles. On both days the engagement spread to the right ; the 4th Prussian Corps to the right of the Bavarians, and the 12th, or Saxon, Corps to the right of the 4th Prussians, forming a line, which, on the 30th, extended, as the French retreated, from Beaumont north-east to Mouzon, and ultimately from Rau- •court east to Mouzon. SEDAN. 137 The Prussian Guard Corps, which on both days was to the right of the force commencing the attack, remained in reserve on the 30th, but on the 1st was employed to turn the French position from the east and north-east of Sedan. The two Army Corps, sth and i ith, which, on the 1st, turned the French position from the west and north-west of Sedan, had been ready to perform a similar office on the 30th, on which day, however, marching to the left of the Bavarians, and a little in the direction of the north-west, they took no active part in the fighting. When, early on the afternoon of the ist, due north of the Bavarian position before Bazeilles, the i ith Corps from the west joined hands with the Guard Corps from the north-east, the French were surrounded, and the battle won. What meanwhile the French were aiming at is not clear, as regards the time during which Mac- Mahon was directing the operations. But when, MacMahon being wounded, the command devolved upon Ducrot, we know, from Ducrot's own account, that an attempt was made to counteract the turn- ing movement from the west and north-west^ and to escape in a north-westerly direction towards Mezieres. For this plan another diametrically opposite was substituted, when, in virtue of a private order from 128 SEDAN. the minister of war, the command was assumed by General de Wimpffen, who pressed with all his avail- able forces towards the south-east. Indeed, of the three, or, I may say four, chiefs who directed that day the movements of the French, the first had apparently no plan ; the second adopted, and sought to execute, a plan which the third caused him to abandon ; and the third was still making unavailing attempts to carry out his plan, in exact opposition to that of his pre- decessor, when the fourth, in the person of the Emperor, came forward, and seeing that there now remained but one plan- — caused the white flag to be hoisted. It was within the circle, and not on the outside edge, whence the Germans pressed and pounded the French, that the terrible drama of Sedan was enacted. Except that the battle-field usually re- mains with the conquerors, it might be said that, to be seen in all its horror, war should always be viewed from the losing side. But, at Sedan, the worst part of the battle-field remained with the conquered — dead, dying, wounded, panic-stricken, being all huddled together against and within the ' walls of the feeble fortress. A little later, and it was neither within nor around Sedan that the drama was being played. SEDAN. 129 The scene had changed to a house near Sedan, where General Moltke, on the part of the King of Prussia, Count Bismarck accompanying him, was about to meet General de Wimpffen, commander- in-chief of the French army now driven into the town. " You bring credentials ?" asked Moltke. " I do," replied General de Wimpffen. " Please show them." Then the principal personages, with the officers in attendance on each side, sat down, and there was a pause. General de Wimpffen hoped Moltke would speak first ; but Moltke, whose talent for silence -is proverbial, exercised it on this occasion. At last General de Wimpffen, seeing that if any speaking was to be done, it would be for him to begin, asked what conditions were offered. " They are very simple," answered Moltke. " The officers and soldiers of the French army are prisoners of war ; but, in testimony of their courage, the officers will be allowed to retain their arms." General de! Wimpffen was in despair. He ap- pealed for better terms, and finding Moltke in- flexible, talked of beginning the battle again, of cutting his way out, and so on. " I have a high esteem for you, and fully sympa- thise with you in your present position," said 9 130 SEDAN. Moltke ; " but what you speak of cannot be done. No one doubts the bravery of your troops, espe- cially the cavalry, artillery, and picked infantry regiments ; but we have already made 20,000 prisoners, and of the 80,000 men remaining to you, a great portion among the infantry of the line is demoralized. How, then, are you to cut your way out, when I have 240,000 men around you, with 500 guns, 300 of which are already placed, while the 200 others will be placed at daybreak ? Send an officer to look at my positions, and you will see whether you can cut your way out. As for de- fending yourselves inside Sedan, you have provi- sions for forty-eight hours, and are already short of ammunition." General de Wimpffen now struck another note, and suggested that if generous terms were accorded the French nation would be grateful, and would live on good terms with Prussia for ever afterwards. "Your argument, general," interposed Count Bismarck, who now came forward, " is specious, but it will not bear examination. It is a mistake as a rule to reckon on gratitude, especially the grati- tude of a nation — and, above all, a nation like the French, with which everything changes from day to day. In two centuries you have declared war thirty times against Prussia — that is to say, against Germany. You could not forgive us our victory of SEDAN. 131 Sadowa, which cost you nothing, and in no way diminished your glory ; and you could pardon us the disaster of Sedan ? Never ! In five, ten years -^as soon as you are strong enough — you will begin again ; and we must be prepared for you. We must have a frontier, fortresses, a territory, a glacis between you and us. No, general ! whatever interest we may feel in you personally, however high an opinion we may have of your army, we cannot acquiesce in your demand, and change the conditions as first laid down." " It is equally impossible for me to accept such conditions !" exclaimed De Wimpffen. " We must renew the battle." As he repeated these words, General Moltke said to him, " The truce expires at four in the morning. At four precisely I shall open fire." The horses were ordered, and the French officers had got up to leave the room, when Count Bismarck begged General de Wimpffen to re-consider his de- termination. " General Moltke will, I hope, con- vince you," he added, "that further resistance would be madness on your part." They sat down again, and Moltke once more assured General de Wimpffen that, independently of the great numerical superiority of his forces, he held positions from which, in a few hours, he could burn Sedan ; which, moreover, commanded all the issues from the place, 9—2 1.32 SEDAN. and were so strong that it would be impossible to take them from him. " Oh, they are not so strong as all that !" inter- rupted General de Wimpffen. " You do not know the topography of the en- virons of Sedan," replied Moltke ; " and here is a curious detail which is characteristic of your pre- sumptuous and thoughtless nation. At the begin- ning of the campaign you distributed to all your officers maps of Germany, when you had no means of studying the geography of France, when you had no maps of your own territory. Well ! I tell you that these positions are not only strong ; they are formidable and inexpugnable." ■ " I will profit by your previous suggestion, and send an officer to look at them," said General de Wimpffi^n. "You will do nothing of the kind," returned Moltke : " you will take my word for it. Besides, you have not much time for reflection. It is now midnight, the truce expires at four in the morning, and I shall not give you one moment's grace." Ultimately, on Count Bismarck whispering to him that the King was expected at nine, and that it would be better to await his Majesty's arrival. General Moltke agreed to give General de Wimp- ffen until nine o'clock, but no longer. General de Wimpffen, and the French officers accompany- SEDAN. 133 ing him, then returned to Sedan, where a council of war was held.'* Meanwhile, the 200 " other guns " were placed in position. But at nine it was not necessary to open fire. * The above account of the interview, in which the fate of MacMahon's army, and of France, was decided, is from a report communicated by an officer of General de Wimpffen's staff. Captain d'Orcet, to General Ducrot, from whose Journie de Sedan I have ventured to borrow it, in a slightly abridged form. (See Appendix A.) CHAPTER IX. AFTER THE BATTLE. HE inhabitants of the muddy, melancholy little village in which I tried to find a bed the night before the battle, were not precisely starving ; indeed, they seemed much more inclined to starve others than to starve themselves. But they were in a miserable state of fright, and had apparently passed one another the word to say that there was no food in the place ; at all events there was none for me, and but for the hospi- tality of friends I should at last have had to beg a piece of bread from the bakers of the Prussian army. The first evening — the night before the battle — all went well enough. A Prussian officer with whom I was travelling had a right to insist upon being fed, and he insisted upon it for himself and friend. Then the wine question arose. "There is no AFTER THE BATTLE. 