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 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 p<ix vos femmes." The taunt stirred the 
 devil in the hearts of the Germans. There is a little bay 
 in the roadway a few paces further on formed by a pro- 
 jecting house. Here it was that Colonel von Zaluskovski 
 fell. He was carried into a stable to the right, and there 
 I)]-. Schroeter found that he was shot through the liver 
 and fatally wounded. Hauptmann von Altroch was lead- 
 ing the advance, if the term could be applied to a des- 
 perate street fight in which every man's hand was for 
 himself. Count Karnitz, who commanded the 3rd J>ri- 
 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> <d o 
 
 the weakest point of the environment 1 question if this 
 tract had not been changed into one of the strongest.
 
 TO THE UKEAT SORTIE. 80 
 
 By a succession of dams the waters of tlic Moree had 
 been arrested, and formed a continuous inundation of 
 
 considerable depth and breadth all the way from Sovran 
 to Dugny. There were indeed two breaks in the 
 continuity, one at Pont Iblon, the other at the village of 
 Aulnay. At the former the chaussee alone waded, as it 
 were, through the water ; there was no dry land right or 
 left. To protect this point, Le Bourget, a mile further 
 on, was strongly occupied, and acted as a bridge-head. 
 The Paris-ward end of the causeway was crossed by a 
 regular earthwork of solid and substantial construction. 
 On the German side, right and left, were two batteries, 
 whose fire converged on the chaussee, and above these, 
 again, two more, while further to the right and further 
 to the left were other batteries whose united lire could 
 have swept a gnat off the chaussee. All along to Le 
 Blanc Mesnil there were substantial entrenchments for 
 infantry, with fre<juent emplacements for batteries inter- 
 spersed. The latter village sits astride of the Moree, and 
 was the key of the whole position. It had been made a 
 fortress of in a most elaborate and effectual fashion. An 
 enemy trusting for a passage over the inundation to his 
 ability to force Mesnil, would have been leaning on a 
 broken reed. On his left the inundation again widened 
 out, and the battery sites and infantry entrenchments 
 sprang up again on the gentle slope and continued all the 
 way to Scvran. The water, and what would have been
 
 81 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 behind it waiting for the attack, were designed as the 
 great obstacles to a sortie. Of course there was a chain 
 of foreposts in the forest beyond, but in the event referred 
 to it was their instructions to fall back and effect the 
 recrossing with all convenient speed. To have sent sup- 
 ports, with a view to the retention of an advanced posi- 
 tion — -in a wood though it were — with level ground and 
 great guns in its front, and deep water in its rear, would 
 have been bad tactics, and therefore unlikely to have been 
 put in practice by Germans. The line to be held to was 
 that of the entrenchments behind the water,* and a com- 
 paratively slender body of troops might have held it, and 
 did hold it, against all that the garrison of Paris could do. 
 At Aulnay, going eastward, one first came among the 
 Royal Saxons of the 12th Army Corps. The Saxons 
 occupying Aulnay were the 108th Regiment, the Schiitzen 
 Regiment, a. few days afterwards so cut up before 
 Villiers, clean-made, sprightly fellows, with much the 
 style about them of our Rifle Brigade, only that their 
 uniform is a little smarter. The German soldiers, 
 Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Y\ urtemburgers, alike 
 were fond of exercising a, quaint wit in the matter of 
 inscriptions. Sometimes it was grim, not to say profane, 
 as witness a legend I read at Noisseville, before Metz. 
 The legend was on a wooden cross, and the wooden cross 
 seemed to be at the head of a grave ; but the grave was 
 a dummy, and was but a decoy to the mine that under-
 
 TO THE GREAT SORTIE. 85 
 
 lay it at the exposed corner of the repli. To complete the 
 illusion, the pioneer had painted in large characters the 
 customary, "Hier ruhen in Gott," and then added, in 
 smaller letters, " 90 Pfund preussisclies Pulvcr." Over ;i 
 pump in Aulnay here which was in a recess I noticed the 
 mocking inscription, " Bier Salon ; " a little further on 
 there were two bronze lions rampant on the pillars of a 
 gateway. The head of each was surmounted by the 
 helmet of a French cuirassier of the Guard, and from the 
 embrace of the fore paws then 1 stuck a chassepot. 
 
 Prince George of Saxony seemed to rule his army corps 
 without much state or fussiness. I saw no liveries in 
 Le Vert Galant, only one gendarme and an aide-de-camp 
 going along at ;i walk. From the proximity of the Forest 
 of Bondy to the French lines the 12th Corps came in for 
 most of the first fruits of whatever oozed out from Paris. 
 At Prince George's head-quarters the staff got a reading 
 <>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- ran<re and lame calibre. Under the 
 circumstances it was judged wise to leave them there in 
 peace. He who visits the spot now may see still traces 
 of the French bivouacs from the 30th November to the 
 ."3th December, and he will see another solemn relic of 
 this unfortunate expedition in a clay field on the river 
 side of the road. The clay is dug out and piled up 
 in four or five long parallel ridges, like huge flat-topped 
 potato pits. They are of unequal lengths, but two at
 
 156 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 least are over fifty yards in length. At either end of 
 each are rude crosses, and on one shapelier yet plain 
 wooden cross is painted the legend that here lie 800 
 corpses buried by the various ambulances. 
 
 On the 6 tli of December the Crown Prince returned 
 to Margency, and Prince George quitted Champs and 
 went back to his old quarters in Le Vert Galant. The 
 whole of the officers belonging; to the Crown Prince's 
 staff did not, however, accompany him on his return to 
 Margency. The officers composing the engineer and artil- 
 lery staffs of the Maas army, went to Champs instead, 
 and a hint which I received led me to think more might 
 be learnt as to the turn future operations were likely to 
 take by accompanying those gentlemen than by going 
 back to Margency. Before leaving Le Vert Galant, in 
 the pleasant company of Lieutenant Hoffman, I was 
 witness there of a scene full of pathos. The 107th Kegi- 
 incnt had marched in on the previous night and taken 
 up quarters. In the morning came on, in a large waggon, 
 what the Feld-post had for the regiment. The waggon 
 drew up at the battalion orderly room, and the bugle 
 sounded the rally. It was a curious medley that streamed 
 out as the tail-board of the waggon was let down. The 
 German Feld-post is an elastic institution, and I think if 
 you had chosen to send a soldier-friend out a box mangle, 
 or a live tiger in its cage, there would have been no 
 objections on the score of bulk. There streamed down
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 157 
 
 cigar-boxes, wrapped in canvas, long shapeless rolls that 
 were eloquent of " wurst," flabby packets that one might 
 swear contained underclothing, and little boxes that 
 rolled as they fell, and evidently contained thalcrs. The 
 pile was made against the wall, the sergeant cleared a 
 space and commenced on the pile letter by letter, packet 
 by packet. 
 
 I made a note of the responses to the first six names, 
 and simply transcribe it: — "Schumann?" "Todt" 
 (dead). " Caspar ? " " Verwundet." " Sclmltz ? " 
 "WW." "Stolberg?" "Todt." " Schrader V "In 
 Paris." " Bergmann ? " " In Lazareth." Thus pro- 
 ceeded the dreary roll call. It was that of the 2nd 
 battalion, which has suffered most severely. Before the 
 sergeant had done there was quite a heap of packets 
 which their owners would never claim. The number of 
 " AYegs " was surprising. "Weg" is a wide word. It 
 may mean anything ; prisoner, missing, unburied, 
 deserted (but 1 never heard of a German soldier desert- 
 ing). The sum of it is — not here ; and Lord knows 
 where he is. " In Paris," was not an uncommon re- 
 sponse, but always with a little ironical chuckle. 
 
 Whatever might have been the case with French people 
 in other quarters of France, there was no want of a cer- 
 tain kind of patriotism in those about this quarter. The 
 villa irers on the wayside assailed the Wlirtembemers on 
 their way back to quarters on the 2nd inst., with cries of
 
 158 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 " Deutch nix courage," a piece of " pie " sufficiently 
 intelligible. On our road to Champs we met a strange 
 gang, closely guarded by Saxon soldiers. These were 
 male peasants and female peasants, with year-old children 
 astraddle on their backs. It was clearly a case of going 
 wholesale into captivity. I had never seen anything of 
 the kind before, and I could not understand it. The 
 explanation was curt, but sufficiently easy to understand. 
 The villagers — at least several of them — had been de- 
 tected on the 2nd ult., signalling to their countrymen 
 from the church tower and the top of the windmills. 
 According to the regulations made and provided in the 
 circumstances, the men should have been shot and the 
 villages burnt. It was, it appeared, a merciful dis- 
 pensation to substitute the temporary captivity of the 
 whole population for the more rigorous measures. I 
 must not be taken as expressing any opinion on a matter, 
 the explanation of which I only received casually, and 
 not upon authority. So far as I could make out, the 
 whole gang would be set at liberty by-and-by, after 
 they had got a good fright ; indeed, the women seemed 
 themselves to have discerned as much, for they did not 
 look as if they believed that they were going to the 
 slaughter, or even to captivity in Deutschland. 
 
 At Champs we shared the soap-1 toiler's chateau with 
 the officers of a Wiirtemberger infantry regiment, and 
 of a squadron of cavalry. It is heartily to be wished
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 159 
 
 that some one had been present with the Wurtembergers 
 on the 30th of November and the 2nd of December who 
 would have done justice to the conduct which it is un- 
 questionable that they displayed. On the former day 
 occurred the only cavalry charge on the part of the 
 Germans which was made, so far as I am aware, during 
 the .siege of Paris. It was only a squadron that charged 
 — a portion of the 3rd Wiirtemberg Dragoons, under the 
 command of Graf von Kronsfeld. But everyone spoke 
 of the gallant ardour which the handful of horsemen 
 displayed, and of the service rendered by the charge in 
 clearing the front, to enable the infantry to operate. 
 From the officer named I had a story which illustrates a 
 very genial trait in the character of the Crown Prince of 
 Prussia. In the 3rd Wiirtemberg Dragoons was a certain 
 
 Jacob ■, who had a father. The father had not 
 
 heard from his son -Jacob for an unconscionably long 
 time, so the old man, in his rustic simplicity, sat down 
 and wrote a letter to the Crown Prince, asking for infor- 
 mation about Jacob. The old man knew he had been at 
 Worth, and also in the battle of Sedan, but nothing 
 more. Wherefore he humbly prayed that his Royal 
 Highness would make inquiry, and let him know at his 
 earliest convenience whether Jacob was all right, and if 
 not, what had befallen him. The Crown Prince, "of his 
 own knowledge," as witnesses say, knew nothing about 
 Jacob, but instead of putting the letter in the waste
 
 160 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 basket, lie sent it round to the officer commanding the 
 3rd Wurtembergers, with a request that the old man's 
 mind should be set at ease. It is pleasant to be able to 
 add that Jacob was not killed or wounded, but only a 
 bad correspondent. How many are like Jacob ! 
 
 The engineer and artillery staffs of the Maas Army 
 went desperately hard to work as soon as they got to 
 Champs — so unremittingly, that I felt myself de trop, and 
 was wont to clear out on to the foreposts whenever I saw 
 the maps and draughting paper produced. There were 
 six of us in one room, and there were no other rooms 
 empty. I felt that I ought not to listen while orders 
 were being dictated about batteries, barricades, &c, not, 
 I believe, that my gallant friends at all distrusted my 
 discretion, but because it was obvious if anything were 
 prematurely to leak out through another medium, both 
 they and I might be compromised by mistake. But, 
 although it was not a matter to be written about at the 
 time, one behind the scenes could not refrain from being; 
 cognisant of the fact that the business which kept the 
 artillery and engineer staff of the Maas Army in Champs 
 was not wholly connected with the strengthening of the 
 cordon across the horse-shoe. That it was true was their 
 first work, but when the talk came to be of the ranges of 
 siege guns, of the establishment of a park at Brou, a few 
 kilometres behind Chelles, of the construction of extra 
 strong bridges capable of bearing heavy artillery, of the
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 161 
 
 requisitioning of trains of cart transport for ammunition 
 cases, of the wholesale manufacture of fascines and ga- 
 bions, of the construction under cover of night of massive 
 emplacements for great guns, of the time when Colonel 
 Bartsch and his fortress artillerists should arrive, it was 
 obvious that something else was in the wind. Three 
 days after the fight of Villiers, I knew that the German 
 tactics on the east side had been changed, and that- Mont 
 Avron was to be bombarded. 
 
 Visiting, on the 8th, the head-quarters of General 
 Obernitz in Malnoue, I found there copies of the Paris 
 papers containing General Trochu's reply to Yon Moltke's 
 communication recounting the German victory at Orleans 
 on the 4th, and offering a safe conduct to any officer 
 whom the former might send out to verify the disastrous 
 position. There was the ring of true metal in the note 
 which the Paris Government appended to the Governor's 
 letter. ''This news," they said, "which reaches us 
 through the enemy, supposing it to be accurate, does not 
 deprive us of our right to rely on the great movement of 
 Franee rushing to our relief. It changes nothing either 
 in our resolutions or our duties. A single word sums 
 them up — to fight! Long live franee! Long live the 
 Republic!" And so while one side set its teeth hard 
 and resigned itself with gallant devotion to '" ruin, disease, 
 and death," the other in its masterful methodical way, 
 went leisurely but thoroughly about its preparations for
 
 162 THE AVAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the bombardment. The same afternoon two French 
 deserters were brought into the Wurtemberg divisional 
 head-quarters in Malnoue. They had come from Choisy- 
 le-Roi, had dodged away northward, traversing the 
 space between Fort Nogent and the Marne, and had 
 crossed the river somewhere below Brie. They men- 
 tioned the construction on the slope in front of Nogent 
 of a batter v mounted with guns of twelve centimetre 
 calibre, and stated that the vicinity was full of infantry. 
 While riding next day, I met a Hamburg merchant 
 driving full pelt to the railway at Lagny in a state of 
 panic. He was full of a story that the siege of Paris was 
 to be raised at once, in consequence of the interception 
 of a balloon from Paris containing a despatch from Trochu, 
 to the effect that he meant to gain Versailles at any cost. 
 The King, according to the panic-stricken Hamburger, 
 was off to Rheims that night with half the army, and the 
 Crown Prince was to be left behind to fight his way out, 
 covering His Majesty's retreat. Poor man ! in the re- 
 cesses of that deep waggon of his lay, it may be, a good 
 deal of ill-gotten gear, and it might have been a troubled 
 conscience which made his apprehensions so causelessly 
 active. When I met this panic-stricken fugitive 1 was 
 on my way to a large field Lazarette of wounded, which 
 the Wlirtembergers bad at Pontault, a place some distance 
 to the south of Malnoue. Originally {here were about 
 ?>50 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(utembcr<j>er. 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 <j-oinij through the park of Le Bourget, a 
 beautiful spot in which there is a lake and many thickets,
 
 328 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the musketry fire from the retreating guardsmen came 
 very close and fast. The officer who carried von 
 Schramm's sword was shot, and fell. Von Schramm 
 made a dash at his own sword, got his hand inside the 
 hilt, cut down the other officer, took to the water like a 
 duck, dodged the bullets of the soldiers as he swam 
 across, and finally joined his regiment after all — rather 
 damp it is true, as a man will be who takes to swimming 
 with his clothes on, but extremely jolly. And the best 
 of it was that the ducking cured his sickness. At least 
 one was entitled, I think, to say so after having seen him 
 demolish a massive dinner and two bottles of beer. 
 
 It is a long weary stretch from Gonesse to Aulnay. 
 There is no intervening; village, and not a single 
 house by the wayside. It was a curious proof of 
 that masterly consciousness of ability to concentrate, 
 and absence of fussy demonstration on the part of the 
 Germans, that not a single soldier nor a single gun was 
 visible on this expanse on which the day before there 
 had stood an army. The men were in the villages on 
 the alert, it is true, and ready for action at a moment's 
 notice ; but they were not needlessly brought from 
 under cover. 
 
 T arrive at the chateau in Clichy, and put up my horse 
 (here, going out to the advanced forcposts before the day 
 fades. As 1 reach the garden opening into the forest, a 
 discouraging sight meets the eve. Four soldiers arc
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTTE TO THE NEW YEAR. :239 
 
 carrying on their shoulders a motionless form, lying 
 on a stretcher and covered with a bloody blanket. 
 "Wounded?" The solemn "Dead"' comes from the 
 mouth of the accompanying under-officer. It is a corpse 
 they are carrying up into the village. This was Private 
 Jeskow's last Christmas morning. He was making- his 
 coffee in a house behind outpost No. 8, when a shell 
 burst under the window. His sergeant told him he was 
 in dangerous quarters, but the coffee was near the boil. 
 Before it boiled, another shell had come and burst in the 
 room ; a fragment struck Jeskow in the back, and killed 
 him. 
 
 forward down a slope through a solitary wood of 
 dense underwood, mingled with goodly trees. On the 
 pathway are numerous craters of shells. There is a 
 little rise, and then I emerge on to a belt of heathy 
 clearing in the wood. Everywhere the wood lias been 
 full of barricades, of chevaux do. fri.se of all kinds of 
 appliances for arresting an enemy. On this cleared belt 
 are works of greater pretension— parallels, entrench- 
 ments, strong stockades, trenches, enfiladed approaches, 
 and what not. A few soldiers were visible about it. 
 There are more among the huts to the right. AYliat a 
 glorious sky is thai which lies over the faint gossamer- 
 like smoke of Paris. The sun is going down, not in 
 human blood this Christmas afternoon, but in blood-lik ' 
 hues of his own creation. All the firmament is rippled
 
 210 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 in crimson wavelets, and the light comes ruddy on 
 the earth as if it fell through stained-glass windows. 
 Five minutes brings one across the clearing into more 
 scrub, and then into a village of chateaux nestling in 
 the scrub. Forest, clearance, and village all reminded 
 me very much of the neighbourhood of Chislehurst in 
 Kent. There is the same ruggedness, and still the same 
 appearance of vicinity to the metropolis in the physical 
 aspect of the scene. On the cross-roads, in the centre of 
 this collection of villages, I meet the officers in command 
 of the two battalions waiting to be relieved. The men 
 are massed behind the walls. They arc sauntering up 
 and down on the exposed road. Any news ? None. 
 Perhaps a little. At ten o'clock this morning two French 
 brigades had deployed in parade order before Bondy in 
 two long lines. Then it seemed as if the troops marched 
 past a. general and formed a hollow square, in which 
 they stood for nearly an hour, after which one brigade 
 went back to quarters, while the other marched on to 
 the foreposts. It was conjectured that a religious service 
 was being performed while the troops stood there in hol- 
 low square. If so, Du Nord and De l'Est furnished the 
 responses, for they were thing at that hour. About the 
 same hour three brigades were visible, marching in the 
 front of Aubervilliers, and the Observatory officer reported 
 that he had seen two naval batteries arrive by train at 
 Bondy, and immediately push forward, as if to take up
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 211 
 
 position. This would seem to argue that there were 
 to be heavy batteries so near as Bondy, which must, it 
 seemed, in the event of their not being shut up by our 
 still, grim, silent friends that sulked behind the para- 
 pets in our rear, have the inevitable result of widening 
 the circle of our forepost environment. 
 
 Tramp, tramp, tramp, here comes the 103rd. There 
 is the major in front talking earnestly with the field- 
 officer he is soino; to relieve. Here comes Hammerstein, 
 unrecognisable by reason of wraps, and only to be dis- 
 cerned and greeted by his voice. He has got on a pair 
 of fur boots, that seem a legacy from an Esopiimaux, and 
 here is his bisf brother-in-law, Kirchbach, and von Zan- 
 thicr, and the whole lot of them. Now comes the 
 relieving of the foreposts — a ticklish duty, for the relief 
 must be in full possession before the relieved dare to 
 come out. As each company goes on to its post, it is 
 met by a trusty non-commissioned officer of the depart- 
 ing outpost, who acts as its cicerone. Then the sergeant 
 and the lieutenant go out and change the sentries, and, 
 with a cheery " Good night," off stumps the " old 
 guard." (Had enough to go, beyond doubt. The duty 
 here just now is one night on, one night off; but when, 
 as has occurred for the last three days, the day and 
 night " off" arc spent standing on the alert, there is not 
 much relaxation. Two battalions, instead of one, arc 
 now detailed for the outposts, owing to the necessity for
 
 242 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 dry-nursing in this way the babes in the wood, who 
 have not yet begun to squall ; and this makes the duty 
 all the harder. 
 
 The relieving duty over, Ave reach our home for the 
 night out beyond the villas. Let me describe it. It is 
 a long, low wooden hut, such as you may see squatters 
 and gipsies occupying on the debateable ground be- 
 tween Peckham, Lewisham, and Nunhead Cemetery. Its 
 loftiest part is about six feet high, the roof sloping till, 
 at the back, the height is about four feet. The erection 
 is wholly of wood — chiefly, as it appears, of chateau 
 doors. There is one window in the place ; it is sashed 
 and tastefully curtained. There is a wooden floor. One 
 — the lower-roofed side of the room — is lined with spring 
 mattresses, that have evidently also come out of the cha- 
 teaux. On the walls are pictures — aye, and mirrors — to 
 be ascribed to the same origin ; and between the win- 
 dow and the beds is a range of good massive mahogany 
 tables, that were not made by the pioneers. The chairs 
 are a study. They are here of all styles. The fauteuil, 
 the ottoman, the American rockino-cbair, the hiirh 
 straight-backed Elizabethan, the Louis Quatorze settee, 
 and the humble wicker-bottom. There is a pleasant fire 
 burning in the little stove, and you cannot well imagine 
 how cheerful, with the bright lamp burning and the 
 sparkle of the fire, the little nest looked — if you could 
 only forget that the French were not 1000 yards off, and
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 21-3 
 
 that you were in so ludicrously easy range of their 
 guns. 
 
 But we did forget these facts somehow. The quarters 
 were those of a Hauptmann, he in whose charge was the 
 uttermost forepost. But by common consent the officers 
 from the other positions further back — the repli, where 
 the major had his post, and the captains from the right 
 and left rear, came dropping in to eat their Christmas 
 dinner with the English guest and comrade. The 
 kitchen was a part of the hut partitioned off, and we had 
 the battalion cook there — a resplendent being in a white 
 cap and apron. Before dinner he entered in state and 
 lit the candles on the Christmas tree, a goodly sprout, 
 from every bough of which dangled cakes and comfits. 
 The doth —we had a cloth, never mind about its eolour 
 
 -was laid, the plates and wine were warmed, and we 
 drew around the social board. I am in a position to 
 present the reader with the Christmas menu of the 2nd 
 battalion of the 103rd Regiment on the foreposts : Soup 
 
 — Liebig's extract. Fish — sardines, caviare. Entrees — 
 goose sausage, ham sausage, a variety of undistinguish- 
 able sausage. Pieces de resistance — boiled beef and 
 maccaroni, roast mutton, and potato-salad. Divertisse- 
 ments — Schinkcn, compot of pears, ditto of apples, pre- 
 served sour-krout. Cheese, fresh butter, fruit, nuts, 
 biscuits, tarts, &c. The potables were as follows : — One 
 barrel of Fran Majorin's beer still to the good, the other
 
 244 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 a dead marine ; very good red wine, champagne iced 
 — a little too much in fact. The caterer had stuck the 
 bottles outside on his first arrival, and it seemed as if 
 the wine had frozen in a solid mass. When it came to 
 be poured out, it would not run. A proposition was 
 made that the bottles should be broken, a hatchet 
 fetched, and a portion of champagne-ice be served out 
 to each person ; but an officer of an inquiring turn of 
 mind, who had been pricking the ice on the surface of 
 one bottle with a skewer, found that it was only about 
 half an inch thick, and that below there lay a limpid pint 
 of liquid champagne. We pricked all the bottles with 
 the skewer, and got on beautifully. 
 
 After dinner there were but two toasts. One was 
 "The King of Saxony;" the other " Frau Majorin von 
 Schonberg." Both were drunk with enthusiasm ; the 
 latter — in her beer — with positive effusion. Then we 
 got to song-singing. A Degenfahnrich came to the 
 
 o o o to <o 
 
 front in this line — the young Baron von Zehman. In- 
 strumental accompaniments were forbidden on account of 
 the proximity of the enemy, but the choruses were loud 
 enough to raise the dead, let alone the Frenchmen. Let 
 me give a list of a few of the songs ; they deserve popu- 
 larity in England. 
 
 " Stelie iclt in finstcrer Mittrrnacht." 
 (Standing in the dark night. ) 
 
 " Wer will unter die Soldaten ?" 
 (Who'll be a soldier ? )
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 245 
 
 The beautiful and plaintive 
 
 " Ich hatte einen Cameraden, 
 Einen besseren findest du nicht." 
 
 (I had a comrade, 
 
 A better one ne'er you'd find.) 
 
 I .seem to have a hazy notion that somebody tried 
 ■'"' Bonny Dundee,'' and failed ignominiously. 
 
 About ten o'clock a deserter was brought in — a de- 
 cidedly unfavourable specimen of the French line. He 
 was very dirty, and he had no buttons anywhere — 
 rather a common want I have noticed with French 
 soldiers. He said he was hungry and thirsty. The 
 major gave him something to eat and the run of a bottle 
 of brandy, while we listened to the rascal's lies. When 
 lie had finished his rigmarole, which consisted of all sorts 
 of canards, it was too late discovered that he was as 
 drunk as David's sow. He insisted on singing the 
 Marseillaise, and when that was done, roared " A 
 has Irs Prussians ! " "What was to be done with the 
 wretch '. If he were turned out of doors he would go to 
 sleep in the ditch, and freeze so hard before morning 
 that you could chip pieces off him. Ultimately he was 
 relegated to the stable by the renli, where stood the 
 battalion horses, and was borne away shoulder high, 
 roaring Vive la rcpubliquc ! 
 
 Enter L nder-officer Sclrultz, wooden as ever, a little 
 woodener perhaps on account of the hard frost. Under-
 
 246 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 officer Sclmltz came to read the orders. Ordinarily he 
 would have read them dry and gone away dry, but this 
 was Christmas time, and kindliness prompted the wetting 
 of Under-officer Schultz's throat. " Champagne, red wine, 
 or cognac, Schultz ? " " Cognac, Herr Hauptmann," 
 came woodenly from the lips of Schultz. Schultz bolted 
 a big glass of cognac, and then read the orders. I think 
 the cognac gave him unction to roll out sonorously the 
 sentences of King Wilhelm's address to his troops, which 
 was in the orders for the night. Then he went about 
 with a wooden click of his heels, and disappeared. 
 
 Continually there was a circulation of officers as we 
 sat by the board in the wooden house. The major and 
 myself were the only sedentaries. Duty called, and men 
 obeyed it. About midnight Hauptmann von Zanthier 
 rose and buckled on his sword. He was going round 
 
 O o 
 
 with the patrol ; would I go with him ? Certainly. 
 There were the officer, three men, and myself. Out we 
 went into the brushwood beyond any of our posts. 
 There were the French outposts — not 500 yards off. We 
 could see the fires lit by the watches. Could a neutral 
 go across and have a chat with them ? Well, not 
 exactly ; there were two or three obstacles. Here is a 
 noise in the brushwood ; somebody is coming down the 
 path ; there are three men. A voice says, " Venez, Mes- 
 sieurs !" It is a French patrol, and the officer thinks 
 our patrol is French too. Von Zanthier and his men
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 217 
 
 accept the invitation. I stand fast. Presently he comes 
 hack with three prisoners — a Mobile officer and two men. 
 The officer is ;i thorough gentleman. On our way hack 
 to the Feldwacht he has an immense deal to say, de 
 omnibus rebus ct quibusdam edits. When we get hack 
 we find that that wonderful man in the white cap has 
 made egg-flip for us. The Mobile officer joins us heartily 
 in a caulker, and does not need to be pressed to take a 
 little supper, lie is a jewel of a man. He tells me he 
 once had a moor in Scotland. He laughs at the notion 
 of Paris capitulating. The Mobiles alone are capable of 
 averting that fate. They certainly are not very brilliant 
 specimens, the two he has met with ; but then, as he 
 says, " they were selected promiscuously." More egg- 
 Hip, and then the spring mattresses. 
 
