alifornia gional nlity Ml *m MY EXPERIENCES WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. VOL. II. MY EXPEBIENCES OF THE ¥AE FRANCE AND GERMANY. ARCHIBALD FORBES, ).\E OF THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS OF " THE DAILY NEW; IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: HUPST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1871. 77,( Ilvjht «/ T.-iu ylo.tiou is Resort 1. LONDON : BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., FRINTKRS, WI1ITEFRIARS. CONTENTS. PART III. PARIS. CHAPTER I. TO THE GREAT SORTIE 1 CHAPTER II. FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR . . .141 CHAPTER III. FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE . ... L'72 PART LV. THE CONQUERED AND THE CONQUERORS. CHAPTER I. THE CONQUERED 070 CHAPTER II. THE CONQUERORS 4o3 PART III. PARIS. MY EXPERIENCES WAR BETWEEN FRANCE & GERMANY. CHAPTER I. TO THE GREAT SORTIE. Having returned to England for a few days after quitting Metz, it became my duty to proceed to the vicinity of Paris, to act as one of the watchers of the terrible drama which was being slowly but steadily played out with the beautiful metropolis as the centre of interest. The siege of Paris may be said to have com- menced on the 21st of September, on which day the left Hank of the 3rd army, and the right flank of the Maas army came together round Paris like the closing claws of a crab, and the grip was never relaxed till the pre- liminaries of peace were accepted at Bordeaux. The armies, divisions, brigades, and regiments dropped into their appointed places, as you may see the bolts of a strong safe-lock fall when the key is turned. The posi- tions taken up on the opening days of the siege were not 2 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. materially altered till the armistice. Temporarily and rarely an effort of the French caused a slight bulging out of the circle of environment, hut the lost ground was always recovered. During the two months that had elapsed before I found myself before Paris there had been many skirmishes ; one important sortie in force, that of the 21st October ; and the capture and recapture of Le Bourget, the former event, characterised by no great shedding of blood, occurring on the 28th October, the latter, a desperate and bloody affair, taking place on the 31st October. A detailed account of the recapture of Le Bourget, gathered from the leading participators who had been left alive, will be found in the course of this chapter. Choosing the road I knew best, I left Sedan at ten o'clock on the night of the 13th of November in the company of a Prussian courier bound for the head- quarters at Versailles, a favour for which I owe many acknowledgments to the distinguished personage through whose permission it was accorded. There was but very little interest attaching to a journey performed at full speed and without a halt, save for the purpose of chang- ing horses at each stage. But one of its episodes may be worth narrating as an illustration of the watchful scru- pulousness and sense of discipline animating German soldiers on sentry duty. My companion happened to be in civilian dress, not having expected to leave TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 3 Belgium, and lie therefore could not show the overt stamp of authenticity which the Feldjager uniform con- fers. Thus at every turn he had laboriously to verify himself. Sedan was in a state of siesre. the gates beino- shut at an early hour in the evening, and an order from the commandant had to be exhibited to the Landwehr under-officer at the gate before he would lower the draw- bridge and make patent the way through the other defences. Just as we were outside, it occurred to my companion that he would not be likely to progress unless he had the watchword, and he asked the under-officer of the gate guard to give it to him. I believe this unyield- ing man, firm to the letter of his orders to owe the watchword to nobody, would have refused it to Count Moltke himself, had he been out of uniform. There was no help for it, but to drive back to the commandant in the town, where the courier duly got the watchword, accompanied by the' pleasing intelligence that it only held good for the garrison, and that he would probably encounter another watchword before he had been a mile on his road. AW' received confirmation of this when we reached the hamlet which forms a suburb of Donchery, on the south side of the Mouse. To the ''halt'" of the Land well r-man in the road in front of the houses, we were able to give a satisfactory response, and the watch- word having passed, we were told to pass likewise. But we had not gone twenty yards when another hoarse I! '2 4 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. challenge came sounding out of the darkness. It came from a post of regulars, who had a watchword of their own, which prevailed throughout the brigade that occupied the territory as far as Flize. The regulars refused to have any connection with the gentlemen over the way, in the shape of the Landwehr, and the Land- wehr watchword was of as little value as a brass sovereign at the counter of the Bank of England. In vain did the Landwehr sentry represent to his brother of the line that the travellers were all right, his demand for a watchword having been responded to. The sentry of the regulars would neither allow a passage nor reveal the watchword. The courier had to dismount and cross the bridge which leads over the Meuse into Donchery, where he found an officer, and became possessed of the precious watchword. Precious it turned out to be for only a very brief period. On the slope between Dom and Flize Ave were challenged by a patrol of two men, who in the accustomed manner demanded the watchword. My com- panion gave that which lie had received at Donchery, but it seemed we were already out of the region where it had efficacy. The men of the patrol repudiated it, and looked gravely at each other. Then they spoke in a low tone of the necessity for taking us back to Dom, to avert which fate my companion produced copious legitimations, and at last contrived to satisfv the patrol that he was really a person to be permitted to pass. TO THE GREAT SORTIE. O They not only let us pass, but they gave us the watchword which prevailed in the parts we were about to traverse. With no small gratitude we accepted the same, and went on our way rejoicing. Some distance outside of Boulzicourt, on the summit of a little swell, we were suddenly challenged in loud and stern tones. The horses had a good deal of way on them, and the driver could not pull them up quite within their own length. Louder and sterner came the challenge repeated, and we heard a couple of ominous clicks, as the sentries on the double post cocked their needle-guns. Just at the moment the moon flashed out, and there in the path stood the two stalwart men, with their weapons at the " charge," the bayonet points in very close proximity to the noses of our team. The driver stopped his horses just in time, and my companion, in the measured under- tone in which this mystic communication is always made, proceeded to enunciate the watchword. There was a pause that was quite oppressive, till the sentry, instead of the welcome " Pass," startled us by saying " No, there is a mistake ! " Of course there was nothing for it but that we should be conducted to the guard as sus- picious persons, who had attempted to pass witli a wrong watchword. Here it became necessary for my companion to descend and elaborately to vindicate his character by the production of his papers seriatim. Then, and not till then, did the under-officcr thaw, and communicate the 4 6 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. information that our version of the watchword was wrong but by a single syllable. The patrol had blundered. I am certain the mistake was not ours — too much inconvenience was the sequence of an error for us to lapse into it through carelessness. At length we made a fresh start with the rectified watchword, which stood us in stead through several posts, and then came to an end as others had done. Two posts, however, consisting of single sentries, we contrived to satisfy without the watchword by the exhibition of legitimations, and drove on till interrupted by a challenge from a double post out- side the village of Mondigny. The sentries demanded the watchword. There was no watchword forthcoming. " Why ? " " Well, the road was horribly tantalising, every other mile there; was a new watchword, and so difficult was it always to take up the new one that the attempt had to be given up." A grunt, in which there was assuredly incredulity, was the response, and then the sentries took post one on either side of the carriage, ported their arms, and gave the word to march. On reaching the guard the undcr-officer gradually became satisfied that my companion was neither a spy nor an unauthorised traveller, and gave us permission to pro- ceed. The courier ventured to ask him for the watch- word. Never .shall 1 forget the look and accent of holy horror with which the honest fellow exclaimed " God forbid ! " He would let us pass, to be dealt with by the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 7 tender mercies of the next post we should meet ; but the watchword — that was his holy of holies, the palladium of his duty — not to he permitted unto King Wilhelm him- self, unless he asked for it with the prescribed title to receive it. However, at Mondigny avc had reached the left Hank of the troops occupying the valley of the Mouse and its vicinity, and had no more trouble from scrupulous sentries as we journeyed on to Rethel through the watches of the night. Some may imagine that it was an excess of caution thus to delay the progress of a courier travelling with important despatches to head- quarters. As the matter stood, the delay no doubt was vexatious, and did not answer any good purpose. But there would have been no delay had the courier been dressed in the distinctive uniform of his corps, and he had to take the inevitable consequences of not being so. I confess that, looking at the matter from a military point of view, I gloried in the rigorous discharge of their duties on the part of the trusty sentries, looking as they did neither to the right nor to the left, but straight for- ward along the definite line of their orders. For once that this stern strictness may be slightly detrimental, as in the ease of the courier, my companion, it will ninety- nine times be of service in utterly preventing the move- ments of suspicious or treacherous persons. And it was part and parcel of the rigorous discipline which the journey illustrated, that my companion bore every inter- 8 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. ruption, not indeed without a grumble, but without a single remonstrance, accepting stoppage after stoppage as if it was a decree of fate, against which there was no use to rebel or even to get angry. Nay, although, as I say, human nature asserted itself, and he did grumble a little, yet there was not wanting a tone of real national pride, not to say exultation, in his comments on the state of discipline which was the cause of his inconveniences. At Meaux, being bound for Versailles, we wended away to the south of Paris, using the Mclun Chaussee for some distance, and then entering upon a labyrinth of side roads. Between Boissv St. Leger and Limeil, on the high ground overhanging the broad valley, the view of Paris first burst on my sight. One must have looked down on the beleaguered city from some one of the sur- rounding heights before the full impression of the reality of the siege, and of the passing strangeness of that reality, could actually come home to his mind. No reading, no imagining, could produce the profound effect. There lay, glistening in the peaceful afternoon sun, the great ex- panse of white houses, alternated with towers and spires. Notre Dame did not seem two miles distant ; with my glass I could trace the course of the Seine through the city by the break in the bank of house tops. How peace- ful everything seemed ! What prevented to turn the horses' heads, and drive straight in to a dinner at Du- rand's, and a bed in the Grand Hotel '( How difficult to TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 9 realise the isolation anion"; tlie white houses there of two millions of human beings, to know of the seething ferment that was ever going on in that dense, excitable mass of humanity, cut off as it was from all communication with the outer world. Versailles. I found the Versailles that had been written about usque ad nauseam for the two months before, a dead stagnation with princes, correspondents, military bands, representatives of the demi-monde, and the errant wanderers of every country in Europe bob- bing lazily on the surface. No fighting, no real news, hardly even gossip, unless scandal could by a stretch be called gossip ; and of that, of tin 1 most pitifully trivial kind, the crop seemed plentiful enough. Undoubtedly, Versailles was the place at which to see notabilities. What a place would Versailles have been in those days for dear old Pepys ! How he would have bowed to the ground as he sniffed the odour of exalted rank ; how he would have scuttled about from one back-stairs to an- other, from the park to the table d'hote and back again to the courtyard in front of the King's residence in the Prefecture. It struck me, even in the two days which was all the time I had to spare to Versailles, that it was not wholly destitute of modern Pepyscs, modified from the great original but bv circumstances. As I sat writing in the Hotel de France on the after- noon of my arrival in Versailles (I got there on the lGth JO THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. November) I heard the mournful Avail of funeral music out in the Place d'Armcs. From out the Chateau, which was one huge hospital, there came winding a long pro- cession, headed by a military band. Behind the band Avere three coffins, one covered by a black pall, the other two by Avhite palls, and all borne aloft on trestles on the shoulders of soldiers. Behind the coffins marched the mourners, consisting of a band of officers, and the rear Avas brought up by a detachment of soldiers carry- ing their arms. To the dirge-like strains the procession slowly crossed the Place d'Armcs, and wound through the streets to the cemetery. There, in a corner, Avas the great imwe of the strangers, of those A\dio are to be so- journers in a strange land till the sounding of the last trumpet. Not a feAv had already been buried below that raised parallelogram of red earth, for there were many sick and Avounded in the A T ast halls of the palace ; and the procession 1 Avitnessed Avas one of daily occurrence. Already tender hands had been at work among the red clay. Headstones had been set up and chrysanthemums planted. One grave, that of a lieutenant, was already railed in. Around the great open trench was collected a motley group — the front tiers composed of the street boys of Versailles. Behind them stood many Avomen ; in the background Avere soldiers of all arms, avIio had come down to the cemetery to pay the last mark of re- spect to their dead comrades. Slowly the procession TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 11 wound up to the grave's mouth, and the band wheeling to one side continued to sound its dismal moanings. The mourners took post on either side, and the first coffin was moved up close to the grave. Two Frencli gravediggers seized it, bore it forward, placed it across the ropes, and lowered it down to a third man in the bottom, who packed it away on one side. There was no near relative there to lower the head of the dead soldier into the grave ; the real mourning for him was yet to come in some quiet village of the Fatherland, when the Feldpostbrief should reach the simple house- hold announcing that its member with the army was to return no more. The other two coffins were lowered in like manner, the band still sounding its solemn strains, the street boys standing in unwonted silence and still- ness, hushed into awe. Then came forward Herr Pastor, the chaplain of the division, in long black robes and casket-like cap, his hands clasped over his breast. The Germans have no set funeral service ; it is left to the clergyman to make the most of the occasion over the open grave. Very much of the occasion did this most eloquent chaplain make, lie spoke of the dead there as "our comrades, our friends, our brethren," of their death in a righteous cause, of their having met their fate as valiant soldiers fighting for their King and their Father- land. Much more said he that would be out of place to quote, and then stepping forward to the brink of the 12 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. grave, lie strewed over the coffins a handful of mould, with the solemn " dust to dust, ashes to ashes," words so familiar to all, yet never heard without a new thrill. The grey-haired Oberst on the mound of earth doffed his helmet and Lent his bare head. All followed his example. To the "Amen" of the Pastor, joined in by all, there succeeded a pause of dead silence, broken at length by the still mournful music of the band. Then the Oberst stooped, and, picking up a handful of mould, threw it on the coffins of his fellow soldiers lying dead there in the bottom of the deep grave. The other officers followed his example, and the soldiers standing all round threw in also their handful s. The procession then reformed, and as soon as the gates of the cemetery were reached, the band struck up a merry march, as if to efface from recollection the memory of the mournful scene we had just witnessed. It was arranged that, should I receive permission, I was to attach myself to the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Saxony, who had commanded the Maas army ever since its formation after the battle of Gravelotte. The Prince had his head-quarters in Margency, a small village due north of Paris, and lying about two kilometres be- hind the well-known Montmorency. A journey round a section of the environment in the times I am writing of was a work of difficulty, and often of impossibility. Broken bridges, barricades, and stern sentries impeded TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 13 the progress of the wayfarer ; and if he was eager for a near cut, he had in many instances to make up his mind to chance being fired into by the French outposts. Any- one travelling between St. Germain and Argenteuil by the river route through Bezons had to face, not a chance, but a certainty of this dropping fire, and that not for a space across which he might gallop in a few minutes, but continuously for a distance of several miles. Discretion therefore prompted me on my journey to Margency to avoid the pontoon bridge below St. Germain, which led to the river, and to make a detour some distance down the Seine till I readied the railway bridge, a little beyond Le Mesnil. There was something almost oppressive in the utter solitude of the long- drive through the forest of St. Germain. In the very heart of war as the forest was, the dead leaves in its drives were not rustled by the tread of a single living thing. One might have imagined oneself traversing the New Forest, instead of driving through a spot that was within, or at all events barely without, the range of the guns of Mont Valerien. One of my most forcible early impressions of the theatre of war around Met/ had been the comparative invisibility of the beleaguering force. It was the same here. We know roughly how many thousand Germans there stood around Paris, ever ready for action when the alarm was given. But where were they ? would have been the natural question for one who docs not know how compactly the 14 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Germans stow, and what little show their hosts make when there is no occasion for demonstration. The country all round is chequered with villages and chateaux, in the vicinity of which was visible an occasional spiked helmet. But let the alarm have sounded, and see what a dense clump of spiked helmets every village and chateau would have given up. The railway bridge at Mesnil was not the most eligible conceivable means of crossing a river ; but it served its turn. What between mud, rails, sleepers, and deep holes, the springs of a carriage had need to be very tough indeed, and the horses dragging it need to be very strong. One, however, was not dis- posed to be over critical when he reflected how lucky it was that this means of crossing was left to him at all. For not 200 yards down stream were visible the shat- tered ruins of the road bridge. What a deal of pains the French engineers must have expended in utterly smash- ing up this structure. Hardly one stone had been left upon another. The shattered stumps of the piers stuck up out of the troubled waters, a swirling rapid in which marked where the rest of the structure lay in a rough heap on the bottom. It is inscrutable that a little of the assiduity developed in the destruction of this bridge should not have been diverted towards rendering im- passable the railway bridge, which now, for all practical purposes, supplied its place. Mont Valerian is the Old Man of the Sea to the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 15 journeyer around this side of Paris. It is the most ubi- quitous eminence imaginable. At St. Germain it is due east of you, and you think if you go a long way north, that you must presently leave it behind. But wherever you go there he rears his head, to all appearance ever in your path. After passing Argenteuil, however, I did contrive to give him a little the go by ; but it was only in escaping from Scylla to fall into Charybdis. A little beyond Argenteuil my coachman turned boldly on the road, in a south-easterly direction, and passed on his left the village of St. Gratien, with a confidence which would have impressed the most distrustful that the man knew the road quite familiarly. At Epinay I was therefore greatly surprised to find us brought up all standing by a formid- able entrenchment, beyond which there was no passing. From what the courteous ofiicer who had charge of the post told me, I could not feel any Great reirret that we were thus brought to a halt, seeing that, as it was, we were all too close to the guns of the crown work of St. Briche Id lie pleasant, that fortification having a gay and festive habit of throwing shells into St. Gratien, which was con- siderably in our real'. Return ins: and passing through St. Gratien, Soisy was presently reached, where ill a plea- sant chateau were the head-quarters of the Fourth Army Corps, and a few kilometres further to the north-west I found the head-quarters of the Prince of Saxony, com- fortably established in Marnvncv. I have not words to 16 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. express my sense of the frank and prompt heartiness with which my request for permission to be attached to the Prince's staff was acceded to. Quarters were at once assigned to me, cramped as the occupants of the place were for room, and General von Schlottheim, the chief of the staff of the Maas army, was good enough to place at my disposal any information which I required. Nothing could be imagined more dissimilar than the head-quarters of the two armies which made up the besieging; force around Paris. At Versailles there was royal state and all the pomp and circumstance which the presence of Royalty implies. There was the King's staff, with princes innumerable ; and there was the Crown Prince's staff, with ever so many more princes. There was a lame town. There were strangers of all countries, of all classes, and with all sorts of businesses — not a few with no business at all. Versailles was the centre of political as well as military news, and of the deliberations and gossip which tidings of both kinds generate. It was dull enough, no doubt, to any one fond of action, but then it presented lots of alteratives to dulness. There was the casino, there were the cafes ; to men of the Jcamcs de la Pluche turn of mind, there was the great dining-room of the Hotel dcs Reservoirs, where Excel- lencies and Serene Highnesses, and other kindred salt of the earth, did so abound, that a couple of hours' inhala- tion of its atmosphere might have made an imaginative TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 17 Titmouse believe for the time being that he, too, must surely have some handle to his name. There were shops in Versailles. I met a gentleman "who had got a dress coat built in the place. There was champagne ; little dinners of a recherche (and expensive) character were possible, and, in short, there was in Versailles a large in- fusion of rosewater in the inevitably bitter decoction, the label on which is horrid war. Every item to which I have referred as characteristic of Versailles was conspicuous by its absence at Margency. The Crown Prince of Saxony's staff was of modest size, and there was no sensational background to the quiet- toned picture in the way of multitudinous princes. It comprised about twenty-five officers, some of whom were Saxon, the remainder Prussian and Wurtemburger. The staff dwelt together in a pleasant fraternal manner in the big chateau and in a few smaller residences in the environs of the village. There was but one table kept — that of his Royal Highness. The stranger coming to Mar- gencv without the good fortune of establishing relations with the staff would have found himself in very barren quarters indeed. A sign board afforded circumstantial evi- dence that there had been once an auberge in the place, but it was now occupied by a marketender, whose stock was at a very low ebb, and did not appear likely to be speedily replenished. Except that the village had no burnt houses, and that its gables were not smashed by VOL. II, C 18 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. shells and pierced with loop-holes, it reminded me forcibly of our deadly-lively dwelling-places around Metz. But its environs were beautiful, and had sustained very little injury at the hands of the troops. The gardens were still full of fruit, and a salad, an article that could not be achieved within a radius of ten miles of Metz for weeks before the capitulation, was to be got with the utmost ease. Small as Margency was, the military occupants seemed determined to make the most of it in the eyes of the world. Imitating the Parisians, they had re- christened the streets and had given names to alleys that were nameless under the French regime. A practical people, the Germans had gone largely into utility in their nomenclature. Thus, we had " Ingenieur-street/' where the engineers of the staff resided ; " Feldpost-street/' which explains itself ; " Telegraph-street/' where were the head-quarters of the field telegraph train, and so on. "Albert-street" was the only departure from utili- tarianism. In the afternoon of the day of my arrival in Margency, a staff officer of engineers was good enough to be my guide to an eminence in the front, from which there was an excellent view of the positions of the besieged and the besiegers, all round the north-western segment of the operations. The ride was a very beautiful one. Skirting Montmorency and Soisy, we came upon the beautiful sheet of water lying to the west of Enghien-les-Bains — TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 19 surrounded with its arabesque fencing, and with the weeping willows on the lawns of the chateaux, trailing their branches in the pellucid lake. The many hotels surrounding the water — pleasant places so well known to visitors to Paris — were now, without exception, occu- pied by troops, and the white-capped cook had resigned his office. The soldiers were enjoying their Sunday after- noon leisure in rowing about the lake in the pleasure boats, sharing the water amicably with the swans, which were not discerning enough to recognise in them the enemies of France. The largest of the many villas near the margin of the lake belongs to the Princess Mathilde Demidoff, and in accordance with orders from King Wil- helm, the chateau and grounds had been carefully re- spected by his soldiers. But subsequently the necessities of war interfered with this immunity, and on the night of the sortie on Epinay of the 30th November, the Cha- teau Demidoff had to be utilised as a lazarette. Bearing to the right through St. Gratien we crossed the road from Sannois to Epinay, and presently commenced the ascent of Mont d'Orgimont, the summit of which was our desti- nation. When we readied the top, what a splendid pano- rama lay spread out before us! Almost at our feet flowed the Seine, on its way from the bend at St. Denis down to the other bend at St. Germain. But yesterday T had crossed the peninsula held by the Germans, now I looked down on a peninsula held by the French. Look- 20 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. ing due south I could track the Seine as it emerged between Mont Valerien and the Bois de Boulogne. The latter, or such of it as might have been left, lay too low to show distinctively ; the former asserted itself right boldly against the horizon, with its two great barracks on the summit, and the white puffs of smoke wreathing about its crest as its batteries sent shot after shot across in the direction of St. Germain. By the villages on its banks — Putcaux, Courbevoie, Asnieres, and St. Ouen, one could trace the course of the stream till it ran into the white houses and sombre groves of St. Denis, and then it made the bend, and came down towards vis almost straight. On one side of the stream on the left was Epinay, not the pleasantest post in the world when La Bridie happened to be in a bad humour. Down at our right lay Argenteuil, which had already been the victim of very rou<>h usage from the French guns in what I may call the inner peninsula. From where I stood I could see no fewer than four destroyed bridges that had once spanned the Seine. The nearest was the railway bridge on the Argenteuil link of the Northern line — it lay now in the bottom of the river. Lower down was the bridge of Argenteuil, with four arches ruined. Across the two nearest to Argenteuil there stretched a slender tracery which betokened that the engineers had been at work endeavouring to repair them, but the operations were suspended. Lower down still was the Bridge of Bezons, TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 21 shattered almost to pieces ; and nearer the bend towards St. Germain there was visible the railway bridge on the line leading to Rouen. Looking across the peninsula it was possible, with a good glass, to make out the enceinte of Paris on the Monceaux and Batignolles face, and then beyond lay the beleaguered city, the horizon closed in by the Mamelou of Montmartre, with the towers of Notre- Dame on our right of it : then the great mass of the Pan- theon ; and passing over a multitude of domes and spires, the Arc de Triomphe far away on the right. The after- noon sun threw its bright rays on the glittering summits and on the white houses. How difficult it was to realise the idea that the city lying there so quiet and smiling was girt by hostile troops and full of righting men ! To come now to the peninsula lying more immediately before us. Almost exactly in its centre was the village of Gennevilliers — no doubt well defended by entrench- ments, barricades, and stockades, but none of these were visible from our position. Through the glass I could see a A. o o .sentry at intervals where the roads quit it — for the rest it might have been a deserted village. On its left front, and almost close to the Seine, was a small French earth- work, designed probably for a single battery. The earth- work seemed nearly if not altogether completed, but no guns were in position, and the reason was not far to seek. The Germans were both capable of preventing the guns from being got into position, and of making the place 22 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. untenable were the guns already there. Near the right — I speak always of our right and left — of Gennevilliers was a much larger work, with a couple of bastions, and evi- dently designed, when complete, to be a very formidable affair. But it was not nearly so far forward as the smaller work I have just spoken of, and the same cause which had arrested the progress of the one prevented the other also from being further proceeded with. The earth- work lay there clumsy and nearly shapeless, without a pioneer or a gun near it. In front of Courbevoie was another French battery, on which the guns were actually mounted, and long range pieces they were too, for they had thrown projectiles across the peninsula on to the side of the river on which is Mont d'Oroimont — a range of 8,500 paces. Yet another and nearer battery was before Charlebourg, mounted with guns of a smaller calibre. This was the battery that had the special animosity against Argenteuil. And to conclude the peninsular defences, so far as they were visible, there was a battery close behind Nanterre, under the shadow of Mont Yalerien — a battery that in certain contingencies I could imagine not a little troublesome. Bang ! whiz-z-z-z, came the long whistle of a big shell through the air. It struck and burst behind a lower eminence about 150 yards to the east of where i stood. Yet another, and another, ami another. The shells came from the big battery at St. Ouen right across the penin- TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 23 sula. Not a shell came nearer us in our snug conceal- ment in the observatory on the summit ; the gunners of St. Ouen had never yet got quite that length. The mark was a battery emplacement on the lower eminence, on which were already mounted more than one gun of great apparent size, and it was evident the French imagined a position so commanding was being strengthened by work- ing parties and room made for more guns. I wonder whether they would have fired so freely had they known that there was not a man within three hundred yards of the hillock, and that the threatening-looking bio- guns were wooden " quakers " neatly constructed by the pioneers. The battery stood with its back to a big bank of wood, with a church steeple on one side of it and a large white chateau on the other. It mounted somewhere about twenty guns, which were 48-pounders, and were believed to be naval guns. Their range was estimated at 7,300 paces. One may write now freely of the forepost line of the ]\Iaas army, a large section of which was visible to us from the top of Mont d'Orgimont. All the way from Chaton on the west to Epinay on the east the Seine formed the narrow boundary line between besiegers and besieged. At Epinay the forts of St. Denis compelled the abandon- ment of this natural line of demarcation, and the German forepost cordon struck away from the river across the plain in the segment of a circle, villages, chateaux, and detached 24 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. houses being carefully utilised as covers for the strong replis which formed the supports of the venturesome Feld- ivachen projected forward a little distance into the plain. The line, quitting Epinay, rested first on the village of Ormesson, then on the hamlet of La Barre, and attained its most northerly point at the Chateau of La Chevrette, in front of the village of Deuil. Thence it struck east- ward with but very little cover to the southern extremity of the village of Montmagny, with a debateable ground in front consisting of a portion of the village of Villante- neuse, which was scarcely perceptibly a distinct village from Montmagny. This debateable ground was wont to be taken up at night by a non-commissioned officer's com- mand, Avhile the French held the rest of the village, and the close proximity gave occasion sometimes to fighting, sometimes to fraternisation, as the spirit moved. Skirt- ing the Paris-ward base of the height of Pierrcfitte, otherwise known as Kichebourg, the line next touched the village of Pierrcfitte on the great northern chaussee, and from Pierefitte audaciously struck south-eastward into ►Stains, which is so close under the guns of the double crown work of Foil du Nord, that the gunners could be plainly seen with the naked eye, going about their busi- ness on the ramparts. Pierrcfitte is only a little further distant, not above a mile and a 'quarter from the town of St. Denis behind the fortifications, and both villages must be rebuilt before they will lose the traces of their proxi- TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 25 mity during the months of the siege, when hardly a day passed that St. Denis did not shell them with more or less acrimony. East of Stains the forepost line had no cover till it reached the Mill of Dugny, whence it passed, athwart the front of the village of Dugny, and so follow- ing the road, the ditch of which save some cover to the Feldtcachen, into the village of Lc Bourget. Of the latter section of the line, as well as of its prolongation on the eastern side of the environment, further details will be found on a subsequent page I am writing now chiefly of so much of it as was visible from the top of Mont d'Orgi- mont. Had the French known how sedulously that emi- nence was used for purposes of observation, their artillery might have been more attentive to it than was the case. The Maas army, as it was termed from the region in which on its formation after Gravelotte it was intended to operate, consisted when organised, and for some time after taking up its position before Paris, of three com- plete army corps, the 4th (Saxon province), under the command of General von Alvensleben ; tin; Guards (Prussian), commanded by Prince August of AVurtem- burg ; and the 12th (Royal Saxon), whose chief was Prince George of Saxony, the younger brother of the Crown Prince. The latter had commanded the army corps con- tributed by his father's subjects until the Maas army was formed, and Prince George had then commanded one of its two divisions (the 24th). After the siege was begun 2G THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. there liad been added to the Maas army the Wurtem- burg contingent, consisting of one division under the com- mand of General von Obernitz. It was by far the largest section of the environment which it fell to this Maas army so constituted to maintain. It kept the ground on the north, the east, and the south-east, all the way from the Seine nearly to ' the Seine, from Sartrouville on the west round to Bonneuil-sur-Marne at the bottom of the horse-shoe, and occasionally with an extended front approaching still nearer to the Seine. The 4th Army Corps, with its head-quarters in Soisy, had the section on the right to hold, a task of comparative ease because of the natural obstruction which the river offered to an ausfall along almost the whole of its front. It was generally in Montmorency that its left flank touched, and indeed blended with the right of the Guards. These splendid soldiers, with their head-quarters in Gonesse, kept firm and true the section of environment from Montmorency as far east as Aulnay, although there were times when the Guards had to extend to their left as far as Sevran, and even to garrison Livry when the Saxons had to close their front to make a denser obstruction to the enemy. On the other hand there were occasions when the Guards had to stand closer and closer and touch shoulder to shoulder, and then the trim men of the Royal Saxon Corps were to be seen in the wrecked skele- ton-houses of Aulnay. Give and take was the motto, so TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 27 long as there were no gaps uncovered by men with needle-guns in their hands. On the left of the Guards lay the Koyal Saxons, the 12th Army Corps. Prince George had his head-quarters in Le Vert Galant, a village in the rear of Livry, and the kindly men of Saxonland confronted Forts Eosny and Nogent, and before the great sortie of the 2nd December crossed the Marne, and held Champs and Villiers. South of them lay the Wurtemburgers with General Obernitz's head- quarters first in Le Peple, afterwards in Malnoue, extend- ing their front through Champigny of the graves and away south by Chennevieres and Ormesson, as far as Bonueuil, and sometimes further. When the 2nd Corps came in on their left and took part of their ground in that direction, then the Wurtemburger kepi came to be seen in Villiers, Noisy-le-Grand, and Champs, the right Hank of the division touching the Saxon left at the river. Give and take was the motto here too, and there were no hard and fast lines. The arduousness of the duty, and the assiduous efforts to equalise it by interchanges of reliefs, made " dislocations " very frequent, and if you saw a regiment one day, it might be in Villiers, and coming back the next should inquire for it, you might be told by men not only of a different regiment, but of a different corps and a different nationality, that it had packed up and shifted to quarters half-a-dozen miles in the rear. 28 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Sights, incidents, and places connected with the prose- cution of the siege naturally engrossed the largest share of interest ; but there came occasional lulls, fitful always and often short, when one had leisure to realise the wealth of historical and social-historical associations of which there is so great a profuscness on the north side of Paris. St. Denis, Montmorency, Aubervilliers, Argenteuil — there is not a name that is not eloquent of great and stirring memories. Let us take one of those quiet days, when the foreposts are lazily exchanging shots in the crisp air of the morning— now and then a streak of fire and then a jet of smoke flashing out from the steep side of Mont Yalerien — and climb in fancy to the top of the Hill of Montmorency, whence we command the country round about for miles in every direction. In that white village out there in the middle of the peninsula — Gennevilliers is its name — there died some hundred and twenty years ago a, lady you may have heard of — one Mdlle. de Launay. In Colombes, to the right, Rollin composed his " Histoire Ancienne," and Bossuet pronounced that magnificent funeral oration over the coffin of Henrietta Maria, the young daughter of Henri Quatre, which serves as a pattern for many a man in the present day that would feel in- sulted if you questioned his claim to originality. That white house among the trees, between Colombes and Courbcvoie — it has the battery for a, background — is called la Garenne: it was the country house of the famous TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 