135 wine in the house, dear gentlemen," said the woman into whose house we had, locust-like, de- scended. " Not one single drop. Your soldiers drank as many bottles as they could, and smashed what remained." "I know that," said my Prussian friend, "and deeply I regret it. But your husband told me that you had kept a' little private cellar of your own, which the Prussians knew nothing about." "If my husband has told yoUt" answered the woman, thrown completely off her guard, " that alters the question. Will you have Burgundy or Bordeaux ?" When I wanted to pay for this repast, I found that we were in a private house, and that my money would not be accepted. In private houses it was often difficult to know whether to offer money or not. The people considered themselves robbed if you didn't offer it, insulted if you did. When the dinner was over we had to get some sort of lodging, and were recommended to go to a certain M. Picard, who, we were told, had no one in his house. Picard said, " Try next door ;" but next door we were assured that Picard was the man, and that if he liked to do it he could give us a room. " Of course, if you insist upon it, you must have it," said Picard — a cunning sort of boor, whom 136' AFTER THE BATTLE. Balzac might have introduced into Les Paysans. " Let me see ! Would you like to have the room next this ? There is a wounded man in here— you see he is not dead. The ball has been extracted. The surgeon even says that he thinks he can bring him round ; but his wound has to be dressed every half hour, and that might disturb yiDU ; otherwise, if you like both of you to sleep on the ground by the side of the wounded man, for God's sake do so." Declined with thanks. "Then," said Picard, "you would perhaps like the room upstairs where my little boy is lying dangerously ill with the scarlet fever .' You have only to say so, and a bed shall be prepared for you at once." The scarlet fever was also declined. "You have an excellent room on the first floor, looking into the street," said the Prussian ; " I have already examined your house from the outside." " Yes," answered Picard, " and two young ladies on a visit to my wife — they went out for a walk an hour ago, and have not yet returned — are going to sleep in it. You would not, I suppose," glaring at us with dull, stupid, but ferocious eyes, as much as to say " there is no sort of atrocity, all the same, of which you are not capable" — "you would not, I sup- pose, ask me to make you up a bed there ?" AFTER THE BATTLE. 137 " What other rooms have you ?" we asked. " This one, the one you are now standing in," he repHed (we had left the room occupied by the wounded man), " and I will now tell you what I can do for you. In this room, in that bed, my wife and myself have slept every night for the last thirty-five years. I will now give it up to you, gentlemen, and my wife and myself will walk up and down the street all night while you are reposing." At last we went to the mayor, who kept, or ought to have kept, a list of available quarters. He could tell us of none ; but it appeared that in his own house, at one of the extreme ends of the town, doors shut, windows darkened, there were two mag- nificent suites of rooms, of which we occupied one. M. le maire could give us no breakfast next morning. He pleaded bachelorhood, and swore he had no cook ; nor could he say where even a piece of bread was to be bought. The night after the battle every one thought the war was at an end ; and, certainly, even the victors themselves were pleased to think so. As for the vanquished, their delight was something humiliating to witness. The triumph of the baser over the nobler instincts of humanity was complete. Their •Emperor had surrendered himself a prisoner, their army had been beaten as no army in this world was ever beaten before, and the miserable, panic-stricken. 138 AFTER THE BATTLE. famine-threatened people could not do otherwise than rejoice, for, at all events, no more Prussian soldiers would be quartered upon them. "Nous voila Prussiens !" exclaimed one man, with contented cynicism, as much as to say, " We are mortally disgraced, but we, at least, shall not die of hunger." The inhabitants in general were I cannot say whether better or worse than this ob- noxious personage. In their simple ndiveti they did not know, could not feel, how sad the result of the three days' fighting had been for France as a nation. They only knew, or believed they knew, that they were not to be plagued, worried, fright- ened any more by the presence of German troops. I said to one man, "You will not have many more soldiers marching in this direction. The other departments will now suffer." " Let them suffer," he replied. " We have had our turn." There was an official cry of " Light up!" when the Crown Prince was about to return. Candles had to be shown in every house, and I heard the com- mandant of the town call out when he passed one house in which no windows on the first floor were illuminated — for the simple, but sufficient reason, that the first floor of the house in question had none — " Lights, or your house shall be demolished !" AFTER THE BATTLE. 139 There is something strange, anomalous, paradox- ical — not to say cruel — in calling upon and forcing a population to illuminate, in celebration of what they ought to consider a heavy national calamity. The illumination was insisted upon, however, and very droll it was. Candles were displayed wherever it was possible to display them. I saw one man perched on the box of a carriage with a candle in his hand, and another man with a candle in his hand sitting astride a barrel. In one house the women shrieked and yelled under the impression' that a battle was about to begin, and cried out that what they had long foreseen was now coming to pass, and that every inhabitant of Ch6mery would be put to the sword. Several officers had copies of the Emperor's letter, which, repeated from mouth to mouth, acquired curious variations. A copy shown to me, and de- clared to be accurate, presented a strange and sig- nificant error. Instead of " N'ayant pas pu mourir a la t^te de mes troupes, je depose mon ^pee aux pieds de votre majesty" it ran : " N'ayant pas su mourir a la t6te de mes troupes," etc. General von Roon, who did not seem acquainted with all the circumstances of the Emperor's sub- mission, now arrived, and was soon supplied with full particulars. An officer, who, after speaking ta him for a moment, came away quickly from the 140 AFTER THE BATTLE. side of his carriage, said to me : " I was afraid he would ask me about his son, and I could not have answered him. He is in the artillery of the guard, and has received a terrible wound, from which it is impossible he can recover." Early the next morning I again took the road to Sedan, a few miles distant. Some thought the battle would be re-commenced — that is to say, that the town would be bombarded until, not only the Emperor, but the whole army surrendered. I had not slept the night before, nor breakfasted that morning, and on the road to Sedan had to make the usual, not always unprofitable, attempt to get something to eat, for, in the absence ot food, there was generally an incident, or a curious illustration of character, to be met with. On my inquiring at a roadside inn, about half- way between Chemery and Sedan, whether the proprietor could give me breakfast on his own terms, the customary negative answer was re-, turned. " I have nothing in the house," said the host, a burly, red-faced man, whom a day's fasting would not have injured ; " your soldiers have taken every- thing. But I must not abuse them," he added, "for if one of them had not given my wife and myself a piece of bread yesterday, we should have starved. AFTER THE BATTLE. 141 Moi qui vous park, monsieur, I should at this mo- ment be dead from hunger !" Without criticising the man's statement too closely, I felt somewhat ashamed at having applied for food to one who had so nearly fallen a victim to famine. He asked me whether there was any- thing new. " Nothing," I replied, " but what you must have already heard. You know that the Emperor has surrendered ?" "What!" he exclaimed. "That brigand, that coward, has surrendered ? And are they going to put a rope round his neck, and drag him three times round the walls of Sedan ?" I said I had not heard of any such intention be- ing entertained by the Prussians, and at the same time asked for the address of the village mayor. The innkeeper, after some little hesitation, showed me where the mayor lived. I drove to his house, , and asked whether there was any well-to-do man in the place who could be supposed to have a loaf of bread in his possession, and to be willing, for a consideration, to part with it. I might as well have searched for the philosopher's stone. I was continuing my way towards Sedan, when a lad ran after me, and shouted to me to return. I thought he had discovered a baker's shop, or, perhaps, that the mayor had conceived hospitable 142 AFTER THE BATTLE. intentions towards me. He told me, however, that the innkeeper had sent him to say that his wife had just returned, and that she was surprised and charmed to find that, if I would take the trouble to retrace my steps, she should be able, in a very few minutes, to give me some breakfast. The lad who had run after me was a young car- ter who had lost his cart, and with it his means of living. The Prussians, he believed, had wanted to make him a soldier, which, for a young man like him, who had never fired a gun in his life, was, he said, too hard. I agreed with him on that point, but also asked him of what use he thought a boy who had never fired a gun would be to the Prussians, who had already a good many trained soldiers of their own. He replied that perhaps the Prussians who had spoken to him had only wished to frighten him, but he was sure, though he did not understand their language, that they had said they would take him for a soldier. Accordingly, he had run away, leaving his cart and his two horses behind him. He was nov/ many leagues away from home, and, as he could not get back to his mother and sisters, he had gone, he said, to live with the innkeeper, simply that he might not be without food. It seemed to me that he had gone to the wrong place ; but, on arriving at the inn, I found a rich AFTER THE BATTLE. 