 The bombardment of Mont Avron — that event which 
 had for days past formed the chief topic of discussion 
 and for anticipation — commenced on the morning of the 
 :27th of December. For many nights before, indeed ever 
 since the change of policy which I noted as having taken 
 place immediately after the great sortie at Champigiiy 
 and Villiers, the woods which covered the German ad- 
 vanced positions before Montfermeil and Clichy had been 
 lull of life. First, working parties toiled in the dark, or 
 by moonlight; then came the heavy roll of the siege 
 artillery, and of the tumbrels weighted with the heavy 
 ammunition. About half the guns arrived direct by
 
 248 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the Soissons Railway to the last available station on the 
 foreposts, and were almost immediately placed in posi- 
 tion on the Latteries. The rest came vid Lagny, and 
 were destined for the more southerly batteries. Most of 
 the guns were from Spandau, and had already done 
 more or less service in the sieges of Strasburg, Toul, La 
 Fert, and Soissons. The batteries began on the south 
 on the further side of the Maine in close proximity to 
 Noisy-le-Grand. There was a gap across the valley of 
 Chelles, but they began again in front where the height 
 of Montfermeil juts out into the plain, and continued at 
 intervals with a slight sweep, of which the convexity was 
 toward Avron, further to the north than, and in front of, 
 the village of Raincy. There were in all thirteen batteries, 
 but only 76 instead of 78 guns, one of the batteries at 
 Maison Guyot, before Montfermeil, being two guns short 
 of its complement. Batteries, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4 (24 
 guns in all), were in front of Raincy ; batteries, Nos. 5, 
 G, 7, and 8 (22 guns in all), were at Maison Guyot, 
 above Gagny, arid in front of Montfermeil ; batteries, 9 
 and 10 (12 guns), were above the bridge at Cournay on 
 the south side; and batteries, 11, 12, 13 (18 guns), 
 were on the low bluffs, at Noisy-le-Grand. Ten of the 
 batteries consisted of Krupp's steel 24-pounders; the 
 other three were armed with 12-pounder rilled cannon, 
 adapted from smooth bores. As must lie almost uni- 
 versally known by this lime, the poundage of the Ger-
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 249 
 
 man guns refers only to round shot, not a single speci- 
 men of which I saw round Paris. All the guns threw 
 shells of a weight more than double their nominal 
 capacity, the relative proportion being, I believe, as G 
 to 14. Thus, the piece known as a 24-pounder threw a 
 shell of about 50 pounds weight. I do not trouble the 
 reader with the fractional figures, involved in a calcula- 
 tion allowing for the trivial difference between the Ger- 
 man and the English pound. The French on their part 
 had been working hard on and around Avron ever since 
 the 2nd ; indeed before it, it was understood that in 
 all, standing opposite the German batteries, and in a 
 position to reply to them, there were about GO cannon, 
 exclusive, of course, of those on the forts. These were 
 chiefly, it' not altogether, naval guns, of recent construc- 
 tion and considerable calibre — say G 4 -pounders. A few 
 were heavier. The German batteries had, according to 
 this computation, a numerical advantage, with the ad- 
 vantage of greater precision —a notable feature of German 
 
 O O J. 
 
 artillery in sc, and backed by special shooting accuracy 
 on the part of the siege gunners, who were not drawn 
 from the field artillery, but had been specially imported 
 from the fortresses, and were thoroughly conversant with 
 the handling of those huge arms of precision. The de- 
 
 O O J. 
 
 sign and construction of the batteries for the reception 
 of the guns had been the work of Colonel Bartsch, the 
 famous artillery officer who had already proved his skill
 
 250 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY 
 
 in not a few of the earlier sieges of the war, Colonel 
 Oppermann, Chief of the Engineer Staff of the Maas 
 Army, and Colonel Impe, Chief of the Artillery Staff; 
 and I am satisfied that the most experienced judges, if 
 conversant with the positions, would admit that all that 
 skill and knowledge, both practical and theoretical, could 
 effect, had been bestowed on the duty. 
 
 If the French had ears to hear, it was simply bewilder- 
 ing that they should have remained ignorant of the fact, 
 that something exceptional must have been going on for 
 niohts before behind the shelterino; fringe of trees. We 
 know that they were so, so blind and deaf were they in 
 their reckless confidence ; but at the time this seemed so 
 incredible that some of us had the fanciful notion that 
 they knew all about it, and, like a boxer who disdains to 
 hit his antagonist till he has " peeled," that they refrained 
 from disturbing the operation. Night after night the 
 electric light flashed across where the working parties 
 were working; as its rays went dancing round the line of 
 environment, like a grotesque gigantic will of the wisp, 
 the spademen held their hands, the raised pick fell not, 
 the tumbrils halted (is if the flash had been a ray from the 
 eye of the Gorgon ; but the precautions, although wise, 
 were probably superfluous. What is the use of light, if 
 there are not eyes to use it ? Will thistles yield grapes? 
 No lime-light, or electric flash, or other fancy expedient 
 that ever was invented, is to be named in the same week
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 251 
 
 with the good to be achieved by a .system of lynx-eyed 
 piquets and patrols, and by small reconnaissances, pushed 
 home with a daring that would be reckless but for their 
 skill and tact. The extraordinary fact stands that it 
 was not till the night which preceded the commencement 
 of the bombardment that the French batteries seemed 
 to awake to the position. All night long the Saxon 
 pioneers were hard at work with their keen axes cutting 
 down, ungratefully but necessarily, the friendly trees 
 which had sheltered their previous labours. It is the 
 way of the world — to the devil with a friend when you 
 have no further need for him. Among the Saxon wood- 
 men who did not spare those trees came not a few shells 
 during the night, not only to their discomfort, but to 
 that of tlic battalions who, ever since the guns had been 
 placed in position, were sent on to the foreposts nightly 
 to double the usual guards for the protection of the big 
 toys in the front. 
 
 It was originally intended that the firing should begin 
 at seven o'clock. Half an hour before I was out on the 
 plateau of Raincy, midway between the batteries in the 
 park of Raincy and those at the Maison Guyot, listening 
 in the cold morning air for the first booming report, 
 the emblem and herald, as it would be, of a new phase 
 of the war, and, as we hoped, of a, cogent argument 
 towards its early termination. Seven passed, and all 
 was still silent — for the French had left off their firing.
 
 252 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Eight came, and the keenness of expectancy became abso- 
 lutely painful. Was the whole thing after all a snare 
 and a feint ? Were these "quakers," whose cold sides I 
 had leaned against a few days before, and were the am- 
 munition cases in the magazines so many "dummies" ? 
 No ; the evidences of one's senses contradicted this. 
 Was, then, the day postponed yet once again ? No, 
 only the hour. At exactly half-past eight the first gun 
 crashed its report below me from the Maison Guyot 
 battery, and I could hear its angry whiz as it cut the air 
 in crossing the intervening space. In three minutes 
 more the air was full of a din of deep diapason. There 
 was nothing to see, and I saw it- — such may serve as a 
 summary of my morning's work. At daylight the snow 
 had begun to fall — not heavily and in big flakes, but in 
 feathery particles, which filled and whitened the air, 
 making obstacles invisible a quarter of a mile off. Of 
 course the gunners had got their sights and ranges the 
 day before, and their shot must have been " there or 
 thereabouts," but Avron was as invisible as if it had been 
 on the further side of the North Pole. The work gave 
 one the idea of fighting with knives in a dark room. At 
 first it seemed as if the French artillerymen were taken 
 by surprise. It was not till nine o'clock that Avron sent 
 back the first instalment of its reply. When it did 
 begin, though, it went to work with a will, but rather 
 wildly, the shells Hying about promiscuously in a fashion
 
 FROM THE CHEAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. :M- - S 
 
 that impaired the safety of any given point. By ten, 
 this duel in the dark was in full sway, the air incessantly 
 lacerated and tortured by the whistle of the projectiles, 
 so that one miirht have imaoined himself in a calm at 
 sea, with the rush of a coming squall bearing down upon 
 him. The German fire was like clock-work ; the French 
 fire came more in spurts and gusts, and then was silent 
 for some half a minute. When in full blaze, it was so 
 rapid as to be continuous, and not admit of beimj timed 
 itself, or of one timing the German fire. About eleven 
 the batteries at Bondy — as well as I could judge by the 
 direction of the sound — took up their parable, and were 
 replied to bv the extreme rio-ht flank of the German 
 position, which had been designed amiably looking toward 
 the said Bondy, witli a view to such a demonstration. 
 All dav lono: the fire continued, with no irreat variation 
 to speak of. Perhaps it was heaviest from twelve till two. 
 After that hour the French fire seemed to slacken visibly. 
 There were longer intervals between the spurts, and the 
 -pints were not so animated. The forts of Rosny, Nogent, 
 and Noisy, however, chimed in occasionally, covering 
 the slackness of Avron's efforts. About sundown there 
 was a marked weakness in the enemy's fire, the German 
 fir*' continuing meanwhile in a steady, slogging, stolid 
 fashion. By nine o'clock at night both sides had partially 
 suspended operations. 
 
 The regulation ni'jht-fire from the German batteries
 
 254< THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 was one shot per hour from each gun. All day long the 
 troops on the eastern side stood in quarters, ready for 
 anything that might turn up, and some batteries of 
 guard field artillery were actually out in the cold behind 
 Pont Iblon, but there was no hostile demonstration. At 
 an early hour in the morning Prince George of Saxony 
 went to Chelles, with the design of witnessing the com- 
 mencement of the bombardment, but the snow in the air 
 hid everything, and hearing was the only sense called 
 into requisition. 
 
 The firing continued sluggishly during the night of the 
 27th, and on the morning of the 28th the French ability 
 to reply, measured, at all events, by their reply, was so 
 feeble as to admit of a considerable further relaxation on 
 the part of the Germans. During the day their firing 
 was continued at the rate of about five to eight shots per 
 minute, chiefly from the guns on the right-hand batteries 
 in front of Kaincy. Those batteries had been, in the 
 words of Mr. Swiveller, a " staggerer " to Mont Avron. 
 The French batteries on that commanding position, 
 although it is true that they looked all three ways, were not 
 quite impartial, and they had been constructed so that 
 the most dangerous direction of their gaze was towards 
 the valley of the Marnc. Thus they could cope face to 
 face with our batteries at Noisy-le-Grand, they could 
 sweep the " horseshoe," they could pound into Chelles, 
 till a man was thankful when he was out of it, and they
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 253 
 
 could send their missiles into Montfermeil ; but on the 
 country further north than Raincy fewer and less power- 
 ful guns were trained, and consequently our batteries 
 further north, in front of Raincy, actually enfiladed the 
 batteries and parallels of Mont Avron, throwing in a 
 flanking fire, against which, when the north-eastern 
 battery was silenced, neither retaliation nor defence was 
 possible. Of course a short time would have remedied 
 this defect ; even in frosty weather, a battery can nearly 
 as soon alter its face as can a hypocrite his ; but just as 
 the mask fails the hypocrite in extremis, so it becomes 
 impossible for the battery to change its front in the teeth 
 of a heavy and unremitting fire. This circumstance 
 accounts for the collapse of the Avron batteries earlier 
 than any of us in the German lines had allowed ourselves 
 to anticipate. There could be no question as to the 
 collapse : so early as the afternoon of the 28th the fire 
 from Avron was all but extinguished, and the four 
 battalions of French infantry which were supporting the 
 [runners when the firing began on the previous morning 
 were believed to have fallen back off the table-land with 
 considerable loss. Our casualties from the lire of the 
 27th were twenty-three killed and wounded. 1 was 
 surprised that it should have been so heavy, spite of the 
 unquestionably heavy fire, looking at the strength and 
 height of the protecting parapets, and the short range, 
 which gave little scope to a plunging fire.
 
 256 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 The easy and speedy silencing of Mont Avron sent a 
 shock of surprise — I can find no other expression — 
 through the Maas army. Men themselves who, the 
 moment they took up a position, set about strengthen- 
 ing it to the utmost of time and power, if they were to 
 evacuate it but next morning, the Germans could not 
 realise how a mass of persons calling themselves soldiers 
 should not, during an occupation lasting for a month, 
 deal so with a position like Avron as to make it some- 
 thing else than a mere noisy blustering bully — awkward 
 till somebody tackles him, but doubling up with ludicrous 
 promptitude as soon as a good man stands up to him. 
 The pessimists shook their heads, and hinted at a ruse to 
 draw on an assaulting party ; sanguine men, on the other 
 hand, spoke of seeing on the afternoon of the morrow 
 the Krupps from Raincy in position on Avron, and 
 hammering away at Rosny, Nogcnt, and Noisy. 
 
 Other results had been attained by the two days' work 
 besides the silencing of Mont Avron. The German bat- 
 teries did not all face that eminence. They " set to 
 partners," with a view to other contingencies than the 
 mere silencing of Mont Avron. The 22-gun battery 
 farthest to the right had two fronts. Its left portion 
 looked to Avron ; then, by the formation of a, very 
 obtuse angle, its right flank was thrown back and faced, 
 across the level, on Bondy and Baubigny. This arrange- 
 ment was devised to admit of the cniracrino; of the French
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 257 
 
 Latteries in front of Bondy. There had been a feeble fire 
 from that quarter on both the 27th and 28th, but of a 
 character calculated to give the impression that the 1 lat- 
 teries which had been believed to be there were else- 
 where. The French, although the large force of four 
 divisions, if not more, which they maintained on the 
 Bondy-Baubigny-Courneuve line for three days — com- 
 mencing with the 21st Dec, had partially dispersed and 
 fallen back, .still maintained, it was believed, quite a 
 division, with its right on Bondy, and its left retired 
 on the railway station at Baubigny. The camp occu- 
 pied by this body had been broken up, no doubt in 
 consequence of the fire directed toward the positions 
 named. That same railway station at Baubigny (on 
 the Strasburg line) was of immense utility to the French 
 in many obvious ways. If the German fire of the two 
 days had not convinced the French of the inadvisability 
 of using the line so far for the future, the fact of its being 
 commanded by the Raincy batteries could not fail to be 
 of incalculable importance to the Germans in the event 
 of any renewal of the French attempt to break out or 
 extend their ground in the Le Bourget direction. There 
 were indications that the idea of efforts in that direction 
 had not wholly been abandoned. They had constructed — 
 I don t know, indeed, that they were ever finished — no 
 fewer than six batteries at intervals across the plain 
 between la Courneuve and Drancy, pretty much on the line
 
 258 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 on which I described their infantry as standing on the 
 afternoon of the 23rd. These coidd only have been 
 intended to support an attack on Le Bourget by dealing 
 more formidably than could field artillery either without 
 emplacements or in emplacements hastily thrown up, 
 with the German artillery, that was ready at a moment's 
 notice to take up the Pont Iblon-Aulnay-Sevran line 
 behind the inundations — that position which I have ven- 
 tured to describe as virtually an entrenched camp. It 
 was on this line that the German artillery had stood on the 
 21st, and where, although unable to prevent the partial 
 storm of Le Bourget by the French, it had paralysed their 
 succeeding efforts, and covered effectually the successful 
 effort of the Guards for its recapture. That we should, 
 therefore, have had warm work again in that quarter 
 before the end, T have little doubt, but for the argu- 
 ments of the siege-gun batteries between Aulnay and 
 Dugny ; the sites which had already been pegged out 
 before Avron had been evacuated. 
 
 That event had, in my judgment at the time, this 
 important effect, it made an ausfatt of any other propor- 
 tions than a demonstration, and occurring anywhere 
 between Chennevieres and St. Germains, not, indeed, as 
 an utter impossibility physically, but as being impossible 
 in a military sense, because certain, on the face of things, 
 to be utterly disastrous in its results. The nullification of 
 Avron as hostile, supplied the wanting link in the impreg-
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 259 
 
 liability of the German cordon. But this condition, valuable 
 as it was, was but passively useful in contributing to the 
 end for which the German army stood round Paris. In 
 the recognition of the fact by men craving at once for 
 victory, for peace, and home, the anxiety for a general 
 bombardment as appearing to tend toward the accele- 
 rated realisation of their ardent aspirations, became very 
 intense. 
 
 Before the bombardment began I expressed my doubts 
 whether the Germans would be able to do any great 
 tilings by a systematic bombardment of the forts, and the 
 forts alone. Remember how many days of bombardment 
 it cost us, and what pyramids of projectiles we threw 
 before we rendered the AlalakofF untenable. And we 
 were close to the sea-board ; yet, nevertheless, we had to 
 pause again and again for supplies of ammunition. Every 
 projectile thrown by the Germans represented arduous 
 and long-continued toil to bring it to the cannon's mouth. 
 They had to lay their account with the certainty that the 
 Parisians would strain every nerve to return the fire and 
 to repair the damage it causes. It would then appear, as it 
 seemed to me, that to operate against the forts success- 
 fully would require both a stronger artillery, whether in 
 calibre or in number, than that possessed by the French, 
 and a large and continuous supply of ammunition. But a 
 comparatively small array of artillery — of such weapons 
 of precision as the German artillery consists of, and with the
 
 260 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 dexterous German artillerymen, would suffice, as it seemed, 
 to keep the guns of the forts in play, so that they could 
 divert none of their attention ; while a few guns of longer 
 range were meanwhile negativing the forts altogether, 
 and pounding directly into Paris. The adoption of this 
 expedient, supposing it successful, had the obvious ad- 
 vantage that it would save the carriage of the vast quan- 
 tities of ammunition which a lengthened bombardment of 
 the forts would necessitate. I readily and cheerfully own 
 that in believing that a very short duration of such home- 
 practice would suffice to end the siege, I did injustice to 
 the enduring fortitude of the Parisians ; but there were 
 no precedents, and I think that if what we knew of the 
 Parisians led us to misjudge them, what they must have 
 known of themselves must have surprised them with a 
 greater surprise than even outsiders felt — that heroism 
 should be extant in Paris in 1870-71. And, further, I 
 do not think that anyone who was in Paris in the early 
 days of the armistice, could fail to gather that the shells 
 which had fallen into Paris had an appreciable effect in 
 hastening the end which was otherwise inevitable. 1 
 do not say that the bursting of shells in the street 
 daunted the Parisians, but it produced a vague, uneasy 
 nervousness, the revulsion from which had not yet taken 
 place when I got inside, and aided the logical perception 
 of the fact that further resistance was utter madness as, 
 in a few days, it would have been impossible from famine.
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 261 
 
 But to return to Mont Avion, definitely shut up by 
 the German batteries on the afternoon of the 28th 
 December. It was " dead," in the expressive German 
 phrase. For the first time for several weeks its slopes 
 were cautiously traversed by German patrols, who saw 
 or heard nothing indicative of life, and the conviction 
 gained ground in the morning that men and guns had 
 alike cleared off it. Perhaps it was just as well, both for 
 the men and guns, for it consists with my informa- 
 tion that certain Saxon infantrymen had been looking to 
 the contents of their ammunition pouches and the setting 
 of their bayonets, and that certain artillerymen had been 
 handling long nails, which a not very vivid imagination 
 might conjecture were intended for spiking purposes. 
 
 One or two slender day-patrols had in the course of 
 the afternoon of the 29th groped their way up the sides 
 of .Mont Avron, and brought back word that, so far as 
 thev could discern, there were no Frenchmen in the 
 vicinity. But the night had fallen, and the young moon 
 had risen, before Hauptmann von Xanthicr, of the 2nd 
 battalion of the 10 :3rd Regiment, stepped out on to the 
 platform of the IJaincy-\ illemomble station, where his 
 companv had it> outpost <juarters for the night, and 
 summoned to turn out the first four corporal-schafts. 
 Out tumbled the sturdy fellows, shaking off them the 
 straw, as hens do the loose feathers, and falling into their 
 places with that rapid, silent method that speaks of real
 
 26£ THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 discipline. When the sergeant reported " all right," the 
 little band, eighty in number, marched off the platform, 
 and took its steady way through the scattered village of 
 Villemomble. Outside it we came — for I was an un- 
 attached companion of the gallant Haiiptmaim— on 
 detached chateaux, standing in their grounds on the 
 plain — residences that had been beautiful once, but which 
 were now ghastly in their utter ruin. Straight on went 
 the road, till one began to feel the gradual rise. We 
 were on the slope of Avron. Then it bent to the left, 
 for the hill was too steep for the road to climb direct, 
 and in the bend Ave came among- the trees and brush, 
 out of the middle of which were dug clearings, on which 
 chateaux stood, looking out over the plain to the 
 north-east. About half-way up the ascent we came on 
 the line of French piquet-posts. The French had certainly 
 been very fond of Avron. What between barricades, 
 entrenchments, rifle-pits, and loopholed houses, many a 
 stout Teuton would have gone down before that position 
 could have been forcibly carried over which we passed so 
 peaceably in the silent moonlight. Working always 
 round to the left, we readied the crest of the hill on that 
 face of the plateau which looks out on Montfermeil, and 
 where the summit was marked by the largest batteries. 
 Once inside them, there nut our eyes one of the weirdest 
 scenes that imagination could conjure up. Ground 
 ploughed with shells, embrasures stove in, parallels all
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. ^03 
 
 but obliterated, and yet seemingly not a single cannon 
 left behind. But if the French had removed their cannon, 
 they had left their dead. One slid and stumbled 
 over a little ice puddle. The ice blushed up red in his 
 face — it was frozen human blood. Behind the batteries 
 and inside the breastworks the dead lay thick. Dead! 
 No man who long followed thjs war but must have 
 become so familiar with the aspect of slain men, that the 
 original thrill and turn of the blood at the sight had 
 faded into a memory of the past, at which he all but 
 smiled when it dimly recurred to him ; but the terrible 
 ghastliness of those dead transcended anything I had 
 ever seen, or even dreamt of, in the shuddering night- 
 mare after my first battle-field. Remember how they had 
 been slain. Xot with the nimble bullet of the needle-gun, 
 that drills a minute hole through a man and leaves him 
 undisfigured, unless it has chanced to strike his face ; not 
 with the trenchant sabre-cut of the dragoon, not with the 
 sharp stab of the bayonet, but slaughtered with missiles 
 of terrible weight, shattered into fragments by explosions 
 <»t" many pounds of powder, mangled and torn by massive 
 fragments of iron. There lay behind one of the em- 
 brasures a form utterly headless. I suppose the shell 
 had struck the hapless being full in the face, and carried 
 head and throat before it in its fierce rush. The 
 guillotine could not have performed the operation more 
 cleanly.
 
 26-1 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 But what need to dwell in detail on such a topic ? 
 Let it suffice that there lay the unburied and abandoned 
 dead anions; the snow stained with their blood, and with 
 the depressions in those ghastly faces turned up to the 
 calm moonlight, drifted up by the snowflakes which had 
 fallen since they had been shot down. When would 
 they be buried ? Wlie^n would those wan faces cease to 
 look up into the eyes of the moon, in silent but eloquent 
 protestation against the institution called war 1 When 
 would the stray human fragments over which one 
 stumbled as he went be gathered together, and their 
 ghastliness be hidden beneath friendly earth ? Not yet. 
 Men will not dig graves in war time as if they were 
 blasting tunnels, and the earth was as hard as the bowels 
 of Mont Cenis. The corpses on Mont Avron had to lie 
 there till the thaw came. That gruesome group in the 
 camp here who had been sitting round the fire when the 
 shells came and burst in it, and blew one and all of them 
 into the other world, had to remain as it was — a horrible 
 mockery of conviviality, for a time at least. To look at 
 the group from a little distance, one would conclude that 
 its members, lying or seated in a circle, were hobnobbing 
 genially round a common pot, or eating out of one dish. 
 Come nearer, and look inside that ring of squatting men, 
 or what once were men. I care not how inured you are 
 to sights of horror, you will turn away sick and scared 
 from that circle of carnaae. Great God ! that man
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 2C5 
 
 should be able so to mangle his fellow-man made in 
 thine image ! 
 
 Behind the batteries, besides the relics I have alluded 
 to, were found many evidences of the precipitation with 
 which the French had evacuated the position. There 
 were lots of wine — we drank some of it standing there 
 among the dead — and piles of loaves — which the Saxon 
 soldiers skewered on their bayonets. There were blankets, 
 too, and military saddles, one of which, an officer's, 
 Hauptmann von Xanthier philosophically annexed. Both 
 in and about the cam}) lying farther back there was a con- 
 siderable quantity of rice, and also many blankets, shoes, 
 and soldiers' knapsacks. Lumps of horse-flesh lay about 
 or hung on cross-sticks. Investigations amongst the 
 tents and mud huts brought to light bottles of rum and 
 bags of peas. The ground was strewn with chassepots, 
 and behind the batteries, as well as in the battery 
 magazines, were gunpowder bags containing each a 
 charge, and many projectiles. The camp, and indeed 
 the whole of the plateau, bore numerous traces of 
 lengthened occupation. The French are the beastliest 
 campers in the world, and they seemed to have been ex- 
 ceptionally beastly in Mont Avion. Behind the camp 
 lav the little straggling village of Avron, still smoking 
 from tiie file that had raged in it during the morning; 
 whether kindled by a German shell or by the last 
 Frenchman 1 do not know. There was not a sign of life
 
 266 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY 
 
 on all the plateau, except a lurching cur who gnawed 
 something under a waggon • what it was I did not care 
 
 o OS ' 
 
 to investigate too closely. The greater part of the plateau 
 had been occupied with vineyards, which were now, of 
 course, trodden down and ruined. Stumbling through 
 the stumps of the vines, I crossed the plateau, and looked 
 down over its farther verge. Below me lay the village 
 of Eosny, easily to be distinguished by its lights. Above 
 it was the horizon line, with Forts Eosny and Noisy 
 standing up against the sky ; and there were visible in 
 their neighbourhood lights which seemed to indicate the 
 new outpost line taken up by the French. Then across 
 again to the south-eastern edge, and there lay the Marne, 
 silvered to whiteness in the moonlight ; and Chelles, with 
 its bright cottages, and Montfermeil, with its swarthy 
 hanging woods, and the horse-shoe farther to the south. 
 How often during the month so nearly closed had 1 
 looked up at Avron from these spots — at Avron hostile 
 and dangerous ; and now, here T looked down upon them 
 from that very Avron, with its fangs drawn, and not a 
 Frenchman near its summit. 
 
 It surprised me much, looking at the abundant evi- 
 dences of precipitation visible, that the French should 
 have removed all their cannon except two (one dis- 
 mounted, the other abandoned in transitu) ; and still 
 more so, looking at the evidences of the German fire, 
 that they should have been able to do so. It is about as
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE XEW YEAR. 207 
 
 easy to transport a big ship about the country as it is to 
 move a big gun after it has been dismounted ; none of 
 the French guns could have been dismounted, with the 
 single exception just noted, else' we should have found 
 both gun and carriage where the damage was done. It 
 seemed to me that the infantry men must have ske- 
 daddled in a panic, and that the artillerymen, fearing an 
 assault from infantry which they had no means of resist- 
 ing, had removed their guns before an absolute necessity 
 existed for evacuation from the strength of the German 
 fire. They were wise, if this was their reckoning. 
 