29 physician Comisart. Bring your eye round now to the shattered bridge of Argenteuil nearer you to the west- ward. There are other ruins thereabout than the bridge. See you that heap of stones among the trees at the bot- tom of the island I That is all that is left of the once famous Maison-Joli, the habitation of Watelet, whither about the middle of last century were wont to flock the litterateurs of Paris and the strangers of distinction who visited the capital. You may read not a little about the place in the Memoires of Morellet and Suard — how it was the rival of Madame Xecker's Chateau at St. Ouen, and of the mansion of Madame Helvetius at Auteuil. Cross the stream with your eye, and it catches the roofs of the houses in the town of Argenteuil — roofs with holes in them in places, made by the shells from the battery over the way. If you ask a typical Parisian for what Argenteuil is famous, he will reply, "For the quantity rather than the quality of its wine." Put Argenteuil has other claims to notice than its fecundity in the juice of the grape. There was a nunnery here once — -if all tales are true it was an uirlv scandal that caused it to be wound up — which had for one of its abbesses Theodrada, the daughter of Charlemagne, and for another the Eloise of whom our own Pope has sung. The church of Argen- teuil is still to the fore. I nder that long dead-coloured roof there is a relic, of which, were 1 a Catholic, I should speak with bated breath. Argenteuil shares, with Treves, 30 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Fribourg, and a score of other places for aught I know, the repute of having in its church a piece of the seam- less coat of our Lord — that garment of which Matthew of Westminster wrote, " Mater ejus fecerat ei, et crevit ipso crescendo." It is here now in a great massive chest of bronze, designed by Cahier in the 12th century style, after a series of adventures before which those of the famous Scottish " Stone of Destiny " fade away into tame- ness, resting quietly here within range of the shells, after having escaped the machinations of Turks and Huguenots, Saracens and Romans, Persians and Normans, after having been buried in a garden and its whereabouts miraculously revealed to a nun in a dream, and after having lain for a few centuries, more or less, in a crypt in a city of Galatia. Look over the slates of Argenteuil at that house among the trees, by the road between Argenteuil and Bezons ; that is the Chateau of Marais, and it was there that ^lira- beau dwelt during the stormy times of the Revolution. Further on, and close to the shattered bridge of Bezons, you come upon an old memory in that smaller dwelling by the water side. This was the chateau of Marshal Bezons. he who took Landau in 1713. Tf we look further westward we shall get confused by distances, so let us turn sharp round and look south-south- east toward St. Ouen. Here, 500 years ago, were the head- quarters of the order of the Knights of the Star, whose emblem was a. star with the mystic legend, "Monstrant TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 31 rcgibus astra viam." Here Madame de Pompadour had a chateau. It was in this chateau that Louis XVIII. halted irresolutely on his way to Paris in May, 1814, and to it came Talleyrand at dead of night with the draft of the proclamation, to consent to the terms of which he found it so hard to persuade the conscientious but beetle- headed monarch. The chateau of the Neckers, that once brilliant resort, is now partly in ruins ; it may indeed be wholly destroyed, for the battery seems very near its site. Looking over St. Denis you can just see the spire of Aubervilliers or "The Virtues." It was as the Allies reached this spot on their march to Paris after Waterloo, stretched out in a weakened and elongated line, that Napoleon, eating out his heart in Malmaison, clutched at the idea that it was still possible to crush them by a des- perate stroke. What an unquenchable energy the man had, how loath to believe that all was lost ! Who will not own that there was something grand in the humility of his offer to make the attempt, not as Emperor, but as General, with the half-piteous, half-comical rider, that if he did not succeed he would forthwith take himself off to the United States ? And now we come to St. Denis. How the single word flashes out, as it were, with the limelight along the whole history of France ! As one utters it lie seems to hear the old war-cry, "Montjoie St. Denis!"' so ready on the lips of the chivalry of France — he seems to see the ori- 32 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. flamme waving in the breeze of the battlefield. The last time they took the oriflamme out of the Cathedral was for Agincourt — would it do the men of Paris any service to revive the old institution, and bear it before them in their next sortie ? Who cares to know that the old stones were first piled together by Catulla, knocked about by Sigebert, replaced by Chilperic, and dressed and squared by Dagobert ? There is no sense of reality about such details as these ; but, in the veritable history of the Cathedral, there is surely plenty. Why, if these Chassepots and cannon would only allow you, you might look on the receptacles that contain the dust of dynasty after dynasty of French monarchs. Surely there is reality enough about coffins. You might begin at the commencement, with the baby of Chilperic and Fredegonde, whose body was placed here in 580, and work systematically down, through the Merovingian dynasty, the Carlo vingian dynasty, the Capets, the Bourbons, and the Orleans people. You would find no Napoleons in St. Denis. We shall come to the tomb of some of them by and by, in a more modern place, cheek by jowl with other ex-royalties. It seems as if the old building would have none of the parvenus. The First Napoleon built himself a splendid vault there, and gave out by Imperial decree that " St. Denis was to be the place of sepulture of the Napoleonic dynasty," setting about repairing the place, as was his energetic wont, TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 33 after the ravages of the Revolutionists. But the stones were more obstinate than the Napoleons. Twice the repairs fell in with a crash of remonstrance, and the late man gave up the task, and devoted himself to the em- bellishment of the interior. It was the merest luck in the world that the hones of the kings were not made inextricable "pie" of. When in 1793 Barrere proposed in the Convention to celebrate the anniversary of the 10th of August by smashing the monuments and tombs of the Kings, he found enthusiastic supporters. When the gay and festive iconoclasts had polished off the marble, they took to the demolition of the coffins, with all the heartier good will, that the lead was found to make very good bullets. But for the sagacious old Benedictine Father Poirier, the dust of St. Louis might 7 O have been jumbled with the bones of Charles Martel, and the Capets and Bourbons got muddled irretrievably. But Poirier was equal to the hour— quite a prototype of Dean Stanley. He had no difficulty, by their royal robes, in distinguishing Henry the Second and Catherine 7 O O J de Medicis. lie found Henri Quatre " in a perfect state of preservation," with his moustache neatly curled, and the mark quite plain of the knife of Pavaillac. Louis the Fourteenth was recognisable easily by "the traits of his visage," and one is not surprised to hear that Louis the Fifteenth was found reduced to a nasty mass of semi- liquid putrefaction. 34 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. One is loath to leave oft' -gossiping about St. Denis, even at the risk of wearying the reader. Here it was that Joan of Arc, after her wound, laid down her sword and deposited her armour. How often has the open space outside the carved arches of the door of the old cathedral echoed to the shout of the multitude, " Le Roi est mort, vivo le Roi ! " when a dead king of France had been consigned to the grave of his fathers. I sup- pose the Gardes Mobiles are in the old cathedral now, usino- it as a barracks. There is less to wreck about it now, if they arc, than before 1793. Before then St. Denis might have set up a score of ordinary cathedrals in the way of relics. It could boast of three bodies — rather a small share — out of the eleven thousand virgin martyrs of Cologne ; of the whole of St. Denis, and another odd saint or two ; of the ears of the Virgin, set in fleur de lis of gold ; of the head of St. Hilaire ; of the rim of the gridiron on which St. Laurent was roasted ; of a bone of the prophet Isaiah; of the sword of St. Louis, that he wore on his campaign in the Holy Land ; of a thorn from the crown of torture : Charlemagne's sword and spurs ; Dagobert's bronze (.-hair ; the sword of Joan of Arc ; the old Royal crown and sceptre ; and lots of other "possibles" of the Wardour-street order. All these the merry men of the First Revolution scattered to the winds. Hut the Cathedral of St. Denis is still a cathedral. The Abbev, once so rich that during a famine TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 35 it kept alive a large proportion of the inhabitants of Paris, has now lost even its name. Madame de .Main- tenon diverted a respectable slice of its revenues, in the shape of 100,000 francs of annual rent, and the First Napoleon finished the work by rebuilding the old house, and devoting it as a pensionnat for the education of a number of children, the offspring of members of the Legion of Honour. The place is now known by the name of the " Maison de la Legion d'Honneur." In St. Denis there is one English association that occurs at the moment. In La Paroisse, as the chapel of an ancient Carmelite convent is called, in the Rue de la Bridie, as you go out to the fort of the same name, there lie the remains of Henrietta of England. Look down at these ridges at your feet, dotted all over with villas and chateaux, that break the fall from the height on which we stand into the flat plain, bounded by the silvery Seine. This congeries of residences is Mont- morency, a name recalling memories of, perhaps, the greatest family that France ever knew. It was from this place that the Montmorencys took their title. Within sight of his ancestral home, Anne de Mont- morency, the hero of a race of heroes, alter a career rivalling that of Bayard, fell on the held of St. Denis by the hand of Kobert Stuart, slaying his slayer, as he died, with a last parting blow with the pommel of his sword. The "first Christian barons," as the Montmorencys were 3G THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. called, have no longer any foothold in this beautiful valley, which once they owned from hill to hill ; not a stone of their original mansion near the Church now remains. But the people will not let die the old glorious name. Effort after effort has been made, without avail, to efface its memory by changing the appellation of the locality. One Louis made a decree that it should be thenceforth known as Enghien, and another confirmed it. The revolutionists tried their best to effect yet another change. They rechristened the place Emile, moved thereunto by another association to which I shall presently allude. But it was all of no use : to this day the place is universally known by the name of Mont- morency. Withdraw your mind from dwelling on the fights and high-handed statecraft of the Montmorency s, constables, barons, dukes, and what not, and look down at your feet on this little sequestered house on the fringe of the forest just outside the town of Montmorency. About a hundred years ago there came to dwell in this quiet cottage a man great in a sense, greater than all the Montmorencys — Jean Jacques Rousseau. It was pro- fessedly to a hermitage that this great man, so full of paltry littlenesses, came, on the invitation of Madame d'Epinay. Had he lived the life of a hermit it would have been better for his own reputation and for the. peacefulness of that pleasant coterie of which the valley of Montmorency was the centre ; or had he not been a TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 37 cynic savage with a dash of lust — a double of Swift — he might have lived and died happily in the society he found ready to welcome him, comprising as it did Grimm, the graceful and spirited historian ; the poet St. Lambert, none the less deserving; the title of the " uen- tleman of the pen and the sword" because our Horace Walpole, in that sour way of his, called him a pretentious and lackadaisical jackanapes ; the two sisters, Mesdames d'Houdetot and d'Epinay, and others, of whom it were tedious to write. But the cynic philosopher came like the apple of discord. He loved one sister and then abused her like a brute ; he transferred his love, such as it was, to the other, who bore with his folly for the sake of his genius ; then he packed up bag and baggage, and came across the slope to tins other house further on the right — the cottage of Montlouis. It is, however, his first residence which is the original " Hermitage" — so long a shrine of idolatry with the French Republicans. If you, too, are a worshipper of Rousseau, you had better spare your feelings by refraining from making a pilgrimage to the Hermitage. There came to it after Rousseau left it (iretry, the famous composer, and (J retry shares with Rousseau the memorial trophies of the Hermitage. In- deed, Ore try has the lugger half of them, for he has a bust on the front with bas reliefs, and a laudatory inscription ; and Rousseau is but commemorated by a painted notice calling attention to his chestnut tree, ::8 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. which, by the way, is very rotten. You can buy the whole concern if you like ; for there is a notice nailed on the chestnut tree, " This house to sell or let ; " and the Second Empire has clapped an unpoetical number on it ; so that the other name of the Hermitage is 47, Rue de St. Brice. Inside it is a wreck, and it is the habitation presently of. a Corporalschaft of the 96th Regiment of Prussian infantry. Rousseau ended that unsociable dis- contented life of his at Ermenonville, a village far away to the east, and we are told when the Prussians under Blucher came on to Paris, in 1814, hosts of them made pilgrimages to the sage's tomb. The honest Teutons now in the Hermitage don't appear to know anything about the philosopher of Geneva, and, if firewood runs scarce, will probably burn his chestnut tree. If you know Paris well, sundry other memories of Montmorency will pro- bably occur to you, more closely connected with your physical being than those to which I have been alluding. In peace time the hotels of Montmorency are justly cele- brated for their cuisine. " Le Cheval Blanc" is quite an historical hostelry. The Ledrus have been the proprietors of it for three generations; the keen air gives one an appetite, and a. sight of the well-appointed salle d manger would be right pleasant. Alas ! now all that is left to the fore of " Le Cheval Blanc" is the walls and the sign. That sign, though, must not be passed over in the disappointment of finding Under-officer Schmidt TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 39 sitting where Madame Ledra, the smiling, was wont to sit. That white horse up there on the creaking sign- board was painted by the great Gerard, in liquidation of a score of 1,800 francs, which he and a couple of gay and festive friends had run up with Ledru the second in about three days. If you are an epicure, don't turn your back on Montmorency and refuse to take interest in yet another cuisine association. This villa near the church was the retreat of the famous Very, the " Cesar tie la bechamel, L'Alexandre du Kotsbif," who came out here in the evening of his days, like De Fontaine's rat into the cheese. The Verys now, how- ever, have a habitation in Eaubonne, in a chateau adja- cent to that occupied by the descendant of Mirabeau. Other circumstances besides misfortune often make strange, bedfellows. It was in Eaubonne where Saint Lambert lived to be conveniently near to Madame d'Houdetot, whose chateau was in Sannois. Nearer Mont d'( )rgimont than Montmorency is Enghien- les-Bains, with its lake and its sulphur springs. The taps of the thermes have been knocked out of order by the shells, and as you pass you smell the sulphur strongly. The tragedian Talma died in this house close to the baths. The French have made it a hotel, and the other day their shells made it a skeleton. The road to the left leads to Epinay. It is a very pretty spot, and old Clovis was a 40 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. sensible man to choose it as his country residence. His example was followed by Dagobert (who was not lucky in Epinay, for there he caught the dysentery, of which he died), by Gabriclle d'Estrees, and by Lacepede, artist, naturalist, and President of the First Legislature in 1791. As we have followed the left road leading to Epinay, it is only fair that we turn right for one moment into St. Gratien, to recall the memory of such a soldier as France would to-day be right glad of. To this quiet retreat came the great soldier of fortune, Marshal Catinat, declin- ing titles, honours, and orders, and cultivating a modest garden like a modern Cincinnatus. It is a beautiful spot, and the soldier philosopher could have no more congenial home for his meditations. Turn your back now on St. Denis, and Paris, and Montmorency, and everything on which you have been previously gazing, and cast your eye northward over Margency and Montlignon, to that church spire which rises over the trees that crop out from the forest into the valley. That is the church spire of the village of Napoleon St. Leu, a place whose associa- tions are more recent, but certainly not less interesting than those of any spot all round the horizon. On the slope above the village, close to where there now stands the beautiful residence of Lady Ashburton, there once stood a much larger chateau. In the year 1814 this chateau was inhabited by a queen without a throne, for she was the wife of a, monarch who had abdicated — and TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 41 by her two sons, the elder of whom was about eight years of age. The Prussians and the Russians were in Paris. Napoleon was already an exile in Elba. This queen's chateau, undoubted Bonapartist as the lady was, somehow came to be looked upon as neutral ground. The coterie in her drawing-rooms was sufficiently enticing. She herself was a brilliant and beautiful woman. The authoress of " Corinne," as she fondled the boys, sparkled out ever and anon with some Hash of wit. Mole, Lava- lette, Flahaut, and Garnerey the painter, were constant visitors. With the sour looks of the Parisians it was dull times for the conquerors, and the great men among them were right glad to mix in the sparkling society that was open to them on the neutral ground in the Chateau of St. Leu. Hither came once and again the Emperor Alexander, with his minister Pozzo di Boroo. Blucher cared more for a fight than a conversazione, but Prince Augustus of Prussia would look in, and sometimes there came with him a slip of a lad, in a lieutenant's uniform, and with the down not yet budded on his lip. This lad was then the younger son of the monarch of a second- rate State. The down came, and gave place to the heavy blonde moustache. The blonde is now snow-white, and it hangs over the lip of one whose title to-day is A\ ilhelm, Emperor of Germany, and who has come to revive early memories at the head of half a million of men. The mis- tress of the pleasant chateau was liorteiise, daughter of 42 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the Empress Josephine by her first marriage, wife of Louis Napoleon, that Bonaparte who preferred Lausanne and his library to the throne of Holland. The elder of the two boys I speak of bore, too, the name of Louis. A year after the time of which I write, his great uncle was showing him, in the absence of the King of Borne, to the cheering crowds of Paris from the balcony of the Tuileries. After years of exile and imprisonment, the people of Paris saw the same face again. The boy of St. Leu was he who, till the other day, was Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. The Germans lie between St. Leu and hot Republican Paris, lusting to eradicate the vestiges of the Empire and the Napoleons. The prefix which the name of St. Leu got some twenty years ago still belongs to it without question, but it may be taken for granted that the prefix will go with the dynasty. I hope that when the Repub- licans sally fort 1 1 to paint out the " Napoleon,'' they will respect the tomb of the Napoleons behind the altar of the Church. The ashes of this strange family have had as many vicissitudes as its members. The dust of the great Emperor has been excavated from below the willow tree in the shadow of St. Helena's rock. Of the rest of the family it may well be said — " Their gi - avos are severed far and wide, I5y mountain, stream, and sea." There are four Napoleons buried here in the Church of TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 43 St. Leu — Napoleon Charles, the eldest son of Louis and Hortense, who died at the age of five ; Napoleon Louis, Duke of Bero- then second son, who died in Italy in 1831 ; Louis himself, brought to St. Leu from Livomi, where he died in 1847 ; and the father of all the stock, old Charles Marie Napoleon of Corsica, who died at Mont- pellier in 178.3. The last was the first of the Napoleons to lie in St. Leu ; his son, the King of Holland, had his ashes transferred from Montpellier to a mausoleum in the park of the Chateau of St. Leu. "When the little Prince Royal of Holland died he was buried beside his grand- father. But after the second restoration the chateau passed into the hands of the Duke of Bourbon, who dis- liked the presence in his park of the ashes of the relatives of him at whose instance the Duke of Eimhien was shot. So he had them dug up, but considerately interposed no obstacle in the way of the cure when that worthy man would find a refuge for the outcasts in the vaults of the church — the burial-place of the Montmorencys. When Napoleon the Third got warm on the Imperial tin-one he had the church rebuilt at great expense, and a special vault constructed for the remains of the four members of the family who were already buried in St. Leu, issuing at the same time a decree that this vault was thenceforth to be regarded as the burial-place of the dynasty. You may see the 1 monument in the recess behind tin 1 altar — three saints, one of whom is " Saint 44 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Napoleon/' painted above a big concern of white marble, crowned by a life-size statue of Louis, the sensible man who abdicated ; and having niches in its front, contain- ing busts of the other three occupants of the vault. The Emperor and Empress presided with great state at the inauguration of the new edifice in 18.33. Strangely enough that Duke of Bourbon, the last of the Condes, who would not give the ashes of the Napoleons sleep- ing room in his park, came in the end to mingle his own with theirs. No doubt he was much disgusted at the event of 1830. One morning in August of that year he was found hanging against the window of his bed-room. Somebody had gone about the business of strangulation very systematically, and the two white neckcloths hanged him most effectually. He was buried in the Church of St. Leu, and you may see through the trees the column which the Legitimists erected to his memory in the park. It has engraved on it the inscription, " Hie cecidit," which is a misstatement. Had he fallen it might have been the better for him ; but the neckcloths and the espagnolette held fast and prevented him. The park is now broken up, and the chateau razed to the ground. It is said that some of our countrymen, when the bricks and mortar were being sold in lots, speculated in the lot containing tin; fatal window, and that they did a, good stroke of business by selling as memorials at least four "original windows." TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 43 There were several considerable outbursts of firing dur- ing the ni^ht between November 20th and 21st, chiefly from Mont Valerien ; but the purport of these ebulli- tions, if there was, indeed, any purport in them, was not apparent. On the foreposts down in the mist there went on a desultory dropping fire entirely from the French side. As the shooting men could not have seen an object a hundred yards before them, they must either have been working off superfluous energy, or emptying their rifles of charges which the night air had damped. In the absence of any occurrence of interest at head- quarters, it struck me that a visit to the scene of the bust hard fighting on the north side, the village of Le Bouro;et, might furnish matter likely to be of interest, and in the afternoon, therefore, I started in that direction. My way lay through Montmorency and St. Brice to Sarcelles, at which village I obtained information as to the where- abouts of the Queen Elizabeth Regiment, with some of the officers of which gallant regiment I had already an acquaintance, and to whom 1 trusted, as the regiment had borne the brunt of the fight at Le Bourget, for a reliable cicerone to the scene of the action. The courteous major who commanded at Sarcelles informed me that tic: Queen Elizabeths were in the neighbourhood of Arnou- ville, or at all events there I should obtain definite infor- mation respecting the position of the 1st battalion, that of which 1 was in search. He added to his kindness a 46 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. permission to ride along the direct road between Sarcelles and Arnouville, by which I saved a considerable detour. This direct route was seldom used, as it was close to the front, and, passing as it does over an exposed table land, was within easy and tempting range of the guns of Fort du Nord. However, Fort du Nord was civil enough not to concern itself with a single horseman, and I rode along in peace, enjoying the fine prospect, in which the most prominent object was the Cathedral of St. Denis, with the double crown work du Nord lying down in the valley in front of it, a grim proof that the aspiration, " Cedant anna togas " had not yet been realised. Along this road, after it crosses the track of the Northern Railway, were the abandoned field-barracks occupied by the Guards before they housed themselves in the villages — pleasant habitations, no doubt, in the fine weather, but now bearing a forlorn and squalid appear- ance in the midst of the slushy fields. Their construc- tion, however, did great credit to the troops, strengthened with earth banks as they were on the front next Paris, so as to be practically bomb-proof. At Arnouville T found (he Emperor Alexander Regiment represented, but the Queen Elizabeths were further on. I had to turn my horse's head due Paris-ward, and jog on the paved road till I reached the village of Garges. Here, indeed, were Queen Elizabeths, but not of the battalion I wanted. The latter, 1 was told, was in Dngnv, still further to the 1 front — in TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 47 fact, so far to the front, that when there, there was no- thing beyond save Feldivachen and patrols. Through a miry byepath I took my way — the regular route running along the front being too much exposed to form an eligible means of transit — and presently came upon a piece of road illustrating the thoroughness with which the Germans do everything they set themselves to do. The road must have been terribly bad- — too bad even for strong horses and resolute drivers — seeing that its bottom was a quagmire. But the pioneers had gone to work and faseined the track much as the constructors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway treated the quaking surface of Chat Moss. Over the fascines had been laid a regular pavement of bricks, artistically beaten level with paviours' mallets, and the track was sound enough for a road steamer. Crossing the raised path through the inundations caused by the dams on the river Moree I was brought up by a double post at the entrance to the park of a chateau, and conducted to the chateau itself by oik; of the sentries. Here I found the Stall' of one of the battalions of the Queen Elizabeth Kegimcnt — the battalion, too, which 1 wanted- -and was right hospitably welcomed by Hauptmann von Altrock, who commanded the battalion, and by the junior officers who shared the chateau with their chief. But the officers of the Queen Elizabeth regiment were not in the same blithe and buoyant spirits as when I had met them in the early part 48 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. of the war. Although frank and hearty as of yore, a deep gloom hung over them, that could not be dispelled by whatsoever exertion on their part. There was a sternly good cause for the gloom. In the fight at Le Bourget on the 31st October eight comrades had fallen, to rise no more ; twelve more had gone down wounded. Of the whole fatal casualties to the regiment that day, one-sixth part had consisted of officers. Among the dead was Colonel von Zaluskovski, the father of his regiment, a man be- loved by all. The tears stood in the eyes of his adjutant as he showed me the snuffbox which the good Colonel had given him as a remembrance, while he lay mortally wounded in the stable into which they bore him out of the hail of lead that swept the road. While we sat at supper a detachment from the fore- posts brought in a deserter who had come across from the French lines. As regards the lower part of his person, he was a Garde Mobile : his trousers were uniform trousers; but he wore the blouse and cap of the French peasant. His appearance was sufficiently weird as he was brought in — his face enveloped in the coloured pocket-handker- chief of one of his escort. As soon as he was uncased he eagerly asked for bread, and went at a huge hunk which the Captain cut him with a vigour and resolution which, if displayed in warfare; would have made him a very tough customer. He had some disconnected and scrappy intelligence concerning an internal commotion TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 49 Avhich he averred had taken plaee within Paris in the afternoon ; but he plainly knew very little about . the matter. His information, however, in so far tallied with a report unofficially communicated by an officer on field watch, that he had heard during the afternoon firing, which seemed to him to be going on inside Paris. It was, how- ever, so difficult to arrive at a correct conclusion whence came the sound of firing that did not take place on one's own immediate front, that the officer in question wisely refrained from giving a positive opinion on the subject. Late in the evening some of the officers were good enough to escort me to a low bluff on the edge of the wooded grounds of a chateau — an elevation which, trivial as it is, commands the whole of the flat expanse, the defensive margin of which is formed by Forts du Nord, de l'Est, and Aubervilliers. Here was the plain seen by moonlight, and Paris by some other light also, whether gas, oil, or candles, 1 knew not. This plain was the first I had seen on tin 1 northern side of Paris, where the configu- ration of the ground admitted of a sortie in force. Here there was room for the deployment of a large army, and the evolution might have been performed under the great guns of the forts. It was this flat, between the Canal de 1 Ourcq and the rising grounds to the west of St. Denis, which was the theatre of the battle by which Blucher ter- minated the campaign of IS 14, and gained Paris. La Villette, Clichy, Rouvroy, and Aubervilliers, all localities on 50 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the plateau, occur again and again in the narratives of that engagement. Blucher would have found some difficulty now in carrying the positions behind these places as one day's work. It would have puzzled Langeron to make a dash from St. Denis, and storm the heights of Montmartre, as he did that afternoon of the 30th of March, 1814. The only defences then were the entrenched lines across the face of Montmartre, stretching; over to the rising ground of Belleville. Now Blucher would have found, as his countrymen were finding to-day, the way stopped long before the ascent of Montmartre begins, by the guns and works of that array of forts beginning with Du Nord and ending with Noisy. As a vantage ground for battle the tables were turned. The plateau was no longer an eli- gible space on which an army could manoeuvre itself into Paris, but a tempting expanse on which an army defend- in g Paris might come out to do battle with the besieger. But this was only in theory. The greenest military student knows what must be the stamp of troops that will complete an effective deployment under an enemy's fire, and advance to the attack under the same. This was the imperative condition attached to a sortie on a large- scale on this plateau ; and Trochu, who knew what manner of men in the matter of discipline were his troops, was wise to shun it. And the difficulty of which 1 speak was only the difficulty on the threshold — the pons as't- norum of an offensive operation in force against the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 51 Prussian environment. How strong was the line which the besiegers held athwart this plain is only to be realised by having personally inspected it. Some details regarding it I will enter into again: but it would be tedious to enter into elaborate particnlarisation of every feature. It may be said here that, held bv the strong force which was wisely judged requisite- -a force consisting of the elite of the Prussian soldiery, each position turned to the very best account by the most careful and judicious engineering appliances, and with supports which were practically illi- mitable available at short notice, one with any knowledge of the subject could come to no other opinion than that the beleaguering line at this critical position could have resisted an assault of a more formidable character than any which the garrison of Paris, from what we knew of its character and appliances, could be judged capable of making. This is no ex post facto conclusion on my part, but one published long before events occurred to test and prove its correctness. Each of these old-fashioned villages surrounding Paris is all but a fortress in itself. The walls are of great thickness, and there is so little woodwork that shells would not fire the houses. This Dugny, for instance. might lie held by a handful of resolute men against all comers. Its streets — if streets the wall-bordered roads can be termed — are so manv covered ways capable of affording safe passage even under a hot. artillery fire. E 2 52 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. The farmhouses are built like citadels, walled in on all four sides, and with the windows looking inward. Some of them are even loopholed. A few j udicious barricades were all that was needed as the complement of the defence. These, it is needless to say, the Guards had not neglected to erect. In Dugny were some of the most artistic barri- cades I have ever seen — in fact, barricade is hardly the term for them — constructed as they were of stones taken from the chaussee, faced with a deep slope of earth, and capable of protecting their defenders from the fire of the heaviest artillery. Their appreciation of the axiom that water is a better barrier than earth the Prussians had .shown by effecting an extensive inundation between Dugny and Le Blanc Mesnil. To return for a moment to the view from the fringe of the grove. Before us in the watery moonlight lay Le Boui'get, dark and silent, as if it were mourning for the slaughter that had been wrought within it. Across the plain, and more to the right, the moon's rays fell upon the great inundation which the French had made in front of St. Denis, by damming the little river of Croud. In front of the water ran the chain of French watch-fires, falling back towards the south-east on Aubervilliers. There were bright lights in Forts du Nord and Auber- villiers. Behind, there was a, dark streak, presumably caused by the enceinte, and then the bank of lights rose in straggling tiers up to the top of Montmartre. I could TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 5:J trace no lines of street lamps defining the thoroughfare. The lights I saw came exclusively from houses ; and evi- dently there could then have been no great lack in Paris of some means or other of " showing a light." At times it seemed as if we could see figures across the lights, dull- ing their brightness momentarily. Likely enough, for as we stood we were within some five kilometres of Paris. Next morning, in the company of two officers present at the recapture of Le Bourget on the 31st of October, 1 went over the ground and carefully examined the village itself, obtaining from my companions a detailed narrative of the events of the day, and noting down also several anecdotes of individual danger or courage. On my return to head-quarters, a staff officer, to whom the disposition of important interests had been entrusted, was kind enough to go over my notes, and add to them information only to lie obtained at head-quarters. It may not be occupying space uselessly if 1 rapidly run over the incidents of an action which was in its way certainly unique in the late war, before describing the condition of the village as 1 saw it. The line of foreposts linking Le Bourget with Dugny has alreadv been described. he Bourget forms the apex of a tolerably acute triangle, having for its base a straight line drawn between Dugny and Le Blanc Mesnil. it stands out therefore in the plain detached and in front, so that the cursorv observer might inquire of what use it 54 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. was to hold it at all. But its value is easily apparent. In the first place, it stands on the great Lille chaussee, on which for some distance there was no such advantageous defensive position. In the second place, it acted as a kind of tete du pont to the inundations which protected the Prussian front in this locality. Had there been no Le Bourget, it would have mattered little to the German security ; but there being a Le Bourget, it mattered much that it should not be occupied by the French, in whose hands it would have been constantly available as a nucleus for offensive operations. As a position of so much im- portance, it may be questioned to-day, with that ex post facto intelligence which is so suggestive, whether the Germans should not have held it with a stronger force than a single company standing in it, with orders to fall back if attacked in force. The explanation given me was that the post was so exposed that the fewer men in it the less the chance of casualties. It maybe questioned, how- ever, whether any probable number of casualties so occur- ring would have mounted up to the sum of those incurred on the 31st October. Be this as it may, the expulsion, or rather the retreat, took place on the 28th, to be succeeded next by a Ger- man reconnaissance which showed the enemy in too e-Teat force to be assaulted without premeditated dispositions. While these were beinc; deliberately made, (luring the days that elapsed between the French occupancy and the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 55 recapture, the German field artillery threw about 2,000 grenades into the place. An ordinary village would have been burnt over and over asain, but Le Bourse t does not seem even to have caught fire. On the morning of the 31st, the three battalions of the Queen Elizabeth marched from Dugny, and by eight o'clock stood at Pont Iblon, on the Lille road, a point where there were temporary barracks for two battalions. In their front stood three batteries of the horse artillery of the Guard. Along with the Queen Elizabeths in Pont Iblon was one battalion (the Fusilier) of the Queen Au- gusta Regiment, commanded by the lamented Count Waldersee, and one company of Engineers. In Dugny (on the north of Pont Iblon, which may be described as the centre of the operations) there lay two battalions of the Emperor Franz Guard Regiment, under the com- mand of Major Derenthal. I have already named the gallant officer commanding the Queen Elizabeths. At Le Blanc Mesnil on the east lay two battalions of the Kaiser Alexander Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel von Zeuner. Here also were two batteries foot artillery <»f the Guard, supported by three companies of the Schi'itzen Guard Regiment. The reserve consisted of eisrlit battalions, a cavalry regiment stood at Bonneuil, and a reserve force of artillery near Gonesse. All the attacking force belonged to the second division of the Guards. In all there were encased about G.000 bayonets. The French 50 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. had eight battalions in Le Bourget — Gardes Mobiles and Imperiales, besides Francs-tirenrs. At Drancy, to the south rear, and almost opposite to Le Blanc Mesnil, they had a large force of reserves. Other reserves were seen in La Courneuve, but the artillery fire from the Prussian field-guns prevented any of the French reserves from taking part in the engagement. The Forts du Nord, de FEst, Aubervilliers, Romainville, and Noisy, all poured out a profuse fire on the Prussian troops, both in their positions, and as soon as they began to advance, and a battery of field-guns stood on the light of the village of Le Bourget. At eight o'clock the Kaiser Alexander Battalions began their march, as they had the farthest distance to traverse. Availing themselves skilfully of the course of the little river Molleret and of the cutting on the Laon Railway, they escaped with little loss the flanking fire from Drancy and from the eastern forts, and by nine o'clock they had captured and were holding the railway station close to the chaussee at the south-western exit of the village. Thus practically the French retreat was cut off, and to appre- ciate the character of the resistance offered by the French this important clement must not be lost sight of. At a quarter-past eight, the two battalions of the Emperor Franz Regiment quitted Dugiiy and came on rapidly to Le Bourget by the road which enters the village about midway in its length ; while one battalion fought its way TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 57 in by the road and the houses to the left, the other under- took to clear a large and beautiful park flanking the vil- lage on the right of the Dugny road. The