143 and varied repast prepared. Whence it came, and why, did not for the moment concern me; but I afterwards sought an explanation of the mystery. The innkeeper then pointed out to me, that, from the remotest ages, it had been the custom to hon- . our the bearer of good news ; that, to him, as an advanced repubHcan, and a wine-merchant who once, under the Empire, had, for his pohtical opin- ions, been refused a Hcence, the news of the Im- perial collapse was glorious, and hence that break- fast, for which he declined to receive payment, either directly, or in the shape of an offering for the poor. All this may have been true, or the man may have disbelieved my statement that I was an Englishman, and assigned to me some occupation in connection with the Prussians. From a few hints that he let drop I gathered that my visit to the mairie had alarmed him. In any case, he gave me breakfast, and I left the inn' fortified for the day. In the meanwhile, I had heard no sound of can- non. It was plain that the battle had not been re- commenced, and that the army had capitulated. An hour or two afterwards I saw, near Donchery, a French farmer sitting outside his house, with an immense pile of grapes before him, which he began to distribute to a number of Wiirtemberg soldiers, exclaiming, as he gave them away : ■ 144 AFTER THE BATTLE. " There, brigand ! there, Arab ! there, bandit !" " Why," I could not help saying to him, " do you abuse these men, and at the same time give them such excellent grapes ?" " You may well say they are excellent," he re- plied. " I had the finest vine in all Champagne at the back of my house, and these chipailleurs" (a word not to be found in the dictionary of the Aca- demy, but which signifies, I believe, " pilferers ") " have all but stripped it. So I thought I would pick what grapes were left and give them away myself." "There, flayer of the poor!" he continued, re- suming his distribution, while the unconscious Wiirtembergers bowed their acknowledgments in silence ; " there, devourer of children ! there, son of the gallows ! there, man who believes neither in God nor devil !" When this curious but not incomprehensible per- son had given away all his grapes, he lighted a pipe and looked calm. You may see much that is sadly comic, but much more that is seriously sad, in time of war. The condition of a conquered population, espe- cially the morning after the conquest, must always be lamentable; but, on the other hand, the in- vaded in this last invasion had no violence to fear AFTER THE BATTLE. 145 at the hands of the invaders ; and this seems to me a very important point. " Violence, indeed !" said the French, when you spoke to them, as I often did, on the subject. " Why should they have recourse to violence when they get everything they want ?" Nevertheless other invaders have not only used personal violence to enforce the slightest demand, they have carried fire and sword into unoffending villages, so that the consequences of a battle have sometimes been more terrible than the battle itself. One of the least available cures for melancholy recommended by the learned author of the "Ana- tomy," is to see " two kings engaged in single com- bat." I had the satisfaction, though the sight was not one to inspire gaiety, to see the King of Prussia take leave of his late adversary, the Emperor Na- poleon, at the Chiteau de Belle Vue, near Sedan. I also saw the French Emperor, when King William had gone, come out into the garden and begin smoking his historical cigarettes, and was much struck by his composed manner, and the urbanity with which, in the modern French military stj-le, he raised his cap to all who saluted him. But what struck me, above all, in the appearance of his Majesty, and of the four generals — Prince Ney de la Moskowa, Pajol, Castelnau, and Reille 10 146 AFTER THE BATTLE. — who were with him, was the brilliant get-up of the whole party : their costumes were perfect, and they wore them with an excellent air. If I had just arrived in a balloon from China, landing on that memorable day in front of the Belle Vue Chateau, I should have fancied that the Frenchmen lounging on the stone steps or walking in the gar- den, and not the Prussians with whom they con- versed, were masters of the situation. This brilliancy of attire did not, I was assured, have the best effect on the fatigued and harassed soldiers. When Ducrot's ist and 3rd divisions saw the Emperor, his staff, and the whole of the Maison Militaire arrive in all their splendour at Douzy, two days before the battle of Sedan — tlie day of the flight and pursuit from Beau- mont — not one soldier (though Napoleon III. had not, by these particular troops, been seen since he left Chalons) cried, " Vive V Empereur f As for the members of the household, they were hissed and hooted. " Les Zouaves les otit gueuMs" said the French officer who gave me this information, adding (with j ustice), that the expression he used was " more fitted for the camp than the drawing-room." The soldiers, moreover, were of opinion that the gene- rals and the Emperor himself fared much better in the matter of food than the great bulk of the fight- AFTER THE BATTLE. 147 ing men ; and this opinion was, no doubt, well founded. I fancy, too, that the King of Prussia and the Prussian and Saxon Princes were not quite so hard up for victuals as that Bavarian soldier who asked me at La Besace to sell him part of my bread. The grumbling of the French troops proved only one thing — that they had no confidence in their leaders, and that there was perhaps some want of discipline in the army. On the esplanade in front of the Chateau of Belle Vue, from which, until two o'clock on Friday, the 2nd of September, artillery was still kept pointed towards the town of Sedan, I recognized, among the members of the military household, M. Caumont, the well-known hairdresser of the Rue Rivoli. M. Caumont, like other Frenchmen, holds theories, and he communicated to me his views re- specting socialism in the ranks, to which he insisted on attributing the otherwise unaccountable defeat and capture of the French army. , "Where was the Emperor during yesterday's battle ?" I asked M. Caumont, who had been in personal attendance on his Majesty since the com- mencement of the war. " For some hours, towards the end of the action," he replied, "the Emperor stood behind a battery and pointed guns himself." 10 — 2 148 AFTER THE BATTLE. Some of the French soldiers attributed their de- feat to the badness of the cartridges served out to them. Others believed that Count Bismarck had " squared " the Emperor ; and some of the Prussian soldiers had got hold of a curious fancy to the effect that Napoleon was onl)' to be kept at Wil- helmshohe until Paris was taken and the Republic quashed, when, " to punish the French," Count Bis- mark would reinstate him ! It is true that the Prussian were, in one respect, better than the French cartridges. An English officer once picked up a needle-gun and a chassepot cartridge, which had both been out all night on a damp battle-field, and, breaking them open, pointed out to me that in the latter the powder was caked, while in the former it was dry and serviceable. But the French were not defeated at Sedan, or any- where else, because their ammunition was either bad or insufficient, or because they were badly fed, or because they were without discipline. They must have be^n at least as well off for food up to the date of the battle as the Germans, who had outmarched their provision columns, and, living for the most part on the resources of the country, und in many places that the French had antici- pated them. Neither was it " the Prussian schoolmaster" who AFTER THE BATTLE. T49 beat the French schoolmaster at Sedan, whatever he may have done to the Austrian schoolmaster at Sadowa. The Prussian sergeant had more to do with it, and the Prussian officer more still, and the Prussian general most of all. If "the school- master " decided battles, the Saxon schoolmaster ought to have been victorious in 1866, for the Saxons are the best educated people in Germany ; and the Russians ought never to have held their ground against any description of European troops. I do not even think it was the immorality of the French that caused their defeats in the late war. They were never a very moral people, in our sense of the word ; and, judging by their literature, they are not more immoral now than they were in the days of the first republic and of the first Napoleon, when, in spite of their immorality, they gained a few victories. Nor had the French army suffered, as is often alleged, from the system of substitutes ; for it was precisely of substitutes— of re-enlisted men — that the Zouaves, Chasseurs, and other picked regiments (" regiments of 61ite " as Moltke called them, in awarding to them special praise*) were mainly composed. The French were in no want of ammunition,^nd in no great want of provisions ; and they were not * See page 130. ISO AFTER THE BATTLE. nearly so much demoralised as is generally as- serted. But there was no unity of command, no commander-in-chief of the entire army on the spot ; and if, moreover, at Sedan, MacMahon's army had been an army of Puritans, and every man in it had taken his Bachelor's degree, the Prussians, better led, twice as numerous, with more artillery and of longer range, elated by previous victories, and fully conscious of their immediate superiority to the French in men and material, must all the same have crushed them. CHAPTER X. FRANCS-TIREURS AND THE RIGHT OF SELF- DEFENCE. PASSED the night of the 2nd in the kitchen of a farm-house near Vendresse, with two correspondents, and I for- get how many officers of one of the companies of a PoHsh regiment belonging to the Fifth (Posen) Army Corps. The ancient, massively constructed building had exterior walls