 During the 29th, the German batteries continued in 
 lull work against Forts Rosny, Xoisy, and Xogent, 
 which bv no means allowed the transaction to be a 
 one-sided one. Each had its satellites in the shape of 
 detached auxiliary batteries, and they chiefly have de- 
 voted themselves to the reply. It was believed that the 
 forts had in a great measure denuded themselves of 
 artillery for the furnishing of these. Conspicuous already 
 among those auxiliary batteries was the Redoubt dc la 
 Boissiere, on the slope of the bluff* behind the village of 
 Merdan. The German batteries also found leisure for an 
 occasional salutation in the direction of Bondy and Grand 
 1 hancv. 
 
 A deserter was brought into G on esse on the 2.0th, 
 who reported that Ducrot had been living in Drancy ever 
 since the 21st. Ducrot, he further reported, had been
 
 268 THE WAR BETWEEN FKANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 assiduously engaged in strengthening his offensive posi- 
 tion, and constructing works, with a view to dominate 
 Le Bourget, Le Blanc Mesnil, Aulnay, and Pont Iblon. 
 According to the deserter, there were now in and around 
 Drancy four batteries of naval guns of heavy calibre, 
 three batteries of long 12-pounders, and two batteries of 
 mitrailleuses. Three days before such tidings as these 
 would have made one devoutly wish that the inundations 
 were longer, broader, and deeper, and that there were 
 no bridges. But now they could be listened to with 
 equanimity, for operations were rapidly approaching 
 completion, that would enable the besieging force to 
 reply no longer with field artillery, but with batteries of 
 siege guns of a power and range calculated to render it 
 advisable for Ducrot, if he still held to his doughty 
 resolve not to re-enter Paris alive, to look for safer 
 quarters than Drancy would then afford. 
 
 During the 30th, a languid fire was maintained against 
 Fort Rosny, which appeared to be replying with only 
 two guns. On the same day, Lieutenant Hoffmann, of 
 the Engineer Staff of the Maas Army, visited Mont 
 Avron, for the purpose of taking careful drawings of the 
 plateau, and tracings of the positions which had been 
 occupied by the French batteries, lie was joined by 
 Colonel Bartsch, and the conclusion was arrived at, that 
 while the forts and redoubts remained capable of sweep- 
 ing the exposed summit of Avron, it would be unwise
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 269 
 
 to attempt the utilisation of the position for bombarding 
 purposes. It was determined, then, to continue the steady 
 bombardment of the eastern forts and of the adjacent 
 villages, which continued to be occupied by French 
 troops, both from the existing batteries and those in 
 other positions whose construction was already far ad- 
 vanced. Xo doubt Avron would have afforded a 
 splendid position for the German artillery, had it been 
 easily tenable, and in a strait, T doubt not, it would have 
 been utilised. Without this advantage, however, the 
 result of the three days' firmi! - had been something to be 
 complacent about. Avron was " dead," and the Saxons 
 had a night-watch on its summit. Yillemomble had 
 oner again in its wrecked houses men wearing spiked 
 helmets. Xeu illy sur Maine, which the French had 
 eontimioiislv held from the beginning of the siege, they 
 held now no longer, and the German patrols perambu- 
 lated it during the night. It was too near Xogent, 
 while as yet Xogent's teeth were unblunted, to be 
 occupied regularly as a post ; but there was a good time 
 coining. Launay was also German once more, and 
 Gagnv, which conventionally had never been utterly lost, 
 was again Saxon beyond all ipiestion. The outpost 
 line had made a real stride in the right direction. 
 
 On the :>lst I went to Brou, a village a few kilometres 
 in the rear of ('belles, to spend the New Year's Day with 
 niv friends of the Artillery and Ensrineer Staff of the Maas
 
 270 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE ANU GERMANY. 
 
 Army, who had been quartered there for some time. 
 The B day eruny spark for the eastern side had been 
 formed there, as it was convenient for railway purposes, 
 the ammunition and gun ears being run on through 
 Lagny up to Brou, where the line skirted the park. 
 Here all was activity. A whole battalion of the 105th 
 regiment was engaged in filling the powder into shells, 
 which had come empty and harmless from Germany. 
 Huge siege guns on massive carriages were ranged in 
 long rows, handled delicately by gunners who seemed to 
 have a real tenderness for the grim monsters. There were 
 sheds adjacent for the horses of the miserable peasants who, 
 with their teams, had been requisitioned to cart first fas- 
 cines and gabions, and then munitions from the park into 
 the batteries. I don't know how it fared with the poor 
 habitants themselves in the matter of shelter; I saw 
 none specially provided. They had got past the grum- 
 bling stage into a kind of equanimity of misery ; what 
 worse could befal them % Thev belonged to villages and 
 country places in the rear, and had been provided by the 
 J\I aires on requisition. Would M. Maire ever pay them 
 for the ungracious work on which they were perforce 
 engaged ? Who would compensate the owners of the 
 horses whose carcases lay about — fifteen in one group — 
 dead of sheer cold before the sheds had been run up ? 
 When you asked them about their plight, all you could 
 get from them was, " All, Monsieur, c est la guerre,"
 
 FROM THE GREAT SORTIE TO THE NEW YEAR. 27] 
 
 and that — so crushed were they — without the shrug of the 
 shoulders, which I had believed a Frenchman would give 
 when the doctor announced to him that he must surely 
 die. \t appeared to me that the miserables lived chiefly 
 on eau-de-vie ; I never saw one eating, and they were 
 as gaunt as scaffold-poles. Clad in the everlasting 
 blouse, they must have suffered fearfully from cold, and 
 as you passed a train of them, their coughing drowned 
 the rumbling of their wheels. I saw one man trudging 
 along without stockings, his bare feet stuck in a pair of 
 sabots. I don't exactly remember how many degrees 
 below freezing point the temperature was that day, but 
 I remember that on coming in-doors, I had to thaw 
 my moustache, at the fire before I could open my mouth 
 to get a cigar between my lips.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 
 
 The New Year was celebrated very quietly by the 
 Maas Army. I saw it in with a goodly company of 
 frank comrades in a chateau at Vaires, where the pon- 
 tooneer company of the Guard Engineers had their head- 
 quarters, and with whom, as belonging to the same branch 
 of the service, the head-quarter engineer staff, whose 
 guest I was, messed during their sojourn in the adjacent 
 village of Brou. Returning to Brou in the small hours 
 of the morning, we heard still the sounds of conviviality 
 from sundry apartments in the great chateau there ; but 
 one by one the revellers sank into slumber. The 
 latest roisterer was a Frenchman ; who he was or where 
 lie had got drunk, 1 Lave not the remotest conception ; 
 but about four o'clock 1 heard some one tumbling about 
 in the passage, sacre-ing most vigorously through a bad 
 lit of hiccough. Ultimately he rolled into the chamber, 
 on the floor of which J lay, and even in his drink he 
 was civil. With profuse pardons he asked for a light, 
 but forgot what he had asked for the next moment, and
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. I'73 
 
 staggered out again into the passage. A quarter of an 
 hour afterwards I heard him making a speech to the 
 sentry, and what ultimately befell him I know not. 
 
 On New Year's morning Colonel Bartsch, who was also 
 quartered in Brou, received a very nattering souvenir in 
 the shape of the Iron Cross of the first class, in token of 
 the success which had attended the efforts of the Artillery 
 under his command. The Colonel had a o-ood rijdit to 
 be gratified at a distinction which is comparatively rare. 
 The bearer of the Iron Cross of the first class wears it 
 <»n his left breast, while he also wears the cross of the 
 second class attached to his buttonhole. On the same 
 occasion Captain Eeinsdorff, the adjutant of the Artillery 
 Staff of the Maas Army, received the Iron Cross for his 
 share of the work that resulted in the French abandon- 
 ment of Mont Avron, and soon after the same honour 
 was conferred on Lieutenant Hoffmann of the Engineer 
 Staff. Colonel Bartsch had brought so many fortresses 
 to reason with those m-im toys of his that one mijdit 
 have expected to see in him a formidable personage, 
 smelling of gunpowder, with a frown like the sombre 
 mouth of a 2-i-pounder, and a voice like its report. You 
 could not well imagine a stronger contrast. He was a 
 gay, dapper little man, as merry as a grig, with a fine 
 open forehead, good-humoured smile, and a close-cropped 
 black beard. You would not imagine that it could enter 
 into his heart to hurt a fly, and there was something 
 
 VOL. II. X
 
 274 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 quite boyish in the unaffected delight with which he 
 sported his first-class Iron Cross for the first time on 
 this New Year's morning. Young ladies would call him 
 a " dear little man." Ask Strassburg, Toul, La Fere, 
 Verdun, and a few other fortresses what they thought of 
 him as seen from a distance ; they might indeed reckon 
 him a " dear " man, but in another sense. 
 
 On the afternoon of New Year's Day we had not, indeed, 
 a "midnight meeting," but I was present at a very interest- 
 ing religious service by candle-light. The scene was the 
 fine old church of Chelles, one of the most venerable 
 religious edifices around Paris, with massive stone pillars, 
 old Norman arches, much stained glass, carved oaken work, 
 and Popish decoration generally. The service was for 
 the whole of the 24th division (Saxons). As we drove 
 from Brou in the moonlight, we passed large groups has- 
 tening; on to Chelles. It must be remembered that the 
 service was an entirely voluntary one. There was no 
 command laid upon the men that they should turn out of 
 warm billets and walk four or five miles in one of the 
 coldest nights of the year. Nevertheless, the old church, 
 I venture to say, never had within its hoary walls so 
 numerous a congregation. The officers whom I accom- 
 panied were unable to struggle their way up to the inclo- 
 sure in front of the altar, and Ave were glad to find seats 
 among the men by the side of one of the pillars. There 
 was something indescribably affecting in the music. An
 
 FHOM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 275 
 
 harmonium close to the altar led ; the strain was taken 
 up by a military band in the balcony, and the two thou- 
 sand men present joined in with one accord. There was 
 no discord, but the church was too small for the volume 
 of sound ; yet one would not have wished it more slender. 
 Then the divisional chaplain, standing on the steps of the 
 altar, not occupying the pulpit, delivered what was some- 
 thing between a sermon, an address, and a prayer. He 
 had the natural gift of eloquence ; his words came from 
 the heart, and they went to the heart. As he spoke of 
 the night this time last year, in the happy homes of 
 Germany, and contrasted it with the melancholy that now 
 assuredly reigned in these households, in so many of 
 which there was a vacancy, right many were the bowed 
 heads and the moist eyes. Then the speaker struck a 
 new key. The war had, indeed, made a sombre Xew 
 Year in the Fatherland; it came upon many a household 
 desolated by its ravages. "Aye, out there on those slopes 
 across the river," he broke out with raised arm and Hushed 
 face, " there lie beneath the foreign sod many and many of 
 our dear comrades and brethren never to rise again till 
 the last trumpet sounds. But though each grave mound 
 there is the sad emblem of so much misery, this New 
 Year's l)av, of broken home circles, of sorrowing parents, 
 of weeping wives, of fatherless children, yet — " and here 
 tin 1 arm swept round the head as if there was a sword in 
 the hand's grasp— "yet we know our brothers died in a
 
 276 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 good cause. They fell fiir Konig und Vaterland, and 
 surely they are mit Gott. And the war, sad and solemn 
 episode in our history as it is in one sense, has had yet 
 another glorious result. It has made our Fatherland not 
 a name, but a reality. Already one race, one people, we 
 are now one nation — Saxon, Prussian, Mecklenburger, 
 Badener, Bavarian, we are all now children of the great 
 German Empire." 
 
 The speaker paused, and through the dead silence of 
 the moment there came the faint boom of the cannon on 
 the batteries in the front. The sound gave him a new cue. 
 " Listen to the sound of the German cannon — a sound 
 now, as ever, heralding the victory to our arms. To that 
 sound you have listened on many a battle-field — you may 
 hear it on yet other battle-fields before you re-cross the 
 Khine. But, oh ! remember ever in its midst that speaks the 
 tidings for you, ' Death is near ; prepare to meet your 
 God.' The good soldier is always ready when the battle- 
 bugle sounds — he falls into the ranks with needle-gun 
 and ammunition ready for action; but there is something 
 else for which he must ever be ready too — death, and 
 that which follows death. His peace with God must 
 ever be part, and the chief part for himself, of his battle 
 equipment." 
 
 This will give an idea of the strain in which was 
 couched what was certainly a most powerful and telling 
 address. When it had finished, the instrumental music
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 277 
 
 did not at once commence, but the vocalists of the band, 
 under the conductorship of an under-officer, struck up 
 Luther's "New Year's Hymn," the difficult part singing 
 of which they accomplished with real beauty and feeling. 
 Then another burst of instrumental and vocal music, that 
 seemed to make the roof vibrate — the blessing — and the 
 quiet dispersal of the great throng. As I walked to our 
 carriage, we passed twos and threes of the soldiery talk- 
 ing earnestly of the words they had heard. Yet let me 
 be candid. Their tone was rather that of connoisseurs 
 than of Christians. "It was very beautiful/' "His 
 words were like fire," " I could have listened to him 
 ever so much longer," and so forth — that was the tone of 
 the comments. It was, as regarded the religious sentiment 
 of the address, much the same tone in which men speak 
 <>i an actor's performance, of a prima donna's singing, 
 of a horse's galloping — not as if the matter were one of 
 the deepest personal import to each one of them. 
 
 The New Year ushered in a period of quietude 
 after the turbulence and excitement that had pre- 
 vailed in the hitter days of the old year. When I 
 speak of quietude L must be understood as using the 
 term relatively. The distant sound of firing was ever in 
 our ears. The batteries that had driven the French otf 
 Mont Avron were still firing steadily against the eastern 
 forts and redoubts, and L did not learn that there was 
 any perceptible decrease in the sluggish steadiness of the
 
 278 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 reply. From no position on this face of the environ- 
 ment were French infantry visible in any direction. 
 Snow to the depth of two inches lay on the plains of 
 Courneuve and Baubigny. The Seine was frozen over 
 in places, but the ice was not reliable enough to furnish 
 a natural bridge for the passage of troops, much Jess of 
 artillery. 
 
 Highly creditable to the German besiegers were the 
 friendly, and indeed cordial terms which they had con- 
 trived to establish with the villagers around Paris. These, 
 indeed, were mostly of the humbler classes, either labour- 
 ing folk or the servants left in the villas, and nothing 
 could have exceeded the kindliness with which they were 
 treated by those whom circumstances had so strangely 
 placed among them, while they, for their part, appeared 
 to feel and appreciate this kindliness. They were all 
 gradually picking up some little German, while the Ger- 
 man soldiers were by this time becoming quite proficient 
 in a guttural broken French. In the early days, by 
 Sedan and by Metz, it seemed as if the French sum- 
 marised the whole German language in an emphatic 
 '•nix," but now they had begun to go deeper into the 
 mysteries of the language. I had a Frenchman in Mar- 
 gency, who was a fund of recurrent amusement to me. 
 He was the gardener of the chateau in which I had 
 rooms, and lie and his wife had remained behind in 
 charge of the place. I casually discovered how handy
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 279 
 
 and oblmino: were tlie pair, and liow mneli better I should 
 be waited on by the same than by the willing but clumsy 
 German Diener. I was rather a transitory resident in 
 Maroencv, but each time I came back, honest AuQ-uste 
 had a surprise for me in the acquisitions of German 
 which he had made during my absence. Apart from 
 what may be called " household words," the French pea- 
 sant's acquisition of German chiefly developed itself in 
 the direction of ability to put questions as to the state of 
 the war and the probable period of its termination. On 
 the other hand, the first French that a German learnt 
 was invariably the numerals and the appellations and 
 values of the current coins. If every German soldier 
 about Paris was not a master of Mr. Goschcn's "Theory 
 of Foreign Exchanges/' he was, at all events, thoroughly 
 at home in the relative values of French and German 
 money, and when you now priced a tiling with a German 
 merchant or marketender, it was as likely as not that 
 he named the cost in francs and sous instead of thalers 
 and groschen. 
 
 The inclemency of the weather and the hardness of 
 the recent service were making the inevitable impression 
 on the health of the German troops on the eastern side 
 of the circle. There were not, indeed, so many serious 
 cases of illness in proportion as there had been around 
 .Met/ in September and October. One seldom heard of 
 dysentery; and typhus, except in lazarettes where there
 
 280 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 were many wounded, had all but died out. The chief 
 diseases were of the bronchial and rheumatic type. 
 Neither were very serious in the majority of cases, but 
 both incapacitated the sufferers from present duty, and 
 pro tanto weakened the field force. Then aggravated 
 forms of inflammation of the lungs and rheumatic fever 
 had become not at all uncommon, and the man who had 
 gone down with either could not be expected to be fit 
 for a resumption of duty while the winter campaign 
 lasted. Illness would have been more prevalent than it 
 was were it not for the now copious supply of warm 
 clothing and blankets. Every soldier now had his thick 
 double blanket, and at Christmas-time the Liebesyaben 
 and home presents poured into the army in a steady and 
 copious stream. A very wholesome regulation had been 
 adopted in shortening the term of sentry duty from two 
 hours to one. This did not necessitate a stronger guard, 
 but only involved shorter periods of relief. Instead of 
 the relative periods being " two hours on and four off," a 
 phrase familiar to every soldier, they were now one hoar 
 on and two off, in the twenty-four hours, the duty being 
 exactly the same, viz., eight hours on sentry and sixteen 
 in the guard-room, or whatever might correspond to that 
 shelter. The German soldiers had learned to go to sleep 
 at a moment's notice, so that the shortening of the un- 
 broken period for rest did not affect them injuriously, 
 while the shortening of the spell of duty was much to
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 2 SI 
 
 their advantage. In very inclement weather I have 
 known the one hour system adopted in home garrisons 
 in Britain. In Canada, during the winter, it is invari- 
 able. 
 
 On the 2nd of January 7 new batteries had been 
 completed on the east of Paris, flanking both on the 
 north and south those already in existence, and fire from 
 their guns began to be delivered on the following day. 
 There were 13 batteries originally, the 7 new ones of 
 course made the number up to 20, the new ones num- 
 bering from 14 to 20. Xos. 1-4 and 15 were close to the 
 old batteries at Raincy, but faced directly toward Bondy 
 and Drancy ; Xos. 1G and 17 were in front of Chen- 
 nevieres, to the south of the horseshoe and close to the 
 bank of tlie Manic ; Xo. IS was behind Le Blanc Mesnil, 
 Xo. 1 i» at Pont Lblon, and Xo. 20 on the slope between 
 (largi-s and Dugny. When there had been 1:5 batteries, 
 there had been 70 guns ; now there were 20 batteries and 
 yet no more than s 2 guns. How arm 7 more batteries 
 with only more guns '. The seeming puzzle admits of an 
 easy explanation. The abandonment of Avion permitted 
 the utilisation elsewhere of some of the guns that had 
 been doing service in the old batteries at Raincy, (Jagny, 
 and ( 'oiirnav. 
 
 Visiting St. Germain on the 4th of January, late 
 business compelled me to stay there over-night. 
 
 Before ten (/'clock on the morning of the 5th, the air,
 
 282 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 thick with fog, was burdened also with a sound to which 
 one could not well give a name. It "Vas not loud- — at 
 times it died away altogether, then it came again with a 
 sustained song, as if of wind moaning through a keyhole. 
 What could it he hut the sound of distant nrino; far 
 away round to the south ? Was this then the day of days 
 — the day so long waited for, so anxiously hoped for? 
 It might be or not the commencement of the 
 bombardment on the southern side, hopes and specula- 
 tions as to which had been on every tongue for a 
 fortnight before. There were some in St. Germain 
 who laughed at the idea, while the din was all in the 
 distance. " Do you think," asked they, with scorn in 
 their accents, " that it can be the bombardment, when 
 no sound comes up out of the immediate foreground in 
 the south- — when the tongues of Valerien are still ? " 
 I could not profess to arbitrate in the question, for 
 Valerien and St. Germain were not within the ring 
 fence of my hunting-ground with the Maas Army, and 
 I had no acquaintance with the ground to justify 
 me in even making up my own mind. So I took horse 
 while as yet the question was undecided, and made 
 the best of my way home toward Margency by the 
 much-vexed Argenteuil and the dangerous gap behind 
 JMont d'Orgimont. Before 1 had reached Sartrouville the 
 noise had swelled to a much louder volume. As I rode 
 through the woods of Bczons the clash of artillery
 
 FIIOM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. "2 ^ 3 
 
 sounded so near and so full that for the moment it 
 struck me that the Frenchmen must he making a real 
 effort at this point of the peninsula, and that they were 
 trying to o-et over the Seine under cover of a heavy 
 cannonade from Courhevoie and Nanterre. I looked 
 forward to the open high bit of road between the forest 
 and Argenteuil, with no small interest. It was never a 
 safe road to travel, individuals of a bloodthirsty tempera- 
 ment making it a point to pot continually at the peace- 
 ful wayfarer from the farther side of the river. But 
 when I got out upon it I found two French boys and an 
 old woman placidly discussing the attributes of a very 
 aged white horse, which stood meditatively listening to 
 lip' criticisms passed upon it. Then there was no storm of 
 shells tearing across the exposed bit of road, as would 
 have been the case had the batteries at Nanterre and 
 Coloinbes been demonstrating. Argenteuil was even 
 undergoing a temporary respite from its peppering. 
 I hit still, full, close, and continuous, came the steady 
 roar of big guns from the south. I was on my own 
 ground now -my foot on my native heath — and at 
 liberty to think for myself. There was little thinking 
 required. In the nature of things what 1 listened to, 
 what made the aspen leaves tremble as the air throbbed 
 to the crashes, could be nothing else but The Bombard- 
 ment. It was with a real sense of relief, with that frame 
 of mind which 1 may designate a relative cheerfulness,
 
 281 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 that I turned away from facing the sound, and struck 
 towards Margency. Everywhere I passed there was a 
 brightness in the faces that looked up at me on the road 
 and in the villages. The sentries, stern duty men, prone 
 to demand inspection of " legitimations," men wont to 
 halt to ponder ere they returned your greeting, gave me 
 " 'Morgen " with a ready heartiness that betokened how 
 welcome was the sound that filled the air. " Bombard- 
 ment " was the first word in everyone's mouth every- 
 where. At Margency Herr Secretair in the Feldpost 
 bureau was so full of the subject, complicated as its dis- 
 cussion was by the dinner he was eating, that he actually 
 forgot to charge me two groschen marked on one of my 
 letters. Head-quarters beamed radiantly, and I almost 
 expected to see the paymaster, who was given to such 
 ebullitions, blossom forth into a night illumination. 
 
 "We had a little English colony not far from Margency, 
 in the village of Napoleon-St. Leu. They were humble 
 folks, it is true, but what little I have to say of one of 
 the families may perchance interest the reader. They 
 were the servants left behind in Lady Ashburton's 
 chateau, and I had taken some interest from time to time 
 in ascertaining that they were comfortable, and not sub- 
 jected to annoyance. This they certainly were not. Two 
 artillery officers lived in the chateau, and its owner, if she 
 has already returned, has doubtless found it totally un- 
 injured, even to the cover of a book. On my return to
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 2S5 
 
 Margency on the 5th, there came to me the old house- 
 steward with a sad story, told in a broken voice. He 
 had a daughter who was shut up in Paris, and the girl 
 had contrived to send her parents a letter by balloon- 
 post. It had arrived on New Year's morning, and the 
 anxious mother sat down to read it with avidity. The 
 letter killed her on the spot. "With it in her hand — con- 
 taining as it did a recital of privation and misery which 
 I refrain from giving in detail — the poor woman fell 
 dead to the ground. Her husband had buried her the 
 day before I saw him, and now he came to me to ask 
 whether I could do anything to get the girl out of her 
 trouble, and also whether I could send certain letters to 
 England. The latter request it gave me great pleasure 
 to comply with ; 1 was forced to tell the old man that 
 his first desire was not to be thought of. He, for one, we. 
 may be sure, was praying God to shorten every hour till 
 the capitulation. It is pleasant to add that the German 
 officers showed him the most solicitous consideration in 
 his trouble, and smoothed every difficulty for him with 
 genuine kindliness. 
 
 The morning of the 6th presented a remarkable con- 
 trast in every respect to that of the preceding day. The 
 latter had been cold to chilling of the marrow of the 
 bones, and so thick that nothing was to be seen half a 
 mile away. The former was clear, bright, and warm as a 
 morning in the end of March. Yesterday the air was
 
 236 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 charged with sound ; to-day there reigned the stillness of 
 an Arcadia that knows not war. Men looked at each 
 other in blank amazement. Had Paris, forts, big guns, 
 bombardment, and the no-bombardment on the eastern 
 side alike been spirited away ? Had the French reply 
 shut up our pretty Spandau toys in one day ? Or, on the 
 contrary, had those pieces of finished mechanism stove 
 in the forts and batteries bodily 1 and if we were going 
 up to Montmorency, should Ave see the white flag on the 
 top of Montmartre in token that all was over ? Men were 
 reticent in expressing speculation, but at the corners of 
 the straggling lanes of Margency I heard the words, 
 " Capitulation," " Parlementaire," muttered as the Fekl- 
 gensdarmes and the orderly-men gossiped in little groups. 
 Making the best of my way to head -quarters, I found 
 head-quarters in ignorance and suspense. Nobody could 
 interpret this strange, ghostly silence. There had come 
 from Versailles on the previous night a telegram stating 
 that the King was we'll pleased with the results which 
 the day's bombardment had achieved. So it was plain 
 the silence was not on our part due to coercion. "Nego- 
 tiations, then ? " I suggested to my friendly interlocutor. 
 "No, that cannot well be," was the reply, "since in that 
 case we should have received instant instructions to 
 silence our Maas Army batteries, and this has not been 
 the case." " Are they firing, then ? " I asked, for it might 
 be that I had been struck with sudden deafness. " No,
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. F.S7 
 
 it would seem Dot ; I can hear nothing. The silence is a 
 puzzler, but we are sure to hear all about it within a few 
 hours." Determining to anticipate by personal investi- 
 gation the information which was kindly promised me, I 
 rode off to the front of Montmorency, whence there lay 
 spread before the eye the wide panorama of the north side 
 of Paris. Still all was silent as the grave. There was 
 the white foreground, the ice-bound river and the St. 
 Denis chimneys smoking lustily according to their wont. 
 Neither from the east nor the west came there the slightest 
 sound of any firing. A slight haze bank hung over Le 
 Bourget, which might have been snow fog or the filmv 
 smoke of a cannonade ; but if the latter it must have 
 surely been audible. There I found three mounted 
 officers, and we had a little talk about the position. 
 They inclined to the armistice-negotiations theory, more 
 especially as they had not heard a single shot since morn- 
 ing. As we spoke there came a white jet of smoke 
 out of the grey side of La Bridie. No sound — for all the 
 noise made it might have been an escape of steam. But 
 in a second or two we did hear something, the close swish 
 of the shell, and then the explosion about fifty yards to 
 the right. La Bridie could not resist the temptation of 
 the group. " No negotiations, then, that is certain," was 
 the remark as we broke up and went our several 
 ways. 
 