three batta- lions of the Queen Elizabeth Regiment, with the accom- panying Queen Augusta Regiment, left Pont Iblon at the same hour as the Dugny contingent, came on through the fire at the double, carried the barricade by storm, were inside by nine o'clock, and finally, by hand-to-hand fight- ing from house to house, cleared the village of French- men, with the aid of the other regiments, by half-past twelve o'clock. In the engagement there were killed and wounded 39 officers and 449 men. The French lost about GOO, and 1,300 of them were taken prisoners. This much my companions related to me as we walked down from Dugny to Le Bourget — -it being forbidden to traverse the intervening space on horseback. Bending to the left, so as to get on the chaussee, along the sides of which the Queen Elizabeths had advanced, we presently reached it about .300 yards from the village. About the same distance on the other side stood a little brick house at a slight bend in the road. "There was where we g<>t the order to double,'' cried big Lieutenant von ■ — • — , " and didn't we pelt along ! "' " And didn't you puff and blow ?" slily asked our other companion ; "anyhow,' he added, turning to me, '"von , big as he is, was one of the first over the barricade.'' At a glance, now that 1 was on the chaussee, I 58 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. could see what a tough place was this Le Bourget. It resembles extremely those walled Indian villages on the road from Cawnpore to Lucknow, through which Have- lock had to fight his way, and the loss in doing which made him give up his first attempt to relieve the latter place. The broad road formed its weak point. On either side had extended, for a breadth of about 100 yards, a massive wall, and this wall was continued longi- tudinally along the backs of the houses. The place was a fortress. With that strong entrenchment across the broad ehaussee, I think Prussian or British troops would have held it till Christmas-time. But the French had made wofully little use of the advantages to their hand. With the exception of the single battery on the right of the village, they had no artillery near it. A battery on the ehaussee in front of the entrenchment, another look- ing toward Dugny, and another toward Le Blanc Mesnil, would have stiffened the problem materially. And where had been the mitrailleuses ? Here was just the place for their use; for a street had to be traversed, and if the mitrailleuse has a metier anywhere, it is in sweeping a street or a road. There was, it is true, one mitrailleuse at the upper end of the village ; but the capture of the railway station by the Kaiser Alexanders early made its position untenable. The big lieutenant told me how the Queen Elizabeths came on. They left the ehaussee empty, and took to the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 59 fields on either side. On the right, in skirmishing order, came the 1st Company, with yellow-bearded Captain von Helldorff leading it on. On the left of the chaussee, in the same order, came the 2nd Company, commanded by lieutenant von Buddenbrock. In the rear respectively of these two came the 3rd and 4th Companies (the four companies forming the 1st Battalion), in that columnar formation in which the Prussian company is wont to go into battle. Behind it came the 2nd Battalion ; behind that again the Fusiliers. On the left were the Augustas. I could not wonder at the big lieutenant puffing and blow- ing. Through the deep potato-land the going must have been awfully heavy, and splashes of lead in the face did not contribute to lightening the way. All along the track were evidences of the latter hindrance — the accustomed relics of slaughter. Behind a friendly dungheap, the only cover in all tin 1 exposed rush of 1,500 yards, the wounded had crept, and there yet lay their blood-dabbled rags. The graves began at about 500 yards from the village. Just to the right of the now levelled entrenchment was one wherein lay three occupants. My companions owned how staunchly the French stood their ground here, fight- ing till the bigger men drove them back. Through the loop holes in the walls right and left of the entrench- ment they kept their chassepots sticking, loading at the breech without withdrawal, and tiring continuously. The officers, rushing up close to the wall, grappled with the GO THE AVAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. weapons and dragged them from the hands of the men who plied them. The pioneers came up under the fire, and with their crowbars stove gaps in the thick wall. Nos. 1 and 2 companies, forming up from skirmishing order right and left, inwards inclined and tumbled pell-mell on the breast-high barricade. The officers led till they fell. One went down with a bullet from a revolver, another got a bayonet right in the heart as he chested the stones of the entrenchment. As HelldorfF dropped among the Mobile Guards, one of them took off a part of his ear, but fared considerably worse than Peter when he served another fellow-creature in the same way. The folio wing- are the names of the officers of the Queen Elizabeths who fell before reaching, or at the barricade : — Captain von Reuthe-Fink, Lieutenants von Merckel, von Schoenitz, von Zedlitz, von Lusk, and von Knobelsdorf. The band pushed up under cover of the wall on the right, and placing itself there, played the troops past as they stormed into tlte village — one air my informant remembered well - — the " Parischer Einzu^smarsch." Just on the left of the entrance to the village is a small* villa, which must have been, the scene of a deadly com- bat. There were several graves on the tiny lawn : a river <>od which had once adorned a fountain there was knocked into splinters. The house was riddled through and through ; it was new, and thinner than the houses of the old construction. There were bayonet marks on the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 01 stairs leading to the cellar, and Hood on the walls. The gable and front were pitted all over with bullet marks, just as if the house had got a white small-pox. In the corresponding house on the right — a big old farmhouse — the fight had been very warm. Here, storming in through the breaches the pioneers had made, the Guardsmen had fallen upon half a battalion of Frenchmen, and, after a struggle, had captured 300 of them. On the wall of this house was chalked the words, — " Prussiens du (liable : volts ne cerrez pri- gade, and Lieutenant-General von Budritzki, who di- rected tlie operations of the dav, entered the village with the :2nd Battalion of the Queen Elizabeths. From every house, as the column pushed forward, poured down the deadlv hail; the French stuck to the houses as evicted Irishmen stick to their cabins. The Grenadiers went right and left into each individual house, and in each house there was a fierce hand-to-hand light on the stairs. The C£ THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Frenchmen fought on the landings — they fought in the rooms. The Guardsmen had to carry the balustrades at the bayonet point. Sometimes an obstinate Frenchman was pitchforked out of window on the bayonets — for it was not a time to stand on ceremony. Others had taken refuge in the cellars, and blazed away through the flaps. In the cellars it was where most of the prisoners were taken. But prisoners were not taken till the Frenchmen were utterly beaten out of defensive means ; nay, there were cases when, after these had " given out," the stub- born Gauls still refused to yield. The smoke traces were still visible against the entrance to one cellar, to which fire had to be applied, and the occupants regularly smoked out ; they would not yield till the threatening^ of asphyxia became too strong. In the East-end of Lon- don, just off the Mile- end Road, there is a spot known to and shunned by our metropolitan police. Its proper name is St. John's Place ; its common acceptation is Jack's Hole. Hither it is that the blousy demi-monde of Ratcliffe Highway enveigle the sailor, who finds him- self stripped and solitary when he escapes from his drunken sleep. The police despair of doing any good with .lack's Hole, it is so like a rabbit warren. You my ill at one end, and you can go through, house by house, from one end to the other, without ever coming down out of the first floor. The labyrinth is useful when there is a hunt. As I saw it to-day Le JJourget, as regards TO THE GREAT SORTIE. Gi thoroughness of communication, was a veritable Jack's Hole. So fierce had been the storm of lire in the street, that the pioneers had to break a passage from house to house through the dividing partitions. Thus it was pos- sible to traverse along the upper floor of the houses nearly half the length of the village on either side of the chief (and indeed the only) street. And, in addition to the isolated fights in the gardens and outhouses in the rear of the houses fronting the street, there were actually, so to speak, three; streams of combat going on in the place at one and the same time — that in the street, where men ducked their heads, and made a rush from shelter to shelter as they found it formed by the favouring project- ing gables of houses, and those two going on on the upper floor of each row of houses. It was from a house, across the front of which is inscribed in large characters, '• Pensionnat de Demoiselles," on the left-hand side of the way, that Colonel Zaluskovski was shot down. A party of his men made a dash forward, and carried the house with a rush. In the passage, which was densely packed with Frenchmen, the cry of " Pardon " was sent up, and the Grenadiers held the points of their bayonets up as they crushed into the place and pushed their way upstairs. In a room at the, top of the stairs stood a French officer, who shot down with his revolver the first soldier who entered, and then, throwing his weapon on the floor, appealed for cpiarter to an officer who was 64 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. among the first to enter. The officer would have granted it, but for once the bonds of discipline were burst. The men had heard the cry of " Pardon ; " they saw their comrade lying dead before them, and the fury of angry revenge was stronger within them than the voice of their officer could control. When the "demoiselles" come back to the smashed and battered pensionnat, they will see where the boards soaked in the blood of the French officer. It was a little beyond this that Lieutenant Paizeniki fell, shot dead on the spot as he was cheering on his men. About half way up the village, on the right- hand side as one goes towards Paris, is the church, a building of considerable size, with a spire of some pre- tensions. It stands slightly recessed from the street, and in the little recess the Frenchmen made a desperate stand, firing from the steps of the church and from be- hind the house that projects before one comes to it. They were dislodged from this position by the Prussians effecting a lodgment in the house, and from this point of vantage firing down upon them. Then from a house a little farther on upon the other side of the way, the French, who had barricaded the windows and the roof, opened a furious fire upon this house, occupied, as I have said, by the Prussians. In its gable I counted two hundred dents of chassepot bullets, and then lost the tally. At length the Prussians forced their foes to eva- cuate this position, and got into the church. Hither TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 05 tliey brought their wounded to be companions to the French wounded, who already littered the place. Even now the lower end of the floor of the building had red coagulated cakes in the cavities of its pavement, where the blood had lain and thickened as it poured from the men lying there on the stones, waiting while Dr. Schroe- ter could overtake their injuries. His colleague was al- ready hors de combat with a bullet through his shoulder. What a wan, dreary look that church had now ! Its open door creaked dismally on the wind. As you entered there lay the bloody rags and the gouts that were the relics of the wounded. Shells had stove in portions of the roof, and the floor was strewed with fragments of ceiling. The light from the windows had been meant to be softened by pictured screens. These were all un- fastened, and swinging in the wind. The Virgin had a bullet-hole through her heart : Our Lord had been shot right through the head. In the little side chapels the images and the alabaster candlesticks were unharmed, but the pale marble was spotted with blood. On the altar, dinted here and there with a bullet-hole, and with a blood-stained boot on its steps, there lay open the great psalter. Had the priest, I wondered, stood to his spiritual weapons to the last, as his countrymen had to the arm of the flesh? The book lay open at the 56th Psalm — " Miserere mei, Deus, miserere mei, Deus. Clamabo ad Deum altissimum." In the vestiary behind the altar lay 60 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. a tangled heap of rich and sumptuous robes, such as would have delighted the heart of Mr. Mackonochie or Mr. Purchas — stoles and copes, velvet mantles with gold and green crosses embroidered on them, and a variety of decorated garments, the appellations of which are not within my secular knowledge. Beyond the church the musketry fire seemed to have slackened slightly as the French became conscious of the hopelessness of the struggle. Still, every house afforded evidence of the stubborn manner in which the fight was maintained, in the shape of dents of chassepot bullets. The swinging iron sign of the Cheval Rouge, the little auberge of the village, was perforated by fourteen bullet- holes. The pioneers had to tear down the lower fronts of some of the houses to let the men get at the pertina- cious defenders. When these did not back their way upstairs, their usual " dernier ressort " was the cellar. It was out of the cellars that quite one-half of the prisoners were excavated. There were eloquent traces of hard fighting in an enclosed row of houses which runs to the left at right angles to the main street. Here it was that the Queen Augusta battalion came battling its way in, having skirted the village thus far on the left. Before they cleared this clump of houses the Augustas lost six officers. Of all the desolate places I have ever seen this shat- tered village of Le Bourget was the most desolate. Ex- TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 67 cept its military occupants, who, in strength quite for- midable enough to obviate any prospect of a repetition of the occurrence of the 28th October, occupied a half- detached portion of the village, there was not in the whole of it a. living thino- so far as I saw, save a forlorn prowling cat that seemed to have inherited the spirit of the French soldiers that once had been the occupants of the place, and put her back up and spat at us veno- mously, as if she were French to the core, and hated the invader worse than she craved for food. There was not a house that had not been crashed into by several shells — not a roof that had the remotest claim to be intact, not a garden but what had nearly as many shell-holes as it had plants, not a wall that was not breached, not a window that was not shattered. The chaussee was strewed with the fragments of shells and with flattened chassepot bullets. hi the entrance to the court-yards were knapsacks, trousers, coats, shirts, blood-stained bandages, and other debris. The wind, as it whistled mournfully along the deserted street, blew to and fro fragments of soldiers' ledgers, scraps of Feldpost letters with loving words on the yellow morsels of papers and tattered leaves of pocket Bibles. 1 think when Paris may once again know the meaning of peace, that her wise men would do well t<> build a wall round this village, and keep it always as 1 saw it. No better corrective to a war mania could be imagined. It is con- 6S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. veniently near Paris, and when the unreasoning mob begins to clamour it would be so easy to answer such a cry as " A Berlin ! " with the counter-shout of " A Le Bourget." How near Lc Bourget is to Paris is worth mentioning. The stone that stands at the southern end of the village records, " a Paris, 4 kil. 9 " — not three miles from the barriers. We were a good deal nearer o when we stood behind the last barricade, and cautiously peeped over at the French forepost across the chaussee in front of La Courneuve some four hundred paces before us. Returning to head-quarters in Margency on the 24th, I found everything reported quiet on the north side, and that tidings of the same tenour had been sent in from the eastern section. I may recall a conversation which on the same evening I had with a distinguished officer of the Crown Prince's staff, as tending to show how accurate was the reckoning of the besiegers respecting the policy to be pursued by the besieged. My interlocutor told me that there was no expectation, on the part of the Ger- man military leaders, of a sortie from Paris — that was to say, of a sortie and nothing more. Trochu, he argued, was sensible enough to know that sorties, in themselves, have very little effect in helping towards the raising of a siege. But he had discrimination enough to perceive three things. First, that there were more troops in Paris than were wanted for its defence, now that it had been TO THE GREA.T SORTIE. 69 fortified to a pitch beyond which fortification could scarcely go ; secondly, that as Metz had too forcibly illustrated, a superfluity of mouths, even if the mouths were the mouths of fighting men, was a source of weak- ness and of ultimate ruin to a city that had a limit to its powers of furnishing provisions ; and, thirdly, that these superfluous fighting; men might have a chance of effecting some good if outside the cordon of environment, and their character changed from that of a besieged army to that of an active field army, capable of co-operating with other forces, not cooped up behind walls and dykes. " Wherefore," continued my friend, " if we are not to continue in this state of utter stagnation till Paris has eaten its head oft', and is forced by hunger to capitulate, we may expect an effort on a grand scale that will not be a sortie in the ordinary acceptation of the word, but an attempt in force to push a portion of the besieged force out through our lines into the comparatively open country beyond. On which side this effort will take place, if it takes place at all, there is no special basis on which to form a prognostication ; but we may be sure, of this, that on the side where the real effort is not made, on that side there will be a feigned attack in force, cal- culated to give the impression that it is no feint. The probability of such an effort depends materially, there can be no doubt, on the intelligence which may reach Paris as to the French forces outside, and what is the 70 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. nature of their doings. The present quiet may he, and I am strongly inclined to think is, but the lull before a great storm. Should a real and heartily meant effort to break through be made, and fail (as fail it shall), and the failure be coupled with absence of news, or bad news, from out- side, then surely the end cannot be far off." The latter impression — I mean the impression that the siege could not last much longer — was very general in the German lines up to about the middle of December. There can be no doubt, I think, that Bismarck and Von M oltke were deceived as to the store of provisions in the city. The delusion was maintained by descriptions which from time to time were made public, written by persons inside of the beleaguered city, of the straits to which even people with plenty of money were already reduced. If rats were selling; for more than fowls were to be bought for in peace-time, and when donkey was a delicacy, surely a condition closely akin to famine was reached. So it was argued; and it may be added to that, the besiegers utterly misjudged the power of Paris to face and endure continuously what, stripped of sensationalism, did intensify into a real and terrible pinch. The miscalcula- tion was not unjustifiable. All that they, or that any body else, knew of the beautiful, sinful capital and its inhabitants was of a character to lead to the anticipa- tion that Spartanism was an impossibility in frivolous, luxurious Paris. Before the end came, the Germans TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 71 frankly owned how far they had erred in their reckon- ing, and their respect for Paris grew in proportion to the duration of her resistance. That resistance was the one break in the black cloud of humiliation that hung like a pall over French martialism when the peace was signed. The world abused Bismarck for the dry matter-of-fact way in which he warned Paris that if it held out much longer it would incur a certainty of absolute starvation after the capitulation. But, whatever sentiment might have had to say in the matter, and whether the German spoke from a single heart or not, it was unquestionable that his warning would have proved but too true but for the nobly prompt succour of Britain in the emergency. The environs of Paris were stripped and depopulated. In all the beautiful villages along this uorthern side, there were but mere handfuls of resident population, and they were all but starving. In the early days the Franes-tireurs had overrun the district, frightening everybody away either into Paris or off into the back country by terrible stories of Prussian atrocities, and then, what the people did not take with them, tin; Franes-tireurs looted. The Prussians, on their arrival, travelled miles without seeing a living tiling. Now the people were beginning to come back out of the back country, having heard by report that the Germans had not teetli like boars, and did not eat little children. But they came back destitute to their forlorn homes. If they had money, they bought some food of 72 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the marketenders ; if they had not, they lived on the vegetables which were still plentiful in the fields (the German soldier does not understand the virtue of salad), and on the bread the soldiers might spare from their rations. Out of such a population and such a country as this, Paris could not expect much to fill her depleted magazines after the capitulation. You might travel from St. Germain to Goncsse in the days I write of without finding a place where }~ou could get a dinner by paying for it — a glass of wine or a feed of corn for your horse. The Germans — provident fellows — had cleared potato- fields of their produce, and stored them in pits for winter consumption, in anticipation that they should have to stay the winter before Paris. Out on the foreposts under fire of the forts, there were still a few fields where the tubers were yet in the earth. But what is a potato- field to Paris ? The French troops, by the way, seemed inclined to risk more for their potatoes than for anything else. At first they had come out potato-digging in large bodies — one batch using the spade while the other covered them. For a time the Germans had refrained from disturbing this industrial occupation ; but the demonstration became too impudent, and the potato- parties were fired upon with the needle-gun. Now the tactics were different. The French came out in parties of three — two skirmishing assiduously, while the third dug with equal assiduity. TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 73 On the 2Gth of November, all being still reasonably quiet on the north side, I quitted Margency, with the intention to familiarise myself somewhat more with the positions of the Maas Army, by visiting at least a portion of the eastern side. On my way to Gonesse, which was my first halting-place, instead of taking the low-conntry route along the front, I crossed the summit of the hill of Montmorency and came down upon Ecouen, where in the beautiful and historical chateau — its style of archi- tecture pure and veritable Renaissance — there was a large lazaretto of the Guards, which I was desirous to inspect. It is impossible to imagine a building better calculated for an hospital than this chateau, standing as it does on an elevation which secures a fine prospect and a free current of air, with lofty halls for wards, wide staircases, hot and cold water on every floor, beds and bedding enough and to spare, commodious cooking apparatus, and a, latrine system of an excellence very rare in France. With the introduction of a simple means of ventilation, such as that in ^o efficient operation in Middlesex Hos- pital, the place could hardly have been improved. It had been, till the invasion, a pensionnat for daughters of members of the Legion of Honour, who were cared for by a number of sisters or nuns, and the latter to the number of twenty still remained, and were indefatigable in their attention to the ailing, although of another and a hostile nation. Staff-SiU'Gfeon-Maior Teirener seemed as efficient 74 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. as lie certainly was a most solicitous chief, and lie had a sufficient number of able and zealous medical assistants. The number of patients in the chateau at this time was 120, of whom two were Frenchmen, one an officer with an amputation of the leg. The great bulk of the cases were of sickness, the prevalent diseases being abdominal typhus, typhoid and gastric fevers. There were but few wounded, the proximity of typhus being detrimental to recovery from wounds. Typhus supervening on a gun- shot wound almost invariably, I believe, results in ery- sipelas. There had been one or two cases of typhus cx- anthemat icus — the "spotted typhus," which I had seen in Metz — but those so attacked had recovered and been sent home. A peregrination through typhus wards is never a pleasant thing. Do what you may in the way of dis- infection and ventilation, it is impossible to banish alto- o-ether the fever taint that haunts the air. And the taint of typhus fever is, I think, worse than that of any other sickness. At times it is so dense that you almost fancy you can see it, and it sticks in your throat as if you had tried to swallow a cobweb. I must say it was very strong in the ('bateau of Ecouen. The ventilation was insufficient. Every military surgeon knows what a con- stant war he has to wage 1 with his patients on the venti- lation question, and the German military sick rebelled against free air with exceptional stubbornness, because the Germans, when well, seem to have but a rudimentary TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 75 conception of the meaning of ventilation. I knew a wily old army surgeon who used to break by chance an upper window or two in each ward, and always forgot to schedule the breakages in the barrack damage-list. It would have been no bad policy on Dr. Tegener's part to have resorted to the same pious fraud. Matters were worse than usual, because the sick were mostly in the smaller rooms, the great hall — " Salle de Napoleon " — and the other larger and loftier apartments having been emptied for sweetening. The place had been used for some time as an hospital. Before the Germans came the French had so used it, and then it had been occupied as such also by another army corps before the Guards came and adopted it as their " 2nd Lazarette." From time to time there had been a good many wounded in it, and in the early days, perhaps, not much attention to cleanliness. The result had been that the place had in some measure become tainted with erysipelas, and, indeed, with gangrene. How subtle, obscure, and persistent are these strange place-infections there are few hospital sure-eons who have not had good cause to know. It was from a profound conviction that not all the appliances of inlaid floors and walls lined with glazed tiles sufficed to prevent the absorption and reten- tion of the malaria that the late Sir James Simpson was led to become so energetic an advocate for cottage hos- pitals. Some years ago erysipelas got such a grip of that admirably managed institution, King's College Hospital, 76 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. that an indoor patient could not have an abscess lanced that this disease did not almost inevitably supervene. Certainly the empty wards in the Chateau of Ecouen looked fresh and healthy enough now with their scrubbed floors, their open windows, and their neat cots, with the clean linen, the legacy bequeathed by the young ladies who were the previous inhabitants. But he would have been a rash man who would have been confident that the demon had been exorcised out of them, especially while it was still rampant in other parts of the building. I saw one poor fellow dying in a corner, of hospital gan- grene in its worst form ; the part affected was bloated to a great size, and the swarthy tint of the gangrene seemed to fight for the mastery with the bright, glazed redness of the adjacent flesh. His face had that ghastly, anxious pallor which is the constant concurrent of gangrene. The sad wistful eyes of the poor fellow are before me as I write. In another ward were several cases of erysipelas, chiefly as the sequent to typhus, from a low habit of body. If this he a common result, I wonder the whole crew were not down with erysipelas in a- mass. Heaven knew they had nothing to fetch them out of a. low habit of body. There was not a drop of port-wine in the place, or indeed of any wine save a. sour country trash that would have given dysentery to a milestone. There was no porter, no ale, no cognac, no Liebig, no milk extract, none of those little comforts to which the heart of a sick TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 77 man turns when his gorge would rise at the food he eats when well. Fancy men sick unto death of typhus having a plate of lean boiled beef put before them. Chances of recovery were incalculably lessened by their having to live on this tough stuff or want ; and when they should have got round the corner, if they did round it, con- valescence must have been materially retarded by this unsuitable fore. Perhaps, however, the want of generous wine was most severely felt. The poor fellow on whom gangrene had fixed its fangs had at his bed-head a cup of sour wine and water. I never Avas so thankful in my life that I had a big and full flask in my pocket. Its con- tents were good sound cognac : we filled a great iron tablespoon with the cordial and poured it down his throat. He brightened visiblv on the instant — not indeed that cognac or anything else could have saved his life, but material comforts help not a little to smooth the road to the dark portals. The other fellows raised themselves on their elbows from their fevered pillows, to gaze with eager eyes on the flask. How 1 wished, as I poured out its last drops, that it had the property of the widow's cruise ! It may interest medical readers, should I have any, to know that the cold-water treatment of typhus was tried in the Ecouen Lazarette witli considerable success. J saw several men snugly packed in the wet sheets, and they expressed their sense of the grateful alterative which the cold afforded them. After all, the treatment differs 78 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. little in principle from that of applying ice to the shaved head, which is in almost invariable use in delirium. I believe that here the treatment was resorted to in conse- quence of the want of physic, of which the stock was exhausted. The former occupants had a nice little apothecary's shop, which was still well stocked, but its use was barred to the German doctors in consequence of the difference in the two pharmacopoeias. It appeared the premises were wanting for working the little question in simple proportion which was all that seemed requisite. Before leaving the chateau I wrote a letter to the chiefs of the English Ambulance in St. Germain, laying the facts of the case before them, and entreating them to send a waggon-load of stores round to Ecouen with all haste. How this request was acted on will presently appear. It must be consistent with the experience of all who had occasion to journey much among the German troops during the war, that the Etappen Commandant * is a being of a somewhat variable temperament. Sometimes he as good as tells you to go to the devil. Again he is fairly civil, but eminently unsatisfactory. He is sorry, but he lias no quarters ; you must bivouac. An excellent type of this variety was the Etappen Commandant at Corny, who consigned the Englisli Ambulance to a muddy bivouac in an open field, when a little trouble might have * The Etappen Commandant was the military official ((if rank proportionate to tin; importance of the position) who acted as chief local administrator, seeing to the billets, transport of troops, forwarding of stores, &c. TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 79 enabled him to find them decent shelter. Again, your Etappen Commandant is suspicious, and evidently would like to stiek a file of bayonets on cither side of you, or he is regularly and unmistakeably obtuse, and you leave him empty, it is true, but with feelings of compassion rather than of irritation. Sometimes you chance on a prince of an Etappen Commandant, a gentleman who not only puts himself out of the way to find you quarters, but asks you to share his dinner into the bargain. Such a paragon of Etappen Commandants was he of Gonesse. When muddy and belated I called upon him, he made me out a billet on the instant, and sent a man with me to the same. It was not much of a place, it was true, but it was as good as any other quarters in Gonesse. I had my choice of four empty rooms on the first floor of an aban- doned apothecary's shop. On the floor of each room was a mattress ; the remaining furniture consisted of a chair and the inevitable picture of the Napoleonic dynasty— the Xapoleon with an arm round that poor limp son of his, and the other pointing towards the ex-Emperor, who tries to look as like his uncle as possible, while he pats his boy on the head. A man cropped up from down- stairs, and c: took me in," as my servant for the time being. A German soldier is always ready for any job that will bring him in an honest penny, and is as content with a five-jjroschen piece as an English servant would be with half-a-crown. He told me of a misfortune that 80 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. had occurred the day before at Aulnay, illustrating the danger of exposing lights on the foreposts within range of the enemy's fire. A military chaplain and a count, an officer in a cavalry regiment, shared the same room in a chateau in that exposed village, and neglected to close the shutters when they lit their lights. Presently a shell from Aubervilliers crashed into the room, and exploding killed them both. I was now in the country of the Guards, whose general custom it is to establish a kind of regimental club, which they call a casino, wherever a regiment happens to be quartered. Head-quarters being in Gonesse, the casino there was both well appointed and well frequented ; and on the invitation of the Etappcn Commandant I spent there a right merry evening. While somebody was sing- ing a comic son 2;, an officer rushed in with the tidings that " Paris was open." The song ceased, and all sprang to their feet ; but it turned out that our friend was only hoaxing us. Nevertheless there were symptoms that the authorities thought the end must have been near. Three days before Metz capitulated, the con- tractors of the army received orders to hold themselves in readiness at a moment's notice to pour forth into the surrendered city. In this particular the coming event cast a true shadow before ; and one felt tempted, when he found the order now repeated, to draw a hopeful augury from it. On the night of the 26tli of November TO THE CHEAT SORTIE. 81 the order was despatched by telegram to all the con- tractors supplying the army with food that, in anticipa- tion of the early capitulation of Paris, they should be prepared to supply exceptional demands upon then- stores. The order was urgent, and caused great anima- tion among the contractors. The German troops con- sumed the extra rations, and rations for many days and weeks besides, before tin; wished-for day came at last. It is an axiom of unquestionable truth that the strength of the whole is equal only to the strength of the weakest part. Sagacious men at home did not fail to perceive that there must have been weak points in an environment of such a circuit as that with which the Germans surrounded Paris, and the inference was tempt- ing that a sortie at one or other of these weak points might have an important if not a successful result. This inference, natural enough for one at a distance, was dissi- pated by actual inspection. As I have already remarked, tin: weakest point of the siege on the north side of Paris was unquestionably the level tract between the road from Paris to Gonesse and the Forest of Bondy. While the region due north is dominated by heights and com- plicated by water, while the col of Picrrefitte dominates the flat on its left, at least as far as Stains, the space J have referred to had no natural advantages ready to the hand of the besiegers to meet the chances of a sortie in force. J jut so careful and skilful had been the applioa- 82 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. tion of military science that the position of the besiegers, from being open and precarious, had been converted into an elaborate entrenched camp, capable of being defended by resolute men against any field force that could have been brought against it. This line of defence had its right on Dugny, which I have already described, and ran east with a south-easterly bend through Pont Iblon, Lc Blanc Mesnil, Aulnay, and Sevran, to Livry, which is the left of what was without it the weak joint in the harness. The little river Moree ordinarily flows in an insignificant channel scarcely capable of interposing an obstacle to cavalry, the ground in its front is nearly level, and for a great part of its extent is covered with a spur of the Forest of Bondy. There is a slight swell behind the little stream, but not enough to give any dominance of value in hindering troops from crossing the stream. The roads along which an attack would advance are- numerous and excellent. Finally, an attacking force would have had the advantage of a covering fire from the forts of Paris up to the very muzzles of the German needle-guns. As I rode along this forepost line on the 27th of November, on my way from Gonesse to Lc Vert Galant, I was much struck with the masterly manner in which these disadvantages had been negatived. From being a> f the Paris newspapers before they were sent in to Mar- <>vnc\\ and they had also the cream of the spies, if such a sour-milk profession can be said to have any cream. Le Vert ( ialant is a village bearing a considerable resemblance to Le Bourget, only it was not shattered, and it has more chateaux in its neighbourhood. The good people of Saxony seemed to look after their soldier relatives with great attention. -lust as I got into Le Vert Galant, a convoy of Liebesgaben had arrived from Leipsic under the charge of four representatives of the committee of that 86 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. city. Fifty "waggons had been required to transport the consignment from Chateau Thierry ; so it may be con- ceived what a show the love-gifts made piled up in the capacious shed. This was the second contribution, too. There were spirits, wines, cigars, and tobacco, warm woollen garments, soaps, matches, biscuits, pens, paper, and that sweeping variety of odds and ends which the word " sundries " comprehends. " The German Organization." How much we have heard of that lately from all sorts of different sources, its excellence, its promptitude, how it never breaks down under any strain. Among others, I have borne tribute to its merits, but the most whimsical tribute I ever heard was exacted from a Briton who was with the head-quarters of Prince George of Saxony. I had the story from the gentleman himself. He had been dining with Prince George, and was on his way to his quarters along the causeway. On his road, he came upon a provision wag- gon, one of whose wheels had. broken, and the concern was in the mud. Not for long though; presently the waggoner produced another wheel in a matter-of-fact way which seemed to convey that he had an unlimited quantity of extra wheels on hand. The new wheel was put on, and the waggon rolled. Our countryman, comparatively a new coiner, had heard mu eh of the German ore-aniza- tion. Here, to his hand, as if he had ordered the re- hearsal, was a specimen. Far away from a wheelwright, TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 87 a waggon suddenly breaks a wheel at midnight ; so thorough is the organization, that a new wheel is on and the vehicle is under way again in less than ten minutes. Our countryman followed Captain Cuttle's counsel by making a note of this illustration, intending, no doubt, O - O 7 after the manner of a Briton, to write about it to his newspaper. Before going into his house, he happened to look into a shed which had been allocated as the dwell- ing-house of a oilt, in which he had a few days before o O O 7 *- invested. The wheel of his gig was gone. It was the wheel of his gig that he had seen stuck on to the proviant waggon. He went to bed, trying, as he might, to digest this last phase of his illustration of the " German organi- zation." Returning to Maigency on the morning of the 29th, I learned that two posts of a line of telegraph wires between Argenteuil and Bezons, near the former place, had been felled during the night, evidently by malice. As it happened, the wires were on a, French track which had not been utilised by the Germans, and therefore no actual harm had been done, except to Argenteuil. which, in accordance with the regulations in such cases made and provided, would have to pay severely for the folly of one of its inhabitants, who would have been hanged if he could have been found. The French were reported to be still pottering over the construction of the materials intended for the repair of the bridge at Bezons, but in a dilettante 88 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. way that indicated little heart. On the previous morn- ing intelligence had reached head-quarters that orders had been given for the gates of Paris to be closed, with intent that a sortie should be made by the troops outside the enceinte — a measure (the closure of the gates I mean, not the sortie) rendered necessary by reason of the crowds of spectators that insisted on witnessing every demonstration of the kind. In the afternoon I rode westward in the direction of Bezons and Sartrouville. On the front, immediately below head-quarters, things were comparatively quiet. A tremendously heavy fire had been heard during the night, Yalerien seemingly leading off the ball, and the direction whence came the sound appeared to indicate that the firing must have been taken up all along the southern side. The din, I was informed, had been as sustained and continuous as that of the cannonade in a general engagement. AVhcn I reached Argenteuil, it became evident that the Frenchmen over the way were in a powder-burning humour. There was quite a lively little fusillade going on from the opposite bank in the orchards and gardens which slope down from Colombes to the waterside. The guns from the batteries at Nanterre and before Courbevoie were booming away at measured intervals, sending their shells crashing into the lower part of Argenteuil, while the peasants worked placidly in the fields within easy range, with the courage either of TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 89 despair or of obtuseness. Outside Argenteuil, on the Sartrouville road, a peasant hailed me in the road, and told me that the previous evening, about six o'clock, his wife had been wounded in one of the streets of Ar- genteuil. and now lav in a house a little above where we stood. Monsieur was not a Prussian militaire ? Xo, I was not. And, pardon, but Monsieur is not then a cure? This peasant must have been a very cautious man, deter- mined to make quite sure of his ground. [Monsieur could with a clear consciousness disavow the clerical profession. Then for sure Monsieur must lie a doctor. I am not aware that I am addicted to washing my hands with invisible soap and water, which 1 have been given to understand is the shibboleth of doctorhood ; and I could not own the soft impeachment. But there is something fascinating in being taken for a doctor, whether the case is of a woman who has fainted in the streets, or one who has been wounded at the foreposts. 