with turrets, like a fortress ; and the captain, as if to keep up the illusion, had placed sentinels outside the gates. The farm-house had been deserted, except by two farm servants, husband and wife — simple, good- natured people, who gave us hot wine at night, and plenty of straw to lie upon, and coffee with milk the next morning. I don't know why we slept in the kitchen ; perhaps because all the other rooms^ together with the passages, barns, and stables, were occupied by about three hundred soldiers — a 152 FRANCS-TIRE URS AND diminished company, with the remains of another company added to it. At Vendresse, where the King's head-quarters remained, from the night of the 31st until the 4th — starting on the morning of that day for Rheims — I noticed a proclamation, in great detail, against francs-tireurs, in which it was announced that, in accordance with the " Prussian military code," those using arms against the Germans must, in order to be looked upon as soldiers, wear a uniform bearing "distinctive marks inseparable from the person," and " recognizable at gunshot distance ;" and must, moreover, carry papers showing that they formed part of the French army. Persons in plain clothes, fighting without authorization from their government, would, if captured, be brought before a court-martial, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in a German fortress, or, in aggravated cases, executed. I believe that every case in which a franc-tireur actually shot a German soldier, was looked upon as an " aggravated case," and entailed the punishment of death. The proclamation against francs-tireurs had caused grea,t indignation among the few French at Vendresse, with whom I conversed on the subject ; but in the absence of some such law, marl^ing clearly the difference between soldiers and civilians, THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE. 155 and establishing the principle that, if an enemy is to enjoy the privileges of a soldier when captured, he. must accept the liabilities of a soldier when free, it would be impossible for an invading army to treat non-combatants as, in modern warfare, non- combatants are usually treated. If the apparently noble, but really barbarous, principle be recognized, that every man has, without conditions, a right to defend his native land, his village, and the house in which he was born, then it follows that an invading army must, for its own safety, imprison or destroy all inhabitants thus claiming an absolute right to resist it. At the same time, it is only successful invaders who can systematically enforce laws against un- military persons bearing arms. The Duke of Brunswick's army in 1792, being defeated, was often attacked by volunteers not in uniform — by armed peasants, in fact ; and no proclamations concerning distinctive marks, papers from the gov- ernment, and so on, could at that time have been of any avail. In 1 8 14, Prince Schwarzenberg, finding that a levy eti masse had been ordered, issued a procla- mation, not quite so explicit as to details, but in effect almost identical with the one published at Veodresse in 1870 against francs-tireurs. Napoleon, without believing much in the levy. 154 FRANCS-TIREURS AND en masse (" how," he asked, " can a general rising take place in a country where the revolution has killed the priests and nobles, and I have killed the revolution ?"), declared that he would retaliate, and that for every French volunteer executed, he would execute a prisoner of the allied army. But, as he retired without making prisoners, and the allies advanced, the threat was disregarded ; the peasantry saw which side was the strongest, and the levy en masse proved a failure * The Prussians, on entering France, had made known their views as to those against whom they waged war, and those whom they proposed not to molest; but it was not until after the battle of Sedan, when nearly the whole of the regular troops of France had been disposed of — one half shut up in Metz, the other half captured — that I met with a proclamation setting forth distinctly and in detail what sort of volunteer soldiers would not be regarded as soldiers if they fell into Prussian hands : in plain language, partisans not in the regular service of the Government, and National Guards not embodied for service throughout the war. While in the neighbourhood of Sedan, and on the subject of civilians appearing as soldiers, I may appropriately say a few words about Bazeilles, and * " L'Invasion dans le Ddpartement de la Marne." Par F. F. .Steenackers, Chapitre vi. THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE. 155 its destruction by the Bavarians. It has already passed into French history that the Bavarians, in consequence of having been fired upon by some civilians, who had beforehand put on thefir uniforms as National Guards, set the place on fire by hand, and drove back into the flames the inhabitants — old and young, women and children — as they en- deavoured to escape. The Duke de Fitzjames, in a letter published in the Times, gives that version of the affair ; but he does not profess to have seen what he describes. All he saw was the lamentable sight of Bazeilles in ruins. Baron Von der Tann, replying to the Duke de Fitzjames, confined himself to proving, by the official evidence of the mayor of Bazeilles, that only some forty inhabitants (and not seventeen hundred, as the Duke de Fitzjames had been informed), were missing from the village after the conflagration ; which, he argued, was sufficiently accounted for by the number of shells thrown into it from both sides. The general left untouched the question, whether the Bavarian infantry did or did not set fire to a portion of Bazeilles by hand ; and, if sio, under what circumstances. I believe I have read everything that has been written on the subject of the burning of Bazeilles ; and nearly the whole of the evidence on the subject is of the indirect, hearsay kind, not very valuable in iS6 FRANCS-TIREURS AND time of peace, and utterly worthless turning up in and just after the excitement of war. But the fighting at Bazeilles has also been described by an observant eye-witness, and by one eye-witness only ; and the author of the remarkable narrative of personal ad- ventures published in the Times (Sept. 8), under the signature of " M.P.," writing immediately after the battle of Sedan, had no idea that the Bavarians had been or ever would be charged with burning Bazeilles as a punishment to the inhabitants for taking up arms ; still less that they would be ac- cused of burning with the village 1700 out of 2000 of the villagers. It is clear, however, thatj during the progress of the action, Bazeilles, being already on fire in several places from the effect of shells, the Bavarians did their best to burn out French soldiers, who were attacking them from houses, and who refused to surrender ; clear, also, that the armed civilians, though mercilessly treated, vs^ere yet not burned alive. " I saw them," writes " M.P.," " taken with the arms in their hands. The men (but not the women, I was assured) would be hanged next day." A field of battle is first a terrible, then a pitiable, then a loathsome sight ; and the field or fields on which the battle of Sedan had been fought soon reached the loathsome stage. On the ground nearest the city the dead men, only two days after THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE. 157 the fight, had, for the most part, been buried. The dead horses had been skinned, cut up, and partially- eaten. The huge red carcasses were lying about everywhere, amid smashed helmets, broken muskets, rusty sabres, torn knapsacks, stray epaulettes, and battered accoutrements of all kinds — a slaughter- house and a dep6t for marine stores combined. On the way from Sedan to Bouillon, a manu- facturer from Sedan, whose acquaintance I had made on the road, asked me to stop at La Chapelle, the last village on the French side of the frontier, that he might make inquiries after a friend whom he had not seen since the great battle. La Chapelle may be said to have marked the last gap left open in the circle drawn around the French ; and the friend assured us that four or five hundred francs-tireurs, not belonging to the neighbourhood of Sedan, but for the most part Parisians — the corps, as I afterwards learned, of M. Mocquard — had made their appearance there, and fired upon the Prussian cavalry stationed at this point. Thereupon artillery was sent for, and the place bombarded. Our informant had quitted his house at the beginning of the general action, and told us that on his return he found that the " Crown Prince " of Prussia had made a call, and that he had even left his name written in pencil on one of the walls. iS8 FRANCS-TIREURS AND I could not understand the presence of the "Crown Prince" of Prussia at La Chapelle, and went into the house to see what the inscription spoken of really was. I copied it down, and it was literally as follows : — " Cette maison a €v€ quit^e intacte. " Schulenburg Mar^chal de la Cour de S. A. R. le " Prince Albert de Prusse, i, 9, 70. "IV. Cav. Div. III. Armee." The band of francs-tireurs who occupied La Chapelle with such disastrous results, had been recruited at Paris. From Paris they reached Me- zi^res, and from Mezi^res marched the day of the battle to La Chapelle, whence, as some said, they were dislodged by artillery. Others, how- ever, declared that the place had been deliber- ately bombarded, by way of punishment to the inhabitants for having harboured francs-tireurs — a course the inhabitants thought unjustifiably severe, seeing that the francs-tireurs had not been invited, and did not even belong to their neighbourhood. I cannot say that I saw any traces of a systematic bombardment ; but the Prussians would certainly have regarded as illegiti- mate an