 This action of La Bridie rather intensified the puzzle,
 
 2S8 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 because it seemed to knock away the only explanation. 
 I could not go to the south, but I could visit the batteries 
 about Pont Iblon, and get at the root of the matter. As 
 I rode through Sarcelles I overtook the "Lady-birds" 
 from Groslay. The " Lady-birds " are the Guard Fusilier 
 Regiment, called by this familiar name by the good folks 
 of Berlin from the circumstance that they pass through 
 that capital, changing quarters from Spandau to Potsdam, 
 every year in the month of May, the lady-birds' month. 
 Dainty lady-birds are the Fusiliers, to be sure ; huge, 
 hulking, six-foot chields, with broad shoulders and great 
 stalwart limbs. Glad, though, would they have been, if 
 they could, to accept the pretty little one's adjuration to 
 their tiny namesake, "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away 
 home," for nostalgia was a disease from which more or 
 less they all seemed suffering. They formed part of an 
 intended demonstration, to consist of the bulk of the 1st, 
 Guard Division, that had been ordered to be made in the 
 region behind Le Bourget, and to be synchronous with 
 the commencement of the bombardment in the south. 
 Events in the latter direction had anticipated this 
 arrangement, but the demonstration had not yet been 
 countermanded, and I had a pleasant hour's ride with 
 the officers of the Lady-birds. They told me how 
 friendly the French forcposts were getting between 
 Groslay and Villanteneuse, and how greedily they craved 
 for erbswurst, offering for a modicum of the same to
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 2S9 
 
 pledge themselves not to fire for ever so long. Now and 
 then the Frenchmen handed over a paper. A captain 
 had La Nouvelle France, two days old, in his pocket. 
 Anions other details it mentioned that the force on 
 Avron had been commanded by Colonel Stoffel, so long 
 the French military attache at the Court of Berlin, who 
 if this were true, seems certainly to have been wiser in 
 precept than in practice. 
 
 At Villers-le-Bel came the countermand for the demon- 
 stration, and I came on to Gonesse alone. What was 
 my surprise to find all the German batteries from Gonesse 
 to Sevran firing away vigorously ! They had been at it 
 since eight in the morning. In Gonesse I learned that 
 the firing on the south side was believed to have recom- 
 menced at the same hour, and was certainly going on. 
 Vet. at Margency and Montmorency we could not hear 
 a sound. It was all owing to the air; it was to-day as 
 non-conducting of sound as it had been the reverse 
 yesterday. Even in Gonesse we could not hear 
 the guns that were thundering, so to speak, at our 
 elbows. 
 
 Afterwards I rode along the chaussee behind the 
 batteries. There was firing from right and left of Pont 
 Iblon, from he IManc Mesnil, and to its right, and also 
 from an old field artillery emplacement between Le 
 Blanc Mesnil and Aulnay. The fire was not very brisk, 
 but it was ever so much brisker than the reply. It was
 
 290 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 chiefly directed against Forts De 1'Est and Du Nord, and 
 the redoubt at la Courneuve, but the leftmost batterv 
 also fired into Drancy, where the French still must have 
 had some kind of lodgment, since they had fired a few 
 guns from it in the morning. I remained for about an 
 hour behind the batteries, and the French only fired three 
 shots in reply during that period. Their shells were well 
 aimed ; one of the three came on to the chaussee, just 
 behind one of the batteries : another exploded on the 
 outward face of the parapet, and the third fell in the field 
 a few yards to its front. 
 
 On this day (the 6th) there Avas a considerable moving 
 of troops. The 2nd Division of the Guards evacuated 
 Sevran and Aulnay, and came farther up to the north-east. 
 The Saxons came northward in their room, unfolding 
 again into the old positions occupied before Mont Avron 
 forced the Saxons to stand four or five deep on their 
 ground, instead of the ordinary three, and thus to narrow 
 their front. The movement extended all round, and 
 among other things it relieved the tension of the 4th Army 
 Corps, which covered an immense front, although not a 
 dangerous one. The " dislocation " had a feature that from 
 one aspect was ludicrous, and from the other sad. Who 
 could refrain from laughing when lie passed a battalion, 
 half the men of which carried chairs, while there was a 
 string of carts behind, laden with mattresses, sofas, tables, 
 washhand-stands, crockervware, and an endless assort-
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 291 
 
 ment of the contents of a furnishing warehouse ? I passed 
 detached groups laden with the oddest articles. One man 
 had a bird-cage with a canary in it ; another had a 
 picture lashed in front, and another on his Lack, in the 
 sandwich fashion of our street advertisement men. There 
 was pretty well everything belonging to domestic 
 economy, with the exception of a cradle, and that useful 
 adjunct to married joys I confess I did not observe. A 
 stalwart " Sheep" — the Second Guard Regiment goes by 
 the name of "Muttons," on account of some old recondite 
 tradition or other — staggered along with a great glass 
 shade on his back, inside which was a massive ormolu 
 cluck, supported by a pair of extremely badly-clad angels 
 in brass. I asked him whether the clock wa.s his. "Ach 
 ?te in," grunted he in reply, " the cursed thing belongs to 
 the battalion bureau." Not exactly the spolia opinio 
 were the mattresses and chairs of the inhabitants of the 
 villages around Paris, but the besiegers had come, with 
 a kind of naturalness begotten of all but necessity, to 
 regard them not as spoils at all, but as fairly their 
 own property, at least for the time being. War blunts 
 sadly the moral sense. In the eves of none of the 
 "Sheep"' were the chairs and mattresses stolen, and yet 
 when one comes to look into the question as a non- 
 belligerent, what else were they? This much else at all 
 events, that they made up a very laughable procession. 
 You could not keep from laughing, although you must 
 
 r 2
 
 292 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 sigh the moment after, when you thought of the inha- 
 bitants of the villages coming home after the evacuation 
 and finding what terribly" sad havoc the German occupa- 
 tion had caused. After all though the doctrine of 
 averages came in as some consolation. If one regiment 
 carried out of Dugny and Bonneuil a given quantity of 
 furniture, the marching in regiment bore with it also 
 a certain quantity which was roughly an equivalent. I 
 dont think any of the beds or chairs have gone back to 
 .Deutschland, and if the inhabitants when they came 
 home did not find their own furniture in their houses, 
 they found somebody else's. 
 
 Staying overnight in Le Vert Galant, I went forward 
 to Ville Evrart on the 7th, in hopes of learning some- 
 thing about the state of Fort Nogent, from the holders of 
 a position so close under its wing. The frost had given 
 on the previous night, and left us to the full enjoyment 
 of the first day of rain for many weeks. For siege 
 work, frost, bitter cold as it is when it was so strong as we 
 had had it, is infinitely preferable to wet weather. It was 
 terrible work to man the foreposts on such a day as this, 
 when men got muddy to the waist before they reached 
 their posts, and when the wet and muddy clothes dried, 
 if they dried at all, on the persons of the wearers. Fine 
 time for rheumatism and catarrh, and other affections of 
 the same kind, was .such weather as this, when the 
 warmth opened the pores just to let the raw dampness
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 29-j 
 
 come in. In Ville Evrart we had not mud but water. 
 The place was all but flooded out. There was a partial 
 block of ice in the Seine, lower down, and the river had 
 overflowed its banks, and spread out on the always juicy 
 plain. Nogent was utterly invisible in the drizzle, al- 
 though to do it justice, it was occasionally audible in 
 reply to the steady but slow firing of our batteries. Ville 
 Evrart was a bad find in the way of information, but 
 outside were rain, water and mud ; inside friendliness, a 
 good fire, and a sofa, which with a chair at its foot to eke 
 out the length, made a decent bed. So I stayed the 
 night with the Saxon lieutenant who commanded the 
 post. And my ride to Ville Evrart had not been wholly 
 barren after all ; [ had picked up by the way a little 
 nugget all the way from Chelsea. Thomas Carlyle on the 
 foreposts ! The "sage of Chelsea" among the besiegers of 
 Paris! Yea, verily, not indeed in the actual flesh and 
 Scoteh plaid, but represented by certain written words, 
 the authorship of which no one could doubt, even if lie 
 were not familiar with the handwriting. In the German 
 armies are many who know how to wield the pen as well 
 as the sword. One of these ambidextrous men now 
 in the Saxon Army before Paris here had sent a little 
 book of his to Chelsea, sure that the matter of it 
 would find sympathy there, and as i rode through the 
 village in which Ilerr Waldmiiller was quartered, he 
 brought me the letter which Mr. Carlyle had sent him in
 
 291 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 acknowledgment. With the permission of the recipient 
 I transcribed it, and here is the copy : — 
 
 "5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, Dec. 27, 1870. 
 " Sir, — Three nights ago there came to me from Dres- 
 den a beautiful little blue book, 'Die tausendjahrige 
 Eiche in Elsass/ which — especially as coupled with your 
 kind inscription on the cover of it, bearing date ' vor 
 Paris ' — I read with very great interest. It is in itself 
 truly a beautiful little book, put together with a great 
 deal of art, and betokening in the writer a delicate, affec- 
 tionate, poetic, and gifted human brother, well skilled in 
 literary composition — not to speak of still higher things. 
 Nowhere have I seen a more ingenious arrangement of 
 whatever was bright and human in an antiquarian study 
 into a really living and artistic form than this of Elsass 
 and its ' Thousand Years' Oak ! ' That a soul capable 
 of such work should now date to me from c Le Vert 
 Galant,' and the heart of a great and terrible World- 
 event, supremely beneficent and yet supremely terrible, 
 upon which all Europe is waiting with abated breath, is 
 another circumstance which adds immensely to the 
 interest of the kind gift for me ; and I may well keep the 
 little book in careful preservation as a memorial to me of 
 what will be memorable to all the world for another 
 ' thousand years.' I wished much to convey some hint 
 of my feeling to you, as at once a writer of such a piece,
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 295 
 
 and the worker and fighter in sucli a world ; and I try to 
 contrive some way of doing so. Alas ! my wishes can do 
 little for you or for your valiant comrades, nobly fronting 
 the storms of war and of winter ; but if this ever reach 
 you, let it be an assurance that I do in my heart praise 
 you (and might even in a sort, if I were a German and 
 still young, envy you), and that no man, in Germany or 
 out of it, more deeply applauds the heroic, invincible 
 bearing of your comrades and you, or more entirely 
 wishes and augurs a glorious result to it at the appointed 
 hour. My faith is that a good genius does guide you, 
 that Heaven itself approves what you are doing, that in 
 the end Victory is sure to you. Accept an old man's 
 blessing ; continue to quit yourselves like men, and in 
 that case expect that a good issue is beyond the reach of 
 Fortune and her inconstancies. God be with you, dear 
 sir, with you and your brave brethren in arms. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 About the second week of January, when the new 
 batteries had lost their novelty, and were found not 
 to realise the sanguine expectations of those who had 
 anticipated a speedy reduction of the eastern forts 
 through their instrumentality, we seemed in a state of 
 puzzlement for the time. Wen 1 we utterly knocking 
 the French into a cocked hat ? Were they squat-
 
 296 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ting in their casemates, watches in hand, counting the 
 hours and the minutes before the time should come when 
 the defence should have reached the climax of heroism, 
 and when, without spoiling their claim to deserve well of 
 posterity, they could send the paiiementaire out to the 
 Prefecture of Versailles ? On the other hand, were they 
 silent and quiet as they were on some plan or other ? 
 were they striving to make us think it was all over with 
 them, and that we had extinguished them, only to turn 
 upon us presently and make a harder attempt than ever 
 to rend us ? It was a curious crisis. Day after day, hour 
 after hour, our batteries, all the way from Chenevieres to 
 Gonesse, were steadily pelting away at something or 
 other in the nature of hostile positions. On the night of 
 the 7th for instance we began to think we had done a 
 great deal. Eosny and Nogent had not fired a shot all 
 day. Drancy had been a dumb dog. Du Nord, de l'Est r 
 and Aubervilliers had just done enough to let us under- 
 stand that their pipe was not utterly put out — no more. 
 Then we got complacent, not to say triumphant. We had 
 " silenced" Eosny and Nogent, that was beyond question. 
 ►Somebody of a sanguine disposition intimated his convic- 
 tion that Rosny had but one gun on its ramparts, and that 
 it had been dismounted. Another gentleman, whose forte 
 was saturnine wit, suggested that Ducrot did not want 
 a fire to keep himself warm in Drancy, and, indeed, that 
 lie must have some time before found the quarters too hot
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 297 
 
 for him. We did not let ourselves be led away exactly 
 into buncombe, but we were very anxious for the end, and 
 everybody knows how much the wish is father to the 
 thought. Well, the morning came laden with its even- 
 
 O J O 
 
 tualities. What were thev ? The white flag, general 
 silence of the forts, Ducrot's coat-tails visible to the 
 mind's eye fluttering behind him as he skedaddled, 
 a triumphantly pious telegram from Versailles, and a 
 general gaudeamus ? All the other way. Kosny and 
 Nogent the '•'silenced" were firing just enough to 
 show that each had more than one gun, and that 
 nothing was farther off than a condition of " dismount ; " 
 Drancy, the despised, absolutely flared up, and gave 
 us back quite a warm cannonade, regardless of our 
 speculations as. to Ducrot's coat-tails. But the day 
 before we had thought Drancy not only silenced, but 
 abandoned. Abandoned batteries don't, as a rule, fire 
 three or four rounds a minute. No doubt Drancy must 
 have been undergoing a heavy punishment, but it came 
 up for it like a glutton, and seemed to have an unlimited 
 capacity. 1 imagine a good deal of pains had been taken 
 with the place. Although it looked detached, and 
 although our fire could converge on it from several 
 points, there had been time to improve its few natural 
 advantages, and it might perhaps be best described as a 
 kind of informal outwork of Aubervilliers. My informa- 
 tion led me to believe that from that fort to it there
 
 29S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 extended across the plain a more or less regularly con- 
 structed protected way with a continuous entrenchment 
 and strong earthworks supported by batteries at intervals. 
 It was curious, not to say suggestive, how the French 
 clung to this position out on the plain, when they had 
 given ground everywhere else on the east side. In itself 
 it was not worth a second thought strategically — it 
 must have had some relative value in their eyes, else 
 why should they have continued to hold it now that, 
 instead of being aligned with other forepost positions of 
 theirs, it was not indeed altogether detached, but the 
 pharos on the end of a pier running out into an ocean, 
 raked wholly by German artillery ? It is unquestionable, 
 I think, that they continued thus limpetlike to hold on 
 Drancy because of its value as a base of operations against 
 Le Bourget, the key to the easiest natural road out of 
 Paris, nor do I believe that till Colonel Bartsch's guns 
 opened their thunder against St. Denis, the idea was 
 definitely abandoned of an eruption by this face. 
 
 January the 9th presented still abominable drizzle of 
 fast-falling minute snow flakes, coupled with intense 
 frost, that made the atmosphere as thick as pea-soup, 
 and the roads as impassable as if they had been made of 
 glass lubricated with grease. A bombardment in such 
 weather could not be brisk. Still, the German guns had 
 been pegging away with a measured steadiness, and, to 
 judge by the faint sounds that came to us from the south,
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. ;299 
 
 there was no want of activity there. Preparations were 
 steadily going on for increasing the din on the north 
 side. Colonel Bartsch had moved to Yillers-le-Bel, along 
 with Colonel Tmpe, and a park of artillery, brought down 
 from Mezieres, had been established there with all its 
 accompaniments of mud, grenade-filling, trains of country 
 carts, and miserable peasants. St. Denis, its forts and 
 town, were to be subjected to a systematic bombardment. 
 The scientific men had been over the ground and chosen 
 the positions for the batteries, the which I shall presently 
 describe in detail ; then had come staff-sergeants of en- 
 gineers with tape and pegs ; and now the working parties 
 were toiling by night and sleeping by day. Long before, 
 in case of need, vast quantities of fascines and gabions 
 had been woven together in the forest of Montmorency 
 and the wood of Arnouville, and those had now found a 
 use and were being carted under cover of fog and dark- 
 ness to the places where they were to be utilised. The 
 loading-up depot for the Montmorency was the lawn in 
 front of Rousseau's hermitage. Forts Rosny, Noisy, and 
 Xogent still preserved their strange silence, with the 
 blinds down or the shutters up, whichever expression may 
 be most applicable. No liberties were, however, taken 
 with them, for the mask of silence was distrusted. The 
 Redoubt de la Boissiere above Merdan was the only French 
 work on the east side that continued to manifest any 
 activity, and its fire was stead}-, although very sluggish.
 
 800 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 When visiting Soisy, to have speech with some French 
 deserters, I saw General Manteuffel as he halted in that 
 village to dine with General Alvensleben, on his way to 
 Versailles, prior to taking up his new command — that 
 of the 5th Army. He had left General von Goben with 
 the 1st and 8th Army Corps and Kummer's Landwehr 
 Division, forming the 1st Army, to dominate the North, 
 and keep Faidherbe in check. He himself was to take 
 command of the 2nd, 7th, and 14th Army Corps, to 
 form a separate army, which was already on its march 
 to support von Werder, and baulk Bourbaki's attempt. 
 General Manteuffel was confident that von Goben was 
 left quite strong enough to stamp out Faidherbe, and 
 keep the North in order. 
 
 It was quite in accordance with German forethought 
 that before the middle of January the dispositions had 
 been all arranged that should follow the capitulation 
 of Paris, should hostilities still continue to be main- 
 tained in the provinces. These dispositions certainly 
 did not comprehend, as some reported, a retirement 
 on certain provinces of France, leaving meanwhile 
 isolated garrisons in the strong places outside these 
 districts. Nothing could have been madder than that 
 policy. It would have involved a forepost line to 
 which the circle around Paris was a bagatelle ; armies 
 standing ever ready, waiting for the concentrated 
 attack of French armies, choosing their own place
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 301 
 
 ami their own time. A French success in such circum- 
 stances needed only a pushing General to make an 
 invasion of Germany practicable. Three or four days' 
 forced marches from the line fancy dictated to rumour- 
 mongers would have brought the red breeches again 
 
 o o o 
 
 on to the Exercise Platz above Saarbriick. There would 
 have been no " masterly inactivity " in such a policy ; 
 it would have been pure fatuity. No ; if the French 
 had obstinately refused to throw up the sj:)onge and own 
 to the loss of the stakes, the punishment, sickening as it 
 was, was perforce to go on. Manteuffel's duty, after 
 foiling Bourbaki, was to bring to reason Lyons and the 
 ^outh-west. Two days before the formal capitulation of 
 Mctz, the 2nd Army Corps, it may be remembered, 
 took the road for action elsewhere. That corps was now 
 once again on the march — this time eastward; and 1 
 know that other orders of readiness had been already 
 issued before the 10th of January, that all the disposi- 
 tions had been made, and that all that was being waited 
 for was the right time in the judgment of the military 
 authorities, [n the event of the continuance of the war 
 after the capitulation of Paris, the Maas Army was to 
 have been broken up, and its commander, the Crown 
 Prince of Saxony, with the 4th Army Corps and the 
 Guards, was to have gone away northward, with the duty 
 of sublimating right to the water's edge the whole of 
 France lying to the northward of Paris. This arrange-
 
 302 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ment would not have superseded General von Goben 
 even nominally ; he would still have retained the com- 
 mand of the 1st Army. Paris, of course, was to have 
 been occupied militarily, and its garrison was to have 
 consisted of the Bavarians, Saxons, Wiirtembergers, and 
 Mecklenburgers. Further details with which I became 
 acquainted have ceased to interest since the contingency 
 to which they related was happily averted. 
 
 Till the 10th of January I had occupied very comfort- 
 able quarters in a chateau in Margency, known familiarly 
 in the head-quarters of the Maas army as the " Guest- 
 house." But the "Guesthouse" filled up so that there 
 was scant accommodation for guests. There came to 
 head-quarters for a day's visit a certain Bussian Prince, 
 and what was to be done for him in the shape of 
 quarters ? There came unto me Hauptmann von Wurmb, 
 our quartermaster, full of polite regrets to disturb, but 
 with a request that I would make room for the Prince. 
 There was a chateau of great beauty and comfort in An- 
 dilly, he said, close by, to which he would be glad to 
 escort me, and which I was free to consider my own. 
 Andilly is a hamlet a little higher up the hill of Mont- 
 morency, about five minutes' walk from the head-quarter 
 chateau. It was added, with great geniality, that I was 
 not entitled to reside in the " Guesthouse," since I was no 
 longer to be considered a guest, but " one of ourselves." 
 The objurgation which I felt inclined to launch against
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 303 
 
 the Russian Prince, I repressed when I saw my new 
 dwelling-place. Talk of the hardships of war ! Why, as 
 the result of the change I became the sole occupant of a 
 chateau, in which there were gorgeously-furnished public 
 rooms, a billiard table, a library, ever so many snug bed- 
 rooms, a hot-air apparatus, carpets, blankets, sheets, a 
 good cellar of wine, everything, in short, " suited," as the 
 advertisements say, " for the occupation of a nobleman or 
 gentleman of position." The place had not been injured 
 so much as by the breaking of a glass. There was a 
 French gatekeeper and his wife, and a French gardener 
 and his wife, and the quartette had nothing to do but 
 wait on " Monsieur." If any lady of my acquaintance 
 had desired a camellia for her hair, she would only have 
 had to send a " trusted courier" across to Andilly. and 
 she .should have been accommodated punctually. For 
 there were in "my grounds" a hot-house, a special 
 camellia-house, and an orangery. I quailed in sight of 
 the luxury, dreading lest it might prove my Capua, 
 and tempt me from braving the chances of casual quarters 
 with a shake-down or a heap of straw for a bed. 
 
 This same village of Andilly was less eloquent of war 
 time than any other place in the neighbourhood. Nearly 
 all the inhabitants had come back who had left— numbers 
 never had quitted their homes. You saw children play- 
 ing in the street ; and as I passed to the Feldpost in the 
 morning, I could hear them hum over their lessons in the
 
 o04 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ''Ecole Primaire," in the Mairic. The village was 
 strongly anti-Republican. It would have been heartily 
 glad to see the Emperor back ; or, if that were impossible, 
 it would have been delighted to be ruled over by the 
 Orleanists — which of the two was quite immaterial, only 
 please, " for the love of God, no Republic." I must add 
 that the village was very drunken, at least its male popu- 
 lation was. You sec they had nothing to do but chop 
 firewood and wait for the surrender. There was no want 
 of money, as most were gentlemen's servants, or hangers- 
 on of some kind to the neighbouring projirietaires, who 
 had all fled. And there were two wine shops where 
 very bad brandy was retailed, and which were ever full 
 of chattering, gesticulating individuals in blue blouses 
 and wooden shoes, who seemed to get the more civil in 
 the same ratio as they got the more drunk. 
 
 The 11th of January brought little perceptible change 
 on the eastern and northern aspects of the siege. Drancy 
 had been seemingly definitely silenced, if not abandoned. 
 The three easternmost forts were silent and blinded, but 
 this was no synonyme for " silenced," and that they were 
 distrusted was evident from the avoidal to occupy the 
 plateau of Mont Avron. The Redoubt dc la Boissiere 
 continued firing. Aubervilliers fired very heavily and 
 continuously for some hours against the batteries at Lc 
 Blanc Mesnil and Pont Iblon. The new batteries in 
 front of Chcnnevieres had produced more appreciable
 
 FROM THE >"EW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. ,'305 
 
 effects than any of the others. It seemed to have driven 
 the French out of St. Maur, and, in conjunction with 
 the guns at Noisy, to have greatly quelled the firing 
 of the continuous work above Joinville, which had Gra- 
 velle and La Faissanderie for its flanks. The importance 
 of having cleared the peninsula formed by the most 
 southerly bend of the Marne, and at the throat of which 
 is St. Maur, must be obvious by a glance at the map. 
 The gunboats were lying, with their steam up, in the reach 
 of the liver that skirts the flank of Fort La Bridie. They 
 had, four or five of them, and more than once, made short 
 raids out to fire a shot towards Epinay. Fort La Bridie 
 itself had been comparatively silent lately, but on the 
 11th it and the double crown work Du Xord fired with 
 some persistency into Epinay, St. Gratien, Ormesson, La 
 Barre, La Chevrette, Deuil, and Montmagny, in fact all 
 round our forepost line to the north-west and north. 
 I am not aware that any shells have fallen in Pierrefitte, 
 but it is likely enough. It was noticeable that the 
 projectiles thrown by La Briche were of inferior calibre 
 to the large shells it had been wont to fire, and it was 
 thought probable that that fort had been at least 
 partially denuded of its bijjger nuns, with their am- 
 munition, for the strengthening of the southern positions. 
 The signs which I have narrated were not uncommon 
 portents heralding a sortie, and, in anticipation of any 
 effort of the kind, I made the circuit of the forepost
 
 306 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 line, extending from Epinay, where the line of the Seine 
 was quitted out of respect to Fort La Briche, around the 
 half-moon in the plain, the other horn of which rested 
 on Stains. Epinay, once the most beautiful of all the 
 beautiful villages on this north side of Paris, was a 
 shattered wreck. Its church w T as smashed, riddled with 
 shells ; its population had long fled, and its aspect was 
 unutterably desolate. The gunboats were pounding into 
 it as I was being civilly entertained by the officer of the 
 31st Regiment who commanded for the day. What 
 had been once one of the finest houses in the environs 
 belonged to a brother of M. Cremieux, of the Provisional 
 Government. Between French shells and German " bel- 
 ligerent rights," the place was wrecked utterly. The 
 floors of the deserted rooms, in which the wind whistled 
 gustily through the shattered windows and the shell- 
 holes, were littered with mouldy papers. There were 
 layers of cancelled cheques drawn by Levy, Cremieux, 
 and Co. on the Bank of France, nearly all for large 
 sums. The road was very much exposed between the 
 villages, and collisions between the patrols were of 
 nightly occurrence. There had been quite a little fight 
 outside Ormesson on the previous night, upwards of 
 forty shots having been fired, at random no doubt, for 
 I heard of no casualties. In this village, which is not 
 an English mile from the Dims of La Briche, and which 
 had by no means escaped its tender mercies, it was
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. -'507 
 
 strange, and indeed affecting, still to see inhabitants 
 clinging, poor precarious wretches, to what had been 
 once prosperous homes. The chateau of La Chevrette, 
 once the residence of Madame d'Epinay, Rousseau's 
 friend, had escaped with wonderfully little damage from 
 shell-fire, although it would hardly have been an eligible 
 residence. The walk across the open in front of Deuil, 
 from La Chevrette to Villanteneuse, is not one exactly 
 to be prescribed as a pleasant relaxation for a holiday ; 
 but then its disagreeables and dangers disappeared in 
 the knowledge that one was going to Villanteneuse, a 
 village which till the morning I had believed to be still, 
 as regarded one end of it, in the French hands. It 
 seemed, however, that the Germans had quietly got pos- 
 session of it a few nights before, and certainly there they 
 certainly were occupying the place as far as the church, 
 which is at the St. Denis end of the village. Then there 
 is a bit of open ground, and presently, about 1.30 or 200 
 yards away, are the walls surrounding the grounds of 
 the chateau of the same name as the village, where the 
 French were still located. 11* the sun rose or set in 
 the south, the place is so near St. Denis that the long 
 .shadows of the chimney stalks would all but reach it. 
 You heard of fraternising hobnobbing over the contents 
 of flasks between the sentries under cover of the night, 
 of requests made and granted for lumps of sausage and 
 pipefuls of tobacco, and really nothing seemed to be
 
 308 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 more natural. The sentries did not need to bawl to 
 each other to ascertain mutual friendliness. The grey- 
 coated gentleman yonder, who now and then showed 
 little bits of himself, I could have conversed with in 
 quite an ordinary tone. On the heights above Pierre- 
 fitte the batteries, being constructed for the edification 
 of St. Denis, were already far advanced ; the one on the 
 Villanteneuse side of the height was, indeed, ready for 
 the guns ; the Stains batteries were also progressing 
 rapidly. A careful inspection of St. Denis and its sur- 
 roundings from the closest accessible point did not im- 
 press me with the idea that any preparations for an 
 aiisfall were going on, and no troops were visible on the 
 other side of the inundations, in the vicinity of La Cour- 
 neuve. Eeturning rid Montmorency, I paused as well 
 on the terrace for a last look southwards ; and lo ! huge 
 clouds of black smoke were rising away over the western 
 shoulder of Montmartre, just about the place where in a 
 very clear day one could see the towers of Notre Dame. 
 The smoke evidently rose from a burning area of no 
 small magnitude, and it was continuous, rolling away on 
 the wind in great swarthy folds. The fire that caused 
 the smoke must have been far behind Montmartre, 
 although it was over its shoulder that I saw it, and 
 there was too much of it to have been caused by the 
 burning of a single house. Of course, the connection 
 between German shells and a bier fire in Paris was not
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 309 
 
 conclusive ; but the coincidence of bombardment and fire 
 bad a certain suggestiveness. The smoke continued to 
 thicken during the half-hour we stood watching it. When 
 darkness came on no flames were visible, but the cloud 
 became lurid as if the fire lay too low behind Montmartre 
 to be itself visible, while it threw its reflection upward. 
 