1 believe I did not repudiate M.D.ship with so much plainness as 1 had done the other professions. Monsieur must at least come and sir the poor woman. To this, nobody with a spark of humanity could have had any objection. I found a woman of about fifty vears of age sitting in a chair over a lire, in a state of considerable fever. The bullet had struck her forearm as it was stretched out in gesticulation, had, so far as I could make out, shattered both the bones below the elbow, then run up the bone into the shoulder, 00 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. and finally lodged just on the lip of the shoulder-blade, where I could feel it quite easily, with nothing but the skin between it and daylight. I did what I could with pillows and other rough and ready appliances to make the poor creature somewhat more comfortable, and left her with the promise that I should send her a German military surgeon from Argenteuil. She had fevered, and it was sad to hear her half-delirious talk. She had a son a soldier, inside Paris, and she seemed to have a morbid fondness for brooding over the fanciful supposition that it might have been a bullet fired by the son which struck the mother. Strange war, of which such things were among the possibilities. Returning towards head-quarters, I was in time to see the Crown Prince of Saxony pass in review two regiments of Uhlans of the Guard, who had returned from the other side of the Oise, having been replaced there by a larger body of soldiery. The regiments were in a state of the most thorough efficiency : men and horses alike were in the very pink of condition. An opinion I observe pre- vailed in England that a Uhlan is a light-cavalry man, and that his ubiquity is owing to his lightness. The fact is, that the CJhlans are heavy cavalry, coming next in ponderosity to the Cuirassiers. Roughly, the relations between the German and the British cavalry may be said to be the following : — German Cuirassiers equal to our Household troops, but with an infusion of slightly TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 91 shorter men ; Uhlans, equal to British heavy cavalry, i.e., 1st and 2nd Dragoons and 4th and 5th Dragoon Guards ; Prussian Dragoons and Hussars, corresponding to British intermediate cavalry (viz., the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Gth, and 7th Dragoon Guards and the Enniskillens) and the British Light Cavalry (Hussars and Lancers). The Prussians have no cavalry the men of which are uniformly so light as our distinctively light-cavalry regiments. We were at a disadvantage in Margency as regarded war news from outside the range of the Maas Army. There came in the shape of speedy information only what the Versailles people thought proper to transmit by tele- graph ; and as regards sortie-making not on our own face of the siege, we had, at least for a day or so, to trust to <>ur ears and to our acuteness in speculation. Our ears, too, did not have quite a fair chance in the matte] 1 . All the sound of firing came to us, in whatever quarter it might have been occurring, through one gap — the narrow valley between the hill of Orgimont and Sannois. Whether Piomainville was speaking, or whether it was .Mont Valerien " qui dowaiit," the distant din came booming to us up through this gap. It was possible to localise the firing somewhat by the exhaustive process. If there were no communications from the right or left of the Maas army, nor any telegrams, then we knew there had been no attack upon any section of it. If Mont 92 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Valerien was quiet, that was evidence that the work was not on the west ; and so by this process we got at the fact that a cannonade under such circumstances must be on the south. Wednesday, Nov. 30th, marked the commencement of an important epoch in the siege of Paris. The belea- guered city began its grand effort to break the cordon which surrounded it. On our northern side demonstra- tions only were made — attempts successful enough to the extent to which they probably aspired, that of keeping the besiegers in play, and preventing reinforcements from being hurried to the scene of the sortie that was really meant. There raged a heavy and continuous cannonade from all the forts, but it was only at one point on the north side where the French infantry broke cover in imposing force. What occurred on the eastern side on the 30th I had not the opportunity of seeing, on account at once of the distance and of the threatening aspect on the northern side. Before, then, making any reference thereto let me narrate just what I did see. From a very early hour in the morning it was apparent that there was hot work in the west. Mont Valerien was quite eruptive from the very smallest of the small hours, thundering away with a laudable impartiality as to the direction in which it sent its projectiles. Before daylight 1 had ridden forward to the top of Mont d'Orgimont, overhanging Argentcuil, and from this posi- TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 03 tion had an excellent opportunity of observing this exceptional activity. It seemed to me that as day broke quite a battle must be in progress somewhere by Yille d'Avray, on the south side of Valerien, and directly in the track between it and Versailles. The crash of heavy guns was almost continuous, and when there was a brief interval in their deep bass the sharper sound of musketry firin<>- came fainter on the morning wind. It struck me that while the cannonade was an all-round one in this direction, there was, besides the point somewhere about Yille d'Avray, another actual fight going on nearer me in the direction of Bougival. I could dimly distinguish down in the low ground in that direction columns of troops, and the frosty mist of the morning was made denser by the white smoke of the small arms. Closer to me, and in what 1 regarded as my own province, the work was very warm. From early morning shells from the batteries at Nanterre and (Ymrbevoie had been crashing into Bezons and Argenteuil. The sheltered road behind the latter town was scored in many places with the deep ruts made by shells. The bank on the French side was lined by their infantry, who had kept up a pattering lire into the darkness. In the anticipation of an attempt to restore the bridge at Bezons, to which I have already referred, the troops occupying that town, Argenteuil, and the intermediate posts, had stood to their arms, but had made no effort to reply to a lire which 94 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. seemed so purposeless, and was doing so little harm. On the eminence where I stood, the batteries on the other side kept up an unremitting lire. The shells ploughed its summit up in all directions, and the buildings which crown it were knocked about remorselessly. As day broke it became too dangerous a position, notwithstand- ing its great advantages as a point of outlook, and I was compelled to evacuate it, and retreat into the low ground beyond. It was out of the frying-pan into the fire. If I went east the shells from La Briche were tumbling into Epinay, St. Gratien, and Deuil. Montmagny and Stains were evidently Laving rough times of it at the hands of the Fort du Norcl ; further round Dugny and Le Bourget were receiving marks of the distinguished consideration of Fort de l'Est. Before returning to head- quarters, I went some distance to the west, to a point on the road westward from Argenteuil, which commands a view of Colombes and Courbevoie. While I stood here, behind the angle of a wall, noting; how alert the French sharpshooters on the opposite bank were in peppering at even a single man avIio exposed himself, I heard behind me the jingle of harness, and, looking round, beheld to my amazement the Union Jack waving in the wind. The old rag fluttered from a staff that was sticking in the front of a fourgon, and side bv side with it waved the red cross flag. In front rode two gentlemen witli the red cross brassard on their arm. The TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 95 two gentlemen were Mr. J. S. Young (of the Army Con- trol Department), superintending the English ambulance in St. Germain ; and Captain Furley, a well-known and energetic member of the National Society. It was Mr. Young to whom I had written describing the condition of the lazarette in the Chateau Eeouen, and begging for some help for the poor fever-smitten fellows who lay there. Mr. Young immediately on the receipt of my letter made his preparations with promptitude and zeal ; Captain Furley \s invaluable co-operation was enlisted in the cause, and here were the two with their waggon load of good things behind them, jogging quietly through the fire on their way to Eeouen. You can easily imagine how delighted I was to see them, and how pleased I was to know that, in consequence of my representations relief was about to reach a spot where it was so badly needed. It was thoroughly British — the cool quietude with which the little procession pegged on steadily on the path of duty, heedless of the chassepot bullets that came singing past them from the Frenchmen over the water. Here was the road; that was enough for our countrymen. To reach Eeouen it had to be traversed, and the dangers by the way were simply part of the dav's work. Further on, while i Kissing between Montmorencv and Sarcelles, J. O the shells dropped profusely about the waggon, but for- tunately without any casualty. 1 accompanied Mr. Young and Captain Furley to the head-quarters of the 96 THE WAR BETWEEN EEANCE AND GERMANY. Crown Prince, at Margency, where they met with a very warm reception from the gentlemen of the staff. Of the reception they experienced at Ecouen I shall speak presently. From Margency I accompanied a staff officer through Montmorency to Montmagny, and round to Gonesse on the swell between Garges and Bonneuil, and Stains, Pierrefitte, and Dugny. For the first time during the siege Du Nord was throwing; shells into Montmorency, which was imagined out of range. It made one nervous to hear them whizzing by us and bursting behind us in Sarcelles, as we were cantering up the chaussee toward Pierrefitte. I don't think the northern forts of Paris ever squandered so much fire as on this day. It seemed to me that they simply let drive in every direction, content to know that a shell was off some wh ere. We were just in time to witness from the ridge a sortie toward Stains, a village the exceptional position of which I explained in a recent letter. Three battalions came over the flat against it, supported by a close and sustained fire from Fort du Nord and the Lunette de Stains. The village was garrisoned by the 2nd regiment of the Guard and a battalion of the Queen Elizabeth's. The French troops, two battalions of Mobile Guards and one of the French line, came on with great resolution and in excellent order, notwith- standing that a, German field battery in an emplacement TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 97 to our left dropped shells among them with beautiful precision. But the German Guards were waiting for them, and received them with a steady fire at short range. The Frenchmen tried a rush ; but the bullets met them in the teeth, and checked their impetus. After holding their ground for a little while, exchanging shots with the Guardsmen, the exposed position had the in- evitable result, and a retrograde movement set in. The French, however, deserve great credit for the regular manner in which they effected their retreat. There was another demonstration in the direction of Le Bourget at a later hour. Dense columns of French troops showed on the plain in front of Fort Aubervilliers, and advanced steadily in the direction of Le Bourget. But they lost heart before they got near the piquet in the railway station, and never came close enough to give the men behind the main barricade a chance at them. Le Bourget, however, already pounded with shells, had a fresh dose <>f the same physic- all day; and when we were away in the east at Gonesse, the French had burst out of St. Denis, and had actually taken Epinay, although they were unable to hold it. The fire from La Bridie had been all day so strong that it was necessary in Epinay to huddle verv close under cover; and no doubt the battalion of the 71st, which was on duty in it, was in a measure taken by surprise by the suddenness and fury witli which the French attacked. They burst out of St. 98 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Denis at the double about half-past three p.m., and simul- taneously a gunboat with a strong detachment of sailors darted out from behind Fort La Bridie, and came steam- ing down the Seine. The vessel, as it came down stream, swept the banks clear of the German outposts with its fire, and landed its cargo at Epinay just as the troops arrived that had come by terra firrna. Of these there were six battalions — four of linesmen, two of Mobiles. The houses by the river-side and round to the west side of the village were occupied, and the 71st at least half surrounded before it had well realised the fact that it was attacked. It had got so late that no sortie was antici- pated. While the French were crossing the plain the German batteries on the crest in front of Montmorency played upon them with considerable effect. A lodgment having been effected in the village by a force so immensely superior, nothing remained for the battalion of the 7 1st but to extricate itself, with as much credit as possible, from its awkward plight. It evacuated the village, fighting as it retreated, and fell back toward St. Gratien. Here it found immediate reinforcement. The French utilised the time by barricading themselves in Epinay, and making preparations to give a warm reception to the force which should attempt to retake it. That force con- sisted of the whole of the 15th Brigade, the 7 1st and 31st Regiments, in all six battalions, with three companies of the 2Gth Regiment lent by the 16th Brigade. The TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 99 whole belonged to the Sth Division, which was commanded by General von Scholer. A rapid march was made on Epinay, the ardour of which the French were unable to baulk, and the place was retaken after having been held by the French not quite two hours. The loss of the Germans was very considerable, to be accounted for from the fact that they were the assailants in the second act of the piece. There were killed outright between forty and fifty men and five officers. The wounded were about 135 men and eight officers. It was at first believed the French were able to carry off no prisoners, although one officer and several men were reported missing ; but it was thought likelv they might be 1 villi!' either killed or wounded in some of the unexplored houses. Although some were thus found, others could not be accounted for : and it was afterwards learned that six men were captured and taken back bv the French into St. Denis. On the other hand, about forty French soldiers, chiefly linesmen. were taken prisoners by the Germans. I saw them in Montmorency next morning. They seemed in very good case, strong, fresh, and healthy, with no appearance of privation. It was a Feature of this affair in Epinav that a party of the 71 st. under the command of an A icefeldwcbel, held a house in the village during the whole time of the French occupation, and successfully resisted repeated efforts on the part of the French to drive them out. Their comrades thought them lost ; and ji 2 100 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. it was an agreeable surprise to find the staunch little garrison still holding their billet, and that without material loss. The wounded from Epinay were brought in the first instance to St. Graticn, where the chateau of Princess Demidoff was converted for the time into an hospital. The position, however, was too exposed, it being within easy range of St. Bridie, and therefore the poor fellows were next morning removed further back — some to Montmorency, but the greater number to Eaubonne. Those who could bear the transport were sent to Germany as soon as pos- sible. The German loss in the sortie on Stains was incon- siderable. The Guards had only to defend the place ; it was different with the French, who had to expose them- selves in the plain on the way to the attack, and during its progress. Shells fell on the 30th November at a Greater range than it had been believed the oims of the French forts were capable of carrying. Before then Montmorency had never been touched by a shell, and it was believed to be just out of range. But on the 30th the shells not only came crashing into Montmorency, but even fell behind it — a range of somewhere about G300 metres. In all, seventy-two shells on the 30th fell in Montmorency. J heard of but one casualty from all this pounding : a line officer was wounded. Dr. Telenor received the English ambulance with great TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 101 enthusiasm. The tears were in his eyes as he shook hands with Mr. Young and Captain Furley. On my arrival at a later hour he fairly embraced me. The stores were carried into his own room, and as the box of sundries was unpacked it was glorious to watch the delight of the good old man. "Porter," " Ganz gut!" "Ale," "Ganz gut!" "Chloroform," "Ach Gott!" " Twelve hundred cigars," " Du lieber Gott ! " and the hands and eyes went up in delight. The subscribers to the Society should have seen, the sick men taking their first dose of the generous port, and smoking their first cigar. The sight would have been ample reward to Mr. Young and Captain Furley had they run greater risks than they did to bring the o-ood things round. The woollen clothing must, I believe, have saved many lives. When convalescents are sent out from hospital to forepost- work, still weak and unseasoned, and thinly elad, they went down almost inevitably with rheumatism ; but with the warm jackets and drawers of the Society they could brave with impunity the hardest weather. Tn the society of the .Medical Staff we three Englanders spent a right pleasant evening over a bowl of punch, compounded by the joint efforts of the apothecaries, of materials not drawn from the stores for the sick. After supper Dr. Tegener asked everybody to dedicate a, bumper to a toast which lie was about to give, and then the good man made quite a little speech. Here is the purport of it : — ■ 102 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. " Gentlemen, — there are some people — we have indeed seen specimens of the species — who go about and make large and sweeping promises which are never fulfilled. What an example of the contrary we have now before us ! There came here casually the other day wiser lieber (the writer of these lines). He saw our state, and on the spot he wrote to his countryman, Mr. Young, at St. Germain, recounting what he had seen, and begging him to act. Mr. Young lets no red tape stand in his way. He and Captain Furley here put their heads together, and now this afternoon, without any bother, any previous correspondence, there comes jogging ui) our avenue a waggon bringing what is health — nay, what is life — to our poor sick. Here is the Englander all over, gentlemen — the bulldog, that has no wind to spare in superfluous barking." Then the doctor went for a little down a side lane to prove that the English and the Germans were brethren, and that a mutual affection was natural ; and wound up by calling for vociferous "Hochs" for the English ambulance. Captain Furley responded in a few graceful words, that were evidently not "from the teeth outward/' Mr. Young contributed vocally to the harmony of the evening ; and 1, who could neither make a speech nor sing a song, had to concentrate my energies on the punch and cigars. And so passed our St. Andrew's night very merrily, for as yet we knew not that doings had TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 103 been enacted in the day-time that, had we known of them, would have made mirth not only unseemly hut impossible. The great sortie on the soufh and south-east was to have been essayed on the 29th November, and was arranged, as it appeared, to consist of a combined attack on the parts of Generals Vinoy and Ducrot. Yinoy had to deal with the southern section, his eruption taking place from Villejuif and Vitry against Choisy-le-Koi and up the valley of the Seine. Ducrot had the valley of the Marne for his theatre of offensive operations. The com- bination failed, in consequence, as was afterwards ascer- tained, of a characteristic miscalculation, want of fore- sight as to the length of pontooning required for bridging the Marne, swollen as that stream was. The explanation of the blunder was that an exceptional quantity of water had been turned into the stream, either through neglect of the sluice arrangements higher up, mi the part of the functionaries whose duty it was to attend to their management, or through a cunning device of the Germans, who, it was said, first dammed the water and then let out the accumulation, with intent to hinder and hamper the efforts of the French to bridge the stream lower down. There was no foundation for the latter supposition : any action of this kind on the part of the Germans would have seriously incon- venienced themselves, as interfering with the efficiency 104 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. of their bridges at Clielles and Cournay; in addition to which obvious fact, I had the positive assurance that nothing of the kind had been thought of. The former is an absurdity on the face of it. The sluices on the Marne are designed, not to regulate the quantity of water in the river, but are in the nature of locks to facilitate the passage of vessels going up stream over shallows and rapids, which are ingeniously localised, so that each lock suffices to neutralise a rapid, and conducts from one long placid reach into another at a single step. The naviga- tion on the stream having been suspended on account of the hostile occupation, these locks were simply left open: throughout the whole distance from Dormans to Clielles I never saw the gates of one closed. Thus the volume of water flowed without interruption, whether it was great or small ; that it was greater than Ducrot's pontoneers had reckoned for was owing to freshets in the upper part of the valley. And under no hypothesis can it be disputed that one of the rudiments of the art of military bridge construction is to leave a margin for the contingency of a swollen stream, from whatever cause the increase might arise. In so far, then, as the failure in the arranged combination between Vinoy and Ducrot for the 29th was ascribable to the default in the bridge accommodation at the service of the army of the latter, the failure was utterly inexcusable, and reflects greater discredit on the military character of those at TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 105 -whose door it lies than any other episode in the defence of Paris. Vinov's effort of the 29th against the Gth Army Corps failed utterly; and it fell to Ducrot to make his effort the day after, unassisted by the distraction which the former, according to the plan of action, was meant to afford, and which, but for the blunder referred to, it certainly would have afforded. It is a bad omen in such cases when a general has to begin offensive operations with the acknowledgment, Perdidl diem. It cannot be denied, however, that on the 30th lie tried his best to make up for the lost time. By daybreak his troops, having for the most part crossed in the night, were pushing in the "Wurtcmberg and Saxon outposts on the horseshoe-like peninsula, under cover of a heavy fire from Avron, Forts Nogent and Charenton, and the redoubts of La Faisanderie and Gravelle. I am writing now from what I was able to learn of this affair after it was over, for I did not reach the ground on which it took place till the morning of the 2nd December. On this account I reserve topographical detail till 1 come to deal with this latter event ; nor, as not having been an eve-witness, can J claim thorough accuracy as to the details of what passed on the 30th. The AViirtem- bergers on the 2.0th had occupied the whole of the line across the peninsula as far as Noisy-le-Grand, which was the left Hank post of the Saxons, and were being partially replaced by the Saxons, when the French 106 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. attack was made. A "dislocation/' in fact, was in progress ; and although in theory an operation of this kind, instead of weakening a force along the line where it is being performed, should indeed double the strength, since the relieved and relievers should be on the ground at one and the same time, yet in practice, especially if the line is somewhat attenuated by its length, the force to be relieved not unfrequently anti- cipates, partly at least, in its departure the advent of the relief. In such a case the temporary weakness must be apparent; and in any case a ''dislocation" is productive inevitably of a certain amount of con- fusion. Abraham Lincoln's adage, " It is a bad time for changing horses when fording a stream," is extremely applicable to relieving operations performed in the very teeth of an attack by an enemy in force. I think everything points to the conclusion that the French, tardy as their movements were in losing the whole of the 29th, succeeded to a great extent, after all, in sur- prising the Wurtembergers and the Saxons in that daybreak attack of theirs on the 30th. Brie was soon in the hands of the French. Then they spread out like a fan, their left threatening Noisy, their centre looking straight at Villiers, their right, in great strength, being already in possession of Champigny. They had hurled the Wurtembergers back on that village with a rush, while at the same time they had taken it in flank on the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. ]07 south side ; and although there was some desperate fighting on the part of the South Germans to hold the place, yet they were utterly overpowered and driven back by sheer dint of superior weight. Villiers was not so easily gained by the French. It stands higher, has better defensive capacities, and they had been more carefully utilised. Here I may state that after the pinch on the south-east was over, and comparative • juietude had been restored, I was informed on authority which commanded attention that the Wurtembergers had been somewhat lax as well as unskilful in their attention to the artificial defences of the extreme front of their position. It certainly seemed to one going over the ground after the fio-hting was over that eligible positious had not been utilised, a] id that there was a want of that continuity and thoroughness of defensive works noticeable in the front of the country of the Guards and the Saxons. Confirmation of what I have alluded to might seem to be found in the elaborate system of defences the construction of which was set about as soon as the French had fallen back from the positions they had temporarily occupied. But to return to Villiers. A Wiirtemberger battery stood in front of an emplacement at the corner of the park in the village, and served for a considerable time, sup- ported as it was by the strenuous efforts of an infantry force which was unfortunately but too scanty, in 108 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. staving off the rush of the French. It suffered severely from the fire of Nogent, and ultimately the infantry supports had withdrawn from it ; but the gunners stood to their guns with admirable persistence. The French were no less obstinate in their assault, and the spectacle was presented of a single unsupported battery blazing into the teeth of a strong attacking force with shrapnel shells at point-blank range of 300 yards. When so small a distance separated the foes, the fire of Nogent had to be suspended, and it seemed as if the battery was holding its own ; but at the critical moment its ammunition was exhausted, and the gallant gunners, in default of supplies, had no alternative but to fall back. Then, with no inconsiderable amount of obstinate street- fighting, Viiliers fell into the hands of the French, and the situation assumed a very alarming aspect. Having used Champigny as a kind of base of concentration, the French had streamed up the slope of Mont Mesly beyond, and actually were on its summit. But further they could not get. Reitzenstein's brigade of Wiirtem- bergers (tin,' 1st) held the heights beyond in force, along with all the available artillery of the division; and this sufficed to stay the advance of the French beyond Mont Mesly, removed as they were from the covering fire of the forts. They were very stubborn, however, and it was not until late in the afternoon that they relaxed their efforts to gain more ground, and until the oppor- TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 109 tunity had arrived, in the opinion of General Obernitz, for directing Reitzenstein to alter his taetics and assume the counter-offensive. Meanwhile three regiments (the 104th, 106th, and 107th) of NehrhofFs division of Saxons (24th) had got into position behind Villicrs, and covering Noisy. Villicrs had cost the French so dear, that they were not prepared immediately to pursue the offensive on their getting possession of that village, and, after a pause of some duration in the active operations on this section of the battle-field, NehrhofT availed himself of what seemed a good opening for an attempt to retake the village. The duty was entrusted to the 47th Brigade, commanded by Colonel von Aben- dorff, who had assumed the brigadier-generalship in succession to General von Schultz, who had been wounded at Sedan. In all the Saxon army there is no gallanter officer than the colonel of the 106th. He in person commanded the two battalions that made the assault on Villicrs. The French had been utilising their occupancy, and already a barricade had been thrown up, which the Saxons carried at the point of the bayonet. The lighting was close, sustained, and desperate, all through the village street ; but the Saxons stubbornly fought their way, and supports poured in behind the men in the forefront of the battle. I believe Abendorff suc- ceeded in clearing the village. It is certain he took about CD O 250 prisoners, chiefly in the houses at the end nearest 110 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the park. But this park was virtually part of the village, and till it was retaken the position could not be said to have been retrieved. Abendorff had gone down, his horse pierced with four bullets. His adjutant gave him a fresh mount, and the colonel was hardly in the saddle before it, too, was shot, and he on the ground. Scrambling up, as an eye-witness told me, the gallant old soldier headed the attack on foot, which was made on the park held so stubbornly by the French. The fighting was long and fierce in this neighbourhood, and the result I never could learn with that exactitude which was desirable. I was informed authoritatively, on the one hand, that on the night of the 30th the Saxons held Villiers, having recovered it by the attack of which I have been writing ; but there was a want of explicit candour in communicating the details that was not altogether satisfactory. From other sources, and, indeed, from the men engaged, I gathered, on the other hand, that on the night of the 30th Villiers was only partly occupied by the Saxons, while the further end of it, in- cluding the park 1 have referred to, was beyond question in French occupation ; and French prisoners taken on the •2nd asserted unhesitatingly that on the night in question Villiers was entirely in the hands of the French, they having recovered the place at nightfall, when Abendorff's men fell back. I incline to place belief in the veracity of the second of these three statements, and assume that TO THE GREAT SORTIE. Ill Villiers was only wholly evacuated in the course of the following day (the 1st of December). But there can he no question about Champigny, notwithstanding that great frankness on the subject was not displayed by the head- quarter staff of the 12th Army Corps. Close on nightfall Reitzenstein's Wiirtembergers had cleared the interven- ing ground, and, well supported by field artillery, made a very energetic attempt to retake the village; but it met with a most stubborn resistance ; and the Wiirtem- bergers not only could get no foothold in the place, but the Mobiles defending it succeeded in recovering some of the ground they had lost in the direction of Mont Mesly, and they employed the night in fortifying the position and in throwing up earthworks outside the village, to render yet more difficult another attempt on the part of the A\ urtembergers to recapture it. The 1st of December was, as I take it, a day of forced inaction on both sides. The Germans were certainly not prepared to take the initiative on that day. During the first half of it a kind of informal armistice existed for the purpose of removing the wounded and burying the dead — a task which neither side, so far as 1 could gather, performed with the thoroughness which was desirable. The French utilised the tranquillity by digging potatoes on the blood-stained field, and in stripping the flesh off the carcases of killed horses which strewed its surface. 112 THE WAE BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. The rationale of the French tactics on the 30th November is not far to seek. There was the sortie on the west, one on the south against the 6th Army Corps, other two at distinct points in the north, and yet another threatened one inJLe Bourget, all meant as feints and distractions ; and there was the great and seriously meant one on the east, on to the horseshoe. It may surely be safely assumed that the intention of the besieged was to break through at the latter point, and at once relieve Paris of superfluous mouths, and let loose a field army to hang on the rear of the besiegers, and co-operate with the army of the Loire. Had the attempt been successful, its success would have gone far to raise the siege of Paris, at all events for a time. But the iron grip of the German was too strong. The history of the siege of Paris is the history of the siege of Metz over again. The Germans threw their cordon round and round, they chose their ground, they planted their feet firmly down upon it, and held to it with a grim, quiet, terribly in- flexible tenacity. The French inside having lost the comparative chance open to them in the early days, Avhile as yet the German foot had not settled itself quite surely on the ground, were now beating themselves furiously on the stern barrier that surrounded them, all impotent, notwithstanding the unquestionable conduct and spirit which they demonstrated, to how a gap quite through that barrier. TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 113 Sucli was the position on the 1st December. Would the French gather heart for another effort ? Would they sulkily abide behind their ramparts till the last biscuit was eaten ; or would they let reason speak to them, and, recognising the double fact that they could not raise the siege, and that its maintenance inevitably entailed upon them the horrors of starvation, would they avert that misery by a timely and honourable capitulation ? These were the questions all were canvassing on the northern side, while the Saxons and Wiirtembergers were drawing; a long breath, and bracing themselves for the struggle that their eves told them was close. The morrow brought at once the answer to the question and the renewal of the struggle. After the storm of the 30th November came the calm — ■ a short-lived one — of the 1st of December. On the former day, the air had throbbed and vibrated with the continuous din of the artillery; on the latter, not the sound of i\ single gun-shot came to break the stillness. The guns of the forts must have got very hot before the firing was over, somewhere about midnight. Their cool- ing had been helped during the night-watches by a keen frost, which hardened the ground and covered the ponds with a thin film of ice. On the morning of the 1st Captain Furley and Mr. Young visited the railway station at Villers le Bel, to inspect the hospital train which was just on the point of starting for Berlin. I have read assertions that the Ger- 114 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. mans cared assiduously for the fighting-man so long as he was in a state to fight, but that when he became hors de combat the care ceased, and the useless man, rendered useless by wounds or sickness, was neglected. This train was in itself a conclusive reply to the calumny. It was a locomotive hospital. The beds were in two tiers along the sides of the carriages — beds furnished with every imagi- nable device for the comfort of the occupant. There was an apothecary-shop compartment, and another car- riage which was a most convenient and admirably arranged kitchen. The train had its living cargo on board — men fit for the journey, culled from the field lazarettos all round the north and east sides of the besieging line. While the steam was getting up, there they were lapping their beef tea, made for them in the kitchen waggon, the hospital orderlies performing their duties just as in the hospital. One fellow told Captain Furley that he was so comfortable that he cared very little whether his journey Lusted a week or a month. On their way back to St. Germain my countrymen picked up my female patient at Argenteuil, to transport her into a civil hospital in the former town. 1 cannot quit the subject of the English ambulance visit without bearing testimony to the promptness and efficiency of the per- formance. To travel to and fro some twenty-five miles either way in two days indicates a high state of efficiency; and it ought not to be forgotten that for quite half of TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 115 this distance the road was under a very heavy fire. Between St. Brice and Sarcelles the men, horses, and waggon were twice spattered with a shower of earth caused by the explosion of shells in the field which they were skirting. I could not help being-- tickled at the O J. o sight of Captain Furley and Mr. Young coolly ex- ■chanoino- cigar-lights just at this interesting!; stage of the proceedings. Between four and five o'clock on the morning of the 2nd, a good friend came to my bedside with sure infor- mation that at daybreak an attempt was to be commenced by the Saxons and Wurtembergers to drive the French out of the villages of Brie and Champigny, which they had occupied since the day before but one. The stra- tegical value to the besiegers of those villages was of only a negative kind, while Brie formed an eligible tete du pout for the French, and Champigny was invaluable to them as opening up the southern exit from the horseshoe. Under these circumstances, the intention, as resolved on at head-quarters, was not alone to drive the French out of the two village's, but burn them both, so that they should not in future be available as shelters or places from which to make head. I was in the saddle in half an hour, and out on the long and weary road, eager to be in time for what 1 knew was coming. Past Montmorency, with its trim chateaux all silent, its hill with the white house on its summit standing out I 2 116 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. against the moonlit sky, with the lake of Enghien at my feet, sleeping placidly in the flood of white light. Just as I passed the now forlorn and abandoned dwelling that was once the hermitage of Jean Jacques Eousseau — boom, boom — there came five shells, one after the other, from Fort Du Nord, as if Paris should say to the besiegers on the north side, " Remember, although I mean hard fighting on the east, you are not to think that I am not thoroughly on the alert all round ; so don't attempt con- centrations, if you are wise." Through the vineyards to Sarcelles, and over behind Stains by the near cut, so swept by the shells the day before but one; past Dugny, where the Guardsmen were snoring in a full-nosed chorus, trust- ing implicitly and with all safety, to the alertness of their comrades on sentry. On across the chaussee before Pont Iblon, whence the Queen Elizabeths sallied out for that des- perate rush of theirs to retake Le Bourgct ; past the broad inundation on the left, across it into Aulnay, with the brass helmets on the stone lions ; on through Sevran, and down into Livry, where I found the Kaiser Franz Guardsmen occupying the old quarters of the Saxon Schutzen Regi- ment. Now a sweep to the right into dangerous ground by Clichy, and forward through the felled forest and the labyrinth of earthwork that crown the summit of the Forest of Bondy above Montfermeil. Before 1 had reached this spot the sombre music; of the cannon had begun to play. First came one sullen boom, and a simultaneous flash TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 117 through the morning twilight from the lofty side of Fort Rosny, then a dull chaos of noise, as from the guns on the newer works of Avron, further to the south. After this overture, which was performed about seven o'clock, there was no intermission in the dm. The air seemed thick with the sound of the terrible cannonade, and at times it was as if a gust struck against one's face, when some huge gun emptied itself into space. There was a sublimity in the roar, such as could be produced by no bicker of mere field artillery. From Jlontfermeil my way lay down between the two heights into Chelles, where I found the Saxons in force — the 103rd Regiment gam- soiling the town, and ready for anything that might take place on their immediate front. J hit Chelles was not the theatre of action this morning. The day before but one it had got a benefit in the shape of some 200 shells, which represented simply the waste of so much ammunition, since not a man was hurt. Some special providence must surely have protected a field-watch commanded by Hauptmann von Zanthier, in the front of Chelles. The shells actually rained about it, exploding in front, at the sides, and in the rear, but never a one came into the little post where the Saxon captain lay with his men. On (putting Chelles 1 took the wrong road, following the c/utussce towards Neuilly, till convincing argument proved to me that 1 was out of the track. Before this road will be eligible again for traffic it will require to be 118 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. relaid with fresh blocks of granite. A heavy shell bursting on the hard causeway produces an absolutely diabolical effect. Iron and stone fly in splinters together, whole blocks are sent into the air, and hurtle outward from the fiery centre as if projected from a gigantic turbine. And it was not one shell that fell on this exposed chaussee, but many — so many that, when man and horse were out of the solitude so infernally enlivened, I thought both were lucky in the extreme. Crossing the river higher up at Gournay, I learned there that Prince George of Saxony had shifted his head -quarters to Champs on the previous evening, and I found a battle raging fiercely on the tract of broken country to the south-west of that village. The Maine, beginning at Gournay, runs first nearly due west to a little beyond Noisy-le-Grand, then makes a sweep south, on the eastern bank of which sweep stands the village of Brie, and then forms a couple of loops, near the south of the broad neck of the most northerly of which is the village of Champigny, and further north and some distance to the east the larger village of Yilliers- sur-Marne. it was in and around the three villages of Brie, Yilliers, and Champigny where had been enacted the bloody drama of the 30th November. When the curtain had fallen on that drama the Saxons stood fast in Yilliers, spite of all that the French troops and the French forts could do to dislodge them. Brie and Champigny, lying TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 119 so close under the lee of Fort Nogent and the strongly armed redoubt of Faisanderie, on the verge of the Forest of Vincennes overhanging Joinville, remained in the hands of the French, for whatever good they were. What this advantage represented was simply this — that Brie gave them a footing, so to speak, on the Saxon mainland, while Champigny formed the key to the dis- trict behind the horseshoe formed by the loop of the Marne. Whether the risk, nay the certainty, of the severe loss entailed in an attempt to dislodge the French from positions which may be fairly designated as out- works of their fortifications, deserved to be weighed in tin; balance, in a military sense, against the advantage to be gained by beating the Frenchmen out of places so protected, is a epiestion the reply to which does not rest with me ; but, if it did, I would candidly give it as my opinion that the objects of the besiegers would have been equally served by giving their forepost line on this face a wider and a safer sweep. A line drawn from Gournay t<> Chennevieres presents a continuous defensive position of considerable strength, the complement of which might have been found in the utter destruction, by fire and crowbar, of the villages of Noisy, Villiers, and Cham- pigny. Such a line would, at all events, have presented this advantage, that there need have been fewer earth mounds beneath which lie dead children of the Father- land, beyond it on the side towards the French forts. 