attack by an irregular, insignificant body of men, whose perfectly independent action might cause some injury to individuals, but could have no effect on the result of the battle. THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE. 159 I met several of these francs-tireurs at a cafe in , Bouillon, and found them by no means the desperate characters imagined by the Prussians ; clearly, however, not soldiers, or they would have been made prisoners at the frontier. In the cafd patronized by "les Mocquard" a great number of correspondents, from all parts, newly arrived via Brussels, were now writing ac- counts of the battle of Sedan. In one of these narratives which I afterwards saw in print, I was much struck by a flight of the peasants, imitated from Gothe's " Hermann and Dorothea," and a retreat of demoralized French troops, after Stend- hal's description of the rout at Waterloo. I also observed a reminiscence of G^ricault's wounded cuirassier, but nothing that belonged especially to the battle of Sedan. It is really, however, on the vanquished, not the victorious side, that the most dramatic incidents of war are to be seen — witness the accounts of Sedan in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," by M. Albert Duruy and M. Paul de Cassagnac, both in the fight ; and by M. Claretie, an outside observer. Only Sedan, to the inhabitants at least, was the next thin g to a surprise. Indeed, in the neighbourhood of Sedan, gaiety rather than fear would seem to have been the prevailing sentiment until the very eve of the i6o FRANCS-TIREURS AND battle. An officer of Ducrot's corps, in reading to me from his note-book the names of places at which his regiment had halted since Rheims, said, when he came to the date of the 30th, " Douzy ; yes, that's where we had the ball." The 30th was the day of Beaumont, two days before Sedan. " What could possibly make you give a ball at such a moment as that .'" I asked him. " Well," he replied, " we had the band with us, and a number of young ladies had come to see us from Sedan." The explanation seemed scarcely sufficient, so I made some inquiries on the subject. An inhabitant of Sedan told me that he had seen the dancing at Douzy, and it evidently had not occurred to him that there was anything unbecoming in it. As Ducrot's corps was the one alleged to have danced, I turned a year or so afterwards to that general's narrative of the campaign, to see whether it con- tained any mention of the gay interlude between the rout of a portion of the army at Beaumont and the capture of the entire army at Sedan. General Ducrot does not describe the dancino- but it is possible to gather from his pages when, where, and how it took place. On the 30th of August the 1 2th, ist, and 7th Corps were making for Montmddy, while the Sth Corps (General de THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENCE, i6i Failly) stood at Beaumont facing south, to cover the march of the rest of the army, A portion of the 1st corps (Ducrot's) advancing through Rau- court and Remilly, reached Douzy on the morning of the 30th. " The march forward," writes one of Ducrot's officers, " the beauty of the banks of the Meuse, a splendid sunshine . . . made us forget our previous wretchedness, and restored confidence to every one." — Journ^e de Sedan, p. 142. "A dazzling sun," writes another, "had succeeded the distressing rains of the preceding days. . . Several regiments marched through Remilly, making the air resoundwith their joyous strains, so long silent" (p. 94). In short, the weather was magnificent, the men were in good spirits, and, young ladies coming to see them, they asked them to dance. But this it is to be hoped has little to do with the " usages of war." More closely connected therewith was a sight I saw in the streets of Bouillon, where about daybreak a most enterprising correspondent "might have been observed" making a wood fire, by which to boil some coffee. Instead of accepting his invitation to share with him his public breakfast, I hastened with terrible slowness, by a constantly blocked-up system of railway communication, to Strasburgh, which with all Alsace was already in effect lost to France, II ^ ^ =^!^^^^ ^^^/#*=* ^ fl^r ^p5 «8!^^ M. s& ff CHAPTER XI. THE SIEGE OF STRASBURGH AND THE BOMBARD- MENT OF FORTIFIED TOWNS. 9 HE siege of Strasburgh from a general military point of view possessed no great importance. A few days, sooner or later, the old-fashioned fortress, unprotected by detached forts, its ramparts destitute of shell-proof casemates, the place closely invested, without the least pros- pect of relief, was sure to fall. The result being known beforehand, the chief interest of the siege lay in certain engineering experiments, and in the trial of various kinds of new guns and mortars, des- tined afterwards to be employed against Paris, and which would probably have been essayed against Metz itself, or at least against the forts around it, if that inassailable city had held out long enough. Although in the course of the last war the Germans commenced parallels before more than one fortress SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 163 (as, for example, Schlestadt), they never had occa- sion, except before Strasburgh, to complete their siege works. In front of Strasburgh, however, they made the three traditional parallels, with a half parallel in advance, crowned the glacis, met mine with counter mine, crossed the moat, captured the outworks immediately opposed to them, breached the walls, and would have entered by assault had not the untenable place almost at the last moment surrendered. The experience was quite new to the Prussians, practised warriors as they are ; and it was said that, in the whole German army, there was not one officer who, elsewhere than at a military academy, had followed, step by step, the operations of a regular siege. One foreign Government, that of Austria, sent a commissioner to the head-quarters before Strasburgh; and the technical account of the operations published by the officer in question, with the equally technical but more generally interesting narrative contributed to the Militarische Blatter, by Lieutenant Maier, of the Magdeburgh fortress artillery (4th Army Corps), are the sources to which military readers should turn for scientific information on the subject. Several important novelties were introduced. Thus it was found possible to breach walls and demolish sluices at immense distances by indirect firing ; and, invariably, not with solid shot II— 2 i64 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. but with shell. Indeed, " cannon balls " and solid shot in general seem to belong to the past more even than regular sieges. The modern mode of dealing with fortified towns is to shell them from a distance with rifled guns, and — later invention still — rifled mortars, such as for the first time in the history of war were used against Strasburgh. The Prussians have never liked sieges; never- theless the plan of reducing fortresses by means of " simple bombardment," is only peculiar to them in so far that they alone have had the opportunity of employing it systematically since the introduction of rifled artillery. French military writers declared openly before the war that it would be the duty of French commanders to bombard the civil and com- mercial quarters of the fortified towns they might attack ;* and as a matter of fact, the French bom- barded Paris under the Commune, without the least regard to the protests they themselves had raised against its bombardment a few months before by the Prussians. Vauban's fortresses were never con- structed on the supposition that, in case of attack, their walls alone would be fired upon, but in the belief that, unless regular siege operations were undertaken, the system of defence adopted would prove sufficient against the artillery of that time, * See article in Spedateur Militaire, referred to in Ap- pendix B. STEGE OF STRASBURGH. 165 which was only effective within a range of from about five to six hundred yards* The reason why formerly the civil population of fortified towns was often spared the terror and torture of a bombard- ment, was not because the warriors of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries were more humane than those of the present day, but because their guns were less powerful. There were political reasons, however — national reasons, it may be said — for which the besiegers hesitated to lay the whole of Strasburgh in ruins ; and as no relieving army was to be ex- pected,t they could afford to wait a little longer before Strasburgh than before some other fortified towns, which met with shorter, sharper, but not in the long run such severe treatment. For the un- happy capital of Alsace, which held out to a greater extremity than any other bombarded town, suffered ten times as much as Paris, in order to prove that it was French ; and was visited with a prolonged bombardment of the ramparts encircling and touch- ing the city, instead of a decisive bombardment of the city itself, because the Germans regarded it as already German. * General Ducrot's figures apropos of the guns of Sedan. t Once only, when for a time the Prussians had lost sight of MacMahon, a telegram of caution was received at the head-quarters before Strasburgh, to the effect that French troops might perhaps be marching to the relief of the place. i66 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. Strasburgh was summoned to surrender on the 8th of August, two days after the battle of Worth, and approached by a considerable body of troops on the I2th. On the 14th, the day on which Count Bismarck-Bohlen and Count Bonin entered upon their functions as general-governors of Alsace and of Lorraine, General Werder, having left the staff of the Crown Prince of Prussia for that