 One beautiful autumn afternoon — it was the 7th of 
 October, although now it seems years ago — I witnessed 
 tin 1 Landwehrmen of the Division Kummer falling in their 
 ranks as they stood, rather than give ground before the 
 furious assault that burst out upon them from the works 
 to the north of Aletz. In earlier pages of these volumes 
 I have tried to describe what I witnessed and what J 
 felt — inadequately, I am conscious, for there are certain 
 feelings that will not somehow go into writing, strive 
 how you may to give them expression. In the course 
 of my daily duty it fell to me to write of what I had 
 .-'■en, in the columns of the newspaper, as whose repre- 
 sentative I was on the field. \n no long time there 
 came to me the first of a series of very pitiful letters — 
 letters that made me shudder when 1 saw the under- 
 ofliecr with the bundle from the Feld post, although 1 
 knew that the packet was sure to contain letters from 
 loved ones over the water. But with these there came with 
 some frequency others. It so happened that what I had 
 written in the l)"lhj Xeics found its way into most of the 
 German papers, and not a few were the Landwehrwomen
 
 310 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 — alas ! that so many were in truth widows — who, in their 
 simple reasoning, concluded that he who penned it must 
 have a soft spot in his heart, and would try hard to 
 answer the questions they asked as to how it had fared 
 with the fathers of their children. That I did what I 
 could in this way, under difficulties that must occur to 
 any reader, I believe not a few humble families in the 
 Fatherland would bear ready testimony. The sad 
 stream flowed toward me again while I abode before 
 Paris, this time from Saxon-land. God help us — no 
 man feels war till it comes home to him in some such 
 way as this. Morning after morning, that smiling secre- 
 tary at the field-post in the park handed me over letters, 
 which, were I to corry a few of them, would bring the 
 water into the eyes of every reader. Some were from 
 friends asking after friends — these were generally wordy 
 and occasionally inflated, although always doubtless 
 genuine. But brothers wrote simple questionings about 
 brothers. Fathers wanted to know about sons, wives 
 about husbands. Oftener still, mothers were the ques- 
 tioners. Poor creatures, how precise were the details ! 
 Kegiment, battalion, company, aye, and a personal de- 
 scription now and then besides. " Tall, slender, with 
 bright blue eyes and curly auburn air, very small hands, 
 and a greenstone ring on one of the fingers of the right 
 hand, and his ears pierced." This minuteness, it was 
 explained, should I happen on Fusilier lying on a
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 311 
 
 battle-field. Ah, fond mother ! there would have been 
 little brightness in the blue eyes in that ease, and I 
 should have had to look a long time before I found the 
 "greenstone ring on one of the fingers of the right 
 hand." There comes a lump in my throat when, looking 
 over the packet, the most touching souvenir man could 
 have of the war, I light upon a tear-blurred epistle from 
 a poor woman in Kamenz, who, it seemed, had seen 
 some extracts from my correspondence in some Saxon 
 paper. She wrote that she " was sure I must be a 
 father, and would not spare, therefore, a little trouble to 
 get information for a mother about her sons." She had 
 given two hostages to the Fatherland — in what guise could 
 the Fatherland redeem the pledge ? Was it easy to tell 
 her, think you, that one of her sons lay behind Brie with 
 twenty inches of frozen French earth on his breast, and 
 comrades unto the death — comrades in the grave — right 
 and left of him ? That T had seen the other in a ward 
 in the Xoisiel lazarette, contemplating with a philosophy 
 that seemed begotten of a cigar, the stump of one of his 
 legs that the doctors had stripped for dressing? Strike 
 up tlic martial music, ring the joy bells ; fire the salutes! 
 Let the cities illuminate, and the mob roar itself hoarse 
 at the news of victories! God knows all these counter- 
 dins are needed to drown the groans from hearts wrung 
 by war. 
 
 The 13th of January was a day of dense fog and
 
 312 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 equally dense dullness. From the east we heard the 
 lazy thud of a big gun now and then fired in protest of 
 total inactivity. Sometimes there came a faint sough 
 from the south that might have been a cart-load of 
 stones emptied in Epinay, or might have been the at- 
 tenuated noise of the southern bombardment. I saw a 
 regimental officer this day, who had come from Ver- 
 sailles, bringing the tattle and gossip of the second 
 " Staffel " of little big men located in the Hotel des 
 Reservoirs. His report was that, unofficial or semi- 
 official, Versailles was not at all pleased with the results 
 of the bombardment, so for as it had gone, and especially 
 was disgusted because some 200 shells said to have been 
 projected into Paris had not produced the effect of a 
 capitulation. I ventured to interpret this news accord- 
 ing to my own lights. I know that the dukes and 
 princes of the Reservoirs did not wish for the bombard- 
 ment at all, and had been therefore not indisposed to cry 
 it down. Now that it had commenced, however, there 
 was a not unnatural, although very mistaken, impulse to 
 weio;h its effect against the effects of former bombard- 
 incuts by German siege guns. " No fortress has stood 
 our breaching artillery over three days except Strasburg, 
 and that for little longer."' " Avron was swept clean in 
 thirty-six hours." " We have been pounding away at 
 these eastern forts now ever so lomr, and for not a few 
 days at the southern, and vet who can see the holes in
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 313 
 
 them that a serene Pumpernickel could walk in at 1 " 
 The worthy Pumpernickels of the Reservoirs forgot what 
 these forts surrounding Paris were. Avron was a thing 
 by itself ; the most stupendous blunder that a garrison 
 containing a corporal of engineers ever perpetrated. But 
 Mezieres, Phalsburg, Toul, Verdun, Strasburg — one and 
 all of them fell either of starvation or because the popu- 
 lation of the towns around which the fortifications were 
 built were being burnt and bombarded out. I believe, 
 trusting to memory, that in this war Strasburg was the 
 only town in the fortifications of which were battered 
 practicable breaches. The forts round Paris had no in- 
 ternal population ; no houses to be burnt ; no children to 
 be blown up as they played in the gutter; no closure of 
 their supplies either of food or ammunition. They had 
 to be battered to bits on their own merits ; and you 
 don't batter to bits in a day, works built and protected 
 as they were. There seemed no reason that, bar assault, 
 and bar panic, the bombardment of the Paris forts might 
 not last as long as the food inside Paris. Put there is 
 starvation and starvation. There are few communities 
 that would not arrive all the sooner at the conclusion 
 that starvation pitch has been reached, when a bombard- 
 ment is going on around them, and occasionally into 
 them, than if hunger pinched them in peace. A\ ny did 
 Paris hold out '. Scarcely, surely, with the forlornest 
 hope that it could ultimately escape the doom of capitu-
 
 314 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ktion ; but to deserve well of the country of which it is 
 the capital — to give time, by engaging the attention of 
 so many of the enemy, for the provinces to resuscitate 
 themselves — to earn for itself a name for enduring; 
 heroism to last unto all posterity. But Paris must have 
 been surely all but hopeless for itself before the middle 
 of January. And nobody can deny that the defence of 
 Paris, had Paris capitulated then, would still have been 
 one of the grandest episodes of modern warfare. How 
 much more then when she bore the terrible strain yet 
 fifteen days longer ? 
 
 It would not have been pleasant for such French 
 officers as had broken their parole to have been re-caught 
 by the Germans; still their plight would probably have 
 been preferable to that of officers who had deserted to 
 the enemy, and who might have been given up or retaken. 
 A message was sent to St. Denis, to acquaint the 
 French chiefs with the fact of the apprehension of three 
 deserting officers who had lately come over the Seine, 
 Trochu sent back a srim and curt message :— -" I am 
 already acquainted with the disgraceful fact, and it would 
 be a great kindness if you would send the scoundrels 
 back into Paris, or if there are obstacles to that, if you 
 would yourselves shoot them." 
 
 It was observable about this time that drunkenness 
 was on the increase in the German army besieging Paris, 
 hi the active campaign preceding the siege you would
 
 FllOM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 315 
 
 hardly ever have seen a man drunk ; now hiccoughing 
 gentlemen making a staggering exit from the shop 
 tenanted by a marketender were far from uncommon. 
 There were more causes than one for this. The men in 
 a siege get inexpressibly ennuye, and somebody has said 
 that the climax of ennui is delirium tremens or suicide. 
 Perhaps even a stronger cause was the want of beer, and 
 the consequent necessity, if a man drank at all, to take 
 glass after glass of rot-gut rum, schnapps, or arrack. If 
 you give a German plenty of beer, you seldom see him 
 actively drunk. He ma}' be passively muzzy, but with 
 thirty or forty glasses inside him he will go through his 
 lacings so as to satisfy the sharpest sergeant in the 
 service ; but spirits double him up, unless he be an East 
 Prussian or a Pole. The former can take a stint about 
 equal, I reckon, to a. seasoned Scotch Highlander; 
 the latter reckon brandy no more than water. 1 marched, 
 in the early pail of the war, for two days with a company 
 of the 63rd llegiment of von Tunipling's Army Corps. 
 They were all Poles ; half of them spoke no intelligible 
 German, and the raw spirits that they put out of sight 
 without so much as winking struck me with abject 
 amazement. We had little or no beer around Paris. A 
 beer-lover myself, 1 knew all the "sure finds" on the. 
 northern and eastern sides, and they did not number half 
 a dozen. Now and then a few stray casks came to what 
 may be called the out-quarters of beer. One day in
 
 316 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Margency I saw on a marketender's shutter the label 
 " liier ! ! " conspicuously displayed. This was in the 
 morning ; in the afternoon the ticket had disappeared ; 
 the beer was drunk out, and disappointed men who had 
 come in from the neighbourhood on the strength of the 
 winged report were turning away, muttering speeches the 
 reverse of soft. 
 
 Up till the night of the 13th January, it might fairly 
 have been said of the defenders of Paris that their actions 
 were good, if one Lad regard to the Scriptural explanation 
 why certain people loved the darkness rather than the 
 light. The French certainly had never manifested any 
 love for the darkness for any other purpose than that of 
 wasting the ammunition of great guns. They had never 
 snatched the opportunity of a dark night to make a dash 
 on an exposed German forepost ; never marshalled their 
 forces under cover of the night, that they might be ready 
 for the assault and surprise with the peep of dawn. 
 That comical major of Mobiles, who, when he was sur- 
 prised at his dinner after dark in Yille Evrart, grumbled 
 most furiously that such tactics were in violation of 
 civilised warfare, and that there was a tacit under- 
 standing that after sundown h[>htiiu>; should cease, 
 expressed, 1 take it, pretty closely the general opinion 
 on the subject of the defenders of Paris. They were not 
 even prone to take advantage of fogs. Nay, Trochu had 
 referred to fogs as standing in the way of his exertions,
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 317 
 
 although most men would be inclined to think a fog was 
 just tlie tiling he would have fervently prayed for. But 
 the night of the 13th witnessed the double revolution. 
 On that night — to make a hull — the moon did not rise 
 till the morning ; the night was as dark as a wolfs 
 mouth, and the foe- - besides was so thick that in getting 
 along you had almost to lean against it and press it out 
 of your path. I was thinking about bed, after quitting 
 the Feld post-office in Margency, when I heard a sudden 
 burst of heavy and close firing. As I stood listening, 
 report after report came up the valley, that could only 
 have proceeded from the big throats of the guns of the 
 forts of St. Denis. Then there was a spurt of faint 
 musketry fire, then a louder burst, the din between 
 artillery and musketry gradually becoming continuous. 
 It happened that in the afternoon I had been having a 
 discussion with a staff officer as to the likelihood of a 
 s< irtie out of St. Denis, either towards Stains and Pierrefitte 
 or toward Epinay and Enghien. He took the view that 
 tin' French, not being rank maniacs, would make no such 
 attempt ; I contended that, a sortie in any direction 
 being now an indication of mania, if seriously expected 
 to succeed, there was, to the perception of the besieged, 
 rather less insanity in coming out in this direction than 
 any other. Was this sudden firing, I asked myself, my 
 triumph over my friend of the staff? It looked very 
 J ike it from where I stood ; but Margency was a deceptive
 
 318 THE WAR BETWEEN FEANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 place as regards sounds. So I took to horse, and set off 
 for Montmorency as fast as I could. 
 
 Montmorency was " alarmed," but not turned out. 
 The opinion of those with whom I spoke there was that 
 Stains and Dugny were the objects of the attack, the noise 
 of which was swelling louder and louder. There was no 
 guide by eyesight. The fog was so dense, that one could 
 not have seen a shell burst 100 yards in front of him. 
 Anyhow, whatever was going on was farther east than 
 Montmorency, and the great guns of the St. Denis forts 
 were in full swing. The way to Stains, if a man had 
 any reasonable desire to get there whole when the forts 
 were firing, was to go to Arnouville, and bend backward 
 again by the road leading through Stains into Paris. 
 When I got to Arnouville I had, therefore, overshot 
 Stains, and still the noise of the musketry was south, a 
 little east. It was not Dugny ; that was too near. Was 
 it possible that it could be that unfortunate Le Bourget 
 again in trouble ? A passing orderly from Gonesse gave 
 me the " office " opportunely. It was Le Bourget, and 
 the French out of Drancy had been pitching into it ever 
 since ten o'clock — it was now eleven. He did not know 
 the dimensions of the attack, but judged it to be con- 
 siderable from the noise it made. Well, I had ears of 
 my own. " Was he carrying the alarm V " Nay, Gott 
 bewahr ! " and he jogged on contentedly. I made the 
 near cut through Dugny, and got into Le Bourget about
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 319 
 
 half-past eleven o'clock. I cannot say it was a strange 
 scene, for you could see hardly anything ; but there was 
 sufficient to engross other senses. Behind walls and in 
 the shelter of the court-yards and their entrances stood 
 the men of the 1st battalion of the Queen Augusta Regi- 
 ment, which had just been hurried up from Pont Iblon. 
 They were in reserve, for they were not wanted. Shells 
 were crashing in the already smashed and battered 
 houses, and the rattle of musketry was incessant from 
 the end of the village. I took it for granted that the old 
 bone of contention, the railway station outside the village, 
 and close to the Lille road, was what was being fought 
 for, and cautiously adventured in that direction, intend- 
 ing to go as far as the barricade across the road. In the 
 darkness 1 ran up against an officer standing out in the 
 open coolly smoking a cigar. The officer was Major 
 von Thummel, commanding the 2nd battalion of the 
 Queen Elizabeths, which formed the garrison of Le 
 Bourget for the night. But there was no fighting for 
 the railway station, for the unanswerable reason, as the 
 .Major explained, that no railway station existed now. 
 it had been pounded to splinters in December, and, no 
 longer affording any cover, the Guards had utterly 
 demolished it, and had used the available wood to make 
 their fires wherewithal. The Queen Elizabeths thus held 
 the barricades on the roads, three of which diverge near 
 the Paiis end of the village, certain loopholed shelter
 
 320 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 afforded by garden walls, and sundry detached houses of 
 great strength, which form a kind of suburb on the Paris 
 side of the little brook Molleret, which passes ' through 
 the village at right angles to its principal, and indeed 
 only, street. They were mostly concentrated in these, 
 one company, however, being in the houses farther back, 
 to keep up the communication with the Augustas. The 
 outermost posts were held by a company of the Guard 
 Schutzen Eegiment, these extending away in exposed 
 field watches on the margin of the Molleret, to the left of 
 Le Bourget, as one looks toward Paris. 
 
 There was a lull in the firing presently, as regarded 
 musketry at least, and so Major Thummel condescended to 
 enter the doorway wherein I was only too glad to shelter 
 myself, and give me the history of the evening. It was not 
 very eventful after all. Our outposts, it seems, as early as 
 eight o'clock, had heard significant sounds in Drancy, which 
 the French still obstinately refuse to vacate. There were 
 bugle-calls and the tread of mustering men, and (so near 
 were the positions) there had been heard also the tramp of 
 men being marched across from la Courneuve into Drancy. 
 I must mention, by the way, that this space, naturally a 
 level plain, almost bare of houses, had been furrowed by 
 the French with three successive continuous lines of en- 
 trenchments. One interpretation of this operation was, 
 that they had so far sapped up toward Le Bourget ; 
 another was, that they had thus triplicated the defences
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 321 
 
 of a tract they might have judged to have been exposed. 
 Anyhow, the farther parallel touched with its left the la 
 Courneuve road at a point in advance of that village ; 
 came with a slight sweep to the Lille road at a place 
 where there are two or three houses ; and was continued 
 with a little more Lend to the end of Drancy nearest Le 
 Bourget. The second line had its left on la Courneuve 
 itself, and its right on the farm of Drancy, in the rear of 
 the village of the same name. The repli line was the 
 road from la Courneuve to Baubioriy. It was inside 
 (tne of these lines that our foreposts had heard the 
 Frenchmen coming over into Drancy, to act as supports 
 probably. A little before ten the guns— first of Auber- 
 villicrs, then of de l'Est, du Nord, and, last of all, of 
 Romainville — had begun to shell Le Bourget furiously. 
 Then two field batteries in the first French line between 
 the Lille road and Drancy had got to work, and suddenly, 
 just after nine, came a splash of musketry fire out of the 
 thick mist and darkness. The Queen Elizabeths knew 
 what was coining. Their patrols had been out feeling 
 the interval between Le Bourget and Drancy, and the 
 advance of a strong body of French troops had been 
 notified. Every man was under cover; every man had 
 finger on trigger and muzzle out to the front. So, when 
 the French lire came, the Elizabeths gave it back steadily 
 and with interest ; not acting so foolishly as to rush out 
 to close quarters in the open, but lying snugly behind
 
 322 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 their stout barricades and the strong walls of the houses, 
 and firing in the direction whence came the French fire. 
 It seemed no Frenchmen were visible. They were within 
 a hundred yards, but came no farther. After firing they 
 stood for awhile, then gave ground and fell back towards 
 Drancy. Yet, again, about eleven, they had come on ; 
 much the same features characterising this attempt as 
 the last. And now had they got enough, did I think ? 
 asked the Major ; or did I think they were gluttons, and 
 would come at it once more ? 
 
 They answered his question, not I. Just as he spoke 
 came the " Steady, men ! " from the officer by the barri- 
 cade. There was a dull sound of tramping, sharpened 
 by a few isolated shots, and then a confused belch of 
 musketry fire. I heard the officer by the barricades 
 order — " Schnell feuer ! " and sclinell was, beyond a 
 doubt, that same feuer. Nor were the French behind- 
 hand in their reply. One could hear the bullets pattering 
 on the walls on both sides of the road, as if the fog had 
 burst out into big hailstones. This steady firing lasted 
 some five minutes, then the French musketry fell away. 
 In the comparative silence from the front there were 
 audible, easily, the shouts of the officers, " En avant ! " 
 " En avant I" One officer — judging by the direction 
 whence came the firing, lie must have commanded the 
 right — had a very shrill voice, and as he screamed rather 
 than shouted a wretched dog, close by, began to bark in
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. -'52o 
 
 opposition ; whereat the Queen Elizabeths laughed con- 
 sumedly behind their cover. Another officer — how 1 
 pitied the poor gallant fellows — ranged from wrath to 
 sorrow in his desperate efforts to make his men charge. 
 "En avant," he began, and repeated once or twice. 
 " Sacra nam de Dieu, en avant, canaille!" And then 
 lie was ever so much nearer us, and must have dashed 
 out to the front alone — "Pour V amour de Dieu en 
 arn nt, mes en fans ! " But the enfant didn't see it. 
 Indeed, they did not see the pleasure of staying where 
 they were. I heard no command of retreat given, but 
 the firing dropped away to a distance, and intermittingly, 
 and then ceased altogether. At a quarter to one there 
 was an advance on the other side from la Courneuve, 
 but enfiladed in the way as the troops composing it were 
 by the guard field watches on the Dugny road, they 
 never got so close as the assailants from Drancy, nor did 
 they hold their ground so stubbornly. Till three o'clock 
 the forts continued their fire ; then all was silent again. 
 And so ended this sorti< — if you can call it a sortie — 
 against Le Hourget. German loss : one man of the Queen 
 Augustas ; two, of the Queen Elizabeths severely 
 wounded. The Augusta man had his shoulder smashed 
 by a shell : three men of the Queen Elizabeths, slightly 
 wounded. Xo officer touched. But surely there must 
 have been ever so many Frenchmen killed and wounded? 
 the reader is entitled to ask ? Perhaps there were — 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 indeed, I don't see how it is possible that they should 
 not have suffered considerably. But they left nothing 
 behind them, except here and there a red patch of blood 
 on the snow-covered QTound. Patrols of the Guards 
 were beating the front all night, as well to ensure 
 security as to pick up any wounded men they might fall 
 in with. They found none. The French had carried off 
 their dead and wounded. 
 
 On the 14th the guns of our batteries, 18, 19, and 20, 
 continued firing heavily into Urancy, and there came a 
 boom through the thick air from the southward that 
 spoke of the gunners of Paincy, Gagny, and Noisy-le- 
 Grand being busy likewise. There was no renewal of the 
 attack on the part of the French, and the forts of St. 
 Denis were almost wholly silent. 
 
 During the latter part of my residence in Margency I 
 received a considerable number of letters both from 
 England and from various parts of the continent, sent 
 me by English families who had residences in the 
 northern and eastern suburbs of Paris, and who were 
 anxious to learn what fate had befallen their houses and 
 furniture. Many of these it was impossible to answer on 
 account of the difficulty of definitely recognising the 
 places inquired for. Put there were certain general facts 
 capable of application to individual cases. In any village 
 or district that was not in the immediate forcpost line, 
 the property of neutrals had been as much as possible
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 3:25 
 
 respected. The property of French residents had been 
 treated with equal deference, in cases where either the 
 owners themselves had remained, or where they had left 
 responsible servants to represent them. Such a course 
 was obviously necessary also for neutrals, such as English 
 people. It did not suffice to stick up the Union Jack, 
 lock one's doors, and clear out, trusting to the talismanic 
 influence of the bunting. But as, for instance, in Lady 
 Ashburton's chateau at St. Leu, and in Madame Sapey's 
 residence in Andilly, in which latter I was now located, 
 leaving behind the servants had secured total immunity 
 from any injury Avhatcver ; and these may be taken as 
 illustrative cases. There were other instances where ser- 
 vants had abandoned their master's houses, after being 
 left in charge of them, with the result that they were 
 pillaged by mauraders and by Francs-tireurs before the 
 Germans threw their grapple round Paris. Such was the 
 plight of a once pretty house in Montfermeil, concerning 
 which its owner, an Englishman, wrote to me from Nice. 
 When the Saxons came they found it already a wreck 
 internally. J lad it been spared by the Francs-tireurs it 
 would probably have been occupied by officers, and so 
 escaped material hurt. But there being no furniture left 
 when the German occupation took place it had been 
 relegated to the soldiers, and was usually inhabited by a 
 Corporalschaft of a Saxon regiment. Still no material 
 injury had been done to the house. A painter and
 
 326 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 glazier might cure all the hurt the Germans had clone 
 it. The upholstery work necessary must go to the debit 
 of the Francs-tireurs. Around Montmorency, St. Brice, 
 Ecouen, Clichy, Montfermeil, &c, this may he taken as 
 a typical condition of the habitations. Farther to the 
 front again, the wreck was more thorough, because there, 
 the. shells from the French forts had a voice in the 
 matter. An English lady of the name, I believe, of 
 Stephens, had a beautiful residence in Pierrefitte, with a 
 fine picture gallery. There was a shell hole through the 
 biggest of the pictures, and the chateau had been other- 
 wise extensively ventilated by similar masterful expe- 
 dients. Respecting this mansion, I afterwards learned, 
 that one of the last thrown from Du Nord in reply to 
 the bombardment had fired it. There was a beautiful 
 mansion belonging to an English family on the verge of the 
 Forest of Bondy before Raincy, and to the right rear of 
 the Villemomble station. If that family has yet come 
 back to what was once their home, they must have 
 recognised the need, not alone for the painter and glazier, 
 but for the mason also. The place was occupied by the 
 Saxons for about a month as Outpost No. 5, and Mont 
 Avron refused to respect its neutrality under such cir- 
 cumstances. It was as nearly as possible laid in ruins. 
 
 The fog was not so thick on the 14th ; but there 
 was a bright sunshine and a fall of small snow. Either 
 the air was in an exceptionally good condition for con-
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 327 
 
 ducting sound, or there was an exceptionally big din some- 
 where, for the noise of distant heavy firing came ever and 
 anon in a very discomposing way. Nothing in the siege 
 operations was calculated to make a conscientious man 
 more nervous than this undefined and indefinable sound of 
 remote firing. If he disregarded it and stopped at home, 
 induced thereunto by bitter inclemency outside and by 
 comfortable quarters inside, he could not quit himself, as 
 every wind -puff brought the noise toward him, of the dread 
 that he might be missing something of importance; and if 
 he kicked off the slippers and drew on the long boots, what, 
 oftencr than not, had he for his pains ? Many a time 
 did I chase this same sound much as a man hunts a Will- 
 of-the-wisp, ever thinking that the next crest would 
 bring me in sight of the work, only to be disappointed, 
 and be farther off the nucleus of the sound than when I 
 started. ( hi this occasion I hardened my heart sedu- 
 lously against the temptation, because there were reasons 
 why one should not be out of the way of head-quarters 
 even from hour to hour; but it is impossible to convey 
 to a home reader how uncomfortable this constant distant 
 unexplained booming made one. One consolation was 
 that head-quarters had no cognisance of anything ab- 
 normal going on ; and the sound was philosophically set 
 down, by those whose duty it was to know, as emanating 
 from the southern and eastern bombardment. 
 
 But about four o'clock in the afternoon the firing
 
 328 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 became so hot that one could stand the uncertainty no 
 longer. After all, when I got to Montmorency, it turned 
 out to be nothing very serious. The northern forts had 
 noticed something — it must have been very dimly — that 
 they did not like in the neighbourhood of the heights 
 above Montmagny and Pierrefitte, and were pegging 
 away very furiously at these seemingly solitary slopes. 
 Solitary, however, they were not, for the working parties 
 were taking advantage of the fog (which had thickened 
 since morning) to expedite by a spell of day work the 
 completion of the siege-batteries getting ready for St. 
 Denis. All round the forepost semicircle from Epinay 
 to Pierrefitte there was a tolerably brisk musketry fire, 
 but it was at long range, and no positive attacks fell to 
 be repelled. Argcnteuil had been full of noise all day, 
 fuller than usual. I think there is a chance of lead mines 
 being discovered in the vicinity of this town in some 
 future age. 
 
 Before going to Soisy, where I had an engagement 
 for the evening, I made a detour into Epinay, from 
 which direction the sound of the musketry fire came the 
 most strongly, to ascertain for myself what was doing. 
 That there were French sharpshooters on the long island in 
 the Seine, the crackling intermittent fire therefrom seemed 
 to prove, although the gentlemen themselves were in- 
 visible in the fog; while the German posts on the Epinay 
 bank now and then drew a bow at a very wild random
 
 FJIOM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 329 
 
 venture. When in Epinay this afternoon I saw handled 
 for the first time a weapon which I learned was coming 
 into considerable use along the northern foreposts. It 
 was called the waUbiicItse ; it was of the needle pattern, 
 hut the balls were of iron, and the calibre was at least 
 three times greater than that of the ordinary needle-gun, 
 while the range of the weapon was considerably longer. 
 It carried 2,000 metres, and sent a ball right through a 
 fascine stuffed in a battery. It was, however, a cumbrous 
 weapon, requiring to work it properly two men, one to 
 hold it on the shoulder, one to serve the breech-loading 
 apparatus. The recoil was so strong, that it required a 
 spring coil in the stock to .counteract it. The forepost 
 men were much fonder of the chassepot with which they 
 were supplied in considerable quantities; and were thus 
 able to meet the French sharpshooters on about equal 
 terms. 
 