12U THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. But speculations of this kind are as tedious as they must be purposeless. The object of the day on the side of the Germans was to dislodge the French from these villages — Brie and Champigny. To essay this task fell to the lot of Saxons, Wiirtembergers, and a brigade of the 2nd Army Corps. The Saxons engaged consisted of the second division of the Boyal Saxon Army (the 24th division of the German host), under the command of General von NehrhofF, and composed of the 104th, 105th, 106th, 107th, and 108th Regiments. This, taking each regiment at its full strength of three battalions, would represent fifteen battalions, or about 12,000 men; but as more than one battalion was naturally elsewhere engaged on forepost duty, it may be outside the exact figures to put down the Saxon force engaged at 10,000 men. Before the commencement of operations these splendid troops occupied positions in Noisy, Champs, Gournay, Villiers, and the vicinity. The division of the Wiirtem- bergers, the strength of which was considerably less than that of the Saxons, was commanded by General von Obcrnitz. Their previous positions had been Ormesson, Chcnnevieres, La Queue, Noiscau, and the vicinity. I have spoken of a brigade of the 2nd Army Corps as co- operating, but I have reason to believe that this contin- gent was neither strictly a brigade nor did it amount to a division, but was made up of contributions from various portions of the Army Corps in question. It was com- TO THE GREAT SOKTIE. 121 manded by General von Fransecki, who, in virtue of seniority, had the nominal direction of all the operations, which were, however, supervised generally as regarded the Saxons by Prince George in person, whose heedlessness of danger must sorelv have tried the nerves of his staff. The contingent from the 2nd Army Corps supported and co-operated with the \Yurtembcrgers. The Saxons had no backing but their own resolute valour. In all, the German troops engaged and immediately supporting may have numbered about 22,000. The German pro- gramme was complicated more or less unexpectedly by a counter- offensive operation projected by the French against Villiers, no doubt with intentions of penetrating further, and of ultimately breaking through the cordon. Thus it fell out that as the Germans were pressing on to the attempt of driving the French out of Brie and Cham- pigny, Messieurs the French were simultaneously pouring out with intent to take Villiers. "When two bodies are going opposite ways in the same groove, it is a law of nature that a collision is the result. When the two bodies are armies, a fight is inevitable. Such events of that fight as came under my personal observation I shall endeavour to recount ; but it is necessary first to give a brief description of the nature of the ground on which it took place. On the road to Noisy the south bank of the Marne is low, with a gradual rise, furrowed by inconsider- able rectangular depressions. As one reaches Noisy, 122 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. which stands on the crest of the rise, and looks southward, he sees towards Villiers, and athwart the neck of the loop, a broad flat upland table-land, affording favourable scope for military evolutions. All along the front of this table-land, on which Villiers stands, and which due west of that village is projected some distance toward the horseshoe, there is a continuous fall, in places shaggy and abrupt, in others cultivated and more gradual, down into the alluvial plain of which the major part of the horse- shoe consists. Toward Brie, which is nearly due cast from Noisy, the slope tumbles more rapidly than further to the south. In front of Villiers is a chateau, inhabited by a courageous French lady, who remained at home throughout the terrible scenes which were being enacted around her habitation. The park around this chateau is girdled by a wall, of the advantages of which the Saxons had made the most, and in front of it again (I am writing always of the side toward Paris as the front) there were still a few fields and vineyards of level ground before the slope, more gradual about here and to the southward, commenced to fall away down into the plain of the horseshoe. The whole position, of which Villiers was the Hougomont, although it was hampered by occasional broken ground, hedges and brushwood, would have formed no bad stand- point for offering resistance to a force which, having deployed on the plain, was attempting to carry it, if it TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 123 were not that it was swept by a direct fire from Fort Nogent and the Faisanderie redoubt, at easy range, and enfiladed at longer range, but still effectually, from the batteries on Mount Avron. When I crossed the river the hour already was consider- ably past nine. It seemed to me that Noisy-le-Grand was an eligible point from which to observe the operations, and accordingly I directed my way thither. I never wish to travel such a road again, nor to reach such a destina- tion. The shells from Avron were coming very thick. Now they fell with a great splash into the Marne at my feet, starring the placid water as a stone stars a mirror ; now there was a great bang on the road, and a belch of white smoke or a dull thud on the frosty ground above. If the road was bad, Noisy itself was worse. It seemed as if the gunners in Avron and Nogent were determined that not one stone of it should be left upon another. Now it was a shower of slates, as a shell crashed through a roof, rifting the solid rafters as if they had been laths. Now half the side of a house went over bodilv as a huge ^ O projectile struck ami crunched it. In the shortness of the range, strange to say. there was one element of safety. The fire had to be direct, not plunging : and so massive J -LOO were the walls, that if one could onlv manage to get two or three of them between him and the hostile guns, he occupied a position of precarious safety. Brie divided with Noisv the attentions of the French batteries, and 124 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Brie was still nearer them than Noisy. I had been told that the 107th Regiment had made a dash into Brie out of Noisy early in the morning, and I wondered much how it fared with them. Hard enough, beyond doubt, but could they hold the place under such a ding-dong pelt- ing ? By ten o'clock the question was resolved. First, there came a drove of French prisoners, red-breeched regulars, up towards Noisy, along the slight shelter afforded by the use of the road. Then came Saxon soldiers, more prisoners, and finally the bulk of the 107th, in very open order, and making the most of the few opportunities for cover. It was not a pleasant way to traverse. Nogent was firing heavily upon captors and captured alike, and more than one Frenchman fell slain by missiles hurled from French weapons. As the struggling columns came up I learned that the 107th, in its rapid rush in the morning, had surprised the occupants of Brie ; some were asleep, others were composedly drink- ing their coffee. There was but trifling resistance, and nearly five hundred prisoners had been taken, including eight officers. 'The reason for the relinquishment of Brie on the part of the 10 7th was not far to seek. The ter- rible and persistent tire from the forts rendered it utterly untenable. It would have been folly — sheer quixotry — to remain in a place teeming with bursting shells. No good could have been achieved by holding it under such conditions. The troops, compelled, that they might TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 125 escape annihilation, to concentrate their attention solely on cover, could not possibly have acted in any way on the offensive, in the way of annoying the right flank of the enemy. As this contingency must have been the sole purpose of the continued occupancy, its impracticability simply nullified the position in a strategic sense, while the same reasons prevented effectual steps being taken for firing it. In a physical sense the shells were rapidly nullifying the occupants. The prisoners looked sturdy fellows, and anything but ill fed. Their heart was good, too, if one might judge from passing expressions. A sergeant bade me "bon jour" as he went by, and told me cheerily that if any- one indulged the anticipation of the speedy capitu- lation of Paris, he was extremely out in his reckon- ing. Food was plentiful, he said, with a laugh, and the programme was sorties every day in every direc- tion. 1 believe it was this lauidiino - philosopher who afterwards gave up a proclamation of General Ducrot, dated the 28th ult., and setting forth that he did not mean to re-enter Paris alive. I dare swear he would not have done so had he chanced about this time to fall into the hands of the Germans. A drum-head court-martial and a volley from a firing-party would assuredlv have been his fate, and it would have served him right. There was found also, I learned, on one of the prisoners a proclamation emanating from General Trochu, that 126 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. commander with " plan on the brain," announcing that the time had now come for making great sorties, since the German, or, as he called it, the Prussian line had been greatly weakened (perhaps by the fall of Metz), and that his plan was to peg away at sorties till he had cut his way through. The prisoners were escorted back to Chelles, where, at a late period of the day, I saw them penned in the yard of the Mairie. As the procession from Brie had finished filing through Noisy an ominous sight met my eye in another direction, as I crept dodgingly forward further to the front. There, on the gradual slope of the further bank of the Marne, under the wing of Fort Noo;ent and extending right and left along the line of the Chaumont Railway, were dense columns of French infantry. How they came there I knew not ; it Avas as if the spectacle had sprung up by magic. Now they stood fast, closing up as the fronts of the battalions halted ; then there was a slow movement forward, till the head of the column dipped out of sight between the village of Nogmt and the river. Then there seemed a final halt, and the dense masses stood there, the bayonets glittering in tin 1 sun, as if the men who carried them had come out to lie spectators of the effeets of that shell fire which was cutting the air above their heads. But little by little there was a gradual trickling off, as it appeared, down to the bight of the river between Nogent and Brie. Was there a bridge there? There was the railway TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 127 bridge, a lofty viaduct whose arches also went across the flat, but there was a gap in one of its river spans that rendered it useless. Presently, on the narrow level to the south of Brie there became visible a knot of red breeches, that grew denser and denser every moment. Simultane- ously the whole plain sprang into life. From the farm- buildings about Le Tremblav, from Poulamris and Join- ville, there poured out vast bodies of French troops, deploying at the double, as they came through under the arches, or showed on the slopes further to the south. The line seemed to extend right athwart the neck of the loop. What happened to Champigny I know not from personal observation ; but I was afterwards informed that the Wurtembergers, after some desperate fighting, had driven the French out of it not loner after eight o'clock, to be in their turn subjected to a violent attack and partial ex- pulsion by the right of the formation to which 1 have just referred. The tirailleurs dashed into the thickets lining the foot of the rise, and scrambled up through the vine- bergs. The mass of troops behind them followed in serried columns. Whence had they come ? Some of them had been bivouacking on the plain ever since the 30th. Others had crossed during; the night, and occupied O O J J- the loop by their bridges. Six of these were between Joinville and Nogent, and the nullification of Brie admitted the utilisation, at the later hour, of yet two more between that villa ire and the railwav viaduct. 123 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Noisy seemed no place for a non-combatant. By a detour vid La Haute Maison, I readied the house named Le Desert, in the immediate rear of Villiers, which evi- dently was the point for which the French advance was intended. That force — I refer exclusively to the section which threatened Villiers — must have been at least 20,000 strong. How large was the force with which the Wiir- tembergers and their good friends of the 2nd Army Corps had to deal towards Champigny I had no means of even roughly estimating. Surely in those dense columns stand- ing in support under Nogent there could not have been less than 20,000 men. But directly and face to face it was with the 20,000 men of the left advance with whom the 10,000 Saxons had to cope. Not with them alone, but with those terrible projectiles also, a storm of which in- cessantly clashed on to the upper ground on which stands Villiers, and up to the table-land between it and Noisy. Had there been nothing else to do on the part of the Saxons but to repulse an assault on Villier.s, directed solely and straightly against it, the task would have been comparatively simple and not very bloody, notwithstand- ing the artillery fire. But the French advance, threaten- ing in its deployment as it did to sweep right on, over- lapping Villiers, up the space between that village and Noisy, and so to get through upon Champs, called for other tactics. Villiers could only serve as a position on which to lean the Saxon left. It became necessary to TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 129 meet the French in the open. From, behind Villiers the several regiments came out to the right on to the brow and under the shell fire. As the French troops came up the gentle acclivity, the guns of the forts continued to play without interruption. So narrow was the margin, that I question much whether a shell or two did not find its billet in the French ranks. I stood by the 108th Regiment as it quitted the position behind Le Desert where it had found some shelter. A couple of young lieutenants gaily shook hands with a Hussar aide-de-camp, who had just ridden up with an order, as they passed him to go out into the battle. On went the reoiments in their dense O columns of companies, the shells now crashing into the ranks, now exploding in the intervals. Line was formed, the rear files pelting up at the double, and in a twinkling less than fifty yards separated the combatant lines. Then came a volley, then a venomous file-firing, and the French broke and gave ground. It was only lo back a little in th^ dip of the ground to let the guns of the fort go to work again. The Saxons had perforce to find what cover they might. When the 108th regiment came back— it had not been gone twenty minutes — thirty-six officers out of forty-five had gone down. Neither of the blithe lieu- tenants were to the fore. And now came a lull in the musketry fire, just as a few minutes before there had been a lull in the cannon fire. The Saxons failed to get their artillery into action with advantage. It was afterwards 130 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. explained to me that the ground was unfavourable for its operations, but this, it must have been obvious from the description I have given of it, was incorrect. Although, exposed as the field-batteries would have been to a tremendous fire from the forts, it was in the nature of things that they should have suffered greatly ; still, the time was one when loss was not to be considered, for the crisis was imminent. The artillery might have at least done something before being silenced, and God knows something was wanted to case for the infantry the fierce brunt of the fray. While this was going on to the right of Villiers, the battle raged with continuous fury in front of the park of the chateau, but my position precluded me from seeing anything of it but the merest fringe on the right. How hot it was, however, the steady, heavy pattering of the musketry fire, interspersed with louder crashes that told now of whole volleys, now of bursting shells, sufficiently testified. If further testimony be re- quired, let the exacting one go and look at the grave- mounds. What 1 have been writing of took place before noon. After a little the artillery fire from the forts slackened considerably, and the French infantry made no demon- stration. On the German left, however, about Cham- piffny, it was evident that hard fmhtino- was £oin«: on. About one the French made another advance, having, as believed, received considerable reinforcements, and TO THE (J HEAT SORTIE. 131 Avron and Nogent resumed the old fierceness of their cannonade. The Saxon infantry confronted them on the challenge, with the old result. But a different policy was this time adopted. It was plain the only escape from the terrible thunderbolts lay in getting to close quarters with the French infantry, unless, indeed, the position was to be abandoned, and that was not to be thought of. So, when the French fell back, the Saxons followed on, as if they wanted to settle the question with the bayonet-point. It was the old motto, " Vorwarts, immer vorwarts." But the vorwarts was very slow. What happened for the next hour I could only guess by the constant crackling of the small arms. The forts con- fined themselves seemingly for the most part to firing into and over Champigny, Villiers, and Noisy. But at length the French were visible slowly and stubbornly falling back across the north side of the neck, the Saxons pushing them hard, the French ever and anon rallying. On this portion of the slope and level south of Brie there was a prolonged struggle. I understand the Saxons were striving to get at and cut the obnoxious pontoon bridge. But this was an impossibility, when Nogent went to work again with the terrible accuracy of which the short range admitted. The combatants parted about three o'clock, both sides falling back. The fort fire continued some little time longer. What shall 1 say of the result? Not much did the Saxons gain — was there 132 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AJS'D GERMANY. much to gain ? The Wiirtembergers held, I believe, at the close of the fight, one end of Champigny. According to the information I received at night at head-quarters, Brie at night stood empty and desolate — it might have been wounded men were groaning in its cellars. There had been French in it in the morning ; later there had been Saxons. But next morning I came to know that there were French in it again after the Saxons quitted it, and they held it till the general retreat across the Marne. The Germans had gained the victory, in that they had not been beaten away from their stand-point. The French had lost the day, because Trochu did not sup in Lagny. And that is all that can be said on the matter. Here let me again observe that had it been possible to hold and utilise the occupation of Brie, the French advance would have been impossible. Its flanking fire would have prohibited the breasting of the slope toward Villiers. The French must have had mitrailleuses located somewhere; in the plain. * I distinctly heard the horrible whirr, which always set my teeth on edge. At night I dined with the head-quarter staff of the 12th Army Corps, in the head-quarters in Champs. T never sat down to a more sombre dinner-table. Men spoke to each other in hushed, some in tremulous voices; some ate nothing, for they had already supped full of sorrow. The gloomy party broke into groups after TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 133 dinner, and what little talk there was was inexpressibly sad. There were chairs empty at dinner-time that had been occupied at the hurried breakfast. Not a man in the room but had lost some dear friends; many had lost relatives, for there is much kinship in the little country whence came those fighting-men. There were those, in the room who had brothers lying stark in the moonlight by the park wall of Villiers. It chilled one's blood to hear the scraps of question and answer. "What about - ? " i; Todt." " And — \ " " Schwer ver- wundet." And there were anxious thoughts about the morrow among the chiefs. There was no talk about failure, but it was obvious that the leaders comprehended how hard it had gone with the linesmen in heading back the French. Snow fell steadily all night. The frost came and nipped the ground like a, vice. It seemed, as I left the Prince's chateau, that the dismal wintry wind brought on its wings moans and groans from the miserable beings — rent with double torture, the anguish of their wounds and the latter pinching of the fell cold — who lay there on the schlachtfeld up in our front. Lay there that night quite half the wounded, — no longer, many of them, alive when the morning sun broke through the frost fog; lay there some for vet another night, and still lived when the Krankentrager found them. On the forenoon of the fourth day there were found eight poor wretches — four in the open field, four in a 131. THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. house — who had survived the inclemency of two nights of as hard frost as any Ave had during; the hardest winter on record for years. Some, if not all of them, lived at least two days after they were found. On the morning of the 6th I asked the question of a Wurtemberg doctor if his frost-bitten patients still lived, and he replied, with a professional shrug of the shoulders, " Oh, yes, they are a little alive." Two days after the battle two French officers were found skulking in a cellar unhurt, but half frozen. No doubt it was their intention to escape away into the landward parts of France. On being asked why they did not fall back with the rest, their assertion was that they were disgusted with the Army of Paris, it was in such a state of disorder. They them- selves — self-constituted critics-— were the best proofs of such a state of things. J should Lave so liked to have seen the sneaks handed over to Ducrot. There were corpses lying unburied for days after ; for wounded had to be removed, and dead had to be buried, under a. steady relentless fire from the forts. Under such circumstances the burial-parties were not particular how deep they dug the graves. Three months after, riding towards Paris across the fields from the Imperial review of the Maas army, on the slope before Villiers my horse suddenly shied witli a great frightened bound. Looking down, I saw a pair of human legs sticking up out of the ground. Close by a ghastly face showed up TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 135 piecemeal through a broken sprinkling of fat earth. The corpses of three French soldiers lay there, side by side, buried so shallowly that the rain had washed away the coating of earth that had covered them. Complaints were rife as to the treacherous conduct of French soldiers, and particularly of officers, in the field. In the sortie at Epinay, two days previously, Count Keller and another officer had been shot down by a body of Frenchmen behind a barricade which they approached in consequence of the hoisting of a white flag. On the 2nd more than one incident of a similar nature was spoken of. Unless strongly confirmed, I was loth to give credence to stories of the kind ; but the treachery towards Count Keller was too well authenticated to be questioned. I heard it alleged that Colonel Hauson, of the loth Saxon Jager Regiment, was fired on in this fashion. But this, ;it least, may be contradicted. The colom-l fancied that a posse of Frenchmen who had halted, and were gesticulating after the French manner, had surrendered. lie rode forward to within a few paces of them, and demanded to know if this was the ease. Somebody in their ranks audaciously responded that, on the contrary, they thought it was the Germans that had surrendered. Whereupon the colonel wheeled his horse and rode back. As he went several bullets were fired at him, one of which killed his horse, but he eseaped. ]36 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. The latest figures gave the Wiirtemberger loss at 40 officers and 1,500 rank and file killed, wounded, and missing, and the Saxon loss at 7G officers and 2,000 rank and file killed, wounded, and missing. "Missing" in such a case means " taken prisoner." Now it is certain that in the open the French took no prisoners, and I never could exact the confession that any were taken in the villages. A little mystery enveloped the doings there which it was not easy to penetrate, and one had to resort to collateral and circumstantial evidence, if he could find it. Pri- soner-statistics are always a good test. If you choose to say that you evacuated a village because you found it untenable, the euphemism may be allowed to you ; but if I learn that you had to leave behind you certain wounded men, which fell into the enemy's hands — and, it may be, sound men, who had to lay down their arms per force of circumstances — I am at liberty to put my own con- struction on your little periphrase. The loss in officers was unprecedented, even in a war in which the German officers poured out their blood like water, and fell in numbers far exceeding the usual proportion. I have already mentioned that the I08th (the Schutzen) Regiment lost 36 officers out of 45. One battalion was taken out of action by a young lieutenant, a Hammerstein. The name must be familiar to everyone who has read the history of the King's German Legion, that splendid body <>f soldiers who did Britain service so staunch in the TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 137 Peninsula and at Waterloo, and of whom Wellington had so high an opinion. He was the only officer left in the battalion that could stand, and he was wounded in two places. .Among the many officers whom the Wiirtembergers lost on the 2nd was one lieutenant, whose loss ought to have an interest for Englishmen, seeing that he, too, was an Englishman. His name was Knight. He had joined the Wiirtemberger Army in 1857, and when the war broke out was on a visit in England. He hastened back to rejoin his regiment, and served throughout the campaign scathless until this fight. It was in the storm of the barricade at Champigny that our gallant countryman went down, shot dead by a chassepot bullet. His comrades buried him by himself in Pontault, a village in the left rear of Champigny. It will be long ere an epitaph is necessary to prevent his memory from being forgotten at all events in tin 1 Wiirtemberg Army. The men of his regiment — the 2nd Jager Battalion, in which he was a premier lieutenant —spoke of him with tears in their eyes, and the officers told of him how he was beloved by all who knew him. The fights of the 30th November and 2nd December call for but little comment ; they furnish their own ex- planation. The French Army of Paris was never so near success as on the evening of the latter day, unless it were on the evening of the former. Had the Army of 138 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the Loire actually been in anything like proximity to the German rear, the environment must have inevitably been disrupted. Some pages back I quoted the expression of an opinion on the part of a staff officer that when the great effort came, it would be not simply a sortie, but an attempt to break out with a force sufficient to constitute a field army capable of co-operating with the Army of the Loire. The verification of his anticipation was found in the fact that in the knapsacks of the captive, wounded, and dead French soldiers were found full provisions for six days — bread, meat, rice, coffee, &c. The meat looked like horse, it is true, but there it was. The kit in the knapsacks almost exclusively consisted of provisions. The Saxons and Wilrtembergers, as it was, and with an enemy only in their front, were strained, perhaps more hardly than they cared to own, before they succeeded in balking the effort of the 30th, and, had the French re- newed the fighting next day, the tension would have been still more strained. But they were in no condition, seemingly for such an undertaking, and the Germans were not idle in the interval fortunately allowed them. Spite of the energetic exertions to repair damages, the links of the iron chain were again sorely tried on the 2nd, and the flaws that showed in places gave ominous warnings that made men tremble for the continuity. But the links held till the strain relaxed at night, and then the cry Avas, " All hands to make good defects." The TO THE CHEAT SORTIE. 139 French had enough of it ; their general had not Grant's rugged doggedness to "fight it out in this line." If CO cc o Troclm, with his vast nominal army roll, could have swept to one side the troops out of whom two days' hard and unsuccessful fighting had taken the backbone, and could have substituted an equal force of good and fresh soldiers, well commanded, and full of resolution, he would be a rash man who would dare to define what might have o been the result. But what we now know entitles us to believe that lie had nothing in hand on which he could rely, and that, in the despondent consciousness of the difficulties of the situation, he acted with a certain methodical discretion. Whether in the circumstances he might not have done better to be reckless is a question on which it is useless to speculate. As for the battle of the -2nd — -and the same, no doubt, applies to that of the :>»)th — it was characterised by straightforward, slogging, laird hitting on both sides, and an utter absence of strategy. If the Germans had elected to meet the French further back, they would have escaped the ter- rific hailstorm of shells from the forts that poured upon them with such steady fury, that the whole face of the battle-scene is studded over with craters as close as the pock-pits stud the face of a man who has had the small- pox. To one pressing this argument, their reply is that, had they taken up ground to hold further back, they would have given the French greater elbow-room in 140 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. which to deploy their vast masses, while, with inferior numbers, their own front would have been extended to attenuation. It may be in its turn suggested, as a reply to this argument, that if on first selecting their positions, at the commencement of the siege, they had chosen some such defensive line as I have indicated further to the rear, they would have had leisure to strengthen it arti- ficially, — that entrenchments, stockades, and batteries might have done service in lieu of the bare breasts of gallant men. CHAPTER II. FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. All the livelong night between the 2nd and the 3rd of December, the movements of troops were going on. Artillery was being posted in cunning places. Strength- ening drafts of soldiers, what the 23rd division dared to spare, were tramping over the upper Kriegs-briicke from the northern side of the Marne. The lower bridge at Gournay, that by which 1 had crossed in the morning, had been shot to splinters by Avron. Punctual])" at daybreak on the morning of the 3rd, did Nogent tender us his morning greeting, and soon after the cannonade became general. About seven I met one of Prince George's staff on the steps of the chateau. " Great God !" was his troubled greeting, "how is all this to end? Is it to be another hellish day. like yesterday '( I shudder at the prospect." There seemed every likelihood of the fulfilment of his foreboding. The forts increased the fury of their fire. The roads and fields before Champs were covered with the dense masses of the reserves — reserves formed of troops that had been in action the day 142 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. before. So sharp was the crisis thought, that a half-bat- talion of Bavarian Landwehr-men who had reached Lagny the day before, on their road to the south, were diverted through Torcy on toward Champs to help in case they should be wanted. The head-quarter column was on the road in the rear, ready for the contingency of the front being driven somewhat back ; its heaviest fourgons had retired to Torcy ; head-quarters themselves had no local habitation by name, but shifted about the field when Prince George moved backwards and forwards. Even the marketenders in Champs were packed up, and had fallen to the rear. Soon after seven, the French showed in dense masses on the peninsula of the Marne, and took up their forma- tion across its neck. Through the frosty fog their ap- pearance was very imposing. A column quitted the main body and headed direct for Villiers, under cover of a heavy fire from the forts. Noisy and Villiers had been occupied by the Wiirtembergers during the previous evening. The occupants of Villiers showed a bold front, and the French did not seemed inspired with the spirit that had actuated them the day before. By eight o'clock the column which had threatened an attack had fallen back among the mass, which to all appearance remained in position during the day. The forts continued their fire for some hours. The Wiirtembergers, in such ex- posed positions, naturally sustained some loss, probably a FROM THE GIIEAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 143 few dozens of wounded men. The head-quarters of the 12th Corps resettled itself in the chateau of Champs in the course of the day, and remained there till the 6th. On the morning of the return to the old location in Le Vert Oalant, Avron got one gun or more guns into posi- tion of so great a range that several shells fell in the gar- den of the chateau, and two upon its roof. On the after- noon of the 3rd the Crown Prince arrived from Margency, and immediately visited the battle-field along with his brother and the 12th Army Corps staff (the Crown Prince had with him but Count Urztheim, his personal aide-de- camp), having several narrow escapes of shells from Fort Nogent. The Crown Prince, after a lengthened consul- tation with his brother, returned to Margency for the night, while Prince George remained in Champs; for the cloud had by no means drifted off the sky. So sullenly, indeed, although silently, did it still lower, that, as Count Urztheim kindly whispered to me as ho got into the car- riage with the Crown Prince, it had been arranged that tlie head-quarters of the latter should come round on the morrow to the cast, and take up a temporary location in Prince George's chateau in Le Vert Galant, to be at hand in case of need, till the storm should have blown off the peninsula of the Manic. On learning that there were some symptoms of an attack in the neighbourhood of the advanced post of Mile Evrart, on the north of the Marne, on the left of that 144 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. awkward part of the ring of environment of which Gagny, on the fringe of the Forest of Bondy, is the right, I rode over to Chelles after the Crown Prince had quitted Champs, and then walked out to Ville Evrart, horse- exercise being prohibited in that particular locality. There was no policeman to enforce the prohibition, but, never- theless, I fancy it was very seldom infringed, Mont Avron having a playful way of potting at horsemen, or even at a single horseman, with little toys that had a tendency to break the skin. It was this chaussee along which I O had been trotting the previous morning, on my road, as I fancied, to a bridge over the Marne, and it struck me that I must have come very near affording a practical illustration of the danger attending equitation in this exposed direction. Through the hazy drizzle, half snow, half rain, there were visible in the fields to the north of Neuilly, and under the lee of Avron, moving bodies that look ed as if they had military formation. They were soldiers covering potato-diggers, and Captain Hammerstein's Saxons were keeping up upon them a lively but intermittent fusil- lade. Whether the potato- diggers had filled their baskets or not, the whole body very soon vanished backward in the mist, there being a ghostliness about the whole incident that might remind one of a Fenian drill in the night. Captain Hammerstein, a cousin of the youngster of the same name I have already mentioned, was quartered with a company of his regiment (the 103rd) in a detached FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 145 chateau, La Maison Blanche, to the north of Ville Evrart. This position here was such that every shot on its way from Avron to Noisy went high over his head, and he assured me that the fire of the latter had been more sus- tained that morning than even on the previous day. There had been hardly even a momentary respite, and often three of the great cannon crashed out their reports simultaneously. How the Wurtembergers in Noisy suffered so little from such a fire is only to be explained by the thickness of the walls in the village. Forty years ago there could have been few finer re- sidences round Paris than La Maison Blanc. The railway came and infringed on its amenities, but not to any great extent, the noble old trees acting as a screen to the track. Later came the Germans, and they be- devilled the amenities far- worse than the railway. War time is a bad season for trim grass-plots, painted stair- eases, and luxurious carpets. Then last of all came shells from Mont Avron, over the way, and played old goose- berry with the amenities that still kept up a self-asser- tion in the. face of the hostile occupation. The hour is midnight. A huge wood lire is blazing in the noble drawing-room of the mansion. In a comfortable arm- chair