purpose, as- sumed the command of the army before Strasburgh, consisting of the Baden division, the division of the landwehr of the guard, and a mixed division of Prussian and other regiments of the line. On the 1 6th, Strasburgh having meanwhile been invested, the French made their first sortie ; and on the 1 8th the citadel and Finckmatt barracks — known as the scene of Prince Louis Napoleon's arrest when he entered Strasburgh as a pretender to the French throne in 1836 — were bombarded from batteries established on the right bank of the Rhine at Kehl. Although the orders on this occasion — as they were read to me by an artillery officer from his order-book — were to shell the military buildings just named, many private houses ai>d public esta- blishments of a civil character were struck and set on fire while the Baden artillerymen were getting the range. The French replied by bombarding Kehl, a por- tion of which, including nearly the whole of the SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 167 principal street, was burned to the ground. Kehl that night was entirely deserted by the inhabitants, who did not return until after the fall of Strasburgh; and General Werder was said at the time to have addressed to General Uhrich an impossible com- plaint as to his having bombarded an open city. The bombardment of the i8th was little more than an experiment made by the Baden artillery with heavy guns brought from the fortress of Ras- tadt before the regular siege-artillery had arrived. The batteries at Kehl were some 1400 yards from the fortifications ; and it was thought that at that distance their fire would not prove very effective. The result, however, was so satisfactory, that it was resolved to try whether Strasburgh might not be brought to capitulate by "simple bombardment" alone. Notwithstanding the absence of detached forts, there were difficulties worth considering in the way of a regular siege. The place was surrounded by water except on the north-west side, which was specially protected by ravelins, horn-works, lunettes, and all the most approved impediments to a hostile approach. Then the operations of a siege could not fail to occupy some weeks, while, on the other hand, " simple bombardment " directed against a rich and populous city like Strasburgh, with a feeble garrison, which would have to defend itself on the ramparts in open batteries, might force the inha- i68 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. bitants to bring such pressure to bear on the com- mandant that he would surrender forthwith. Gene- ral Uhrich's garrison consisted of only 11,000* regular troops with 6000 mobiles, francs-tireurs, national guards, and sailors ; and Strasburgh had 84,000 inhabitants. The sailors, it may be here mentioned, had come to Strasburgh under the com- mand of Admiral Excelmans, to man a fleet of gunboats which was to have manoeuvred on the Rhine. <, The arrival of 200 rifled guns, and about 100 smooth-bore mortars, enabled the besiegers to com- mence a regular bombardment from various points on the evening of the 24th August. In addition to the Baden batteries, the artillery now before Stras- burgh included the fortress artilleryf of the 4th, Sth, 6th, 7th, and loth Army Corps, and of the Guard Corps, besides that of the Wurtemburgh division, and of one or both of the two Bavarian corps ; making in all 33 fortress companies, with * These are the Prussian numbers. General Uhrich, in a proclamation to the inhabitants of Strasburgh (loth of August), declaring that he means to defend the place as long as possible, puts down the number of the garrison at 11,000 men, without counting the sedentary national guard. t A Prussian artillery brigade, of which there is one to each army corps, consists of two artillery regiments, one of field artillery, the other of fortress, or, as it would be called in England, garrison artillery. SrEGE OF STRASBURGH. 169 ffbm 7000 to 8000 men. Batteries were con- structed for about 100 pieces, partly rifled 24- pounders (carrying 60-pound shells), and partly heavy mortars. A fresh summons to surrender, threatening bom- bardment as the alternative, had been sent in on the 22nd ; and on the evening of the 24th a terrible fire was opened upon all parts of the city. The bombardment was kept up relentlessly throughout the night of the 24th, and again throughout the night of the 25th. On the 26th the white flag was looked for in vain ; and it was determined, as the two nights' bombardment had not produced the desired effect, to undertake regular siege operations. Meanwhile, the famous Library and the Picture Gallery, among other public buildings, had been entirely destroyed. The roof of the Cathedral, too, had been burned, and the cross on the tower struck by a shell, so that, but for the surrounding props which maintained it in a crooked position through- out the siege, it wquld have fallen. The besiegers had hoped that the bombardment would bring about an immediate surrender, and thus liberate the 50,000 men detained around the fortress. But no such result had ensued, so that the Library might, after all, have been spared. Certainly, the rarest of its rare contents might have been saved; for the authorities . of Strasburgh,- 1 70 SIEGE OF STRA SB URGH. warned beforehand, had had time enough to put them in some place of security. The bombardment was continued while pre- parations for commencing the siege-works were being made, but was now directed, as much as possible, against the ramparts. As new batteries, however, were erected, and brought nearer and nearer to the walls so did the number of projectiles directed against the fortifications increase ; and though the centre of the city was as much as possible spared, fires were lighted every night, and houses, and sometimes whole streets, destroyed. The two quarters which especially suffered, and which the besieging artillery, in fact, laid in ruins, were the Stone Faubourg, at the back of the gate of the same name, that being the main object of attack in the north-west front, before which the siege-works were constructed ; and the National Faubourg at the back of the citadel on the other side of the town, which, as the garrison's chief stronghold, was bombarded without intermission from the batteries at Kehl. Sometimes the shells fired continuously at the citadel on one side, and at the Stone Gate on the other, went considerably beyond their mark, and fell in the centre of the town. Shells, too — so completely was all Strasburgh within range — were thrown right across the town, so as to take the soldiers on the ramparts in rear. Thus the distinc- SIEGE OF STRASBVRGH. 171 tlon between bombarding the town and bombard- ing the ramparts alone must to the inhabitants have appeared somewhat illusory. It is certain, all the same, that, after their first ineffective endea- vour to reduce Strasburgh by " simple bombard- ment," the besiegers spared the town as niuch as they could, consistently with their resolution to take it as rapidly as possible, by means of siege operations. If occasionally they threw a shell at the observatory established by the French on one of the towers of the Cathedral, that is to be ex- plained by the fact that the French had not thought fit to discontinue its use. On the morning of August the 2Sth, after the first deliberate night-bombardment of the city, the Bishop of Strasburgh went out under a flag of truce, and endeavoured to reach General Werder's head-quarters, where he hoped to find the Grand Duke of Baden, with whose family he had long been on friendly terms. He was anxious to obtain permission for the women and children to leave Strasburgh, but was informed at the outposts that his application would be in vain, and that he could not proceed. As Strasburgh ultimately fell through the effect of siege operations, and neither through famine, nor through the terror caused by " simple bombardment," it is obvious that the women and children might have been suffered to depart with- 172 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. out the result of the siege being thereby affected. It is, at the same time, only fair to remember that ^ General von Werder was bound to leave no means untried for forcing the enemy to capitulate ; and one, apparently possible, probable means of in- fluencing a population of 84,000, was the severe one of hunger. The first parallel was made on the night of the 29th, without accidents, and almost without inter- ference. It was dark, and the officers marched to the foot of the glacis, and measured the distance unobserved. Soon, however, fire-balls were thrown in the neighbourhood of the working parties ; and the men of the 30th Regiment, beneath whose cover they dug, and who were themselves en- trenched at about 400 paces from the fortress, expected an attack, though none was made. The ground laid open was just before Schilitigheim, a village commanding the north-west front of the fortress, where General Ducrot, chief of the Stras- burgh military district, had vainly urged, in 1866, that a fort should be constructed. Such a fort would have closed the one possible approach by means of trenches, since, on all other sides, the place was surrounded by canals and canalized streams. A parallel is a trench — usually about three feet deep and ten feet wide, with a breastwork thrown up before it, about three feet high — more or less SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 173 " parallel " to that front of the fortress which it is proposed to attack, and probably some five or six hundred yards distant from it. Batteries are esta- blished in the first parallel (which, at Strasburgh, was 1200 yards (1800 paces) long) ; and zig-zag cpm- munications, or " approaches," are dug to a second parallel, which may be 250 or 300 yards in ad- vance of the first, and about