 In Soisy in the evening I was present at the opening 
 of a packet sent from home to a young lieutenant of the 
 (3 6 tli Regiment, with whose Company I had been dining. 
 The worthy people, his parents in Magdeburg, understood 
 pretty well what were the wants before Paris. Here is 
 the inventory: — One ''box of very good cigars; a selec- 
 tion of wurst ; a bottle of mustard, unfortunately broken ; 
 a warm woollen comforter; a glorious piece of ilannel 
 for the chest ; a piece of German cheese ; two pair of 
 cork soles; two pair of long thick woollen stockings; a
 
 ;3;iO THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 pair of wadded goloshes ; fur gloves, photographs, a 
 letter. The transmission of the whole cost about 9d. 
 Verily the Feld post is a great institution ! 
 
 The 16 tli brought a total change of weather. Frost 
 and snow were alike gone, and we had a high wind from 
 the south, bringing frequent splashes of rain on its wings. 
 It brought something else besides rain — the bellow of 
 the bombardment in the south, which dinged steadily 
 from morn till night. There was a curious regularity in 
 the sound. It did not come in casual and fitful gusts, 
 but with a regular beat and stroke just like the working 
 
 o JO 
 
 of a steam-engine. The mist was gone, and although 
 the squalls, ay hen they came, dimmed the prospect for 
 the time, in the intervals the air was very clear, and one 
 could see long distances. I sat at my window half the 
 day, watching the southern bombardment. Strange as 
 it may appear, I could see it with the utmost distinct- 
 ness, owing to the elevated position of my habitation, 
 half-way up the hill of Montmorency. In the foreground 
 was Enghien and St. Gratien ; then, across the Seine, 
 Gennevilliers, Asnieres, and the other villages on the 
 peninsula ; then Paris itself, looking absurdly near. 
 With the glass I could see every detail in the structure 
 of the Arc de Triomphe ; and the dome of the Invalides 
 and the tower on Montmartre were equally plain. Eight 
 across Paris, on its farther margin, there was first a con- 
 tinuous streak of white smoke. This was from the. guns
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 331 
 
 on the enceinte. Farther away, in the middle of the 
 rising background, were three distinct patches of white 
 smoke. These must have been Forts Issy, Vanvres, and 
 Montroii£e. To iudire by the smoke, it was clear enough 
 that they were not silenced, nor anything near it. Still 
 farther away and close to — in some cases on — the horizon, 
 were more patches of white smoke, and these were the 
 German batteries. Much nearer to us, and farther to 
 the right, Mont Valerien had got his nightcap on, and 
 certainly was snoring in his sleep very heavily. Let 
 anybody try to look in this way across smoky London, 
 and see what a failure it would be. At all times the 
 atmosphere of Paris is clear; it was clearer than ever now 
 when fuel is so scarce. If shells, as was reported, were 
 regularly coming into Paris, they were not firing the city. 
 1 heard many expressions of pain and indignation 
 among the members of head-quarters stall* of the Maas 
 Army, on account of an utterly gratuitous falsehood put 
 in circulation by the Wiener Fremdenhlatt, to the effect 
 that disagreements had occurred between the King of 
 Prussia and the Crown Prince of Saxon v, and the King 
 of Saxony was coming to Versailles with intent to solder 
 up the unpleasantness. The falsehood was too apparent 
 to merit anvthin'' - but contempt. Throughout the sie^e 
 
 mi O 1 CD o 
 
 there never was anything but the utmost cordiality be- 
 tween Versailles and Alargency, and nobody could live 
 long in familiar relations with the latter head-fpiarters
 
 332 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 without becoming aware how genuine and hearty was this 
 cordiality as regarded the chiefs of the Maas Army ; and 
 — judging from every appearance — how reciprocal was 
 the good feeling. Ever since I became acquainted with the 
 composition of the Maas Army head-quarters staff, it had 
 impressed me strongly as being a really valuable and suc- 
 cessful auxiliary in the actual and virtual unification of 
 Germany. Here we had Saxon officers, Wiirtemburger 
 officers, Prussian officers, officers of the late Hanoverian 
 Army, all working together in the most enthusiastic and 
 genial manner, living together in the same quarters, 
 associating round the same board, taking their daily 
 rides together, and, in line, blending so thoroughly, that 
 the differences, of what can scarcely with truth be called 
 diverse nationality, were utterly invisible. The same 
 thorough blending was apparent right down the ladder 
 till it reached to the private soldiers ; among whom it 
 was as marked as higher up. Saxons, Guardsmen, and 
 Wurtemburgers, had stood to one another like men — like 
 Germans — in more than two or three bloody tussles with 
 the common enemy. They had shared the same bivouac ; 
 drank out of the same bottle; and they were, in the 
 words of the old sono - , "brethren all." A large share of 
 this thorough blending that had welded the Maas Army 
 into a consistent whole, from the staff to the field watch, 
 av;is due to the personal influence and personal attributes 
 of the Crown Prince of Saxony himself, the commander of
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 333 
 
 that army over since it was first formed. The soldiers 
 who were the subjects of his father spoke of their Prince 
 with a personal love and admiration which was right 
 pleasant to listen to. "He is a gallant soldier and a 
 true man/" said to me that wooden under-ofneer Schwltz, 
 his woodenness disappearing for the moment when he 
 came to talk of his Prince. And Prince Albert had like- 
 wise won the personal liking and respect of the whole of 
 his army, besides that portion of it which came out of 
 Saxony proper. The explanation is simple enough. He 
 is a plain, frank, manly soldier ; too fearless for the heir- 
 apparent to a kingdom ; utterly unskilled in Machiavel- 
 lianism, and, likely enough, quite blind to the advan- 
 tages it may possess. His metier was to command the 
 Maas Army, and he did so with credit and distinction. 
 My own estimate of his soldierly frankness and straight- 
 forwardness of purpose carried me on to this conviction 
 --that if on any point there ever occurred any misunder- 
 standing Itetween him and those at Versailles, he was 
 just the man to get into his little oak-painted carriage, 
 start oil' for Versailles without an escort— there never 
 was a more unassuming Prince in such respects — drop 
 into the Prefecture, have a quiet talk over the trouble 
 with the King — who is a man of much the same straight- 
 forward soldierly type as himself — put everything straight 
 by that great institution, '"'word of mouth," and drive 
 back again to dinner in Margcncy, nobody a whit the
 
 334 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Aviser ; except, perhaps, his sagacious chief of the staff 
 General von Schlottheim. But it was all but impossible 
 to conceive how a conjuncture demanding any such visit 
 could arise. 
 
 On the night of the lGth inst. there rendezvoused 
 in Margcncy the officers, under-officers, and privates 
 from the Guards and Saxons — one of each rank from 
 every regiment — who had been selected as representa- 
 tives to 1)0 present at the assumption of the Imperial 
 dignity by King Wilhelm. My "humble roof" was called 
 upon to afford accommodation for the sixteen officers. 
 It is a little curious how thus fortuitously I should have 
 come into close contact with the military deputation after 
 having casually hit upon the civil one at Lagny in its 
 way home from Versailles. Monsieur Bourgeois^ at the 
 corner, had some very good cognac ; and among Madame 
 Sapey's goods and chattels, of which I was the temporary 
 beneficiary holder, was a jolly big punch-bowl. I rather 
 think we made a night of it, but M. Jules, Madame's 
 serving-man, was equal to the occasion with a continuous 
 flow of boiling water. Jules' personal opinion was, that 
 Messieurs les Prussiens were bons r/arpons. 
 
 My guests, especially the sprightly young Guardsmen, 
 were curiously cynical about the, event of the morrow, in 
 which they were to be participators. A studied absten- 
 tion from the display of any emotion is fashionable 
 among other Guards besides our own, but I should not
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 335 
 
 have cared to be the man to chime in with this tone of 
 the Prussian Guardsmen. One can take a good many 
 liberties with the German if one only goes the right way 
 about it; but there are topics on which one is sure to put 
 his foot in it, if not very careful. I remember one day in 
 tin.' early part of the war, as I lay under a hedge near 
 Vouziers, in the Ardennes, a train-man, with his short 
 sword drawn, rode by me, hectoring a Frenchman, whose 
 horse he wished to requisition, and he turned to me with 
 a humorous grumble about the hardship of his duties. 
 Taking up his tone, I asked him banteringly what he 
 carried his " bread-knife " thus exposed for I Heaven 
 and earth ! you should have seen the man's face change, 
 lie called me a pig-dog ; he swore he would split me up 
 from thigh to throat for insulting the Prussian arms; and 
 he looked uncommonly like as if lie would carry his 
 threat into execution. The more 1 tried to throw oil on 
 tlic water the fiercer he got, and I really began to fear 
 that 1 should have to recall old defensive memories with 
 my walking-stick, when an officer opportunely turned up. 
 I have no doubt these Guardsmen would have taken 
 seriously amiss any chiming in with the tone in which 
 they thought it comme il tout to adopt regarding their 
 mission. 
 
 Xext morning (the 17th) the deputation waited on the 
 Grown Prince of Saxony, and received his cordial con- 
 gratulations as to the object of their mission ; and then
 
 33G THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 they took the road for Versailles, whither His Eoyal 
 Highness, and the leading members of his staff', followed 
 them. Versailles was off my beat, so I set my face east- 
 ward with intent to see what was doing among the bat- 
 teries in that direction ; and on a whisper — not on 
 authority— that there might be a chance of seeing some 
 more active operations than the besiegers had lately been 
 indulging in on the eastern face. My road lay along the 
 top of the ridge between Sarcelles and Bonneuil, whence 
 a wide and sweeping view is commanded. The day, 
 atmospherically, was one by itself — one of those dull, 
 surly, yet semi-clear days, that are commoner in summer 
 when thunder is in the air than in mid-winter. Under 
 such circumstances, the aspect which Paris presented was 
 weirdly unique. There is a town in the south of Scotland 
 around which lingers to this day a ghastly memory of, 
 which the elders shudder when they speak, and of which 
 the young ones are thankful that they had no personal 
 experience. Dumfries stands in the bottom of a cup, 
 the edges of which are formed by hills. At no time is 
 there much circulation of air. When fogs prevail, or 
 when there is a stagnation of the wind, the stillness is 
 positively painful. In 1832 the cholera raged in Britain, 
 and it fastened its fell fangs on Dumfries. For days, for 
 weeks, for months, it claimed its victims, till one-eighth 
 of the population had been heaved into the pits in the 
 churchyard, and till the ill report of the pestilential place
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. :):)7 
 
 was so strong; that never a vendor dared enter it with his 
 wares. And all these days — days when the pest stalked 
 abroad relentless— there hung over the cup, in the bottom 
 of which stands the town, a dull, heavy film — not dense, 
 indeed, but mystically altering the sun-rays from bright 
 gold to a lurid orange, and mantling the whole place 
 with its evil shadow, as if some foul and persistent ogre 
 of death were spreading his pinions over the place. As 
 men walked the streets they felt to smell the cholera- 
 breath, so stagnant and rotten was the air, and they went 
 home and wanted graves ere morning. Let any man 
 who would realise how a death-pall like this can hang 
 over a city, read in Macdowall's "History of Dumfries" 
 the chapter where the author describes the ghastly 
 features of this visitation. As 1 looked down on Paris 
 to-day there came vividly before me the description I 
 had read of Dumfries in o2. All round it, save on the 
 north side, surged up the foam of the white smoke of the 
 bombardment. Over if hung the dull brown pall of the 
 smoke thrown up by the exploding shells and the casual 
 conflagrations, not large but frequent, which they occa- 
 sioned. I nderneath —below this brooding demon of 
 brown smok< — the city showed out wondrous clear and 
 plain. At times the sun's rays struggled through the 
 black clouds that underlay the heavens; fell on the 
 brown pall ; battled through the crannies in it; and 
 kissed lovingly some white, house or metal roof in the
 
 ;338 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 beautiful city. Never can I forget the strangely beau- 
 tiful and yet almost ghastly and utterly abnormal effect. 
 The eastern batteries had taken to volley firing. Instead 
 of timing their shots so that you might have counted a 
 patient's pulse thereby, they now loaded almost simul- 
 taneously and fired almost simultaneously. The two bat- 
 teries between Pont Iblon and Dugny were at work with 
 great energy as I passed behind them, firing towards St. 
 Denis, but, as I take it, chiefly dropping their projectiles 
 into Courneuve. The Blanc Mesnil and Aulnay batteries 
 were pegging away at Drancy, which looked forlorn 
 enough to move the bowels of their compassion, if they 
 had any. There had been no return fire for some hours, 
 as I was assured by the under-officer when I halted in the 
 little battery for a while. Our shells were falling and 
 exploding all about the place, but never a shell came 
 back. Now, it is easy enough, if a shell happens to come 
 to hand to you, to know whether over against you on the 
 enemy's side it is a shell that has exploded or a gun that 
 has been fired, but if you don't hear the whizz and see (or 
 feel) the splinters, it is rather bothersome to distinguish 
 the difference. The sergeant and I agreed for a quarter 
 of an hour that Drancy was silent, and that the explo- 
 sions in its vicinity were the shells he was projecting, but 
 suddenly there came a jet of smoke, not upwards and 
 umbrella-shaped, but forwards and then upwards, in 
 shape like a series of bed-pillows, and I ventured to
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. :5o9 
 
 express my opinion that these appearances betokened a 
 shot. He differed in opinion — he was a "yearling" — • 
 hut he owned up to his mistake like a man when the 
 shell came whizzing over the parapet and exploded in 
 the field, about one hundred yards behind the battery. 
 This is the only evidence I saw that any battery on the 
 east side of* Paris was alive, with the exception of La 
 Boissiere, which was firing very steadily in reply to the 
 Kaincy batteries. 
 
 I had my ride to Clichy for next to nothing. And 
 yet it was not for nothing. My eastward trip satisfied 
 me that there was no immediate prospect of any attempt 
 to establish batteries on Mont Avron or to assault any of 
 the eastern forts, as I had vaguely heard was in contem- 
 plation. The status quo of steady slogging at the forts 
 and batteries of junction was steadily maintained, with- 
 out much apparent effect; but the people working them 
 seemed satisfied, and it was not for outsiders to grumble. 
 There was a rumour about grins having- had what is vul- 
 garly known as a ''skinful" of work, and having to be 
 allowed to rest ; but if this was the case, certainly the 
 other pieces were made to work double tides. The silent 
 sulkiness of the forts was still preserved, with the ex- 
 ception of Aubervilliers, which was given to losing; its 
 temper now and then, and let drive in some direction or 
 other. The St. Denis forts were very quiet on the 18th ; 
 their calm trustfulness in a peaceful future was touching - .
 
 •'HO THE WAR BETWEEN PRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 but, as they discovered by-and-by, fallacious. Argenteuil 
 Avas vexed on the same day by much musketry fire ; but 
 Argenteuil was ever a barking dog, and the bite was 
 never reported. 
 
 All the northern side the Maas army made merry on 
 the 18th in honour of the event which on that day oc- 
 curred in Versailles. Champagne was the first tipple to 
 oive out in the officers' casino in Gonesse. But when 
 the champagne was done, the fellows philosophically took 
 to beer, and when that in its turn was drunk out, they 
 tackled the red wine without an apprehension as to the 
 intestine commotion the heterogeneous mixture seemed 
 calculated to produce. Weak stomachs are luxuries not 
 to be indulged in by campaigners. 
 
 After a sulky, lowering, gloomy morning on the 19th, 
 there came a clearance of the weather in the forenoon, 
 and with it tidings of an important sortie to the south- 
 west and west. No part of the Maas army was engaged, 
 with the exception of the artillery division of the 4th 
 Army Corps, generally quartered in Sannois. The bat- 
 teries to the northward of Valerien, at Nanterre, Cour- 
 bevoie, &c, and the big fort itself became eruptive about 
 ten a.m. ; and it soon became apparent that they were 
 firing to cover the advance of French infantry by the 
 roads and through the valleys of the peninsula of Gen- 
 uevilliers. The columns of these headed for Rueil, de- 
 signed to coalesce with troops that had come out behind
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. .'HI 
 
 Yalerien round its northern shoulder, and struck out for 
 Bougival, their front covered by skirmishers, and the 
 batteries firing furiously over their heads. The attack 
 extended all the way round to Montretout and the park 
 wall of St. Cloud, and on this flank the fighting was 
 heaviest and the sortie assumed the most important di- 
 mensions. A contingent was detailed to threaten Chaton. 
 ( hi a splendid position in front of the carrieres of St. 
 Denis, the artillery of the 4th Army Corps took up its 
 ground, and made brilliant practice in enfilading the 
 French advance on RueiL as well as in convincing the 
 force that set its face towards Chaton that it was not 
 wanted there, and that a strategical movement in the 
 direction of its own rear was an advisable operation. 1 
 heard bickers of musketry fire from the direction of Bou- 
 gival till nigh sundown, but about four o'clock the 
 artillery made the only sound on our face. 
 
 Tip' artillery of the 4th Army Corps lost four men 
 and six horses. They were the targets, nevertheless, of 
 a very furious tire ; but the shells fell into the mud, 
 which was nearly knee deep, and although they duly 
 exploded, were muffled by the mire and did little dam- 
 age. The feature of the sortie, as regarded the northern 
 side, was the armoured railway train, which came out on 
 the St. Germain line, considerably beyond Nanterre. 
 and proceeded deliberately to exchange discharges with 
 the German batteries. There were two gun-trucks in
 
 3-12 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 fi'ont of the protected locomotive ; eacli truck mounting 
 a long gun that worked on a pivot, and seemed at once 
 a very handy implement, and one, from the protection 
 the armour afforded, tolerably safe to work. The Ger- 
 man artillerymen devoted themselves chiefly to efforts 
 for hitting and disabling the locomotive, and succeeded 
 so for as to damage the chimney — which was unprotected 
 — whereupon the affair retired into the rear of Nanterre. 
 It was Ducrot's command, marching from St. Denis, 
 which our artillery enfiladed to so much purpose as to 
 delay its progress till too late to take the share which 
 had been assigned to it in the operations of the day. 
 
 The Germans were evidently not filled with deep ap- 
 prehensions as to the last writhings of the captive in 
 their grasp here. Artillery was held to form bonds quite 
 as strong as the infantry grip which so long had held 
 Paris down. In accordance with a policy which I have 
 foreshadowed, portions of the besieging army were al- 
 ready being spared to co-operate in more active opera- 
 tions elsewhere. On the 18th the 16th Brigade of the 
 4th Army Corps was dispatched by railway from Go- 
 nesse to St. Quentin, to strengthen the hands of von 
 Gobcn. In addition to this exodus, there was on the 
 same day a general movement of the troops on the north- 
 ern front. Details would be Avearisome, but the general 
 result was what might be termed a bracing up of the 
 inner circle. The sortie of the 18th did not seem in the
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 348 
 
 slightest degree to interrupt the relentless prosecution of 
 the bombardment on the south and south-west. I judged 
 as much by the evidences of firing which were audible 
 to us on the north side in the intervals of the fog and 
 rain. A German journalist, who was my temporary 
 guest, employed one of those intervals on the 19th in 
 earnestly contemplating Paris through a powerful field- 
 glass, preserving meanwhile a rigid taciturnity. When 
 the prospect once more became obscured, he turned to 
 the fire with the sententious observation, " Dey are get- 
 ting dare gruel." The phrase smacked, of Jemmy Shaw's 
 or lien Caunt's, at which haunts, I understand, my guest 
 had been a frequent visitor during his single short visit 
 to England ; but it was very expressive. They were 
 " getting their gruel," those citizens and soldiers in the 
 white city out there to the south; and. the man who 
 should refrain to bear testimony to the enduring con- 
 staney and valour with which they were taking the 
 punishment, would have claim neither to the title of a 
 truthful reporter, nor to a capacity for some appreciation 
 of a spectacle and an event unique in modern times. 
 
 Militarv writers are busy just now in analysing: the 
 distinctions between an army of the people and a pro- 
 fessional army. 1 saw an incident on the afternoon of 
 the 19th, trivial in itself, but which to the comprehension 
 of one familiar with the attributes of a professional 
 armv, and who had been also for some months studying
 
 344 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the workings of a national military system, was not 
 without its significance. In a field I passed a squad of 
 young soldiers who were practising the bayonet exercise. 
 Presently the drill instructor stood his pupils at ease, 
 whereupon, instead of grounding arms and listlessly 
 Avaiting for the next " Attention," the squad fell each 
 man to practising industriously the lessons that had just 
 been imparted. There was one young fellow lunging as 
 if he would skewer the garrison of Paris ; another pre- 
 paring to receive cavalry with a pertinacity that must 
 have struck terror into a brigade of horsemen. Then the 
 men took to criticising each other's performances, not 
 chaffingly, but quite seriously, and even anxiously, 
 individual expressions of opinion being, so to speak, 
 illustrated with cuts. Now, is there a drill-sergeant in 
 the British army who can conscientiously assert he ever 
 witnessed a similar " stand-at-ease " episode in any squad 
 he has ever drilled 1 I have seen a good many squads 
 drilled, but the chief occupations of such intervals I 
 have ever noted to be chewing tobacco, surreptitious 
 attempts at horse-play, and anxious glances at the 
 barrack clock. There is a standing direction to cavalry 
 recruits in our service that they shall take opportunities 
 for practising the sword exercise in their leisure hours. 
 Whoever saw a cavalry recruit fulfilling this injunction ? 
 In some barrack-rooms there are masks and single-sticks, 
 but their use is confined to a few who have had some
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. ol5 
 
 knowledge of cudgel play before enlisting. The Germans 
 cannot touch the French as swordsmen, but botli could 
 walk round and laugh at us. An English Dragoon can 
 cut the sword exercise without depriving his horse of its 
 head, and about one in every three is tolerably dexterous 
 at " heads and posts," but not one in twenty have 
 any conception of utilising the sword exercise in 
 actual self-defence. Yet the sword exercise is the mere 
 means to a defensive and offensive end ; it is what 
 Euclid is to the practical utilisation of the science of 
 geometry. 
 
 " Eight o'clock to-morrow morning, sharp to time, on 
 the steps of the Schloss." These were the parting words 
 to me on the night of the 20th, uttered bv an officer of 
 the Crown Prince's staff, to whom I was indebted for 
 many kindnesses. ' : Sharp to time ' 1 was, but the steps 
 of the Schloss looked quite forlorn in their desolation. 
 1 1 was. in truth, a forlorn and disheartening morning. 
 All the Maas Army, from the Prince to the private, 
 wished for bright, clear weather, and you could not see 
 twenty yards before you. Was this an omen? Did it 
 signify that what the weather could do to throw obstacles 
 in the way of bombarding Paris, it meant to do with 
 persistence .' If so, the weather must have owned that it 
 reckoned for very little when the ( Jermans had their minds 
 made up on a line of action. The night before every- 
 thing had been reported read v. Colonel Bartseh was not
 
 346 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the man to leave loose stitches in his work, and the 
 answering telegram came from Versailles, " Go ahead at 
 discretion." I ought by the way to give a brief detail of 
 what manner of work it was that Colonel Bartsch with his 
 coadjutors Colonels Impe and Oppcrmann had done. 
 The armament of the new batteries consisted chiefly of 
 the siege-train employed in the reduction of Mezieres, 
 and it had been brought down by the railway to Villers- 
 le-Bel, whence it had been brought, partly on the night 
 of the 19th and partly on that of the 20th, into the 
 emplacements which had been stealthily prepared for it 
 more than a week before. The batteries were ten in 
 number, mounting sixty- two guns, of which thirty-six 
 were ordinary 24-poundcrs, eight long 24-pounders, 
 twelve long 12-pounders, and six short 12-pounders. 
 There were also two mortars in position behind the Stains 
 batteries. The guns might have been earlier pushed 
 forward, but there was no occasion for hurry in this 
 respect, pending the accumulation of a sufficiency of 
 ammunition. Commencino- on the risdit, there was no 
 battery in the neighbourhood of Epinay. The nimble 
 gunboats might have enfiladed batteries here. The field 
 batteries on Mont d'Orgimont could take care that they 
 did not do so as regards the other two in that neighbour- 
 hood, which might otherwise have been affected by them. 
 These were-— one battery (No. 30) of six 24-pounders 
 behind Ormesson on the left of the Rouen Railway,
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 347 
 
 directed against La Bridie; one battery (No. 29) of .short 
 1 impounders at La Barre, a little nearer Montmorency. 
 Between Enghien and La Clievrette, almost directly in 
 front of Montmorency, there was a third battery (No. 28) 
 of 24-pounders. The battery of long 24-pounders (No. 27) 
 stood just in front of the terrace of Montmorency, with 
 a 1 lattery of short 24-pounders (No. 26) below it, above 
 Deuil. The height known indifferently as Richebourg or 
 Pierrefitte (lyins: between the village of the latter name 
 and Montmagny) presents on its summit nearest St. 
 Denis a splendid offensive position for artillery, domi- 
 nating alike all the forts; but the position was so 
 much exposed, that it had been wisely avoided, without 
 anv detriment to efficiency. This long bluff, whose nose 
 looks out into St. Denis, contracts about its middle, so 
 that its promontorium throws forward, as it were, two 
 -Inhering wings for butteries stationed in the narrow 
 waist behind. Its shape roughly resembles that of a 
 wasp. This configuration of ground had been admirably 
 utilised. The summit had not been loaded with guns. 
 but two batteries (Nos. 2.*) and 24) had been, as it were, 
 slung pannier-wise across the narrow waist, one on either 
 side, so that they could throw a telling indirect and 
 plunging lire down into the forts, while the bastion-like 
 blutf in front of each was an effective screen against 
 the French return-fire. No. 2:> was just above Pierre- 
 fitte. ( hi the slope behind the village of Stains (farther
 
 348 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 round to the east), with the butt ends of the guns 
 toward Garges, were four batteries with the howitzers. 
 On an advantageous position between Pierrefitte and 
 Stains were batteries Nos. 22 and 21, and the mortars. 
 Thus there was a converging fire on the focus of the 
 forts from the radius of very nearly a semicircle. 
 Of course the fog mattered something. True, the 
 sights had been taken and distances calculated over- 
 night, but gunners, like other Christians, have a natural 
 pleasure in viewing the results of their handiwork, and 
 with a clear atmosphere openings may present themselves 
 that a mist effectually conceals. To give, then, the fog 
 a chance to rise, the hour of commencing the bombard- 
 ment Lad been altered from eight to nine. There was 
 something melodramatic in the expectancy scene, and I 
 wished that I were an artist. The mist had partially 
 lifted. On the broad steps of the Schloss stood the 
 ( !rown Prince, watch in hand, his handsome face bright 
 with the excitement of expectancy. Behind him, in 
 wistful silence, stood several members of the staff. 
 Saddled horses, fretting at the restraint, were being led 
 up and down oil the lawn. At the gates were visible 
 the watching faces of the straggling military and semi- 
 
 & no o J 
 
 military population of Margency — gendarmes, ordonanz- 
 nien, feld-postillions, the butcher, the Prince's grooms, 
 and a representative of the markctender species. 1 
 • met' heard a travelling showman bawling in front oi his
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. olO 
 
 booth, "'• Valk Imp, ladies and gentlemen, and sec the 
 Hempror Solomon in hall his glory. Vith vim heye he 
 is a-kintemplatin' the Temple, vith t'other he is ogling 
 the Kveen of Sheba." As a feat of optics, this was a 
 wonderful performance ; but I would not be certain that 
 our telegraph clerk did not match it this morning. He 
 stood just inside the door of the office, and it certainly 
 seemed to me that he had one eye fixed on the Crown 
 Prince's face and the other on his instrument. A natural 
 squint may have contributed to the facility of this dual 
 vision. 
 