on one side of this fire sits a middle-aged Haupt- mann, opposite him an individual in civilian attire. The two are drinking grog, and chatting as they drink. They are old friends. They knew each other a dozen years ago 146 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. in Luneburg, that dullest of all dull Hanoverian cities, when as yet King George, the pious, the blind, and the obstinate, reigned in Hanover, and annexation was only dimly apprehended by far-sighted people, who — such is the lot of the sapient — were put down as theorists and alarmists. The middle-aged Hauptmann had fought in six-and-sixty in the army of his monarch, and when the evil day came he, with some eighty comrades, had trans- ferred his services to Saxony, in preference to remaining in an army which thenceforth was to be merely a Prussian army corps. The talk is of the old days in Luneburg, of pleasant rides by the banks of the llmenau, of rowing excursions up to Rotheiisleuser, of naughty scampers to Hamburg, of those pretty English girls that stole the hearts of a couple of regiments of infantry, of the old Waterloo major that lived by the waterside, of certain sensational steeplechases and memorable mess dinners. Unto these two there enters Under-officer Schultz. Schultz is a Saxon, but utterly unlike the bulk of his countrymen. Schultz would make an excellent study for an artist anxious to limn a Cameronian or one of Cromwell's Ironsides. His name might be Praise-the- Lord-Barebones. Tall, gaunt, thin-flanked, and scpiarc- shouldered, with high cheek-bones, and a, lofty, narrow forehead, Under-officer Schultz enters, and bringing his heels togctlicL' with an audible clank, stands bolt upright and motionless. "Well, Schultz ?" asks the Hauptmann. FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 117 " Herr Hauptmann, the patrol is ready," replies Schultz, with solemn curtness. Herr Hauptmann bolts the heel- tap of his grog, rises, tightens his sword-belt, feels for his little friend the six-chambered revolver, puts on his cloak and helmet, pulls up his long boots, and is ready. The civilian's preparations are simpler, since he has no arms to see to. Out into the night air. " Der Teufel ! what a beastly night." It had been hard frost all day, and now it rains a drizzly rain. The wet has mingled with the frost, and the ground is at once slippery and sticky. It will be dirty and heavy walking to-night, that is clear. There is a moon, but the sky seems as muddy as the earth, and her rays serve only to impart a dirty white tinge to the fine drizzling rain. The patrol — three sturdy Saxon soldiers — are standing motionless in the gloom, the red cigar tips showing dimly through the rime. " March ! " .says the Hauptmann. Schultz takes his place in front of the patrol, and behind the Hauptmann and his companion, and away goes the little party, slipping and stumbling down the tree-shadowed avenue. They traverse about half an English mile of flat country, crossed by numerous walls and fences, enclosing fields and the grounds surrounding chateaux. The wav is winding and the road horrible. There is no life in this tract, till, lately, inhabited by wealthy Parisians. Somewhere about is a new chateau, not quite finished, belonging to the [Treat French surgeon Nelaton. But the masons and 148 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. carpenters have stopped their work, and are now in the Garde Mobile, and the doctor is certainly not at home. Presently the ground begins to rise. The party are climbing the slope of a hill. That hill is Mont Avron. There is no road, only a rough track through the copse- wood, interspersed with vineyards. At every second step somebody is on his hands and knees ; now stumbling over a stump, now losing his foothold in the mud with the frost-hardened substratum. The vineyard track winds and wriggles, but it is always upward, and that steeply too in places, so that the breathing comes harder and shorter. Suddenly there comes a smothered " Halt ! " from vigilant Under-ofhcer Schultz, that curious pitch of the voice in full development that is the characteristic of Saxon-German, and that reminds one so much of the " twang" of the fisher-folk in the villages on the Moray Firth. Under-ofhcer Schultz has not called " Halt ! " for nothing ; his quick ear has detected coming footsteps. " Dodge behind the thick brushwood there," is the sharp- whispered order of Herr Hauptmann. The party is off the track in a twinkling, hiding like a Fenimore Cooper's Indian, the civilian, in particular, squatting like a rabbit. The movement was not an instant too soon. The sound of the footsteps and voices comes nearer and nearer. There is a medley of jabber, everybody speaking together in shrill French. "A patrol of Francs-tireurs," whispers the Hauptmann. A nice patrol party truly, doing their FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 149 work with that silent vigilance and caution which the duty essentially calls for. Pop ! a gun goes off. Have the jabberers spotted the lurkers in the wood 1 If so, the pregnant thought occurs to one of them how a mer- cenary life assurance office had " hung up " his policy till he should return home in safety. Tut ! any appre- hension was ludicrous. One of the Francs -tireurs had fired off his piece in mere lightness of heart. Probably he shot into the air. Stern Under-officer Schultz gives a snort of contempt, and mutters between his teeth, " (Jammer Kerl" The Franc-tireur patrol has passed, and the squatters get up from their muddy position, and stumble onward and upward. They arc near the top of the hill now. A light is visible through the undergrowth of scrub, and there is a halt. The light is the watch fire of a French picket. There is a sentry posted, who has his back to the forest and his face to the fire, such a position afford- ing him full opportunities for the exercise of vigilance. "What is he doing now ? Under-officer Schultz gives another snort of contempt as the sentry props his piece against a tree, walks up to the fire, and has a drink, taking a good long warm before he comes back. All the picket are drinking. Some seem tolerably on toward drunkenness, judging by the clatter of loud voices. Above, on the flat summit of the hill, is the battery. It is evident that there is another watchfire inside it. The 150 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. earthwork, whispers the Hauptmann, looks three ways, and has six guns mounted on each face. It is the latest construction of the besieged. It has only been in opera- tion for about ten days, and it is an abominably mis- chievous affair. There arc no movements or sicms of movements in the vicinity. This ascertained, the patrol takes its weary way back to the chateau. Getting down the hill is worse than it was getting up. How welcome is the wood fire in the drawing-room. Herr Hauptmann and the civilian look at each other, and simultaneously burst into a fit of laughter. They are plastered with mud from head to foot. Under-ofhcer Schultz, who is muddier than either — for his nose seems to have been rooting in red clay — stands by as solemn as a mute at a funeral. He gets an order, goes right about face as by machinery, and disappears. Grog and cigars in the arm-chairs. On the morning of the 4th, on my way from La Maison Blanc to Lc Vert Galant, I breakfasted in Chelles with Major von Schonberg and the Staff of the 103rd Regiment. While breakfast was proceeding it was sud- denly announced that the whole 23rd Division, of which the 103rd formed a part, was to cross the Manic, No destination was announced. They might go to Noisy, under the terrible fire ; they might relieve the Wiirtem- bergers in the hardly less dangerous Villiers ; or it might be their lot to occupy the splendid chateau of the wealthy FROM THE CHEAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 151 soapboiler in Champs. Nobody knew, but the movement looked like fighting. Before coffee was served, however, there arrived a couple of lieutenants of the 108th Regi- ment, come to take up quarters for the regiment, and bringing the announcement that the whole of the 24th Division was under orders to take the positions of the 23rd on the North side of the Marne. The anticipations of an immediate renewal of the combat subsided on this intelligence — all that was in progress was merely an outer change of quarters, and the relief of a division that had suffered very much on the 2nd. But to return to the two sprightly young lieutenants of the 108th, who came there to choose quarters for their brother officers. The youngest of them, a boy of about 19, had rare luck on the 2nd. By the doctrine of chances he should have been now on the look-out for a grave, not for quarters. In the short skirts of his tunic were four bullet holes, his left shoulder strap was severed and hung in fringes from another bullet, and he had no knee on the left leg of his overalls, the piece had been torn clean out by the frag- ment of a shell. The young rascal walked lame from the latter casualty, but otherwise he was as sound as a bell, and to see him tackle a yard of "wurst" was a caution. While our young friends wen; talking with .Major von Schonberg about quarters, there dropped in the representative of another regiment on the same errand. I was an auditor of the interview. It was too 152 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. good not to be narrated. Representative of incoming regiment : " You have here a beautiful place, Herr Major, Avitli a fine Speise saal and a grand piano. This will suit well our Herr Oberst," Herr Major Schonberg : " Oh, yes, and many grenades come into the garden. That will furnish a pleasant accompaniment to the piano." As if to confirm the Major's words, whizz — bang came a shell from M ont Avron, and lit right in front of the window, sending the pellets of half-frozen mud up against the glass. The Major grinned a dry grin. His sympathy had been enlisted as regards quarters in favour of the young lieutenants. The formal staff officer hesi- tated. Whizz, bang, another shell — this time on the roof. He looked still more undecided. Then up came the doctor of the 103rd, and recounted how the shells had interfered with him the day before. This was enough for our friend. He left the field to the young lieutenants, and went in scare] 1 of quarters less exposed. As I jogged out of Cbelles, on the way to Montfermeil, I met the whole of the 1st Grenadier Guard Regiment. This was the avant courier of a whole brigade of the Guards, including its artillery, pressing on to occupy Chelles and the vicinity. The movement, and those movements along the whole line of which this was but a detail, did not augur anything more than a design to strengthen the position across the dangerous peninsula in such a manner as to negative whatever advantage the FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 153 French might ostensibly derive from their occupation of Brie, Champigny, and the peninsula in the rear of these vil- lages, which was still in their possession. As I rode out of Chelles, the shells — how similar are the two names — came pounding into it vigorously. The French must have seen the movement of the troops, and thought to incon- venience it with their long-range artillery. A German battery on a bluff between Chelles and Montfermeil might have attempted a reply had the guns in it been siege pieces instead of field guns, but as it was, Mont Avron was allowed to have it all its own way. The only casualty, so far as I saw, which the fire produced Avas to startle a pair of fine grey horses which, with a carriage behind them, were coming down the steep slope out of Mont- fermeil. Off they tore at a furious gallop, kicking the splinter bar to bits, and utterly ignoring the frantic zeal with which the driver tusked at the reins. They dashed through a company of the Guards, routing with ignominy a section which had taken up the road, bayonets levelled, with intent to stop them. The driver jumped out here, and lit safely on the top of a soldier. The horses galloped on, strewing the road with portmanteaus, cigar-boxes, a mattress, and other contents of the carriage, which was rapidly going to pieces. At length, still pursuing the same headlong pace, they vanished round a corner, and their ultimate fate I know not. On my arrival in Le Vert Galant I found that the 154 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Crown Prince's head-quarters had already arrived, and had occasioned a squeeze-royal in the little place. Quar- ters, such as they were, were ultimately found for every- body without recourse being had to bivouac. On the 5th the Crown Prince paid a second visit to his brother in Champs, and an informal council of war was held, the faces at which must have worn a much more cheerful expression than those which had surrounded Prince George's table on the night of the 2nd inst. There was reason for the good spirits. The French had lost heart, or had determined to concentrate their efforts in some other direction. On the morning of the 5th it was found that they had not only evacuated Brie and Champigny, but were engaged in abandoning the horseshoe also, and © © © ' retiring beyond the Marne. This operation was per- formed under a very heavy fire from Mont Avron and Port Nogent, which impeded the Wurtembergers not a little in their occupation of the vacated villages. Several were killed and wounded in the course of the morning. There had been, indeed, a brisk little skirmish just in the neck of the peninsula. The Wurtembergers, feeling their way ever onward to take up a forepost line aligning on Brie and Champigny, pushed on into a wood called Le Plaine. This same wood had been part of the French forepost line some twelve hours before, and it seemed that they resented the readiness with which on their abandon- ment of it the Wurtembergers came to occupy it. The FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 155 wood was an important post in the very throat of the peninsula, and on the south of the line of railway just where it bends to cross the river. The French thought it worth while to send a battalion to dispute its possession with the Wurtembergers, and the little force was backed up by a fire from the big guns, but the Wiirtembergers pressing on steadily succeeded in occupying the wood and establishing their foreposts without exposing them- selves much to the artillery fire, and without coming to close quarters with the French, who fell back on finding the wood occupied. The French did not wholly quit the peninsula. Although they destroyed their other bridges, they continued to retain at least one at Joinville, and held the few houses on the trans-Marne side of the stone bridge which spans the river opposite that village, while their outposts were stationed in the farm buildings of Poulanges. Here they were close under the lee of La Faisanderie and La Gravelle, on the ramparts of which wore [runs of lono- ran50 wounded brought thither; but, in pursuance of the FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 103 usual policy, all had Leon evacuated towards Germany, with the exception of those cases which wore too severe to Lear removal. Of these there remained about 120, including a consideraLle number of amputations. It was the critical time with amputation cases — the third or fourth day — when the ligatures are prone to come away and great effusions of blood recur. In addition to the very Lad cases, consisting of Wurtembergcrs chieflv, with a few Frenchmen and men of the 2nd Army Corps, there were in the place about eighty Frenchmen, who had been too severely wounded for the French to remove them from the field, and had been brought in by the Wurtcmberger ambulances. The Mayor of Xoiseau, a neighbouring village, had volunteered to take these poor fellows off the hands of the Wurtcmberger medical men, giving his personal guarantee for them as prisoners of war. In most of the cases the Mayor's guarantee was quite superfluous, rnless the war had lasted far longer than it did, not many of these could have been very formidable men for many a day after its termination. One word as to the \\ iirtemberger field ambulances, which are admirable ve- hicles for their purpose. The hinder end contains places for wounded men on stretchers, which are run in from tin; rear two on the lower tier, two above. The front part is a kind of double coupe, comfortablv padded and seated for six men not so severely wounded as to necessi- tate a recumbent position. The sides are well screened, M 2 lGi THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. while at the same time free ventilation is secured. The body of the waggon is mounted on capital springs, and four good horses, with mounted drivers, ensure rapid con- versance to the Lazarette. The Wurtembergers had special wounded trains of their own, which were employed in despatching their men from Lagny to \Vlirtemberg. The American construction of railway carriage is in use in Wurtemberg, and it is easy to conceive the facilities for the conveyance of wounded afforded by this build. I learned from the Prince of Saxc- Weimar that one of those trains had been inspected by our army medical repre- sentatives at the seat of war, Inspector-General limes and Dr. Becker. The representatives of another of our insti- tutions, the British National Society, had put in a most opportune appearance both at Pontault and Noisiel, another large Lazarette in this neighbourhood. Four four- gons had arrived from Meaux on the 4th December, under the direction of Captain Brackenbury; and Dr. Biberstein, the chief of the medical staff, spoke with enthusiasm of the business-like manner in which the British fourgons were able to fulfil his requisitions, which he said were both large and various. The British Society beat the Berliner Htilfsverein this journey. Active men as the almoners of the latter were, they only put in an appearance at Pontault on the day before my visit. While the doctor and myself were having a gossip before making a tour of the Lazarette, the Prince of FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 1C5 Saxe- Weimar came to visit tin? wounded Wlirtembergers. He is married to a daughter of tlie King of Wurtemberg, and had been commissioned by his parents-in-law to this kindly duty. The Prince is a big man : all the Saxe- Weimars run large, and he has a heart certainly big in proportion to his corporal bulk. Sad as were the sights the wards presented, it was a not unpleasant peregrina- tion which I made round them in his company. The Prince went round with a box of cigars under his arm. AVitli each man in turn lie had a little conversation, which always ended in the question, "Can you smoke V The affirmative response was all but universal. One or two poor fellows there were who seemed past caring for the cigar — past the power of speech, indeed. All that they could do was to look grateful for the Prince's kindly words. One bright-eyed young fellow replied so warmly. " Ach, ja, cure Hoheit!" The doctor shook his head, the hoy was in the fever, and a cigar might not be the best thing in the world for him. But he pleaded so hard, that the good doctor relented, and let him have the grateful weed. Another chap would have the Prince see the piece of shell that had made a hole in him. "In the cupboard" he directed the orderly. The cupboard was searched, but it could not be found, and the doctor would have had the Prince pass on. Put he would not, and by-and-by the bit of shell turned up in the wounded mans waistcoat pocket. There were two men who had It) 6 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. each lost a leg, with whom the Prince had specially in- teresting conversations. One was a stalwart, hairy, imder-officer. He was one of three brothers, and now all were wounded in this war. And was he married ? No ; but there was an old woman in some street or other in Stuttgart, and now that all her sons were down it might be bad times with her. The other " amputated " was a mere boy, handsome as a statue. I don't know whether it may have struck others as it did me, that there are a great number of classically beautiful men among the Wurtembcrgers. This lad was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. In both cases the Prince's hand went into his pocket, and came out with a gold piece. " Here, my man, send that to the mother, and let her know it comes from the Queen." In one ward were two amputation cases — one was a. Frenchman, the other a AY(utembcrer. Both had burst out bleed- ing, and the orderlies were busy around them, pressing femoral arteries, picking up veins, and applying ice. The Frenchman was shrieking and yelling ; the German lay silent, the drops of cold sweat on his forehead, and the muscles of his face working, but never a cry came from him. The spectacle illustrated one of the differences between the two nationalities. As he quitted each room, the Prince said a few simple words to the effect that he was commissioned by the King and Queen of AViirtem- berg to visit the wounded, and to thank them for their FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 167 exertions on behalf of their country. The words, I fancy, and the visit did more good than any physic Dr. Biber- stein conld exhibit. All the occupants of this Lazaretto were wounded men; there had been a few cases of typhus, but they had been sent to the rear. To quote the dry professional remark of Dr. Biberstein, " We have no time for typhus here." A report was current in the Maas army on the 11th December, of which, however, I could get no confirma- tion on my return to head-quarters in Margency on that day, that Count Bismarck had transmitted an ultimatum to the authorities in Paris, offering terms for acceptance within a week. These terms were such as Paris might have thought over before rejecting. Her citizens were to be spared requisitions. No troops would be billeted upon them. The thousand and one objects of fine art in the Queen of Cities would be scrupulously respected. The officers of the army would be treated with the fullest consideration. There were other items in the rumoured ultimatum of a decidedly tempting character, which, in the absence of confirmation as to its authenticity, need not be further alluded to. On the 12th December the defenders of Paris, for the first time since, the 30th November, displayed some activity on the northern face of the environ- ment. Perhaps they were; anxious to display to the chiefs of the Maas Army their scornful repudiation of the 168 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. ultimatum which Bismarck was reported to have ten- dered. Early in the morning Argenteuil the unfortunate was subjected to a brisk cannonading from the batteries about Nanterre and Courbevoic. The damage done was chiefly to stone and lime. I hoard of only one casualty among the Germans, and an inhabitant was killed in his bed by the bursting of a shell. There was a lull as the morning advanced, but the firing was resumed about noon, and was quite warm for a couple of hours. There was an unwonted amount of musketry fire between the posts on the opposite sides of the river all the way from Epinay down to Bezons. Accompanying a compatriot who had spent the night with me in Margency, I rode through Argenteuil about one o'elock, when one would almost have imagined that quite an engagement was going on close by, so heavy and eontinuous was the firing. Mont Valerien was speaking at intervals in its gruff tones, not, however, in our direction, but toward Bougi- val. It was evident as we rode along the bit of road outside Argenteuil, which commands so capital a view of the adjacent French positions on the peninsula, that the enemy were on the alert for something or other. One could see armed groups coming out from Colombes to- ward the left, and there was a eontinuous popping from the French posts among the poplar trees on the other side of the Seine. Presently the bugle began to sound, at first faintly and fitfullv, but soon with a louder swell, FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 169 and then the sound of a military band's music was borne towards us on the wintry wind. It was not easy to form a conjecture as to the nature of the French movements. Whatever they were the fire directed against Argenteuil and its vicinity was probably meant to cover them. Per- haps the French were massing troops on the peninsula, on which are the villages of Geimevilliers, Courbevoie, and Nanterre, and at the neck of which stands Mont Valerien, with a view to a sortie somewhere from it as a base after their failure on the other side of Paris. If this was their design, it was indispensable to its fulfilment that they should have established pontoon bridges over the river in the face of the German fire, and without so strong a support from their own fort guns as that under which they debouched over the Marne. There the crossing of the river was comparatively easy since they had never lost foothold on the further side; but in the direction to which 1 now refer, the Seine all the way to the Carrieres above St. Germain marked the line of demarcation between French and Germans. I heard no more talk of the renewal of the once abandoned project, which had for its object getting over the river at Bezons. Xo further effort had been made by the French to repair the bridge there, and the boats which appeared designed to supple- ment the deficiencies in the means of crossing, had been to all appearance rendered useless by the German field artillery. The French fire lulled anain for half an hour 170 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. towards two o'clock ; but was rather warmly renewed soon after that hour. It was then chiefly directed toward the base of Mont d'Orgimont, and between that eminence and Argenteuil. Before nightfall it fell away again. There existed among the Germans a suspicion that Ducrot's proclamation after the battle of Yilliers was meant as a ruse, and that he had not abandoned so fully as he protested his design of utilising for sortie purposes the foothold which he yet held on the other side of the Marne, at Joinville. Some colour seemed given to the suspicion by the unquestionable fact that French troops in great force were still lying around and under Fort Noo;ent, and towards Charenton. It seemed that the French on their side suspected that the Germans were finding the batteries on Mont Avron so inconvenient as to stimulate to efforts for effecting their silence, for the Mont remained garrisoned by a French force, guessed at not under (5,000 bayonets, which was assiduously en- gaged in the strengthening of their position in the neigh- bourhood, hv enlarging existing defences and erecting others. The 12th was the birthday of the King of Saxony, and in the head-quarters of his eldest son the occasion was warmly celebrated. The Crown Prince and his brother at Le Vert Galant sent filial messages to Dresden, and a congratulatory telegram in the name of the Saxon army was also despatched. The reply which the King FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 171 sent to his eldest son was of a tenor creditable to our cousins of Saxony. The Kings birthday is usually cele- brated throughout his territory by great festivities, public feasting, and other demonstrations which involve consi- derable expenditure. The event in 1870, as one learned from the Koyal telegram, was not made an occasion for eating and drinking. Those who lived at home did not make merry while their brethren were standing with their face to the foe, while the wounded groaned in the lazarettcs, and while the widows and children were weeping for those who had found graves by Villiers and Brie. The money that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been spent in festivity, was diverted to a nobler use, to add to the comforts of the wounded, and to help those who have lost their bread-winners. But tlic loyal Saxons in Margency managed to get up an illumination which would have been creditable anywhere, but which was positively wonderful in a region so barren of the materials for such a purpose that if you wanted a candle you had sometimes difficulty in getting one for money ! As I walked down to the Feldpost at night, I observed the chateau on the left, inhabited by our pay- master, brilliantly lit up, and not only did stars and letters of fire bedeck the front of his residence, but parti- coloured Chinese lanterns hung from every tiee in the garden. It was the same in the grounds of the chateau in which the Feldpost is located. I walked to the door 172 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. up an alley of illumination. On the night air floated the sounds of vociferous " Hochs," which were calculated to suggest the idea that the King's health was being very warmly drunk in more than one Saxon gathering in this French village. Perhaps the Parisians meant their activity of the 12th, on the northern side, as a complimentary salute to the King of Saxony. This, at least, is certain, that on the 13th, his birthday over, they were profoundly quiet again. It was not believed, however, that this quietude was anything more than a lull, and it seemed to be accepted as a matter of course about this time that we were to look for more fighting, and that the end was not yet at hand. I think it may be taken as a fact that the Germans had been quite out in their reckoning as to the food resources of Paris. According to the calculations and information on which they had based their inactive policy, Paris should by this time have begun to know the meaning of famine, and it was inexpressibly galling to them to find that she was not yet so far gone as to be wholly on salt meat rations. The miscalculation caused chagrin on several grounds. Put for it, who can doubt that before this time there would have been a duel between the big guns of North Germany and those of the Paris forts I In that the error of reckoning as to the food resources of Paris had postponed this duel until now there was cause for self-reproach ; but there was yet deeper cause for this FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAH. 173 in the fact that, so implicit had been the leaning on the broken reed of the miscalculation, that the indispensable preliminaries to a bombardment had been neglected. Thus, if it be assumed that now the eyes of the besiegers had been opened, and that they had seen it necessary to resort to this expedient, it was yet plain that they must perforce wait yet awhile ; and it was irritating to reflect that the months which had elapsed had been in a great measure so much lost time. Now the work had to be gone about in earnest at the worst possible season of the year for such operations, when the roads were terribly heavy after the breaking; of a hard frost and the thaw of a considerable fall of snow. The eagerness with which the troops craved for what they considered the beginning of the end, in the shape of the bombardment, must have been known in head-quarters at Versailles, and must have been taken as an element which could not well have been set aside. But, then, the troops, Full of the belief that the bombardment had been now definitely resolved upon, used their discernment to wonder how it happened that so much time had to elapse before it were possible to act on the resolution, and the deduction could not fail to be unfavourable to the German prestige for forethought and a condition of preparedness for alternative events. Still it was safe to reckon that the thunder of the big guns, and the stir of a bombard- ment would do much to efface such an impression ; and 174 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. all that could now be done was to make up as fast as possible for lost time. There is no doubt that activity had become by this time the order of the day. To one quarter only, the south, had before the second week in the month, all the siege train been directed, and hence the delay elsewhere. Doubtless were the bombardment only to have been on this hand, it might have commenced earlier than it did ; but then what of the east side, the side nearest the feeding railway line, and yet a side left utterly barren of siege artillery till the hour that the crisis in front of Villicrs forced on the determination to resort to active measures in the shape of a bombardment ? Had guns been all that was required the delay would not have been very long. But experience, if manifold, taught the error of beoinnin^ a bombardment without the means of sustaining it uninterruptedly for a considerable period. The reserve of ammunition must be large, and the com- mencement of the bombardment had to wait till that had been provided. From the 13th to the 17th of December we lived in a state of quiet, presenting a strange contrast to the bustle and excitement of the early part of the month. To my daily question of the gentlemen of the Crown Prince's staff, " What news ?" the reply was very curt, "None." "None! — do you mean that I am to know and to com- municate, or really and actually none ?" " Really and actually none," was the response. The French had FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 175 seemingly taken to economise tlieir ammunition. If you wanted to hear any shooting at all, it was necessary to go down into Argcnteuil. There there was no cessation of the crackling fire across the river, but it was almost whollv musketry fire. The place was full of interest. It is a town of some size and it was not empty of people. The shops had re-opened, some of them, and a portion of the population having come Lack, the citizens, men, women, and children, were for ever in the streets gossiping with apparent cheerfulness and unconcern. Over their heads was the constant sing of the Chassepot bullet, which they minded no more than they nikdit the singing; f a bird. When a shell came they ran into the houses, only to emerge when it had burst, to find out what damage it had done. There is a beautiful church in Anjcnteuil: its steeple made a good observatory. The market place is below it. In the steeple were several huge holes made bv shells, and the roofs of the adjoining houses had been severely injured. But the people stood in the market place, the peasants brought in their carts, and sold poultry, butter, and cheese there with as much unconcern as if the French batteries and the German soldiers had been miles away. Some casualties occurred, but so far as I could learn they were very few. It almost seemed that the French sharp- shooters on the other bank had some occult means of discerning; their countryfolk ; I can at least testify to the briskness of their practice against those who were not 170 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. their countrymen. One clay, along with Mr. Sidney Hall, I went into a house which overlooked the esplanade on our bank of the river. The esplanade is about 100 feet wide ; then comes the stream, and on the other side were the Frenchmen ever ready. I incautiously showed at the window for less than a minute, and drew quite a brisk fire, more than one of the bullets striking the walls of the house. When we went down into the street we found a Frenchman composedly posting up a proclamation issued by the commandant. There was nothing between him and the river but a loose barricade of timber. It turned out that it was his house in which we had been. Now how was it to be accounted for that he lived there without being shot, while we, wearing like him civilian clothes, could not show for half a minute at a window without being fired at ? Everywhere, as the winter progressed, the people came gradually back to their homes in the villages that were not on the foreposts. Their condition was very bad, yet not so utterly wretched as one might imagine. There must have been great stores of food in the villages around Paris; money would still procure almost anything. There was very little sickness among the native population, notwithstanding the hardships which most of them must have undergone in hiding in the woods, or huddling together in the backlying villages. The health of the German troops was exceptionally good. Typhus fever FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 177 had nearly disappeared, and one hardly ever now heard of dysentery. Kheumatism and bronchitis steadily sent a proportion to the lazarettes, but in no great numbers, and a large proportion of the cases recovered and return to duty after a few days' lie -by. English ambulance waggons from the depot at Meaux frequently visited the field lazarettes on the north and east sides during the winter months, and distributed large quantities of stores. From other districts, too, came cheering tidings of the good work done by other detachments of the "English Ambulance/' It cannot be denied, nevertheless, that there was in the late war a vast expenditure of British money with disproportionately small return. Still, the experience gained has been good, and will be found useful, let us hope, if another war should unfortunately call for the services of another such organization. But there are many difficulties in the way. A great one is in the selection of qualified superintendents and organizers, in view <>(' the work to be done. What I saw and learned impressed me with the conviction that to give a surgical character to the ambulance organization, is a mistake in manv ways. If an army has not doctors enough of its own. and appeals to neutral .Bowers for assistance of this kind, it would be well were the organization for medical aid entirely separate from the ambulance, and that the neutral doctors should work under the orders of the medical authorities of the army to which they may be vui.. ir. x 178 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. attached. Squabbles about etiquette, personal tetchiness, and professional jealousies did much to impair the useful- ness of that organisation for which Britons so freely put down their money. There ought to be a copious supply of ambulance vehicles of the best patterns extant. These might be horsed and furnished with all appliances, and then lent as they stand to the several Powers at war. No object is to be gained by the neutral State finding drivers and medical staff; and there are many embarrassments in the way. The adoption of this plan would leave the course clear for the concentration of the working staff on that part of the organization which concerns itself with the supply of stores to the lazarettes, a branch of the work which the experience of the war demonstrated, can be cultivated by far to the greatest advantage. The staff, from top to bottom, must consist of neutrals. The Eng- lish ambulance drivers were chiefly Frenchmen, and the Germans looked upon them with great suspicion — not, I I >elieve, invariably without cause. " English ambulance, sir," said a Prussian officer to me, speaking of the mena- gerie in St. Gcrmains, " an infernal nest of French spies." Swiss drivers would be the best ; they are more polyglot, and not such incorrigible jabberers as the Belgians, and Switzerland is in a condition of perpetual neutrality. Place at the head of the affair a strong man with a great command of temper, an entire absence of paltry self- seeking, some experience in kindred work, a man of FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 17 9 promptitude, and without fussiness — one with self-respect, hut without bristles, and give him the command — make him despotic. And make him responsible too, not only for efficiency, but for economy, and the prevention, or at least the check of malversation. About this time, a large proportion of the Saxon cavalry left the front of Paris for the north, to strengthen the army under the command of General Manteuffel. I having indulged in a gossip about ambulances, let me ask permission for another about the German cavalry. All the Germans are excellent horsemasters — the Saxons, perhaps, best of any. The men must have taken immense pains with their horses, and that continually, to turn them out in such condition as those I saw march off northward — bright as stars, plump as in barracks. Rations were not very plentiful, nor were quarters always very eligible. Straw, especially, was short. But if a man caters assidu- ously for his horse, lie can materially supplement the regularly issued rations, and this was what the German avalry man did. The epoch of sore backs had now long passed. In the early days of the campaign there were many sore backs ; ascribable partly to the bad pattern of some of the saddles, but more to the young-soldierhood of many of the men. Nothing teaches a, dragoon solicitude lor his horse's back and success in keeping it sound like a long march during a part of which he has had to walk while a chafe slowly healed. When will the "best-saddle 180 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. controversy " be definitely decided ? My own opinion is, that our cavalry never had a saddle like the old high- cantle and pommel saddle, with the thorough draught right under the tree, with the blanket instead of the numnah, and the cloak and valise well tightened up in the centre. The Germans have no valise, and the want has the result of increasing greatly the size and weight of the wallets. The strain on the withers that might result therefrom is prevented by placing the saddle farther back than with us, but with questionable ad- vantage ; and the valise is an article of immense use and convenience to the cavalry-man. It may interest not alone military men when I note that the German cavalry have almost without exception betaken themselves to the practice of "jockeying " on the trot. We utterly prohibit jockeying, and a goodly pro- portion of troop defaulterships have connection with addiction to the forbidden practice. The German officers and men alike assert that experience has convinced them that to "jockey" in the trot is easier for the horse, spares his back more, and averts his tiring, while it beyond doubt is pleasanter for the horseman in a long journey. We took our cavalry menage from the Germans, including the balance seat and bumping the saddle. Shall we follow them into the abandonment of the latter ? \ don't think it matters much. Lord Cardigan was perhaps the strongest opponent of "jockeying " of his day, and when FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 1S1 he commanded the "cherry breeches" there were generally more .sore hacks among them than in any other regiment in the .service. I believe that the legitimation of '•'jockeying" would keep the dragoon longer sound. After bumping the saddle for fourteen or sixteen years a man's lc"\s get strangely crooked, and if he has had a succession of rough trotting