half as long. Approaches and second parallels are armed with batteries ; and fresh approaches, equally armed, are pushed forward to a third parallel, about half the length of the second, and some hundred and twenty or hundred and fifty yards nearer the fortress. Guns are placed in the third parallel, and in a " half parallel " yet farther in advance. The third parallel and "half parallel " both lead by short approaches to the glacis ; on the summit of which a last trench is dug, and armed with batteries commanding the outworks in front of the main wall. This is called " crowning the glacis ;" and when the glacis has been crowned the work is approaching its end. The first parallel ran in front of one of the great Schilitigheim breweries, from which a. good view of Strasburgh could be obtained, but which was natu- rally much exposed to artillery and other fire. Fortunately for lookers-on, the shots from chasse- p6ts and wall-pieces were generally aimed too high, and passed, whizzing, over the brewery roof. 1 74 SIEGE OF STRASB URGH. The shells were better directed, and often fell In and about the trenches. But the besiegers' batteries were not much injured, and their loss in killed and wounded, chiefly from shell, amounted to only about ten a day. The civil population of Strasburgh lost that number daily, in killed alone. The second parallel ran through the cemetery ; and the excited Strasburghers used to imagine that the besiegers — without the least regard to the ma- terial unfitness of such projectiles — fired at them crosses torn from the desecrated graves. But bits of iron from shells are of various forms, and the leaden sheath in which the elongated shell is en- veloped assumes, violently separated from its con- tents, the most fantastic shapes. In sieges, as in other operations of war, that peaceful invention, the electric telegraph, plays an important part ; and at Strasburgh a telegraphic wire ran through the trenches, and connected the parallels and approaches with head-quarters. There was also telegraphic communication between the batteries at Kehl and a church tower close by ; whence an artillery officer watched each shot, and corrected or approved the gunner's aim according to its eff"ect. Before quitting the trenches I must not forget to mention that, in the first parallel a so- called cafe was established, which, in contempt, as it were, of the French artillery, was named "Cafe Sans Souci." STEGE OF STRASBVRGH, 175 The glacis having been reached by means of the parallels and approaches, and duly "crowned," it must now be explained that between the glacis and the Stone Gate, through which an entry was to be forced, stood two ihiportant outworks called "lunettes," numbered in the plans of Strasburgh "52" and "S3," and separated from the wall of the glacis by a ditch or moat 14 feet deep and 180 wide. Lunette 54, which commanded lunettes 52 and 53, had been first made untenable by 160-pound shells from a rifled mortar battery, established about a mile off at the farthest extremity of the first parallel. The walls, too, of lunettes 52 and S3 had been battered by shells from a distant indirect breaching battery of rifled 24-pounders : but before these works could be entered by the besiegers, a reconnaissance all round them was made swimming by Captain Ledebour. The same gallant officer discovered a mine which, before further operations could be undertaken, had to be dealt with through an appropriate sap. A few nights later the brave Captain Ledebour was mortally wounded ; but not until the Prussians, crossing on a bridge of barrels, had occupied first lunette 53, and afterwards lunette 52. From batteries established in the occupied lu- nettes, and from the indirect breaching batteries, the bastions at the side of the Stone Gate were literally 176 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. demolished. There was now an open breach : the ramparts were so swept by the besiegers' artillery that the French' soldiers could no longer mount them ; and at last, when the moment for the assault was approaching — though, inasmuch > as there was still six feet of water in the moat between besiegers and besieged, it had not yet actually arrived — at last, on the 27th of September, at five o'clock in the afternoon, in the midst of a most infernal cannonade, the white flag was hoisted above the remains, the mere skeleton, the tottering frame-work, of the citadel. Several shots were fired at the flag from the inside ; and we afterwards heard that some foolish fanatics had raised the customarj' cry of " treason." Then another flag appeared on the Cathedral tower, and all at once the ear was surprised by a remark- able silence. There was a general feeling of relief on the part of the besiegers. The question of the assault, anxiously discussed for some days past, had been satisfactorily solved, and both sides were spared the final horror of an entry through the breach. The surrender of Strasburgh on the 27th (it was formally delivered up on the 28th) was, in some measure, a surprise to the Germans. General Uhrich had lost it, but General von Werder could not have taken it from him for several days. The water in STEGE OF STRASBURGH. 177 front of the breach was too wide and too deep to be crossed in front of the French fire, feeble as that fire had become. Some doubted even whether the assault could be delivered on the 30th — the day on which, for sentimental national reasons, every- one declared that it would be made. The 30th of September, 1 681, was the day on which Louis XIV. seized Strasburgh in time of peace ; and it was Tioped that not later than the 30th of September, 1870, it would be recovered by the Germans. No salute was fired when Strasburgh fell. The 28th and 29th of September passed without any sign of rejoicing ; and it was not until the 30th that the •joy of the Germans at regaining possession of a city which, rightly or wrongly, they looked upon as national property, was expressed in the form of thanksgiving services. For one thing the Germans were really thankful — for not having been obliged to take the city by assault. Numerous French writers have reproached the Prussians with not cg-ring to take fortified towns by the method of Vauban, and with habitually pre- ferring the safer plan of reducing them by " simple bombardment." But if an entry by assault cannot be effected in absolute security by the besiegers, it is the most terrible of all warlike operations to the besieged ; and the inhabitants of those towns which 12 178 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. the Prussians bombarded most severely — even the cruelly-tried inhabitants of Strasburgh, where the loss of life was greater than in all the other bom^ barded cities and towns put together — may con- gratulate themselves on having escaped the last trial of an assault. It is not to be supposed that the Prussians, had Strasburgh really been stormed, would have put in force the barbarous practice of sacking the city and (as an almost necessary consequence) slaying the inhabitants at will ; though, in the absence of posi- tive information, it is difficult to say what the rule on the subject may be, as laid down in that inac- cessible document, the Prussian Military Code.* The theory at the bottom of the ancient Law of Sacking was that, to tempt the soldier to face the dangers of an assault, it was desirable to hold out to him the prospect of unlimited rapine. All laws, human and divine, were set aside as a temptation to ruffians who agreed to run great risks, on con- dition of being allowed, during a certain space of time, to indulge every brutal and savage propensity which at other moments they were condemned to * The American Instructions are explicit enough on the point (Appendix C). They forbid pillage in all cases (art. 44), and specially forbid the sacking of towns taken by assault (art. 44). They at the same time repudiate the idea of re- stricting commanders as to the means to be employed for injuring the enemy (art. 30). SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 179 keep in something like restraint. But in those days criminals were freely admitted — were even delibe- rately drafted — into armies, and all soldiers were -driven like slaves. The greater the reason, it may be said, for never relaxing a discipline which was of a purely mechanical kind. Soldiers, neverthe- less, were let loose, like hounds, on certain occasions, and especially on such diabolical occasions as the storming of a town. In the present day, that Prussian soldiers, repre- senting the whole population of Prussia, except the criminal class, would need to be excited to the per- formance of their duty by the prospect of violence at will, to Ije perpetrated upon a defenceless popu- lation, is an idea that cannot be entertained. Nor would the kind of discipline now cultivated in the Prussian army admit of such exceptional licence. Nor would the chiefs, in any case, be likely to tolerate it. Nevertheless, in an assault upon a town houses would have to be stormed. It would be difficult to distinguish between the military and the civil occupants of the buildings attacked ; and in all street fighting the civil population, whether taking up arms in the excitement or not, is sure to suffer. Moreover, by the laws of war in e^ery country, a shot fired from a private house exposes the inmates to summary execution ; and of this law the inhabitants of Strcisburgh were in fact 12 — 2 i8o SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. reminded by a proclamation from the mayor the very day the Prussian and other German troops made their entry into the city. As it was, a few shots were fired just as a portion of the 30th Regiment marched in ; but it was im- possible to see whence they came, and no one seemed to take the trouble to inquire. Probably