 The clock of the Mairie struck the first chime of nine ; 
 there came rolling up from Ormesson a dull muffled re- 
 port ; nearer in the wood behind the Schloss there Avas a 
 clash, as a tree crashed down, that the woodsmen had 
 kept upright by a single fibre in waiting for the event. 
 Before nine had done striking the single report had 
 swelled into a heavy diapason; the Crown Prince was 
 in the saddle ; the telegraph clerk hard at work with my 
 message t<> England. So bcLfan the bombardment of St. 
 Denis. Alas, for the short-lived lifting of the foe:. Every- 
 body had fixed his own point, just as you see sportsmen 
 branching oil' when the hounds irive token that they have 
 found a fox in the cover. The quickest was not in time- 
 to see so much as the smoke from a single cannon. For 
 the fii'iii" - drew down the heavy mantle airain, and the 
 ears wen 1 the only organs called into exercise. The Crown
 
 350 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Prince, with General Schlottheim and an aide, sat out the 
 fog in his elevated eyry on Mont d'Orgimont, and must 
 have been rewarded by a partial glimpse of what was 
 swing on between twelve and one, when the fog again 
 lifted, or rather grew thinner. I tried place after place, 
 but utterly in vain. Montmorency was blank, save for a 
 general and a doctor ; the white house on the crest above 
 it had a balcony thronged with staff officers, and a sea of 
 dense mist surrounding it. Enghien Avas a weariness of 
 the flesh, and dangerously close quarters to boot. So I 
 came home to my interrupted breakfast, and abode in 
 hope that the mist might disappear later in the afternoon. 
 The hope was destined to be fallacious. Although the 
 mist did occasionally rise, just enough to tantalise one 
 with expectation, it regularly came down again as heavily 
 as ever. The Crown Prince, after three hours' weary and 
 bootless sojourn in the little room in the observatorium, 
 returned to lunch and discontent. Still the guns kept 
 thundering on steadily ; now warming to their work in 
 the clearer intervals, then falling to the minimum regula- 
 tion number of shots as the mist wreathed round them. 
 Of results of my own knowledge I could not speak, 
 because I had not been able to see anything, with the 
 exception of a vague and dim attempt on the part of the 
 French heavily-armed batteries at St. Ouen to enfilade 
 our westmost one at Ormesson. This was about four 
 o'clock — 1 mean what I saw. The attempt may have
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 351 
 
 been going on before, and may have lasted longer. I 
 merely caught a casual glimpse through a chink in the 
 mist. It was respect for these batteries at St. Ouen 
 which had prevented the erection of any German batter}" 
 nearer the Seine than Ormesson, and the contingency of 
 a flanking fire from them had been carefully guarded 
 against. The idea respecting the French fire impressed 
 during the day on experienced artillery officers was that, 
 although keen enough after noon, 'when the forts, and 
 especially La Bridie, pulled themselves together after the 
 staggerer of the morning, the St. Denis forts were but 
 weakly armed, and that with artillery of small calibre 
 and short range ; and the correctness of this estimate was 
 vindicated on the surrender. One strong proof of this 
 was that there seemed to be no attempt made to cope 
 with the long 24-pounderson the brow of Montmorencv, 
 and the warmest French fire was directed against the 
 heights of Richebourg, where the batteries were much 
 nearer the fortresses. Of casualties on the German side 
 the list fir the day was trivial ; oik 1 man was killed and 
 three wounded (one an officer), belonging to the Guard 
 Fusilier Regiment, (quartered in .Montmagny. This village 
 was below the battery, and the damage must have been 
 done by a blind shell bred from La Rriche. I had ex- 
 pected a greater number of casualties, since the nature of 
 i he intermediate ground, well suited as it was for deploy- 
 ment under cover of mist or night, necessitated on the
 
 352 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 part of the Germans the retention of comparatively strong 
 parties of troops in the villages and on the posts in front 
 of the batteries. Even if the French did not fire into 
 these intentionally, it is obvious that there was a likely 
 billet for such projectiles as fell short. I thought this 
 forenoon, as 1 looked out on the grey billows that filled 
 the valley, what a chance there was for resolute men to 
 make a spurt and give trouble and alarm at least, if they 
 could do nothing else. And several times the rattling 
 echoes of the big-gun reports sounded like the bicker of 
 musketry ; and once or twice I made sure the infantry 
 were at it ; but no, it was only the sharp reverberation 
 of the reports in the hills and dells behind. The town of 
 St. Denis was reported at nightfall to be burning. All 
 Paris might have been in one blaze for aught we in Mont- 
 morency could have told. But adventurous patrols 
 brought the news in from the precincts of Villanteneuse 
 that a large fire was raging in one place and two smaller 
 ones elsewhere 1 . A bad hour for the ladies of St. Denis, 
 who, daintily gloved and booted, had admired the stalwart 
 limbs of the Prussian Guardsmen taken prisoners at Le 
 Bourget, and likened the soldiers of their own garrison to 
 dwarfs alongside of the big East Prussian men. There 
 was a bitter flitting this bleak January night, I ween, 
 along the straight road leading by the pretty suburb of 
 St. Ouen into the already densely-packed Montmartre. 
 And the citizens of Paris would meet the exiled ones of
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 353 
 
 St. Denis, and asking them " What cheer \ " would get 
 for answer that the inexorable Prussian cannon were 
 smashing; and burning on the north as on the south. 
 Would the strong hearts melt, we asked ourselves, the 
 tension of the stern determination overstrain itself, and 
 so relax into the conviction that enough had been done 
 against fate, against possibility, — against the luck that 
 every Frenchman strives to hope for in the future — to 
 prove to the world that Paris was not a place of frivolous 
 pleasure lovers only, but that the lovers of pleasure in 
 the old luxurious peaceful city knew how to dare and to 
 endure beyond all previous conception ? 
 
 At night the German fire was allowed to drop away 
 to one shot per hour from each gun — sixty per hour, or 
 one shot per minute — mere snow-flake business in com- 
 parison witli the day's cannonade ; and that was said to 
 have been comparatively mild on account of the fog. 
 
 Is the reader in a humour fa- a dose of statistics '. If 
 not he can skip this paragraph. There were, sav, sixty 
 German guns tiring steadily all day at the St. Denis forts. 
 Twice 1 timed the fire, and on one occasion made it 
 twelve, on the other fourteen, shots per minute from the 
 aggregated batteries. Put there were periods of lull 
 occasioned by fog, etc., and 1 have no doubt I am consi- 
 derably within the mark when L say that six shots were 
 fired per minute during the seven hours from nine a.m. 
 till four p.m. This gives a gross total of 3,220 shots
 
 351 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 fired in that time. Of the batteries six were armed with 
 24-pounders, eacli throwing a shell of 52lbs. weight, four 
 with 12-pounders, each gun throwing an elongated pro- 
 jectile of 2 Gibs, weight. It follows that the six 24-pound 
 batteries threw in the time I have named 100,464lbs. 
 weight, and the four 12-pound batteries 33,280lbs. weight 
 of material ; or, in other words, there were pitched into 
 St. Denis during seven hours of this day very little under 
 sixty tons of lead, iron, and powder. Fancy how the 
 intermediate air must have been torn and vexed by 
 3,220 huge projectiles darting through it at an average 
 velocity of 250 miles per minute. Fancy this pelting 
 of colossal hailstones tumbling into so limited an area 
 with a shower so profuse and yet so unremitting. Hail- 
 stones, say I % Why, hailstones are not full of powder, 
 and do not explode, sending from half a dozen to a dozen 
 massive, jagged, fanged fragments and splinters abroad 
 centrifugolly into upward space. There was used for 
 each charge of a 24-pouiider, six pounds of powder, 
 therefore the firing oft' of the 1,932 shots fired by the 
 guns of this calibre, used up 11,; 592lbs. of powder. For 
 each charge of a 12-pounder was required a little over 
 411 is. of powder — say 411 is. ; this gives the quantity 
 used up by the 1,2 SO shots fired from guns of this 
 calibre at about 5,120lbs. Total quantity of powder 
 used in charges lG,712lbs. Each shell fired from a 
 24 -pounder gun contained four pounds of powder for
 
 FllOM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 355 
 
 explosive purposes — on the day's fire 7,7:23 lbs. of powder 
 fired away inside the larger shells. Each shell fired by 
 a 1:2 -pounder gun contains 2 1-lOlbs. of powder — say 
 2lbs. — on the <lay's fire of this description of ammuni- 
 tion, 3,5G0lbs. of powder shot away inside shells. The 
 consumption of powder in charges and for explosive pur- 
 poses was, therefore, within a fraction of 22,000lbs., or, 
 as nearly as may be, ten tons of powder alone consumed 
 in a single day in one section of the bombardment. 
 Remember they were at it on the east and on the south 
 also, and one cannot be far wrong in estimating that in 
 this one day there were close on 200 tons of projectile 
 matter thrown upon the beleaguered forts and city out of 
 tie' mouths of German cannon. The reckoning takes no 
 account of the return fire, which was no trifle. Think of 
 the labour and transport power involved in bringing to 
 the front all the way from Germany 200 tons of material 
 per diem for an indefinite number of days. 
 
 Ii seems to me that the whole war hardly afforded a 
 more striking example of the military genius of von 
 ■Moltke than the opportune railway trip he ordered for 
 the L()tli Brigade, forming part of the Maas army. Cal- 
 culation had furnished him with evidence that von 
 Guben would make his mark at St. Quentin all the 
 deeper if he were strengthened by 4,000 or 5,000 men 
 and a lew guns; calculation and good information told 
 him the hour at which this help would be good at need. 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AXD GERMANY. 
 
 The brigade quietly went away for the fight just as a 
 lawyer goes down to Beading or Gloucester for the 
 circuit ; and the work done, it came back to its quarters 
 before Paris just as the lawyer comes back to his cases in 
 the Court of Queen's Bench. This device simply for the 
 time converted 5,000 men into 10,000 men. Napoleon I. 
 was, perhaps, the greatest utihser of his soldiery by 
 means of rapid movements, of all von Moltke's prede- 
 cessors ; but then Napoleon had not the locomotive and 
 the militiir-zug. 
 
 I never knew a German officer or soldier who was a 
 family man that did not carry about with him photo- 
 graphs of the wife and the children. By this time the 
 cartes were getting dirty and thumb-marked, for they 
 were had out for inspection and admiration very often. 
 You would see a couple of officers in the casino or at the 
 mess table interchanging sights of photographs, and then 
 would come a gossip about the children's ages. I 
 watched the growth of a warm friendship between two 
 gentlemen of my acquaintance, the first link in which 
 was the discovery, at one of those quiet talks over the 
 pictures, that one had a boy and the other a girl, who 
 had been born on the very same day of the very same 
 year. I have seen two huge hairy sentinels at a double 
 post far to the front exhibiting one to the other the gal- 
 It ay of family portraits, fetched out of a sweat-besmirched 
 pocket in the breast of the tunic. On the afternoon of
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 357 
 
 the 21st I was standing bv the white house on the hill 
 behind Andilly, trying with but little success to get a 
 glimpse of the firing through the fog bank, when there 
 joined nic two or three men of the 26th Regiment, and 
 we naturally fell into conversation. Presently, as I 
 turned to go, one of them remarked in perfectly good 
 English, " Heigho ! I wish this weary war was over, and 
 I back in New York." The man had been for some 
 years earning his two dollars a day as a house-painter in 
 New York, and had got married and begot sons and 
 daughters. "When the war broke out he threw down his 
 brush, shipped himself, wife, and daughter — the boys 
 were dead — on board a North German Lloyd steamer 
 and had fallen into his place in the ranks with no more 
 fuss or consciousness of extra patriotism than if he had 
 come for a holiday. It is the fact that men like this are 
 in the ranks of the former that makes the difference 
 between a national and a professional army. Of course, 
 out came tin; photographs — he carried them, to be handy, 
 inside the folded cuff of his great coat. "Ah! isn't she 
 a fine woman just, and isn't the girl a beauty '. ' lie 
 was proud of his belongings, and had no stuck-up reti- 
 cenee about owning up to his pride. As I walked home 
 after leaving him I fell a pondering on the differences in 
 national idiosyncrasies, and there came to my recollection 
 the pictorial contents of sundry French officers' knap- 
 sacks that German officers spoke of after Sedan and
 
 358 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Metz, their noses in the air as if they inhaled a foul 
 stink. Also whether it were in the nature of things that 
 boozy old Tommy Tudor of the Royals should carry 
 about with him, if sent on foreign service, the photograph 
 of that slattern barrack-drudge, his wife Poll, whom 
 human eye never saw but with dirty face, toozled hair, 
 and a young one imbibing nutriment at a fount of nature 
 extremely patent to the naked eye ? 
 
 During the 22nd, 23rd and until four o'clock on the 
 afternoon of the 24th, the bombardment of the St. Denis 
 forts was conducted very languidly, the fog on the latter 
 day being even exceptionally dense. At four there 
 sprung up a furious cannonade, which was obviously not 
 all one-sided. The French had utilised the night and 
 the foggy day to repair the damages done to the forts by 
 the bombardment ; to bring into du Nord heavier 
 guns than it had previously been manned with, and to 
 throw out a field artillery force backed by infantry and 
 gunboats to threaten Epinay and Ormesson ; and then 
 they assumed the offensive when the fog partly lifted at 
 four o'clock p.m. Listening to it I thought I heard in- 
 fantry fire, but the echoes very so very deceptive, that I 
 was assured that I was mistaken. There was a furious 
 two-handed cannonade, lasting for an hour and a half. 
 By seven p.m. all was over, and our guns had dropped 
 back into the usual night average. 
 
 Two artillery officers, one a captain, were killed on the
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 359 
 
 24th in one of the batteries. On the previous night, a 
 reconnaissance accompanied by engineers, approached 
 close to the St. Denis glacis, and their report was that 
 great damage had been done to the fortifications. In 
 consequence of an attack of fever, I was an invalid from 
 the 22nd to the 25th, and unable to gather information 
 *at first hand — always infinitely the best method. 
 
 When my servant (who dwelt in Margency with 
 my horses) came for letters on the night of the 25th, 
 he reported the probability of a sortie. I asked him 
 where ? Tie had no idea ; his information was derived 
 from an orderly who was forbidden to speak plainly as to 
 the news he brought. Morning, however, brought nothing 
 bur the steadily remorseless lire from our batteries 
 against St. 1 )enis. There was no rattle of musketry borne 
 rearward on the light wind ; no sharp crack of field artil- 
 lery filled up the brief pauses in the deep-throated noise 1 
 of the siege guns. ! found my way to the old haunt, the 
 emplacement in front of Montmorency. Just below me 
 were two lone- 24-pounders trying their hardest to repre- 
 senf six. ]>y night there were to be six there in reality ; 
 originally there had been eight in this battery. Of these, 
 six the night before had gone down into the middle of 
 the plain, some eight hundred paces to the west of the 
 Chateau of \ illantcneusc. From the batteries in front of 
 Enghicn the short 24-pounders had been moved forward 
 to a position between the railway and the hamlet of La
 
 360 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Barre, where the traveller by rail may no doubt still see tlie 
 remains of the emplacement. The short 12-pounders from 
 La Barre had been moved still farther forward, considerably 
 in advance of the Epinay railway station, and near the 
 side road which quits the chaussee to diverge into the 
 village of La Briche. They were within about 1,200 paces 
 of the glacis of Fort La Briche. The batteries on the * 
 heights of Kichcbourg, repudiating all need for a friendly 
 screen, had come audaciously to the front, and were now 
 cocked one on either side of the slope of the eminence. 
 The French continued to fire both from La Briche and 
 Du Nord, solely at the nearer batteries. Their practice 
 was utterly contemptible. I saw shell after shell fall 
 and explode in the open plain quite six hundred paces- 
 be] and the battery at which it must have been aimed — 
 that is to say, no other rational aim was apparent. Since 
 the opening of the new and near batteries the French 
 had not succeeded in hitting them once. It seemed to 
 me that their fire was quite thrown away for want of 
 system. Now it was a shell which you might guess 
 aimed at Epinay; now one full in Eughien — the outside 
 of their range ; then two or three in succession were let 
 fly at the new batteries, all dropping wide. Presently 
 Du Xord would fulminate impotently and intermittently 
 against Picrrcfitte and Stains ; and then the gunners 
 would take a rest. With these tactics every shot was 
 thrown away. They never got a reliable range of any
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 3G1 
 
 given point, and at the day's end must have been worse 
 off by damages and loss of ammunition than at the begin- 
 ning. If the Fort gunners had deliberately taken in 
 hand a single battery, or two at the most, and concen- 
 trated a steady fire thereon, they might have had some 
 chance of dismounting a gun or two, and at all events 
 temporarily silencing one section of their tormentors. 
 As it was, like the skunk, they threw their virus miscel- 
 laneously, and did hardly any harm. The German losses 
 in the batteries had been ridiculously small. 
 
 The forts had been roughly dealt with beyond ques- 
 tion. La Briche has two bastions, and the stone work 
 had been sorely pulverised in places. This I could 
 plainly discern with my glass. Some embrasures were 
 1 mnged up altogether, presumably on account of their 
 undue enlargement by the action of the German shells, 
 and the trim neatness of the whole aspect had changed 
 into a ruggedness for which I had almost written ragged- 
 ness. But the foils were far from shut up ; that was 
 plain. Ordinarily they bred only slowly, but this was 
 apparently from choice, Ibr presently, as if the humour 
 had bitten them, they would burst out into epiite a 
 respectable cannonade, not however from vcrv many 
 guns. The German artillerists and engineers asserted 
 that the curtain, which was known to have been thrown 
 up between the forts, had been utterly beaten down and 
 destroyed, and that the covered way no longer existed ;
 
 362 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 so that each fort had to depend on itself, or lean on sup- 
 ports from its direct rear. Covered ways, however, are 
 not crockery ware, and I took leave at the time to doubt 
 whether there yet existed any great difficulty or danger 
 in inter-communication between La Bridie and Du 
 Nord. 
 
 The night before I had thought I heard some chasse- 
 pot firing, and it turned out I was not mistaken. The 
 firing had come from French marksmen potting at the 
 German gunners in the nearest battery over the ramparts 
 of La Bridie. The range, as I have said, was about 
 1,200 paces, far from an impossibility with the chassepot, 
 but not near enough to do any serious damage. Some 
 of the bullets, however, I was told when I went forward 
 into Villanteneuse, came pretty handy, and would have 
 been bothersome if the German suns had been fired 
 through embrasures. As they were not, but on the over- 
 bank system, the gunners were fairly covered against 
 anything but an almost vertical fire. Of course, in front 
 of and Hanking their batteries the Germans had infantry 
 posts and rifle-pits, and the Frenchmen were, I learned, 
 to be introduced on the coming niirht to the knowledge 
 that chassepot-firing at gunners is a game at which 
 more than one, side could play. 
 
 The town of St. Denis had not been seriously fired 
 since the first day of the bombardment. Especial orders 
 had been issued to aim clear of the venerable cathedral,
 
 FHOM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 363 
 
 and every one hoped that, come what would, it might 
 escape unharmed. When the German gunners were told 
 to avoid hitting an object, their skill enabled them for 
 the most part to comply with the injunction ; with 
 French gunners, from what I have seen of them, I think 
 the order would be waste of words, and it might be as 
 wise to let the thing take its chance. Was it possible 
 that there was not an adequate force of trained artillery- 
 men within Paris, when one came to think of the mul- 
 titude of troops there of all arms ? From the briskness 
 of practice displayed from time to time, it was clear 
 there was no lack of men to serve and load the guns 
 quickly; where the fault lay was in bad training of the 
 gun on to the object intended to be aimed at. Now this 
 is the dutv of but oik; man in a gun detachment ; every 
 gunner need not be a good No. 1. If Paris, after four 
 months of siege, and after firing away so much powder 
 and shot, was now short of expert artillery marksmen, 
 the fault lay at the door of those chargeable with the 
 conduct of the siege operations. They could not ride 
 off on tin: pretext that they had found a scarcity of 
 fitting men ; they had time enough and practice enough 
 to make a plethora. 
 
 One day, now more than a month previously, 1 had 
 happened to be jogging along tin 1 road behind Font 
 Iblon, when a. smart Vice feldwebel accosted me witli the 
 somewhat startling question, "Do you know Grace-
 
 36-1 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 church-street V I owned, with the frank readiness of a 
 Londoner, to a knowledge of Graceclmrch-street. " Then, 
 perhaps, you know Greenwich, too ? " was the somewhat 
 inconsequent second question. Vividly the memory of 
 sundry dinners at the Trafalgar rose before me as I 
 answered " Yes." My interrogator then told me that 
 previous to the war he had been in business in Grace- 
 clmrch-street, and had his private residence in Egerton- 
 road, Greenwich, and after a pleasant conversation we 
 parted. I learned afterwards that Mr. Hartwich had 
 greatly distinguished himself by his conspicuous gallantry 
 in the storm of Le Bourget, for which he had received 
 the Iron Cross. Before the close of the siege, as a further 
 reward for his valour on this occasion, he was promoted 
 by the Emperor to a lieutenancy in the 4th (Queen's) 
 Regiment of Guards. Thus, it seems, neither a desk in 
 Graceclmrch-street, nor family life in Greenwich, detracts 
 from a trood Prussian's willingness to fioht for his 
 Fatherland, or deteriorates the character of his valour. 
 Speedy promotion, say I, to Lieutenant William Hart- 
 wich, of Gracechurch-street, City, and Egerton-road, 
 Greenwich. 
 
 A little before this time I had the pleasure of a visit 
 from Mr. W. II. Bullock, the able emissary of the Daily 
 News Peasant Belief Fund ; and was pleased to find that, 
 after I had shown him several villages on this northern 
 side of Paris, and after la; had conversed with inhabit-
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 305 
 
 ants whose testimony was to be considered trustworthy, 
 lie arrived at the same opinion which I had long held ; 
 that while the active military operations in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Paris were pending, it would be both a pre- 
 sent mistake and a weakening of subsequent potentiality 
 for usefulness were any large sum expended in this 
 quarter for the relief of the poorer inhabitants. The 
 vicinity of Paris is very different from the vicinity of 
 Metz. Around the latter fortress the country is na- 
 turally poor, and it has no great capital for its centre, 
 the supply of which formed the business and the study 
 of the population. Long before the siege of Metz was 
 over, the whole district had been utterly exhausted 
 of anything calculated to sustain life in man or beast. 
 There would have been real starvation — not starvation 
 in that conventionally exaggerated meaning of the word 
 into which many are apt to be betrayed — but for the 
 spare rations of the German soldiers. Around Paris, on 
 the north side at least, there was no such utter depletion 
 of the means of subsistence, or rather, while it struck 
 one that in the earlier days of the siege such depletion 
 really existed, a recuperative power seemed to come into 
 action afterwards, owing, as I reckon, to easier and more 
 assured communication with the country farther back. 
 About two-thirds of the population in most of the vil- 
 lages had utterly vanished — clean gone away out of ken. 
 Some were inside Paris, no doubt ; others away into
 
 366 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the background of the lurid scene. This exodus was 
 chiefly from the villages nearest the front. The people 
 who remained in these forepost villages were very few, 
 comparatively, and they were managing to live. They 
 might have had concealed stores of their own ; what 
 they had not of their own, the Germans freely gave 
 them according to ability ; and the poor people kept 
 alive, and would continue to do so till the siege should 
 be done, in a precarious, unsatisfactory manner no doubt, 
 but still not starving. Were you to have poured out on 
 them the biggest till in the Bank of England while they 
 were in their then condition — hands compulsorily folded, 
 houses wrecked, fields untilled — I do not sec in what 
 important particular you could have benefited that con- 
 dition. In the villages farther to the rear, where the 
 desolation was less marked, there was little destitution ; 
 neither lack of money, nor of the necessaries money will 
 purchase. These villages around Paris must have been 
 very rich in a quiet way. And I have an idea 
 that those ay ho had remained at home had made them- 
 selves heirs by a kind of natural succession to the food- 
 stores of those who ran away. Of course everybody was 
 living on his capital. The poultry woman, who used to 
 send chickens and turkey eggs into the Paris market, 
 was killing her hens and her turkeys, and selling them 
 to the German officers. If the hostile occupation were to 
 Lave lasted much longer, no doubt stores would Lave come
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 3G7 
 
 to an end, and the villagers would have had to depend 
 on the German troops, and sometimes be very hungry. 
 But as yet there was no call for laying out money 
 among them for their sustenance; and, as matters were, 
 money expended for any other purpose than just to 
 tide them over the dismal hour would have been 
 wasted. 
 
 It was obvious, however, that there would come a time 
 
 when every penny that we could spare would be urgently 
 wanted. The arrondissement mayors of Paris had plenty 
 of money, and that private enterprise was sure to bring to 
 market material on which it might be spent. But it was 
 very different with the suburban villages. I am strongly of 
 opinion that in the warm ilow of our sympathy we rather 
 overdid the relief of Paris. We are a generous nation 
 when our hearts are stirred, and he would lie a churl 
 indeed who should fail to appreciate the noble prompti- 
 tude with which Britain succoured Paris in her extremity. 
 Put zealous and earnest as were the administrators of 
 tlie English don, I am convinced that there was a rela- 
 tive superfluity after the first absolute pinch had been 
 tided over, and that it helped to perpetuate that self- 
 helplessness among the poorer classes which the forced 
 inaction el' the siege had made almost a second nature 
 to a population never averse to idleness. I say relative 
 superfluity, because, although it is obvious that the want, 
 poverty, and shiftlessness of any great city will always
 
 3CS THE WAR BETWEEN" FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 be prepared to put forward claimants for relief in suffi- 
 cient numbers to admit of the distribution of any relief 
 fund however large, I think that the normal condition of 
 the east end of London is more wretched than was the 
 state of Paris after the strain had slackened and the re- 
 victualment fully effected. Not that I would counsel for 
 Bethnal Green a vast don, to be distributed with that 
 perfunctorincss of discrimination which inevitably in the 
 nature of things characterised the Paris distribution. 
 Such a vast eleemosynary sowing of relief broadcast 
 would but increase the area of demand for aid, and in- 
 tensify and prolong a paralysis no inconsiderable propor- 
 tion of which is already ascribable to mal-administcred and 
 indiscriminate pseudo- charity. But what we should judge 
 it unwise to do as regards our own fellow-countrymen 
 and fellow-citizens, it was surely a fortiori both unwise 
 and unjust to do outside the bounds of Britain. I be- 
 lieve that the administrators, placed as they were in novel 
 and arduous circumstances, acted as well and as wisely 
 as it was possible for any men to act in such circum- 
 stances. Put this I have not the smallest hesitation in 
 affirming, that Britain, in her impulsive overlavish con- 
 tributions to this fund, swamped Paris injuriously with 
 eleemosynary succour, and, to square her balance-sheet 
 of charity, stinted her usual outflow towards many de- 
 serving internal institutions. But if it seemed that 
 wealthy Paris possessed within herself the means of
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 369 
 
 speedy self-recuperation, it was obvious that the case 
 was very different with the suburban villages. How the 
 position of those struck one who had been living among 
 them for over two months, it may not appear wholly 
 impertinent to show by an extract from a letter of mine- 
 written shortly before the capitulation. 
 