mounts it is odds but that he has palpitation of the heart and varicose veins. But the short service system diminishes the significance of this consideration. On the morning of the 18th, there occurred in our neighbourhood an interesting little episode. A little after eleven o'clock two gunboats came out with a rush from behind Fort La Bridie. One following the other, they steamed rapidly down the Seine, purring out vigorously brown jets of smoke. They never fired, although with the glass one could make out the gunners standing by the long gun in the bow of each, but held on their steady way making for Epinay. Presently there opened fire on them our batteries on the slope in front of Montmorency, and as tiny got nearer, those recently prepared on Mont D'Orgimont chimed in. The shells splashed into the water and burst on the banks, but still the gallant little craft held on their way. When opposite Epinay there was a stoppage 1 , and it seemed that a landing was con- templated from the vessels, but if so, the fire from Mont D'Orgimont was too warm to make the undertaking prac- ]82 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. ticable. The boats, probably out of bravado, fired a round or two at a necessarily high elevation toward Mont D'Orgimont, and after a seemingly irresolute movement or two, took their rapid course backward as they came. There were troops on board the gunboats, but only a com- parative handful on both ; however, amidships in one there stood a group apart who seemed to be officers, and it is conjectured, no doubt correctly, that the expedition was a reconnaissance to spy out the condition of the land in the direction of Epinay, which, it will be remembered, was the scene of one of the many sorties of the 30 th of November. If this was the case, the reconnoiterers could hardly have found grounds for much encouragement towards another attempt, for the positions had been materially strengthened since the date of the last attempt, and French troops would now have found it very difficult to occupy Epinay by a coup de main. The continuance of quietude on the front tempted me on the 19th, to set out for a ride round to Lagny, a little town on the east of Paris, some distance in the rear, in order to see something as to the transmission and con- dition of the wounded and the French prisoners from the recent battle in the Orleans district. Lagny was the terminus of the Eastern Railway, and thither therefore, necessarily collected all and everything recjuiring trans- mission to Germany. "What a glorious thing it would be for the newspapers if their war correspondents were FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. ] S3 endowed with the gift of ubiquity," was the quaint re- mark made to me by a young subaltern of the German Guards who stood beside me in the lee of the white house on the summit of the height overhanging Stains and Yilletaneuse, whither, leaving my horse in Groslay, I had mounted for one last reassuring look at the front and at Paris, before venturing out of range. I suppose the multiplicity of objects of interest in the prospect before him prompted him to the reflection. The long chimneys of the St. Denis factories were smoking as vigorously as if they had been Black Country chimneys when a batch of urgent orders are in hand. What did they smoke for 1 AY as it machinery below them grinding corn for the two million beleaguered ones ? Were brawny men at work in the forges below pouring molten iron into moulds, ham- merino- the outside of cannon barrels, rifling the bores, filling the breeches, casting the projectiles which these cannon were designed to pitch among the ranks of the enemy? Did they indicate powder manufactories? Perilous juxtaposition was not to be studied in such a pinch as Paris was in now. Were they the chimneys of bakeries, or of huge steam sausage-machines for chopping up horseflesh \ Whatever they represented they were smoking away with a curious air of manufacturing prosperity that seemed utterly incompatible either with a bloody siege, a close blockade, or threatened starvation. Were his companion ubiquitous, thought the Guardsman, 181 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the puzzle — for to us, as to most, those factories were a puzzle — would cease to be so, nay, never would have existed. Then there were those waspish-looking, low, black little gunboats every now and then showing their sharp snouts out from behind the crown work of La Bridie. What were they doing ? Had they any intention of another reconnaissance ? Were they acting as ferry- boats, or had they parties of ladies on board, to whom these curious grasshopper-like motions afforded pleasure ? First, there comes out one — puffing as if she were flapping her chest with her arms to raise her courage. Out she comes bodily with a dash, and a big gun from where I stand might cover even her stern. Then she seems to lose heart again. You almost think you hear the skipper crying " Ease her," " Stop her," and then the word is "Turn astern." She goes back in a droll pirouet- ting fashion, feeling, as it were, from side to side with that huge antenna on her deck. I take it she came out to see whether she could not find an eligible object at which to discharge her gun. No reliefs are crossing the plain, the officers in Epinay are at dinner, men have learned to lie close in Deuil, Montmagny, and Stains. So she has had her journey for nothing. A few minutes after, two came out abreast, and, so fir as we could make out with the glass, there were groups on the deck that seemed officers. Was yesterday's reconnaissance, then, not enough? Was there still a craving for an attack FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 185 upon Epinay, notwithstanding yesterday's lesson from Mont d'Orgimont 1 Perhaps Trochu was himself aboard, with Ducrot and Vinoy in the other craft, so that the destinies of Paris might not be entrusted to one fragile eoncern of tin-plates and maple pannelling. In the green foreground of Gennevilliers we could dimly see masses of men, now to all appearance swelling into densely packed 1 todies, anon elongating into columns. What was their purpose, or had they one ? Were they listening to a speech from Trochu, were they collecting there to be ferried over by the gunboats upon Epinay, in case these should make a rapid voyage in that direction ; or were they being marched away in the direction of Bezons, in view of a contemplated renewal of the attempt to bridge the Seine at that point? Again the lieutenant's remark as to ubiquity came home to me. But he had his ex- planation ready about the shifting soldiers, whose appear- ance was shaking my Lagny resolution. "They are drilling the stupid fellows of Mobiles," was what he had to say about it; being very anxious for Lagny, I accepted the explanation. Boom, and boom again, one gun from 1 hi Xord, one from La Bridie in momentary succession. With a far-off sough we heard the whistle of the shells through the air — that is a sound that carries far ; but we heard not the dull clash that is the signal of the impact, nor the sharper crack that the explosion produces. Was the tire against Stains, or Le Bourget, or Epinay, or into 186 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. miscellaneous space ? Non-ubiquitous, we could not tell ; but it was some consolation to know in this case that ubiquity of presence might have been accompanied with ubiquity of danger. Ten minutes more, and the same double salute ; still another ten minutes, and the repe- tition with such clockwork regularity, that showed a mutual understanding by signal, telegraph, or otherwise, between the gunners of the two forts. A fourth double discharge, this time almost simultaneous and anticipatory of the expiry of the statutory ten minutes. That far-off sough comes nearer, nearer, nearer — cuts the air, as it seems, so close to our ears that I, at all events, swerve involuntarily. There is no mistake about the crash of the explosion this time — far too near to be pleasant. It is clear that we, and none other, were the marks for these two shells, at least. What keen dogs they must be behind those grim embrasures ! Good afternoon, Herr Lieu- tenant, my winsome youngster, smiling there from ear to ear, as if gunpowder had been an amalgam of your mother's milk, and as if shells had been the bon-bons of your boyhood. I am not sufficiently acquainted with your domestic affairs to know if you have anybody whose livelihood depends on your existence otherwise than in little pieces — J. have, so adieu to you, with all decent pre- cipitation. The shadows were falling as 1 rode through the Guards- men in Sarcelles, Arnonville, and Gonesse, where the men FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 187 for forepost duty are turning out burdened with wrappers of the strangest kinds. Here is a man with a sheepskin door-mat lashed round him ; and surely that is a Brussels carpet that this bio; grenadier has over his shoulders. If you were to hear the alarm sound this moment, down would go the wraps, and forward would go their bearers, all the more supple because they understood how to keep themselves warm when the alarm was not sounding. When shall we learn that efficiency in the field does not crucially depend on trimness on parade ; and when shall the adjutant of a British regiment understand that for a private to go on night guard with a comforter instead of a stock is not a fearful portent of the end of the world ? Have the artillerymen in Sevran been fishing in the Arctic Seas, and is that their catch of walruses that I see on my left, as 1 ride through the little town ? Synonymes are often convenient, and this synonyme for a siege gun we owe to the master of all of us in the profession of a war correspondent. The Sevran walruses have come hither by train — preserved in ice, no doubt. It is cold weather, and a considerable number of them are allowed to huddle together for the sake of warmth, but some of them have been cut off from the "school "—that is the technical word, I believe — and are located in smaller groups farther to the front, placed in localities where, it is true, they have a certain shelter consisting of earthen embankments in front of them, but where that general 188 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. shelter is, to a great extent, nullified by the gaps cut in their immediate front — gaps which those who have to do with walrus fishing have a habit of calling embrasures. But cold though the unwieldy denizens of the Arctic regions may be in such exposed positions, they are cer- tainly not to be allowed to starve. These streams of waggons, drawn by teams of strong horses, and accom- panied by men in uniform, are returning empty from the conveyance of food to the inhabitants of the deep. True they may have to hunger for their rations yet a while, but the meal will be all the heavier when it does come. What is the use of administering Jwrs d'eeuvre when the dinner is not ready ? I was concerned, however, to notice that this catch of walruses ran smaller than one could wish. 1 am bound for Le Vert Galant, and should turn away from the front at Livry ; but let me go a little farther southward, through the col of Bondy, to see wiiat that old bete noire Mont-Avron is like in the thickening gloom. The place is true to its established character. From' the range of the fringe of felled forest through which I have penetrated I can only faintly trace the familiar outlines, so rapidly has the darkness fallen. But — Flash! up goes the electric light from Nogent and Rosny, and bang comes the first shell — the " top of the evening" from Avron. What a humbug, to be sure, is that same electric liorlit. The French were always usinu; o JO FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAH. 189 it. You saw it scintillating on the summit of Valerien and flashing out toward Lc Bourget from Montmartre. To the defenders of Paris all it could do is to make dark- ness visible ; to its besiegers, if they had only been in the mind, it would have been a gratis illumination that would be worth any money. In the foreground of the electric flashes from the forts before me, lies xVvron as clear as if it were noonday. But Chelles, Montfermeil, Noisy, or Yilliers might have been swallowed up in an earthquake, so utterly invisible are they. Oh for something else than the meagre walruses by the windmill and on the vine- berg. Half-a-dozen hours pelting with real artillery on those impudent batteries on the verge and crest of the plateau so brilliant under the rays of the electric light — then in the small hours a storming party of one battalion of Saxons and another of Guardsmen ; a bavonet fight on the summit — and then hurrah for the black, white, and red flag to flaunt wherewithal the gunners of Nogent and Rosny. It would not be a light cause for which the Saxons, having once got a grip of the. summit, would surrender it now. Well, let us live, in hope, in early hope. How long? How long? I get angry as I look at the battery, made right in our faces, but the other day comparatively harmless, and at whose door, young as it is. lie the deaths of so many stalwart Saxons, whose corpses will fertilise next year's crops in J 90 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. the fatal horseshoe. I get angry and impatient when I think that this place, which our ground dominates so that not a gun could ever have been mounted but for unaccountable laissez faire, should test the elasticity of our forepost line in a direction that I am disgusted and savage to have the knowledge of. The laissez faire days were over ; but there seldom comes an indulgence without a penalty, and on many graves around this side of Paris, the pioneers might have substituted for the " Hier ruhen in Gott," the words, " Here lie the consequences of vacillation. " Making for Lagny on the morning of the 20th, I was amusing myself, between Pomponne and my destination, by noting the variety of railway lines from which the carriages composing a single reserve train had been drafted — Berg, Hanover, Taunus, Halle- Cassel, Westfalen, Saxe, and half-a-dozen more, when I observed a half troop of Blue Hussars on the other side of the water coming at a trot down to the Kreigs- bruckc. The horsemen were followed by a string of carriages, which were closed up by another half troop of Dragoons. What could it mean ? Was the King ful- filling the frantic prognostications of the Hamburgh merchant, whose ravings I have chronicled, and flying to Pthcims in twelve two-horse post- waggons ? Had Trochu J. uu yielded himself up on the sly, and was he off to Wil- helmshohe via Lagny and Bouillon, after the manner of FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 191 his quondam royal master ? Had the ( 'rown Princess been on a flying visit to her royal and gallant husband, and warned out of Versailles by " Big Joseeline ? " How could I tell ? None the more could I understand the reason d'etre of the procession when the escort and the post-waggons came past me at a trot. I saw faces not wont to be seen on the war path — faces grave with thought, attenuated by long; watching over the midnight lam}), civilian faces and dresses in every carriage. Although T did not express myself audibly, I shared the sentiments of the honest Landwehrman in the gutter, who bluntly roared out to one of the postilions, " I wish you'd tell me who the devil you have there!" The man's quaint coolness reminded me of an Ost Preussen M arketender, who, passing during the memorable inter- view between the ex-Emperor and Bismarck after Sedan, bawled out lustily, " Wo 1st der Napoleon, den ?" The cortege whirled on, and I rode after it, but was acci- dentally so delayed that the waggons had discharged their freight in front of the Lagny Railway-station some time before 1 got there. Very hungry, and with a trust in the chapter of accidents, begotten of some experience, to purvey somehow the information I needed, I turned aside to the 'officers' casino' — a modest eating-room, on the mess principle, established opposite the station. The place was full of the faces I had seen in the carriages. The owners of the faces were hard at work— -very. 192 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Sausage, ham, cold meat, were disappearing with cre- ditable rapidity ; the wine gurgled from the bottles, and a silence reigned such as is wont to exist among very hungry men. No wonder that they were hungry. The thirty civilians I saw before me, in the fur coats, the fur caps, and some, indeed, in fur boots ; one man, with white moustaches, many of them with bald heads, and other signs and tokens of grave and reverend signiors, were the deputation of the North German Reichstag, who were on their way home from Versailles, after tendering to King William the crown and title of Emperor of Ger- many, and they had not eaten since they left Versailles, after a very early breakfast. It was a strange sight, no bad emblem of a nation which loves peace, while it never shuns righteous war. Here in the low-browed, narrow room, waited on by soldiers in canvas undress, whose straw beds were visible in the kitchen as the door stood open, interspersed with officers in uniform — here a general, there a lieutenant, the street in front crowded with the wounded of two nations and half-a-dozen principalities, its stones echoing to the din of galloping orderlies, to the rattle of marketender carts, and the roll of tumbrils ; here sat the fathers in Israel, men wise in council ; men famous in literature ; men whose names are a tower of strength on every bourse in Europe. When lias a Par- liament been seen on campaign before? 1 can recal no later instance than when the Council of the Covenant FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 193 went with the Covenanting fighting men into the field — themselves, too, fighting men. Truly this modern Parlia- ment on campaign took to the role very kindly, to judge by the good knives and forks they played. Having had the honour to be recognised by one of the members, Baron Rothschild, I was most courteously requested to take a seat at one of the tables. The Baron, in urbanity and geniality, is a host in himself; at the same table sat the following members of the deputations : — President Simson, Landrath von Cranach, Br. Weigel, Herr Putt- kamer, Baron Nordeek, Count Hompesch, Herr von Sybel, and Herr Sombart. They told me, with much feeling, how the tears had trickled down King Wilhelm's cheeks when the grandest proffer of the age was made to him. They expressed with hearty warmth their pleasure that when the time came that Wilhelm's son should reign in his stead, the Princess Royal of England should be Empress of Germany ; and before Herr Director came to say that the train was ready, one toast was drunk, and in that all the room joined with acclamation — "Prosperity io Germany and England; may they ever be friendly." Baron Xordeck it was who gave the toast. And then '" the house adjourned" into the snug first-class carriages, " honourable members/' not a few of them, showing from their poeketj what one might have taken to be the muzzles of pistols, designed for protection against Erancs-tireurs, but which in reality were the necks of wine-bottles. 191 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. I could not help being amused at the gentleman who was charged with the duty of settling the reckoning. It was stiff, unquestionably — 164 thalers for a simple cold luncheon for thirty-one persons. No doubt the casino keeper would have replied to a complaint to the same effect as a Scotch change-house keeper is reported to have used to James VI., "Ye dinna come this gate ilka day, your Majesty.''' Certainly it is not often that a Lagny marketender gets a chance of cutting into the purse of the German Reichstag. The paymaster was disposed to grumble, but I ventured, to point out that it was all, so to speak, in the family, since the man was a German, and since Germany was paying the costs of the delegation— a view which the good deputy, perhaps, all the readier adopted, because his colleagues, getting over before him, were picking up all the best seats in. the train. The deputation vent the same night night as far as Epcrnay, where, in its corporate capacity, it was to break up. I was forced to resist a very cordial invitation to accompany it as far as the city of champagne, but my duties called me elsewhere. Prince Carl's surgeon, who accompanied the delegation, had with him a cage containino- a Paris carrier pigeon, which had been captured with its despatch, and which he was conveying home as a, present to Princess Carl. So pressing at the first strain were the needs, and so ghastly the misery, of the French prisoners passing through FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 195 Lagny on their way from Orleans to captivity in Ger- many, that Captain Nevill, the chief representative in Meaux of the British National Society, had wisely thought it his duty for once to break through the trammels of rule and regulations, that the horrors of the situation might be alleviated. It would tax the vivid pen of MM. Erckmann-Chatrain to depict the sufferings of these poor wretches. I was told of one batch that came in so ravenous with hunger that the men grubbed in the gutter after turnip-tops and bones, and turned over dirt- heaps in search for stray crusts of bread. At Meaux, when the train containing these unfortunates passed through, the Society people threw hams into the carriages, which were seized and worried by the ravenous men, as dogs worry bones. Between wounded and prisoners, the German organization for the time broke down. It was little wonder. The average daily quota of prisoners from the 1st up to the 17th was 1000 men ; the number of wounded averaged little less. Lagny did its best, but it is never a great place, and its resources had been severely taxed for months before. The cry of the great distress reached Meaux, and Captain Nevill and his colleagues could not withstand it. On the 17th December Mr. Harrington Kennett came on to Lagny with twenty huge cases of preserved meat; next day followed Captain Nevill with 200 leviathan loaves. Mr. Kennett was left at Lagny in charge of the arrangements, and every one spoke 196 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. in terms of enthusiasm, as to the manner in which he had accomplished what he set himself to do. The German organization had righted again— it was never long on its broadside — and now the arrangement was in force that every prisoner on his way through should receive a lump of bacon and another of bread, while the British Society, in case of another collapse, continued to keep in reserve a store of preserved meat and bread for administration in that event. The horrors of Lagny during December transcended all imagination. Fancy an average of 1000 wounded men pouring in day by clay, a fresh thousand every day, unfed, their wounds undressed, bitter cold, and jolted almost to distraction. There was no hospital in the place. No hospital, had it been as big as new St. Thomas's twice over, would have sufficed. Sheds, houses, railway vans, the lamp-room in the railway station, the church, the Mairie, were turned into hospitals. I saw one courtyard on which opened four or five squalid rooms. Into these eighty wounded Bavarians had perforce to be placed for the night, supperless, tireless — hopeless, I should think, in their utter misery. In one day came 1800 wounded, nearly 100 of whom were officers. The men were put into the church ; there was no other place for them. During the night a certain man was wanted particularly for some reason. Diligent search was made for him among the masses of wounded men, but it was like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. The search FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 197 was unsuccessful. As I walked about the streets of Lagny, I continually met strange "mounted men/' Now it was a man on the back of another, the man carried having a leg swathed in bandages. Xow came a pair carrying a man in what boys call a king's chair. All were on their way to the station, the platform of which was continually littered with a kind of luo-o-ao-e that made one's heart ache. There, at full length on the litter lay the poor broken fellows, looking up at you with their great, calm, patient eyes. I saw a clumsy fellow stumble over one of the prostrate forms, and all the chiding he received was a wan pinched smile, lucre was a lady at Lagny whose name deserves to be written in letters of gold wherever are recorded the names of devoted philanthropists; Madame Simon, the lady superintendent of the Saxon ambulances. Day and night did this noble woman wrestle with the torrent of human misery that had surged upon Lagny sincethe beginning of the month. The church of Lagny had come to strange uses ; the previous week, a refuge for 1 .700 wounded men ; two nights before my visit, the barracks for 1000 Bavarians — a new draft press- ing to the front : last night, the prison-house of some 1200 Frenchmen. I went among them into the stench — stench and scene reminding me of the church of Donchery the day after Sedan. Most of the prisoners 1 saw were boys, some tlie merest children, unable to cany a gun, much less to use one. Their guards w^re very kind and 19S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. gentle with them, poor wretches ; it would have been difficult to be harsh with creatures so utterly down and crushed. At six o'clock, on the morning of the 21st, a good friend routed me out of a comfortable bed in Lagny, with the information that fighting was imminent. Taking at once to horse, I heard nothing as I rode for the first two miles, but had abundant confirmation everywhere that my friend's intelligence was good. I overtook a pontoon train going at a trot towards Chelles ; the officer believed that that was the point to be threatened, and the bridge might be useful to facilitate the passage of succours from the region of Champs, Malnoue, and Villiers. At Le Pin I found the three field batteries of the 24th Division quartered there, limbered up and taking the road. Their orders Avcre likewise for Chelles, and I was tempted to accompany them. But as I spoke with the officers, there came down on the wind the sound of heavy firing from the direct front towards Clichy, and so I resisted the impulse to go to Chelles, where there was undoubtedly the most tempting district for an infantry attack, and headed up the slope to General Montbe's head-quarters in Clichy. The terrace of the chateau he inhabited commands a noble view of the whole country as far as Dugny and Gonesse, and this country was the theatre of the cannonade that lasted till the afternoon. By eight o'clock, when I arrived, the fire was continuous. FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 199 The centre of tlie German position was that fortified eamp between Sevran and Le Blanc Mesnil which J have already described, and around Aulnay, in the very middle of that stretch, were the batteries chiefly con- centrated. The German force engaged there, so far as I could learn, was as follows : — Three batteries of the Guards Artillery, three batteries contributed by the 23rd Division of the 12th Army Corps, and three or four batteries of the Artillery Division of the 12th Army ( 'orps. There were reserve batteries in addition to this, but those were not engaged. Infantry and cavalry supports were partly drawn out, partly standing ready in their quarters. The 103rd Regiment, the garrison of Clichy, were on the plateau of Raincy, to watch the French infantry that had been observed concentrating in Bondy. The French artillery seemed engaged all round. Avron was firing over Villemonble at Clichy and Montfermeil ; and Forts Noisy and Romainville were vigorously fol- lowing suit against Raincy, Gagny, and the German posts in the forest of Bondy, which were also dividing the at- tention of Avron. The batteries at Bondy and Drancy wen; playing on Livry, Sevran, and Aulnay ; and Auber- villiers. in combination with de L'Est, was throwing; shells into Le Bourget, Pont Iblon, and Dugny. Du Nord was bombarding Pierrefitte and Stains. The French infantry was concentrated between Bondy and Bau- bigny, one demonstration towards Clichy, and another 200 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. toward Chelles, having been arrested earlier in the morning. About a quarter to nine Aubervilliers, de l'Est, and St. Denis seemed to be concentrating their fire on Le Bourget. Six or eight French batteries had formed line with their left on Drancy, and were partly firing obliquely into Le Bourget at very short range, partly firing on the German line behind the inundations. I could see shells bursting in Pont Iblon, also behind our batteries in Aulnay. The French fire was quite furious, half a dozen guns flashing out at once ; but it seemed wild. The German was regular as the beats of the pendulum of a clock. An occasional shell from Avron was tumbling into Clichy. At nine o'clock came a rattle of musketry on the wind. It sounded from Le Bourget. Were the French infantry pressing on the battalion of Guards occupying it \ It sounded like it. It grew louder, and then there was a lull. It sprung up again nearer Pont Iblon. " The Guards must be in retreat towards Pont Ib- lon," was the exclamation on our terrace. The hellish shell fire concentrated on the place was enough of itself to drive them out. There were the shells bursting all along the road towards Pont Iblon. They must, mark, surely the line of the retreating Guards, the shells following as they fell back. Now it seemed as if they were safe behind Pont Iblon, for the batteries above the causeway through the inundations opened, their way seemingly free, since FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 201 friends were no longer in front of their muzzles. It afterwards turned out that we were wrong in the con- clusion that the Guards had been wholly expelled from Le Bourget. The French, in the teeth of Pont Iblon's fire, had got up batteries on the ehaussee before Le Bourget, and seemed to be exchanging shots with the Pont Iblon batteries at point-blank range. A German battery at Sevran was beginning to speak in the direction of Bondy. I could see the shells from Aulnay bursting in the middle of the French batteries at Drancy, as the wind for the moment blew the smoke away. Still they held their ground. Fire seemed opening out towards us from Avron, and now and then I heard the waspish sing of a chassepot bullet. At half-past ten the French were brightening up all round. The forts were, without exception, firing as hard as they could. That white smoke I saw in the far distance must have been the Lunette de Stains play- ing into the village of the same name. Did the firing go farther round towards Montmorency and Epinay ] I could not tell for certain : but the direction of the noise and the smoke argued as much. At eleven o'clock both sides were at it ding-dong, without advantage on either side. Putting out of sight the forts, the French had the greatest strength of artillery engaged. 1 could make out, as I reckoned, eighteen field batteries. The 202 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. line of guns to the right of Drancy was lengthening. How they did fire, to be sure ! Could they have been aiming as they blazed away with such rapidity ? Splash — splash — I saw now with the glass that most of their shells were bursting in the inundation in front of our position in Aulnay. That could break no bones. Why, they had set the Forest of Bondy on fire, on their own side of the water ! If they had meant to follow up with infantry, this would have inconvenienced them seriously. Kr-r-r-r, kr-r-r-r — one ought to know that sound if he ever heard it before. Where could they have got their mitrailleuses at work ? That indicated close quarters. Had they got their infantry edged forward on the sly at some point we could not see from our position, and were they backed up by the mitrailleuse ? Why, the sound was coming from two points at once. The glass ex- plained the mystery. Near Drancy, and on to Sevran if it were not for the interruption, runs the Soissons railway. Below us, by Bondy, and so round to Villc- monble and Gagny, runs the Strasbourg line. There was a mitrailleuse train on each line. General Montbe saw it first — the locomotive purl-puffing out from behind, the trees of Drancy, having the mitrailleuse waggons before it. There was the kr-r-r-r again. The concern was playing dodging tactics — it came out to fire, and scuttled back to load. Another mitrailleuse train was at the same name on our direct front — on the Strasbourg FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 203 line — that was the song of some of the bullets. 1 wondered how Von Schonberg and Hammerstein, and the rest of the 103rd fellows on Ilaincy were relishing their closer contiguity. At twelve an orderly rode in with the information that in the direction of Noisy-le-Grand French infantry were pushing forward, and that a battery had been established and opened fire in the same place, n p the valley against Chelles : also that all the batteries south of Avron were at work playing on the horseshoe. This had a serious meaning. The artillery in the neigh- bourhood of Chelles would be able to honour none of our drafts now, if we should want them. It looked as if we might need them. The fire was as hot as ever, the French activity seeming unabated. Our guns were pounding away in a steady, business-like way — they would not spurt. Artillery spurts never pay — infantry spurts sometimes, but not so often as is generally thought. The "walrusses" by Sevran were asleep ; it was evident we were not firing ;i gun that was not a field one. At a quarter to one there came a 24th Division battery past Clichy toward Sevran. It was one of those that had left he Pin in the morning. This was reassuring as to the state of things to our south by Chelles and the horse- shoe. The battery could not well have been spared if it had been very hot there. A shell— it must have come from Fort Noisy — burst in the battery as it traverses the space at our feet between Clichy and Livry ; one 204 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. horse — a detachment beast — was down, that was all. They had got the range from Avron now pretty closely. Where we were standing was hot quarters now. Bang. General, you are not hurt, are you ? A close shave, in all conscience; a 24lb. shell came right in among us, alighting among the stacked arms of a picquet, and sending the needle-guns riving right and left, and, for © © 1/ O © ' > that matter, the men too ; not a soul hurt, hut all smothered with gravel and mud. At one o'clock it was evident our fire was beginning to tell. The batteries © © flanking Le Bourget were shutting up. They were be- ginning to retreat, What was that burst of black smoke behind them % The French must have been trying to burn Le Bourget, They had succeeded so far ; there was a jet of fire, but the place must have been "washed, surely, in the composition ballet girls use for their skirts ; it would not take to burning kindly. I supposed it was the wet straw that raised so dense a smoke. At half- past one there was a lull. The French were changing position. The lull was only on their side, ours was pegging away as if driven by steam. There were the Lc Bourget batteries at work again, but farther behind: they must have limbered up and been falling back, and suddenly unlimbcred again. There was a gap in the line of batteries on the right of Drancy before another quarter of an hour had passed. The centre batteries seemed to have dropped out. What is the artillery word FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 205 of command? If it had been cavalry I should say they were retiring by columns of troops from the centre. The front batteries had wakened up again as hot as ever to cover the movement of the others no doubt. By half- past two the French artillery was all but silenced, and in full retreat. All the firing we now saw was our guns milling away steadily as if paid by the piece, and the French forts of De l'Est, Dn Xord, and Aubervilliers. In the distance, under the hill of Ecouen, which shuts in the horizon, I saw smoke rising. Perhaps Dugny or ( iarges might have been fired. Perhaps a shell had lodged in a straw stack. By three o'clock hardly any- thing was audible to our north front. Xoise still came from the direction of Montfermeil, Chelles, and the south. Phe neighbourhood of Clichy, for the time, seemed to be attracting exceptionally hot fire. Shells were falling on the slope below us witli disagreeable frequency. Although in other parts of the line, at least to the northward, the firing seemed to be dying away as the early winter twilight came on, shells continued to be thrown toward Clichy, with perhaps greater frequency than in the earlier part of the afternoon. About five (•clock the fire from the German guns about Aulnay, which had been dying away as it ceased to evoke a response, suddenly flared up again, and continued very 1> risk for about a quarter of an hour. It appeared to me as if the French wen' disposed to halt at least sonic of 206 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. their batteries for the night in advance of the position out of which they had come in the morning, and that the warm fire of their opponents was intended to prevent the execution of this design. The French guns, which had been utterly silent for half an hour, could not refrain from replying to this fire, however feebly, and they were unlimbered — a couple of batteries, in the flat some dis- tance to the north-east of Baubigny. It was very pretty, in the all but darkness, to watch the rapid flashes, and the shells bursting in the air, ■ like a comet that has knocked out its brains against some aerial rock. But the pyrotechnic display was not of long continuance. The German fire was too steady and rapid to admit of a lengthened interlude of the illumination of the inunda- tion waters on the part of the French by the bursting shells on its margin. All grew silent and dark again over against Baubigny, and it was as if the French array — the forts, whose grey embrasures had been visible in the daylight, the serried batteries of artillery which had maintained their share of the day's din with so much spirit, and the dense battalions of infantry men which had done nothing all day but hold themselves in reserve - as if all these were blotted off the black face of the night. But not for long. From the far-off firing plat- form of Fort de l'Est suddenly flashed out the electric light, followed by a flash that heralded the dull thud which, as it seemed quite a minute after, struck the ear. FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 207 At what De FEst was firing we could not tull — if indeed at anything, and not in pursuance of that Gascon custom to which the Pans forts were addicted, of having the "last word" in every affair, no matter what its issue. Presently there rose against the sky another light farther south — directly between Clichy and Paris, a whole chain of lights so numerous that they blended as in one great fire, and made the heavens bright above them. These were the bivouac fires of the French camping in the open in the position they had taken up on the previous night, their right resting on Bondy, their left on La Courneuve. There they lay — foiled indeed in whatever they con- templated to-day, if it was of an actively offensive nature, but still stubbornlv refusing to relinquish it. They were •/OX J at hand for anything. To-morrow their infantry might be raging against the needle-guns of the Saxons lying before us on Raincy. To-morrow their field artillery, changing its direction, and backed by Avron, might be pounding inconveniently into Montfermeil. To-morrow, changing its front, the Bondy-Baubigny force might be supporting a division farther to the south or a heavy attack towards Chelles ; we could not tell. There they lay, at all events, the object of an undefined uneasiness, in which there was no trepidation, but something of nervousness. Ah, well, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. What was the raison d'etre of this great powder- 20S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. burning demonstration ? It could hardly have been intended as an attempt to break through. Specu- lations in the early part of the day had been various. It might, thought some, be a reconnaissance in force to dis- cover by drawing their fire whether the besiegers had any heavy artillery mounted on the works between Sevran and Pont Iblon, with future intentions towards the forts. It might be, thought others, that, in the knowledge of the railways being in use as far as Gonnesse and Sevran, the speculation might have been ventured by the French that to these termini were centreing the siege guns, and that under a heavy artillery fire the infantry might get the chance of making a dash in an exploring and destroying expedition. But in my opinion the cue was given to the motive of the day's work in the terms of a communication made by General von Montbe, at his hospitable dinner-table. All day long heavy columns of French infantry massed on and about the slope of Avron, and as far forward as Neuilly, had been threatening the gap of Chelles. This alluvial tract pre- sented several obvious advantages for a sortie. It is (juite fiat, is open in the physical sense all the way to Lagny — all the way to Chalons for that matter — and the French holding Neuilly as they did, already sat astride of the flat country, and could make their dispositions without annoyance or exposure on the same level as their succeeding operations. Then there was no river to FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. :200 cross. But for that somewhat sturdy obstacle, the Saxons, there would have been a straight run home unobstructed by water or broken ground all the way, as I have said, to Lagny ; and behind a sallying force there stood up the formidable Avron, a most judicious bottle holder, and something more. No doubt there were disadvantages to set against all these advantages. This world is a vale of crosses, and nobody can expect to have it all his own way. The bluff of Montfermeil would have enfiladed a force coming up the flat toward Chelles as soon as it had shown out from Neuilly. The height behind Chelles looked nearly direct in the face of any such force ; and the Germans had batteries of field-earns both on the bluff of Montfermeil and the heights around Chelles. Those heights, too, narrow the fair way considerably, and from the outset it is the