some despondent soldiers, having to give up their arms, wished at least to give them up empty. The French articles of war expressly forbid the surrender of a fortress unless the commandant shall previously have repelled at least one assault by a practicable breach. "The Military Law," says the article in question (art. 218), "condemns to capital punishment every commandant who gives up his place without having forced the besiegers to pass by the slow and suc- cessive stages of a siege, and before having repulsed at least one assault on the body of the place by practicable breaches." Accordingly, when during the siege the Grand Duke of Baden wrote to General Uhrich, entreating him, for the sake of the inhabitants, to give up Strasburgh, which he had bravely defended, but obviously could not defend beyond a certain point then fast approaching, General Uhrich felt himself bound to consider — not the interests and safety of SIEGE OF STRASBVRGH. i8i the inhabitants — not his own military credit, so far as that could be dissociated from strict observance of the injunction conveyed in the cited article of war— but the article of war itself. He had made such a defence as no other French general made throughout the war (" a proof," said the ingenious Germans, " of his German origin ") ; but he could not "repel," he could not even await, an assault, because at the last moment, in presence of the hurricane of fire kept up by the Prussians, it was a physical impossibility for his men to remain on the ramparts. He had declared, in one of his first proclamations, that he would hold the place as long as he had " a soldier, a biscuit, and a cartridge ;" and when he did surrender he had, effectively, no soldiers left. He was unable, all the same, to observe the strict letter of the article of war; and no other French general, in the whole course of the war, approached its obsei-vance. Metz, with its girdle of detached forts, was the one fortress in France where the inhabitants were safe from the besiegers' fire. All the old Vauban fortresses, with the exception of a few minor ones perched on hills, proved mere traps, and held out just so long as the Prussians happened to be unable to bring suitable artillery against them. Then it was a mere question between the determination, perhaps also the humanity, of the defenders on one side, and the number and calibre of the guns on the other. i82 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. "It is admitted now," says a French military- writer, "that when all is lost, when neither the artillery nor the infantry have been able to arrest the advance of the enemy, it is due to the honour of the army to sacrifice a few squadrons of cavalry."* So it may be said that when neither the walls of the fortress nor the fire of the garrison are found to- be of the least avail against a bombardment, it is thought necessary, for the sake of an article of war which cannot be observed, to sacrifice a certain number of the townspeople. Of course there are cases in* which the command- ant is bound, at whatever risk to the inhabitants, to hold out to the last moment ; and these are just the cases in which the attacking force — also at whatever risk to the inhabitants^is bound to do all in its power to hasten the surrender. During the winter campaign in the north of France the Prus- sians attached great importance to the possession of the once impregnable fortress of Pdronne. Peronne held out. The Prussians bombarded it.' An army was marching to its relief, so it still held out. The Prussians bombarded it all the more, determined that it should fall before the relieving army arrived ; and tjie end was that, when half the houses in the town had been more or less demolished, and the * " Campagne de 1870." Par un officier de I'Etat-Major de I'Armde du Rhin. SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 185 ■fine Old cathedral not touched, here and there, like that of Strasburgh, but simply reduced to a heap of stones and rubbish, the commandant, after a twelve •days' bombardment, which had injured neither the walls nor the guns nor one soldier of the garrison, gave in. Meanwhile twelve inhabitants had been killed, General Faidherbe * says " une vingtaine ;" and he himself shows, by a process of reasoning which he afterwards designates as " specious," but which is only logical, that the modern— or, as some say, the Prussian — method of taking towns is far more humane than the older and, according to general belief, milder method. Pdronne taken by the ancient -system would, he says, "have perhaps cost the besiegers from 3000 to 4000 men, and us from 1000 to 1500. But suppose," he goes on to say, "that a town resigned itself to utter ruin, and thus forced the enemy to follow up the bombardment by regu- lar siege operations ? Then," he concludes, " the besieger would find no advantage in the destruction of the civil population, and would be obliged to re- nounce his odious system under pressure of universal •execration." The experience, however, of the late war seems to show that "simple bombardment" practised * " Campagne de I'Armee du Nord." Par le G&dral Faid- Jierbe. Page 57. i84 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. against small places must bring about a surrender, P^ronne yielded after twelve days' bombardment ; Soissons after four ; Thionville, exposed to the fire of the very heaviest guns, originally destined not for Thionville, but for the forts of Metz, after two. In the case of Thionville the Prussians knew they could not, within any reasonable time, reduce the place by investment, for it was full of provisions conveyed there from Luxemburgh for Bazaine's army, in view of a successful sortie. Eager, then, to secure the use of the railway from Metz to Luxem- burgh, which Thionville blocked, they attacked the town with i6o-pounders, of the Strasburgh pattern, and all sorts of minor artillery, until the Council of Defence, who in the first instance had solemnly cautioned the commandant against imi- tating the treasonable example of Bazaine, begged him, and for some little time begged him in vain, to capitulate, before the whole town was knocked to pieces. Bricks and mortar suffered terribly at Thionville ; but, though most of the houses were injured, only one inhabitant was killed. General Ducrot, who pointed out the weakness of the French military system, and the powerlessness of France in face of Prussia,* long before the war * " Papiers Secrets de TEmpire." (Letter of 1867 to General Trochu, saying that France could only put in the field 300,000 men and 600 guns, against Prussia's 600,000 and 1200 guns.^ SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. 185 broke out, thought Strasburgh incapable of standing a week's siege ;* and, instead of entering useless, and illogical protests against the bombardment of fortified towns, recommended, and still recommends, that the old fortified towns of France be deprived of their military character, and that in their place a system of entrenched camps, connected by lines of railway, be established. Indeed, the attacks made upon the Prussians in respect to the modern method of reducing fortified towns, will not, from any— above all, from a humanitarian — point of view, bear the slightest examination. As regards their alleged un- willingness to expose themselves, let it be remem- bered, that at the very beginning of the campaign they made an attempt to take the small, but im- portant, because railway-protecting, fortress of Toul by escalade ;f and that the attempt, however gallantly made, failed so disastrously that to repeat it else- where was not to be thought of. At Strasburgh the losses among the civil popu- lation were scarcely greater day for day during the deliberate bombardment of the town than during the progress of regular siege operations ; nor, in the case of a populous city, can it well be otherwise when siege operations are carried on vigorously with powerful modern artillery commanding, even * " La Joumde de Sedan.'' Page 48. t See ante, page 79. ^86 SIEGE OF STRASBURGH. from the most distant parallel, the whole area of the place. But the fate of unhappy Strasburgh, the one fortified city in France which the Prussians >in besieging are supposed to have " spared," was, indeed, lamentable; for after it had been bombarded with a severity deemed amply sufficient to bring about an immediate surrender, it was attacked by another method more prolonged, and, during' the whole time of its continuance, almost equally -severe. From the first bombardment of Strasburgh until its capitulation, upwards of 300 of the inhabitants were killed and about 1700 wounded. The Paris- ians made light of their bombardment, but they never knew what bombardment really meant. If the bombardment of Paris had been on the same scale as that of Strasburgh, Paris would have lost all its libraries, all its picture galleries, many of its churches, all its theatres, and — due proportion being always observed — from 30,000 to 40,000 in killed and wounded of the civil population. I have seen it stated that the Germans on enter- ing Strasburgh were received with a certain shyness, as though the Strasburghers felt that after all they had to deal with men of their own kindred. It is •certain that the Strasburghers were solemnly cautioned against firing on their relatives by eth- nology ; and it seemed to me that they received SIEGE OF STRASBVRGH. 187 them as a brave but beaten population might be ■expected to receive soldiers who had destroyed or injured the greatest ornaments of their city, laid in Tuins two large quarters, and wounded, mortally or ■otherwise, one man, woman, or child out of every forty inhabitants. General Uhrich had already left the city, and his farewell proclamation, still on the walls, was as elo- r "Fridherbe," "Faidherbe.'j .5i:es;i