reverse of too large. Still I had won- dered that the French, who had essayed ground far less eligible in a physical sense for a sortie, should not have tried this. It was clear that I was not alone in my opinion, for Chelles was the line taken by the 24th Division Artillery in the mornmer from Le Pin. The French columns — a whole division it was known- — were waiting under and around Nogent opposite the gap, ready to throw themselves into it. But they knew of old the results of a concentration at any point of the deadly field artillery <>f the Germans. Had they come "D directly, and wit!; no diversion, what would have VOI.. II. p 210 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. hindered it, but that the Saxon batteries from the Marne to the inundations, the Guards batteries from Livry to Gonnesse, should have been waiting there for them across the throat of the gap at Chelles, and on the crest of Montfermeil ? Wherefore was made a great artillery demonstration, supported with infantry, to look in earnest on the north-eastern face, in the hopes to draw off the artillery from the Chelles positions, and leave the coast comparatively clear for an attack. The plan might have succeeded with a weaker artillery than that pos- sessed by the Germans — that, as it was, it was not partially successful, I am not quite prepared to assert. Any how, the French division about two o'clock thought itself justified in advancing to the attack up the northern bank of the Marne. What followed, General von Montbe had not learned when I left Clichy. But when I came on to the head- quarters of the 12th Army Corps in Le Vert Galant, 1 found that Ville Evrart and La Maison Blanche, the two keys to the Prussian outpost line athwart the alluvia] plain, had been taken in the afternoon by the French, and that the staff wen; waiting for infor- mation concerning the result of an attempt which had been ordered to recover these positions under cover of the darkness. The attempt was successful. At six o'clock in the; evening the whole of the lOGth Saxon Regiment simultaneously fell upon Ville Evrart and La FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. .Hi Maison Blanche. The latter, a minor detached post, was first taken, the capture including a major and five officers, the former of whom must have been making the rounds, and about fifty men. Ville Evrart followed, and it contained 500 or more defenders, who were all made prisoners. Some of the outlying enclosures on the western side of Ville Evrart still remained for the night in the hands of the French ; but in the morning the Saxons got possession of them also. The French made hardly any resistance in either of the two places. They had settled down comfortably for the night, and when the Saxons burst in upon them, were utterly panic-stricken. The prisoners said that everybody believed the Saxons had been lying in ambush in the cellars, and had rushed out on a given signal. The major protested against his capture with comical lurmbriousness. "It was not o-cntle- manly warfare," he argued, " to take a man at advan- tage when he had his boots off and was thinking about supper. He understood there was some kind of tacit pact that there was to be no fighting after sundown, and of this the surprise was a reprehensible infraction." lie could not, however, argue either his liberty back or the Saxons out of La Maison Blanche. The chief loss of the day was sustained by the 1st Battalion of the Queen Elizabeth Regiment, old friends and good friends of mine. The battalion, which the reader mav remember, had headed the attack which re- 212 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. took Le Bourget on the 31st of October, had again terrible reason to remember that village. Of its remnant of officers left, five more went down on the 21st of December, 117 men were killed and wounded, and some sixty were taken prisoners. The chief, Haupt- mann von Altrock, seemed to bear a charmed life. He had on the 31st of October fourteen bullet holes through his loose mackintosh, and not a single wound. On this sortie of the 21st December his officers fell around him, but he never was touched. A severe mishap befell a very dear friend of mine, young Freiherr von Broek- dorff, a lieutenant in the Kaiser Franz Regiment, and the nephew of General von Moltke. He was shot through the chest near the close of the action, while occupying, with a portion of his battalion, an exposed line of barricades closing; in the village of Le Blanc Mcsnil. A brighter lad I never knew. He was a stu- dent at college, in Berlin, when the war broke out, and joined the army at once. He had won his commission and the iron cross. Now the war had brought him something else. I saw him in one of the Gonesse lazarettos the next day but one. He was lying nearly comatose, and very weak. lie believed it was the splinter of a shell that drilled the jagged hole in his side ; but the surgeons were certain it must have been a stray chassepot bullet, or one of the mitrailleuse balls which the cuirassed train sent over. His elder brother, FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 21o a lieutenant in the Thuringian Uhlan regiment, had been sent round by General von Moltke to see how fared it with the lad. The tidings which he took Lack were the reverse of good ; but the fresh-constitutioned youngster pulled through ultimately, and by this time is no doubt a healthy veteran, proud of his scars. .Many circumstances occurred during this campaign, tending to imperil the continued existence of the Geneva Convention. One abuse of its stipulations occurred on the night of this artillery duel. The French had collected their wounded in the village of Bondy — fearfully wounded most of them must have been, for shell-splinters do not make neat holes in men. Bondy being in a line with the front of their position, and one of the keys to it in the event of that position being assaulted, they had run up> the red cross, and doubtless there would have been the cry of "■ brutes and barbarians " if that cross had not been respected. It had not been fired on, but none the less was it a flagrant abuse of the terms of the Convention, which stipulates expressly that no Feld Lazaretto shall be erected in a position too near the front or of value in a military sense. Neither side adhered closely to this defi- nition, and tin; consequence was that each had stories of asserted atrocities to narrate against the other. Speaking of wounded, our losses at Clichy during the day con- sisted of a field-postman's foot damaged, a soldier severely wounded by a splinter and a krankentriiger cut in two, 211 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. by a shell. In all from 500 to GOO prisoners were cap- tured, chiefly when Le Bourget was retaken after its partial occupation by the French, headed by their gallant corps of sailors. Several of these were among the prisoners, but most had died as they had charged, with an implacable fury that disdained quarter. On the morn- ing of the 22nd the French looked very threatening for a O J CD time ; they sent forward about a brigade of infantry against Chelles, which coalesced with the troops yet remaining in Villc Evrart. But a hot fire from Noisy-le-Grand and the opposite bank of the river between it and Cournay was enough to cause a retreat with some precipitation. The air was clearer on the 22nd December than on any day within my recollection since I had come to the scene of operations before Paris. From the advanced forepost in the Forest of Bondy, from which I looked out upon the beautiful panorama, Montmartre did not seem two miles off. I could discern the sun-glints on the windows of the Cathedral of St. Denis far round on the right front, Bondy, directly in our front, seemed so close that you might almost have sent a stone the length of its church steeple, and yet the French were in it, although they kept very quiet and out of sight. Still, occasionally a few were to be seen prowling about, and the smoke which hung in the air behind Bondy marked their camp fires. On the left front was the abrupt rise of the long ridge crowned by Forts Noisy and Bosny — FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 215 right between ns and the latter was the lower blunt- headed summit which we had learned to detest under the name of Mont Avron. Noisy at intervals was wreath- ing itself in white smoke, which showed out in fine con- trast against the blue horizon. As I watched it and the whole picture spread out before me in its loveliness, it was difficult indeed to realise that the foreground was full of fio;hting men, and that the smoke was the signal that a deadly missile had been sent hurtling through the air. But here comes something to remind one that smiles and peace are not synonymous. Carry him gently over the rough ground — ah ! T fear from the look of him he will not long feel whether he is handled roughly or tenderly. That shell you heard explode in the foreground tore half his hip away as he stood leaning against the wall ; he is quivering with incipient tetanus, and the blood is drip- ping on to the ground as it soaks through the canvas of the stretcher. How tenderly Colonel Dietrich speaks to the poor fellow. Ah, colonel, no wonder that you sigh and turn away at that faint reply to your question — " Landwehrmann, Herr Oberst." In that word "Land- wehrmann," uttered by that poor bleeding soldier, is a volume of meaning. It means a widow and orphans, a shattered home, the breadwinner of a family struck down. There were gay lads standing about, brisk young regulars, and eighteen year old volunteers ; but the shell spared them and whizzed straight on to the man who has mouths tliQ THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. to fill. How one feels to hate war, as the Krankentrager carries the man out of our sight ! The whole regiment— the 103rd — is on the foreposts to watch the French, and there is a squeeze in the little huts which have been run up to shelter the men. Strange dog holes they are ! The men are lying so close that it seems in places they are in layers among the straw. The officers have a separate place which is nearly as full as are the huts of the men. There is a stove, but it smokes ; so does everybody in the place, and you cannot discern clearly the features of the man sitting opposite to you. Faintly it is apparent that he is eating sausage with a pocket knife. Yes, that is a tumblerful of neat rum which he is tendering you. It is so strong that it would bring the water to your eyes, only that the wood smoke has done so long ago. Somebody is asleep — at least voci- ferous snoring ought to be an indication of sleep. He must have tried very hard to sleep, else he could not have been successful in the din. But, then, remember that this regiment has been on this forepost duty without a break for three whole days, and your wonder will not be that one can sleep, but that the whole are not asleep. Here comes the orderly with the welcome order that the relief is coming, and we shall get to dinner in JMajor von Sehonbere-'s chateau. The irood major is in oreat fettle. He has a wife in Saxonland, a lady for whom I FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 217 have an intense respect, although I do not know her. I respect her for two reasons ; first, because she is the major's wife ; secondly, because. she has had the thought- fulness to send her husband — by the field post of course — a couple of barrels of Bairisch beer. These barrels are ever in the major's mind and on his tongue. He shouts, " Hurrah for the barrels!" when the orderly brings the tidings of the relief. While waiting for the relief I went with an officer into the batteries of sieire guns, which had been surreptitiously preparing for days before with a single eye to the discomfiture of Mont Avron. The guns were already in their places, — fell tigers lurking in the jungle. Their ambush was complete. In front of the- batteries stood intact a fringe of that close under- growth which pervades everywhere the forest of Bondy, intermingled with tall trees with bushy tops. There was a substantiality and trimness about the works that .-poke of .-kill and method — the parapets solid and well defined, the covers fur the supporting infantry elaborately finished, even to the dainty flattening of the slope of the banquette. The magazines were already about half full, but not a shot was to be fired till the complements should have been made up. Xo signs of exertion towards this result were visible in the broad sunlight ; but had I waited by the batteries till twilight, I would have seen. coming slowly rumbling through the glades of the forest, long trains of carts driven by peasants escorted by ca- 218 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. valry, and each loaded up with ammunition-boxes. There was a quiet power about the whole scene which was very impressive. The relief arrived, we returned to the chateau, and spent a delightful evening. The beer turned out per- fection. There was a lack of beds in the chateau, which, however, as regarded myself was supplemented with characteristic Saxon courtesy. A captain gave up to me his bed, and slept himself on the straw on the floor. About four in the morning I was awakened by a shake on the shoulder. As, half awake, I looked up, there stood over me, looming very large, an Uhlan, with his throat wrapt up in many and preternaturally-complicated folds of comforter. He handed me a paper, and shoved a candle under my nose. What could the man mean ? Was this an order for my immediate execution, or had that rich .93rd cousin died and left me his heir ? I sleepily read over the paper, and found it was an order to turn out at once and march my company, with the rest of the brigade, to the neighbourhood of Sevran. Where was my company ? Who had a right to order me — a free-born British Christian, and a neutral — thus peremptorily to turn out in so cold a- morning? All at one.' I remembered 1 was in the captain's bed, and the sagacious idea occurred to me that the order must be intended for him. So it turned out, and the captain did the same. There was a general turn out in the early FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO TFIE NEW YEAR. 219 morning of the 23rd. The 2nd brigade of the 23rd division consists of the 102nd and 103rd Regiments, and there being, it seemed, symptoms that the restless French contemplated another attack on Le Bourget, this brigade was ordered to march to Sevran, to stand there in reserve in case they should be wanted. On we went, through the fiercely cold morning air— the breaths freezing into spangles on the beards, and little icicles forming on the tips of the moustaches. Everything seemed quiet. In Livrv we met the Saxon Schiitzen Regiment going on to strengthen the Bondy foreposts. How well their black plumes looked in the gray light of the early morning. Livry save for them was empty. A couple of forlorn turkeys, ready plucked for Christmas, hung mournfully in a marketender's window. The customers had gone away, and might never come back. When the brigade reached the halting Ground all was still quiet. There was nothing to 1)0 seen, and therefore I rode forward through Sevran and Aulnay. Between these villages the emplacements for the held guns were all appropriately occupied, and the gunners stood at their posts; no infantry was to be seen. But as soon as I cleared Aulnay and got up the gentle rise on the top of which runs the great Lille road, which passes through Le Bourget, it was apparent how thorough were the preparations. There were in position six or eight batteries of artillery all along tin 1 rear of the inundations, and on the slope rising behind Le Blanc 220 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Mesnil and Pont Iblorj. Farther back stood other bat- talions in reserve. The great road itself was clear; I could see along it right into Le Bourget, a mile and a half to the front. But right and left of it stood the bat- talions of infantry, eleven of them, the whole of the 2nd division of the Guards. Here stood the pink and pride of the Prussian army — the Kaiser Franz, Kaiser Alex- ander, Konigin Elizabeth, and Konigin Augusta regi- ments. The Elizabeths had one battalion away out to the front there, holding Le Bourget, and have only two battalions on the ground here. The artillery consisted of that belonging to the 2nd division, and also of the artillery division of the Guard Army Corps. At the cross-roads, as I rode on, there met me a quaint little figure with a knot of officers behind him. His head seemed literally " in a bag," one could see nothing but a pair of keen eyes and a pair of white moustaches. Don't laugh at the funny-looking old man ; you see before you a soldier than whom there is not a gallanter in all the German hosts ; one who, though a general, ever lusts to be in the thick of the fray, fighting with his own good sword. The owner of the white moustache is General von Budritzki, the Commander of the 2nd Division of the Guards, the general with whom rested the dispositions of the day. He told me, as I halted for a gossip with Ids staff, that he feared there would be no fighting to-dav. ft was clear he was longing for a brush FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. :ll\ with the troops who gave him so much trouble on the 31st of October, when it fell to him to retake Le Bour- get. That same Le Bourget — out to the front on the farther side of the inundation — seemed to stand strangely isolated. If the Queen Elizabeths occupying it were looking behind — a custom they were not addicted to — it must have had a tendency to make them nervous that there was nothing in the way of supports all the way back to Pont Iblon. But behind Pont Iblon there were supports enough in all conscience. Depend on it, the Elizabeths would stick to Lc Bourget as Ions; as they could, and if they had to fall back they would only entice tlic French forward into the half-burnt, half-shattered man-trap. A French occupation of Le Bourget, always temporary, simply meant so many French prisoners. It was now one o'clock, and looking across towards Draney, I could see no move on the part of the French, whose i\]r<, were smoking in front of Baubigny. Behind us. in Font Iblon, there stood the Guards, waiting in the cold for whatever might turn up. It struck me, for my own part, that nothing would turn up, and that we should all go home to dinner. I knew Major von Schonberg was thinking of the beer again as he stood in that breezv meadow beside Sevran. My anticipations of a quiet afternoon and a peaceable return to dinner were not realised. 1 was the solitary occupant of the officers' casino in Gonesse, when Auber- 222 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. villiers fired a gun which seemed to be a signal, and a furious cannonade almost at once began. Le Bourget — poor battered Le Bourget — with my friends of the Queen Elizabeth Regiment, was again in receipt of all the punishment. Instead of returning to my post of the morning at Sevran, which was ineligible as a view point, I made for the high ground above Bonneuil, from which the whole scene lay spread before me like a map, in the clear afternoon air. In a long column, with its left resting on a clump of houses, a little in front of la Courneuve, right athwart the plain behind Drancy, and on as far as Baubigny — farther, perhaps, only I could not see it — stood the French infantry. There must have been 30,000 of them at least. On the left flank of the in- fantry, in front of la Courneuve, were two batteries of field artillery continually firing ; there was [mother near the farm of Groslay, and at least two more in front of the village of Drancy itself. Then the forts were all hard at work from du Nord away in the north, the lunette of Stains, its covered way running across the inundation, de l'Est flashing out its discharges so close to the waters edge that the smoke might have been taken for jets of steam — Aubervilliers, the grey and grim, squatting there like a gigantic, toad in the middle of the green plain — o o OX and Romainville on the farther brink of the canal ; while the puff and curl of smoke which ever and anon hung round the lofty summit of Noisy, far away on the FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO TILT: NEW YEAH. 2:11 top of the ridge, and standing' bluffly up against the horizon, told that again to-day Clichy was experiencing its tender mercies. But this was the only diversion ; everything else concentrated itself doggedly on Le Bour- get, if I except Mont Yalerien, which away far to the right in the eve of the declining sun had also his mantle of white smoke about his shoulders, betokening annoy- ance to St. Cloud or Bougival. La Bridie alone was quiet, lying there by the north bank of the Seine, look- ing as sulky as might be, as if out of temper at being debarred from joining in the melee. And a right boister- ous melee it was, yet for the most part one-sided. The Guards' field artillery between Gonesse and Aulnay was profoundly silent ; I suppose the French infantry were beyond range, and the forts, of course, yet more so. On the tract between Aulnay and Sovran the batteries of the 12th Army Corps were very brisk, firing steadily across into Drancy and the line toward Bondy, but making comparatively a poor show in comparison with the pro- fuse fire of the French bursting out from so many points simultaneously. I was almost certain that 1 heard the crashing of the shells into Le Bourget ; every moment I saw the flash and smoke of their explosion. With hardly an exception, every gun had the range well, and how it was possible for anything to live in the place passed my comprehension. But certain it is that there was in it Yon Alt rock's battalion of the Queen Elizabeths, in the '1-1 1 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. cellars it might be, or behind the thick walls, but there sure enough, as the French infantry would have found out had they ventured on the attack. Several times it seemed as if this was coming. Once three battalions threw themselves into as many columns — just to the right of la Courneuve, and made a start. I could see the officers out in the front. There was one man on a white horse — it might have been Duerot himself —who was ubiquitous, now cantering right out beyond everything, now wheeling and halting, as if making a speech to en- courage the advance. They came on very steadily for about a quarter of a mile, then they slowed, and finally halted. The officer on the white horse seemed to go frantic ; lie dashed hither and thither with desperate energy. Once or twice he rode right into one battalion, then came scouring round the rear, no doubt to stay the tailing off. Rut all was of no use. He could not get his fellows' steam up. A few shells came flying over Le Bourget and. burst under their noses. There was one sharp bicker of musketry out from behind a barricade 1 by Le Bourget railway station. That was Von Altrock f'ivin"' tongue, and when the Queen Elizabeths barked they also bit. The battalions went about, the white horseman bringing up the rear at a slow walk, as if marching to the funeral of his honour ; and they blended again with the long fixed line. At a later hour I saw less distinctly another threatened assault from Drancy, FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE XEW YEAR. 2lo but it made no head, and I could not distinguish its strength or character. How brisk the French were everywhere behind this long line of theirs ! The whole plain between la Cour- neuve and Baubigny was alive. I could distinctly see the red-cross flag flying on the ambulances as they stood by Maison des Ponccaux, in the southern rear of la Cour- neuve. The Soissons Railway line was extensively uti- lised. Half a dozen locomotives were puffing on it at once, each drawing a train of three or four carriages. When the train got to the end of its tether, about 500 yards beyond la Courneuve, it halted, and disembarked its freight — -always soldiers. Reinforcements kept being drafted up till the very close— a circumstance auguring ill for peace the morrow. At the improvised railway terminus stood fast a locomotive, with a couple of car- riages in front of it— no doubt those famous pieces of workmanship of Call's, the cuirassed mitrailleuse wag- gons. They were, however, never called into action to- day. 1 never saw the locomotive move, but it had its steam up. Riding along the front to the edge of the terrace of Montmorency, 1 came on the artillery officers stationed here, looking out on the scene through a huge telescope — a very powerful instrument. Bending it across to Montmartre, I could distinctly see the Parisians packed in dense masses on and around the top of the hill. VOI . II. Kl 226 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Behind the round column of Solferino, now used as an observatory, there stood the largest group — men, Avomen, and children. I wonder what they thought of the scene, such a contrast to scenes Parisians wot of Avhich these once-quiet villages in the foreground had seen. By four o'clock the fire was burning out ; only the embers still smouldered in the shape of a sullen gun from De l'Est or Aubervillicrs. The smoke from our artillery away at Sovran was still banking up in large clouds, and we could just hear the sharp cracks of the field pieces. By five the forts had left off, and although the field batteries in front of la Courneuve brightened up again, it was but a momentary spurt — the usual "last word." Before I turned my horse's head towards Margency, the watch fires were burning up brightly in the crisp darkness of the frosty night, and all was quiet. My last view of Montmartre as I looked back going down the slope showed me the electric light flashing out from it across the plain in a great weird streak. In describing, a few pages back, the manner in which the Germans had thrown up works across the naturally weak tract which lies on either side the Canal d'Ourcq, and northward to Gonesse, I expressed a conviction that they had made this section strong enough to turn any French force that might assail it. The events of the 21st and the 22nd December fully proved the correctness of the first anticipation, and inspired me with all the fuller FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. :l!7 confidence that any future effort must share the issue of those operations. Why, so far from carrying the " en- trenched camp," the French had not been able to take and hold Le Bourget, its mere incidental advance post. Yet another dies irce was the 24th. The French seemed determined on fighting it out on this same Le Boursyet line even to the bitter end. What the measure- ment of bitterness that end might represent it was im- possible then to foretell : surely the intermediate stages must have been bitter enough for them, in bloody bivouacs, with the temperature twelve degrees below freezing point. I left them on the previous afternoon still standing in position there athwart the plain from la Courneuve to Bondy, with the settincfsun on their backs, and Le Bourget the untaken in their front, the guns of the forts still hot from hurling the projectiles high over the heads of the immobile soldiery. The evening lapsed into the long hours, and the lull still continued, and one thought, for sure, the guns would at least be given a few hours to eool. But at midnight just as, after three rough and terrible nights, I was preparing to turn in between the luxury of a pair of sheets, the dreadful din com- menced again. There was no roll of proviant columns or artillery tumbrils to deaden it — -every bomb smote the ear as it were with a blow. Then, as the gunners warmed to their work, the separate and individual booms merged in a concatenation of hellish noise. I can sleep through Q 2 22S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. most things ; but I could not sleep through the fierce sound-clashing of this night, hard as I tried. There was nothing for it but to lie awake till one got nervous — and cannon fire produces inevitably this result in the strongest nerved — or to get up and go and watch the scene. Choosing the latter alternative, I soon found myself in the emplacement on front of Mont- morency, where, in the cold, there stood a couple of artillery officers, watching the scene professionally. It was, indeed, a strikingly beautiful scene, if one could have eliminated from it its deadly nature. The night was so black that you almost fancied you could cut the solid darkness with a blow of your stick. From out the pitchincss there flashed the straight jets of fire, widening out like the mouth of a trumpet. Then away through the air went the projectile, recalling the memories of the old nursery alphabet, " C was a comet, with a fiery tail." Perhaps it burst in mid-air, as if it had brained itself on one of the rocks forming the foundation of heaven. Then the living fire flew in coruscations in all directions, [he sparks gradually growing dull as the principle of specific gravity asserted itself. Or the bolt after its flight struck the ground, and striking burst, sending into the air an upward centrifugal illumination, as if it had stabbed the subterranean reservoir of a volcano. On the intermediate ground was the long serrated and irregular line of the French watch fires. We could see FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 22 ( J them one after another bum red and dull as the fuel got low, and then flash up with long-streaked tongues of flame as the watchers heaped on the wood. Hour after hour we gazed at the strangely weird scene, heedless that the bitter frost caught the breath on beards and moustaches, and matted them with ice tangles. There was a resistless fascination in the scene, under the spell of which one forgot even to smoke. But towards five o'clock, through the air troubled with the bellow of the firing, one could detect another sound — the rumble of artillery wheels in the rear. The Fourth Army Corps was contributing its quota to the resistance of the expected onslaught. Six batteries were on the road from Franconville to Gonesse, on the "round beyond which they would be in position before the darkness lifted. Then silent Montmorency burst out into life and candle- light. A brigade of the 7th Division was under orders t<> back up the sturdy Guardsmen, and the men of Anhalt-Dessau, the square-built soldiers of the Ludwig- Franz regiment — the 93rd of the North German line — were turning out of chateau and cabin, of desolated restaurant and apartments, no longer meubtis, and head- ing for the- front. Then it was time for me to go back to Margcncy, to get to horse ; for the Crown Prince and his stall' were bound for Gonesse before daybreak, and there were all the symptoms of a wild day s work. The explanation of the persistence of the French in their •230 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. efforts on this face was believed by the staff to lie in this — that they had received intelligence of the Army of the North having made some head, and that they were bat- tling on ever in the expectation of hearing its answering cannon from the woods of Chantilly or the slopes of Dam- martin. They did not know what we knew, how the day before Manteuffel, the grim, the curt, the astute diplomatist and able general, had sent Faidherbe reeling back with a facer, from which it would take him some time to recover. But who could help honouring them for their per- tinacious endurance — that passive valour not reckoned an attribute of the French character in the traditional estimate ? Just think, British reader, as you read this with feet in slippers in a cosy arm-chair, with a bright coal fire curling the ed^es of the boards of the volume, what it must have been to lie on the ground, badly clad, for three, aye four nights, with the glass several degrees below freezing-point ! To do this at night, and to stand all day with faces to the foe ! I protest I was filled with admiration, respect, and heartfelt compassion for the men whom I saw before me doing this — doing it too, it might be, on scanty rations, and without the spur and the backbone which the prestige of conquest ever gives. Those men out in the plain there must have been soldiers, and they must have had men to lead them who were worthy to command troops that could suffer priva- tions so great. Not indeed soldiers in the highest sense FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 231 of tlie word, since they manifested evident reluctance to come on to close quarters ; but one knew not the circum- stances under which they seemed to hang hack, and if one had been among them he might have found their clan on a par with their endurance. Gonesse was reached by eight o'clock, just as the sun lose. Again the Guardsmen of the 2nd Division were out waiting for the foe that never came, gallant old Budritski impatiently pulling his white moustache as lie stamped up and down the road. The whole line was " alarmed," that is, ready to turn out and fight in anything but alarm. On the further side were the I loyal Saxons of the 12th Corps in reserve ; on the hither side the Prussian-Province Saxons of the 4th Corps, also in reserve. The forts thundered continuously —hapless Le Bourget still their target. Major Kucne, of the Stall', had been in that village the day before, to know how it fared with its garrison of Guards, and he told me that in all his experience he had never seen anything to give him power to realize that such a rain of shells was possible. Yet the case of Le Bourget only bears out all previous experience regarding the comparatively little harm to life and limb which a shelling, however severe, causes to a place in which there are houses of tolerably strong construction. The Guards had sustained no great loss — less than they would have done in half an hours skirmish in the open. :2'32 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. Hour after hour passed monotonously as we stood listening to the artillery fire. It would only have been wasting ammunition to attempt a reply with field guns ; for the French infantry stood out of range, and con- centrated their fire on Gonesse, considerably to our front; their artillery had no occasion to come so far forward as to give the Germans a chance of silencing it, while on the other hand had the latter been pushed forward, it would have to no purpose come within the range of the heavy metal of the forts. So there was nothing to do but stand watching the pounding of Le Bourget, and a terrible pounding that La Haye Sainte of our position got. But it became evident by one o'clock that the French con- templated no active forward movement, and the Crown Prince took the homeward road to Margency. The artillery and infantry of the 4th Army Corps followed him, leav- ing the Guards to the enjoyment of the Christmas-eve concert alone. In very deep bass that concert still con- tinued long after the Lud wig-Franz men were cooking their erbswurst in their billets in Montmorency. It was still making the air pulsate when I left the position there, as the shadows of the twilight were coming down. But there were signs that Christmas-day — the day sacred to associations of peace on earth and goodwill among men — was not to have its hallowed character desecrated, by bloodshed. True, instead of the chimes of the bells that you heard in merry England, we might hear the FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 233 hoarse-throated roar of the cannon from Du Nord and De l'Est. True, instead of wreaths of mistletoe, we might have wreaths of white smoke, beautiful, indeed, to look at against the clear blue sky, but the evil sign, neverthe- less, of a terrible missile having been sent out into space; but there would to all appearance be no fighting. The French infantry, so far as I could judge, were breaking up their bivouacs, and falling back. The railway trains were brisk as ever in the afternoon, but they were, as it seemed, going out empty, and coming in full. Trochu was giving his poor fellows a chance to thaw — they must have been frozen stiff after so much exposure. It was Christmas morning. Where shall we dine ? I know where I should have liked to dine ; but the obstinate Parisians came between one and "the old folks at home," and the young ones as well. I had no need to complain of want of Christmas invitations ; it was in their very number that the bewilderment lay. I refrain from more than an allusion to one kind in- vitation from one who was ever kind. Then there was that genial one from compatriots in Versailles. Good old Dr. Tegener, of the Ecouen Hospital, had sent round another with a postscript to the note in the shape of the single word " Punch."' Some merry lads in Epinay wished me to go down there, and be jovial under the shadow of La Bridie : a battery of artillery would be glad of my company — at least they said so — at Napoleon- 234 THE WAR BETWEEN ERANCE AND GERMANY. St. -Leu ; a battalion of Wurtemburgers in Champs had half booked me more than a fortnight ago ; and the list ended with the genial and cordial invitation of good Major von Schonbcrg, and his officers of the 2nd Batta- lion of the 103rd Saxon Regiment. It was the battalion's turn on Christmas night for duty on certain far out- lying foreposts in front of the village of Raincy. The officers I knew to be right hearty fellows ; then there was Frau Majorin's Bavarian Beer (per Feldpost). Yes, I said done and done again with the major. It was a long ride, with the temperature, too, below freezing point, and things over on the French side were not altogether tranquil, but the way I was going would bring me to the right spot, if that sluggish firing from the forts should warm up and cover a sortie ; and there was some- thing in all likelihood to be got by a gossip at the officers' casino in Gonesse. The latter anticipation was realized even better than usual. Among the men of the Queen Elizabeth taken pri- soners in Lc Bourget on the 21st, was an ambulance assistant, whom the French had sent back the next day, in terms of the Geneva Convention, and, having been sent for by his captain to the casino, he gave me some interesting details of what lie saw during his brief captivity. The prisoners were taken into St. Denis, and temporarily placed in a house with sentries over them. Phey were treated with the greatest huma- FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 235 nity, amply supplied with coffee, sugar, wine, and bread. There was also given them abundance of flesh, but it was candidly owned that the meat was horseflesh. The French officers came among the Prussian prisoners, and asked them with great solicitude whether they had any cigars. An exchange was effected, the Germans giving cigars for cognac, of which there seemed to be great plenty. A party of ladies, dressed with the utmost elegance, came also to see the prisoners, and bound also, besides the gratification of their curiosity, on an acquisitive errand. " Had Messieurs les Prussiens any bacon in their knapsacks V If so, the ladies would be glad to buy it of them. Only two fellows had any, and the}" gallantly made a present of it to the fair in- quirers, who became very complimentary then as to the personal appearance of the captives. "What great, huge line men these Prussians are to be sure,"' remarked one lady. " l es, and just compare them with our little morsels of fellows," added another, pointing to the five fee! nothing sentry who was on duty over the stalwart Guardsmen. Not unnaturally, as 1 think, the "little morsel'' in question felt aggrieved at this observation, and his irritation took the form of turning the ladies out. My informant saw nothing of any privations during his sojourn in St. Denis ; but then he was there only for a few hours, and owned his opportunities had not been great. 236 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. In the officers' casino there was sitting a dragoon officer who had come thither on an errand worth men- tioning to English readers. His men, quartered in a village a considerable distance to the rear, had heard that there was in Gonesse a colporteur of the English Bible Society with his waggon, and they had asked the officer to come and ask the colporteur either to visit or to part with a few parcels of his tracts. I should have mentioned that on the road between Gonesse and Aulnay, on the morning of the 23rd, a road which two hours after was a very via dolorosa of exploding shells, I met this same colporteur coolly jogging forward with intent to distribute his wares among the battalions standing on the slope there waiting for the battle to commence. " It was a good time," according to the expressed views of this simple, brave Christian man, " for the men to read good words when they were stand- ing there with nothing to do, and with the shadow of death hanging over them." There are few who will dis- agree with him, but there are not many who would have proceeded so practically to give effect to his convictions. I regret much that I lost the card on which 1 had written down the name of this brave colporteur, but he came from Carlsruhe, he told me. ITere is a story of valour of another kind, but not of a higher character. In the 1st battalion of the Queen Elizabeths there was a boy-lieutenant, with a swarthy FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. :>37 face and bright black eyes, whose name was von Schramm. When I knew him he could not have been more than eighteen : had he been an English lad, he would have been at Eton. A German lad, he had done with the schools, passed his examinations, got his com- mission, won the iron cross, and was the adjutant of his battalion. When Major von Altrock (Le Bourget, if it had made Indict holes in his mantle, had brought him, too, a step in rank) — when Major von Altrock led his battalion into Le Bourget, on the 20th, little von Schramm was left behind sick in Aulnay. The gun fire on the 21st knocked the sickness out of him ; his regiment was fighting, and he not there. He jumped on his horse, crossed the inundation at Le Blanc Mesnil, and rode into Le Bourget athwart the artillery fire from Drancy. The Queen Elizabeths, however, were already driven far down the street ; and he, striking the village street half way up. found himself in the crowd of the Frenchmen. To leap from his horse and dash into a house was the work of an instant — if he could get out at the back door he might yet escape. But there was no back door — the pursuers were hot on his heels, and von Schramm was a prisoner. His captors asked him for his parole, but he refused to give it, and they proceeded to conduct him towards St. Denis — a convoy of two officers and two men. In outpost