 "To those villages hanging on to the fringe of the 
 capital will flock back their old inhabitants, the refugees 
 now in Paris, the waifs and strays now drifting about 
 the back country. The snug cottages that they left, 
 with the hectare or two of daintily-tilled garden ground 
 and the winter store of provisions and firewood, they 
 will find mere wrecked shells, incapable even of afford- 
 ing their owners a barren shelter. There will lie an in- 
 terval of syncope — that is inevitable — in which the mere 
 keeping to life, without giving a thought to retrieval, 
 will be a problem that many unaided may fail to solve. 
 To face and dissipate the abjeetness of this syncope, to 
 plough up the dismal fallow waste of human misery that 
 will lie soddening round Paris — that is the task for us. 
 Bread and meat will he wanted as the first requirement, 
 but food alone will not stimulate the people sufficiently 
 to shake off the apathy of despair their surroundings will 
 so inevitably engender. Put spades in their hands ; send 
 them kitchen-garden seeds and voung cabbage plants ; 
 give them the chance to feel that they are once more 
 helping themselves, as they were wont to do before the
 
 370 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE A^D GERMANY. 
 
 thundercloud of war burst over their heads. The genial 
 spring-time is not far off, and the tooth of Paris ever 
 watereth after its salad stuff. With judicious help, not 
 administered after a pauperising fashion — and pauperism 
 is far readier than jealousy to grow by what it feeds 
 on — the more humble inhabitants of the villages around 
 Paris might be on their legs again by midsummer. I do 
 not see how, with deeent justice to our home charities, 
 we can deal with any other class. Our role is not surely 
 to give compensation for ruined villas or the sack of de- 
 tached family residences." 
 
 It is pleasant to know that not a little has been done 
 in the direction indicated in these lines. The adminis- 
 trators of the Lord Mayor's Fund have most judiciously 
 applied for such purposes a share of the money placed 
 at their disposal, nor has active seconding been wanting 
 on the part of those charged with the allocation of the 
 French Farmers' Seed Fund, and the Peasant Relief Fund 
 of the Do ily News. 
 
 Great sensation was caused in the head-quarters of 
 the Maas Army by a curt telegram from Versailles, 
 which reached Margency about five o'clock on the after- 
 noon of the 12 G t Ii January, to the effect that the northern 
 and eastern batteries were to hold their fire after twelve 
 o'clock on that night, unless the French fire should be 
 continued later, and that they were not to resume until 
 further order-, unless in a similar eontiniiencv. Off
 
 FUOM THE NEW YEAH TO THE ARMISTICE. 371 
 
 galloped Ordonanz cuirassiers on their mighty horses ; 
 the news spread like wild-fire, and the word " Friede" 
 was in every one's mouth. We were aware that Jules 
 Favre had been in Versailles on the 24th, but had 
 assumed that his visit was connected with his antici- 
 pated journey to England. But about seven o'clock 
 there came a rather more detailed telegram, stating that 
 the French minister had returned to Paris in the after- 
 noon, after a second interview with Bismarck, and that 
 the prospects of a speedy arbitrament were favourable. 
 Meanwhile the cannonade was slowly, and, as it seemed, 
 half reluctantly, dying out. 1 believe the Crown Prince 
 of Saxony sent out orders that it should not be piti- 
 lessly persevered with till the last moment permitted in 
 tlie orders from Versailles. By seven o'clock it had 
 fallen away to one-third of the ordinary night regula- 
 tion ; between eight and nine only two shots were tired. 
 The light to fire was, however, vindicated scrupulously 
 lill the vei'v end. As ten struck on the cracked bell 
 of thi.' Margencv Maine, a single hoarse roar came bel- 
 lowing up the valley; at eleven there was the solitary 
 repetition : at the first stroke of twelve crashed out the 
 report of the last cannon-shot of the siege that was tired 
 on the north side. It was morning ere its echoes had 
 cea>ed to reverberate in the glades of Montmorency and 
 the quarries of >Sannois. 
 
 Not a few there were in Margeiicy who refused to put
 
 372 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 faith in the good tidings ; cautious men who economised 
 emotion, knowing how poignant would he the revulsion 
 of the disappointment if no " Frieda " should come of 
 it after all. Everybody, however, remained up till after 
 twelve o'clock to listen whether the French would renew 
 their fire. When they did not — at least on our side — 
 even the unbelieving Thomases bejmn to let themselves 
 think there must be something in it, after all. There 
 seemed to me so much in it that I thought it might 
 be possible to get into Paris by dint of a little unob- 
 trusive impudence. Before daylight on the morning of 
 the 27th I struck down into Villanteneuse, the outposts 
 of which may be called quite close to St. Denis, and 
 found there an officer of my acquaintance belonging to 
 the "Ladybirds."' He laughed my desire to scorn, and 
 his arguments, and others which were even more patent, 
 convinced me how premature and how futile would be 
 any attempt of the kind. So I returned to Margency, 
 and rode to Versailles instead. All alone; the road there 
 was silence, although I was told that Valerien had fired 
 heavily on the previous night, and that there had been 
 firing that morning. The terrace of St. Germain was 
 totally deserted ; the first time during the siege I had 
 ever seen it without its groups of gossiping spectators. 
 Versailles was in a state of bewilderment, and, except 
 the astutest, who hardened their hearts and refused to 
 believe anything at all, the dwellers therein were wholly
 
 FROM THE NEW YEAR TO THE ARMISTICE. 373 
 
 given over to the dominion of chameleon-like canards 
 of the greatest magnitude and the strangest versatility. 
 From one reliable source I learnt that there certainly 
 had been heavy firing in the direction of Sevres in the 
 morning. Then came one who boldly affirmed that Paris 
 was open. He had not been in himself, nor had he seen 
 anybody who had come thence, but he had the fact on 
 undeniable authority. A little later it was communi- 
 cated unto me, with much attention to detail, that the 
 capitulation would be signed at four o'clock to a minute, 
 and that the terms were very favourable for Paris. 
 Another report was that there had been a revolution 
 on the previous day when Jules Favre went back into 
 Paris, and that he would on no account be allowed to 
 come out again any more. But the raconteur of this 
 collapsed when another interlocutor struck in with the 
 positive assurance that M. Favre with two secretaries, 
 and General Beaufort with two aides, had really come 
 out that morning, and that the former was even then in 
 close consultation with Bismarck. ''They have been 
 drinking champagne together," added another, as con- 
 fidently as if he had helped to finish the bottle. Then 
 came details as to the character of the negotiations. It 
 seemed that M. Favre had come out intending to ask 
 terms for the city only, leaving the forts to be dealt with 
 .separately. Of this Bismarck would not hear; and, on 
 the other hand, refused to accede to a surrender of Paris
 
 374 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 as a fortress apart from negociations for a general cessa- 
 tion of hostilities. He was, in fact, making the misery 
 of Paris the stick with which to beat France into yield- 
 ing to her fate. M. Favre had represented what hard 
 lines these were, and ultimately Bismarck had withdrawn 
 this as an absolute postulate, on the understanding that 
 the former was to use his best exertions with the other 
 members of the Provisional Government to bring about 
 the desired end. On this understanding he had c;one 
 into Paris, and returned to Versailles that morning, 
 bringing with him General Beaufort, as the affair was 
 the capitulation of a fortress, and therefore to be arranged 
 by the military authorities. All this was explained with 
 a detail that might have been expected had one been 
 amanuensis to Count Bismarck, without any pledge to 
 secrecy. " Then how about to-day's doings VI asked. 
 " Oh, I can tell you that too. The hitch is about Mont 
 Valerien. It seems some 20,000 die-hards are deter- 
 mined to get up into that keep and hold out for a spell 
 longer, and that the Germans are aware of this, and will 
 not listen to any other arrangement except all or none. 
 There is no regular armistice, but a cessation of hosti- 
 lities up to six o'clock," and more detail equally reliable. 
 That there was no firing for a number of hours, till six, 
 is certain. Six came, and with it the information that 
 the time for the suspension of the firing had been 
 extended till nine. Men must dine, even in a state
 
 IT.OM THE NEW YEAK TO THE ARMISTICE. 61 a 
 
 of excited suspense ; for my part I always find such 
 sensation stimulate appetite. Judging by appearances, 
 the second "' Staffed " in the Hotel des Reservoirs did not 
 find the edge of its hunger in the least taken off by 
 sensational reports, and the bear-garden-like Babel was 
 rather more noisy than usual. The Moniteur Officiel 
 came out earlier than usual by a couple of hours, but 
 was so great a sell, that one, I think, would have been 
 justified in demanding his money back. " Xothiim new 
 before Paris." Thus curtly was the situation dealt with 
 in the official print. An obese colonel was civil enough 
 to announce to us, as he left the dining-room, that nego- 
 ciations had been '"'broken off" for the night ; and then 
 nine o'clock came. It had hardly finished striking, when 
 one side or the oilier began to fire, and between nine and 
 eleven sev< ral reports of big guns were tpiite audible. 
 I. believe there was silence during the night ; and on the 
 morning oi the 2sth there certainly was no renewal of 
 the firing. \ <mitted Versailles too early to hear any 
 further intelligence; and as 1 rode to St. (icrmain met 
 great droves ol lean cows, driven by Frenchmen, and 
 freipieiii calls laden with calves. All these were for 
 Paris : the people had heard of the puiirjuwlers, and had 
 rat her taken time by the forelock. 
 
 At nine o clock mi the evening of the i! s th. while the 
 head-<pi;irter staff of the Maas Army were assembled in 
 the draw in a'- rooms of the Crown Prince's chateau after
 
 376 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 dinner, an orderly brought in a telegram to the Crown 
 Prince. His Royal Highness, having read it, handed it 
 to^General von Schlottheim, the chief of the staff. That 
 officer perused it in his turn, and then rising, walked 
 to the door communicating between the billiard-room 
 and the saloon, and there read the telegram aloud. It 
 was from the Emperor, and it announced that two hours 
 before Count Bismarck and M. Jules Favre had set their 
 hands to a convention in terms of which an armistice 
 to last for twenty-one days had already come into effect. 
 It was not easy to settle down to cards or billiards after 
 news like that.
 
 PART IV. 
 
 THE CONQUERED AND THE CONQUERORS.
 
 CHAPTER. I. 
 
 THE CONQUERED. 
 
 At three o'clock on tlie morning of the 29th there came 
 to Margency Major Kransa from Versailles, with the 
 detailed terms of the armistice and of the capitulation of 
 the forts. No time was suffered to run to waste. In the 
 early morning Major von Welcke, of the Maas Army staff, 
 rode into St. Denis to arrange with the commandant 
 the details for the surrender of the surrounding forts. 
 At ten a.m. the Crown Prince of Saxony and his staff 
 were in the saddle, and the soldiers who had thronged into 
 the street greeted his Royal Highness with hearty cheer- 
 ing as they set out for St. Denis. When we got to the out- 
 post village of La Barn- there was a halt, which turned 
 out to he a long halt. Welcke had not returned ; the com- 
 mandant (Admiral La Lioncicre)was understood to be sulky 
 and impracticable, and the aspect of the French troops 
 was threatening. While the staff waited, a rough lunch 
 was eaten in a ruined house, for the delay was for hours. 
 At last the Major returned, but not with tidings that all
 
 380 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 was settled. There was a hitch about something concern- 
 ing which it was necessary to consult General Schlott- 
 heim. The Prince and his two officers went out into the 
 battery at the back of the house and held an earnest 
 conversation. Then von Welcke went back, accom- 
 panied by Lieutenant von Hinnuever, the latter to bring 
 back word when all was settled. 
 
 Meanwhile the Crown Prince and his staff waited on 
 still. A strong body of troops was marched forward in 
 anticipation. The whole of the Ludwig Franz Regiment 
 and of the 27th, and four field batteries of the 4th Army 
 Corps, pushed on and halted on a little slope midway 
 between St. Denis and Enghien. P>efore this a staff of 
 engineer officers had gone forward into the fort, accom- 
 panied by a detachment, to draw the charges from the 
 mines, and two companies of siege artillery were sent on 
 to take over the imns and magazines. 
 
 It was now nearly three o'clock, and, although von 
 Welcke had neither sent nor come back, the Prince started. 
 Yon Welcke met him at the half-way house, and reported a 
 conversation with the representative officer of the French 
 Etat Major, who had explained that the troops had not 
 all evacuated St. Denis, and that the population, most of 
 which was armed, looked somewhat threatening. He 
 had therefore counselled a strong body of occupation. 
 Welcke and Hinnuever had themselves been unmolested ; 
 but testified to there having been much disorder, which,
 
 THE CONQUERED. J3S1 
 
 however, was gradually dying out, as the inevitable came 
 to be accepted. 
 
 We rode on, with La Bridie close on the right ; 
 
 looking from the outside, it was not very seriously 
 damaged in essentials. Its glacis was furrowed with 
 shells as with a plough, the massive stonework of its 
 scarp was pitted all over, and in places the coping 
 stones had been dislodged. The earthen ramp was 
 rather cavernous, especially about the angles ; but there 
 were no signs of anything that the wildest imagina- 
 tion could construe into a practicable breach. There 
 were only two embrasures extant on one of the 
 bastions; these from their appearance had evidently 
 re<jui red repeatedly making good. Guns showed through 
 these. All the other embrasures had been bunged up 
 roughly, but seemingly effectually, with fascines, &c. 
 obviously a reason of the adoption of the system of over- 
 bank firing. There were the muzzles of guns visible 
 sticking up over the parapet. Bending to the east we 
 crossed the railway, and with another bend came to the 
 northern entrance to Fort Du Xord. This fort had been 
 served worse than La Bridie. Its glacis was one series 
 of shell pits. That, it is true, was nothing but evidence 
 that many -hells had fell short. But great pieces of the 
 earthwork were turn away, and the wall of the scarp had 
 been -battered am 1 penetrated in places. Here, too, the 
 few embrasures left had been made good, but there was
 
 332 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 noticeable a paucity of guns. A terrible fire had con- 
 verged on the gate ; one drawbridge was demolished, the 
 other could not be raised. It struck me that in both 
 forts the defences flanking the gates and intended to 
 sweep the approaches at what are always weak points, 
 were insufficiently provided for. Just inside the works 
 and covering the gate there was a halt amidst a mass of 
 German officers and soldiers. This was to permit the 
 delegate from the Etat Major to make some explanations. 
 He came forward — a wan, sad-faced young officer of 
 Marine Artillery, with a grave dignity in the pale face 
 and weary anxious eyes, that commanded respect and 
 commiseration. He was quite alone, not even an 
 orderly with him, and the solitary man looked forlorn, 
 yet full of a certain gallant pride, as he rode up to the 
 Crown Prince with a high-bred greeting that was not, 
 assuredly, of Republican France. His statement was 
 that all the troops Lad evacuated St. Denis and gone 
 into Paris ; that the Mobiles, National Guard and Seden- 
 taries who remained had been disarmed; and that the 
 population had come to its senses. The whole of the 
 supporting force being reported close up, the band of the 
 27th struck up the Paris March, and before it the staff, 
 headed by the Crown Prince, marched up the principal 
 street, which was much cumbered with barricades, and 
 embarrassed by the conductors of undrawn mines, laid 
 down among gravel heaps in the road. The houses were
 
 THE CONQUERED. 383 
 
 shattered into fragments as far as the great square before 
 the Caserne. The whole town was a ruin. Civilians 
 swarmed on the side walks, men, women, and children ; 
 none looking very like starvation. It seemed to me that 
 all the males over fourteen were in such uniform as a 
 pair of red trouser stripes represented. There was a 
 strange un-Freiich silence, lowering brows, and many a 
 Sucre muttered between the teeth. That all the arms 
 had not been given up was very apparent. The staff had 
 quite an escort of chassepot-carrying individuals on the 
 side walks, not indeed of a very martial appearance, and 
 probably on their way to the depot for the reception of 
 the firearms. It might have been the sight of the 
 weapons which prompted General Schlottheim, when the 
 »taff was about half-way to the square, to order to the front 
 the detachment of Saxon Cuirassiers of the Guard which 
 formed the Crown Prince's escort. As the splendid 
 horsemen clattered forward at a furious gallop, the 
 women and children ran shrieking into the battered 
 houses, '' The I hlans ! " ''The I'hlans ! "' In the square 
 before the great barrack the Prince halted, wheeled on one 
 .-idf, and the 14th Brigade of the 4th Army Corps, the 
 brigade that was detailed to garrison St. Denis, inarched 
 past him, their bands playing the " Paris March" and 
 " Icli bin ein Prusse." Crowds of the French witnessed 
 the sight, and I could hear them gloomily owning to one 
 another their admiration of the physique and soldierly
 
 384 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 bearing of the German troops. The interim Governor of 
 St. Denis was Brigadier-General Zychlinski. Before we 
 quitted it the provision-sellers were already crowding 
 into the place. The German forepost line was before 
 nightfall established all round 500 yards nearer Paris 
 than the forts, and nobody was allowed to pass without 
 a special permission. Strong patrols of occupation, com- 
 posed of the first troops that entered the place, were at 
 once marched into the forts. The Commandant of Fort 
 de l'Est reported that there had fallen in it during one 
 day of the bombardment no fewer than 1,200 shells. 
 Prince George duly reported his successful occupation of 
 the Eastern Forts. 
 
 When I rode into St. Denis on the forenoon of the 30th 
 I found that it had in a measure recovered its tone since 
 our hurried visit of the day before. It was true that it 
 was as squalid and forlorn as then ; that the men still 
 clung to the red stripe on the trousers and the number 
 on their cap, which with their wooden shoes and gene- 
 rally unwarlikc tout ensemble rendered them somewhat 
 incongruous-looking beings ; but the shops had got their 
 shutters down ; the Germans had got themselves bil- 
 leted ; and the markctenders and provision-sellers were 
 ready to present facilities to avert the imminence of 
 starvation. One had to study the place with some care 
 to comprehend thoroughly how devastating had been the 
 nature of the bombardment. After passing the second
 
 THE CONQUERED. 385 
 
 big barricade, the houses on either side of the principal 
 street had been spared by some casual luck, and I began 
 to think that I had come through the zone of ruin, and 
 had emerged into a territory comparatively unharmed. 
 The aspect of the great barrack tended a good deal to 
 undeceive me. A little farther on and I was again in 
 the thick of the prints made by the bombs. The theatre 
 had had its front utterly wrecked ; through the great 
 gaps you could see the painting on the roof and on the 
 pillars flanking the stao;e. Turning off to the left I made 
 
 J. o o o 
 
 in haste for the venerable cathedral, to discover what 
 amount of damage it had sustained. The republicans 
 who had painted Ltberte, Egalite, Fraternitc on its por- 
 tals, had not allowed their republicanism to render them 
 negligent of the historical monuments the edifice con- 
 tains; all round it had been banked up high with sand- 
 bags, which had caught and stopped several shells. The 
 stained glass was intact, or all but intact. Only four 
 shells had penetrated to the interior of the building. 
 One of the elaborately carved crosses on the top of a 
 buttress had been splintered off, and a coping stone had 
 been shattered; this, I think, summed up tin; evil done 
 to the cathedral by the shells of the enemy. The 
 splendid carving on the arches around the great door 
 had not been harmed in the least, although it must have 
 had some very narrow escapes. Several houses in the 
 neighbourhood had been utterly demolished, and others
 
 386 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 fired. The aspect of the cathedral inside was very- 
 strange ; the tombs of the kings had all been protected 
 by sand-bags ; the interior might have been called one 
 great sand-bag. The statues had been covered in with 
 wooden frames, and the sand-bags laid over them. It is 
 pleasant to be able to state that never a statue had so 
 much as a nose knocked off. In fact, considering the 
 weight and duration of the bombardment, the cathedral 
 may be said to have escaped wonderfully well. The 
 same cannot be said of the new church of St. Denis, 
 which is just behind Fort La Bridie. Its steeple was 
 wrecked ; its north side was stove in ; and its interior 
 was a chaos of mortar, stones, and smashed paraphernalia. 
 The little Protestant chapel, however, had suffered worse 
 than any other religious edifice in the place. One might 
 almost fancy its pasteur trotting dolefully about picking 
 up the pieces of his church from the open spaces in the 
 vicinity. The pulpit and the door were intact ; as for 
 the rest, if you had had all the bits collected, it would 
 have been worse than any Chinese puzzle to put them 
 together again. The two Protestant schoolrooms escaped 
 the bombardment, with the exception of having the 
 windows broken ; but in the morning the German soldiers, 
 hungry after wood, had made a raid upon the desks and 
 forms. Pasteur Saglier thought it hard that when there 
 were plenty of Roman Catholic combustibles about the 
 place, Protestants should burn the furniture of the only
 
 THE CONQUERED. 3b 7 
 
 Evangelical establishment in the town ; so he had paid 
 a visit of remonstrance to General Zyehlinski, who sent 
 his chaplain to exorcise the evil spirits that were troubling 
 the Evangelical woodwork. 
 
 It must have been verily the reign of the Prince of the 
 Power of Darkness, that period of five days during which 
 the bombardment lasted. While the shells were crashing 
 into the houses, they were ploughing up the streets as 
 with the deepest subsoil plough ever invented. There 
 was no safety for any but in the cold and dark cellars ; 
 so heavy were the projectiles, that not always in the 
 cellars was there found safety. There were houses of 
 which garrets and cellars had been battered into a shape- 
 less pile of stone and mortar. W you asked the loafing 
 bystanders whether any had been buried in the ruins, 
 they moodily muttered, "Qui sait { " shrugged their 
 shoulders, and turned away. For myself, 1 think there 
 must have been not a few underneath these jagged monu- 
 mental piles : but there was nobody who has interest or 
 energy to explore, and " Qui sait ' might have been painted 
 up as the vague epitaph. 
 
 r>efoie the commencement of the siege, the garrison of 
 each of the St. Denis forts had consisted of three artil- 
 lerymen, a commandant, and a few military tailors 
 and shoemakers. When the siege began, St. Denis did 
 not .-hare greatly in the tremors of her big sister; she 
 was girt bv her forts, and she believed ill them. Ad-
 
 .'388 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 miral La Ronciere was appointed to the command, and 
 sailors and artillerymen came and manned tlie forts. The 
 population of St. Denis is peculiar. Its manufactures 
 are insalubrious, and it lias the unenviable attribute of 
 attracting all the worst workmen from other parts of 
 France, who can earn wages in St. Denis when they 
 would be laughed out of factories elsewhere. 80 it is a 
 chronically poor, shiftless, drunken place, with a popula- 
 tion so floating that of the 30,000 the census gives it, it 
 is reported to change 15,000 every year. In the early 
 months of the siege St. Denis was tolerably quiet. Food, 
 gradually got dearer. The people came to horseflesh 
 about two months before the surrender, and to reduced 
 bread rations ten days before it. The world is familiar 
 with the diet-throes of Paris — those of St. Denis had 
 been similar but more intense, because of the prevalent 
 poverty of the inhabitants. All the males had become 
 "soldiers," and earned their franc and a half a day; 
 which, as well as the 7.5 centime allowance for their 
 wives, most drank with regularity and thoroughness. 
 The wives and families, therefore, starved after they had 
 eaten everything on which money could be raised. There 
 had. been in the place two ambulances, one a branch of 
 the International, another a military ambulance. The 
 bombardment had come on the town like a thunder-clap. 
 The corporation wen; fiercely abused for not having 
 given warning, which it was alleged it was in their power
 
 THE CONQUERED. 381) 
 
 to do. Whether this was the case I do not know, and as 
 far as the corporation goes it mattered very little, for its 
 members all ran away when the bombardment com- 
 menced. Nobody had any responsibility ; with a few 
 noble exceptions, nobody had troubled himself except 
 about the wholeness of his own skin. The Admiral Com- 
 mandant concerned himself with his forts — the people 
 
 might o;o hang for him. The members of the Inter- 
 im & o 
 
 national Ambulance accepted the situation ; took their 
 lives in their hands, and went out to do what good they 
 might. They dragged the maimed and shattered out of 
 the ruined houses ; they collected the corpses from the 
 streets and the ruins, and buried them with some sem- 
 blance of decency. They went round the town urging on 
 the people that the women and children should go forth 
 from the doomed town, and retire into Paris. The women 
 and children had been huddled into the semi-security of 
 the cellars. The shells were crashing into the streets, 
 and avalanches of stone and brick were ever crashing 
 upon the side-walks. The women peeping forth shud- 
 deringly declared that they would rather die where they 
 were than incur a more certain and fearful death by 
 sallying forth in that iron tempest. 80 they turned into 
 the dank caverns to hunger and cold, and cuddling their 
 children to their bosoms, utterly refused to budge. The 
 Pasteur Saglier had gone to the Commandant and begged 
 that he would allow him to go out as a parlementaire to
 
 390 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the Germans, to ask for two hours' cessation of the bom- 
 bardment, to give the women and children a chance to 
 get away without being struck down as they went. The 
 Admiral refused, and the ruthless devilry went on. Then 
 the Pasteur sent an appeal to the Paris journals, begging 
 all who possessed means of conveyance to send them into 
 St. Denis to remove the perishing women and children. 
 The response was but weak, and there appeared not a 
 solitary representative of those ambulances whose mem- 
 bers took delight in flags, and gave themselves to the 
 vanities of buttons and uniforms. About half-a-dozen 
 private vehicles turned up, and with the help of these the 
 sick and wounded were got out of the hospitals in the 
 town, and located in two large factories on the plain 
 between St. Denis and Paris. Then children followed, 
 and women great with child such as cared to go, till the 
 plain-houses became like caravanserais. Meanwhile the 
 few vehicles belonging to this ambulance were toiling 
 assiduously in conveying to the rear the wounded struck 
 down at the guns ; a. few men, and a few only, so far as 
 I could learn, toiling with a zeal and energy that merited 
 better support. As for the bold National Guards, their 
 location was the wine shop. Therein they imbibed the 
 courage that prevented them from creeping into the cel- 
 lars ; and when their cups had made them reckless, they 
 sallied out into the streets, only to give the ambulance 
 more trouble with their worthless carcases. Not a few
 
 THE CONQUERED. J391 
 
 were killed as tliev staggered about ; others were brought 
 to the ambulance, wounded, indeed, but as drunk as 
 lords. 
 
 After a lengthened and searching peregrination of 
 St. Denis, I accompanied two German officers in a ride 
 beyond the foreposts toward the gate of La Chapelle. 
 In the course of the day the restrictions to passing out 
 had been materially relaxed, and the Avenue cle Paris 
 was thronged with 'Parisians. It seemed to me that if 
 they could get out I might get in, and quitting my 
 friends I rode forward toward the gate. Before going, 
 on a duty that seems likely to be hazardous, the wise 
 soldier overhauls his weapons, looks that his sword is 
 easy in the scabbard, and that his revolver is duly 
 capped. 1 was no soldier and carried no lethal weapons ; 
 but before risking an entry into Paris, it seemed advis- 
 able to make sure that 1 had the important document 
 with me which vouched for my being a British subject 
 and a neutral. Alas, not anticipating the occurrence of 
 such an opportunity 1 had left my passport behind, and 
 there was nothing for it but to postpone my " invasion " 
 of Paris until the morrow. On my way back to 
 Margency, I must have met at least a third of the 
 population of St. Denis returning from the fields in the 
 plain, with barrow loads and armfuls of frosted half- 
 rotten green stuff. 
 
 Next morning, that of the 31st of January, I left
 
 392 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Margency better armed as to passports. Before essaying 
 an entry into Paris,* I spent some time in investigating 
 the condition of the St. Denis forts. Let me briefly 
 describe the armament and condition of Fort la Bridie. 
 Its guns consisted mainly of long twelve and sixteen 
 pounder muzzle-loaders, smooth-bores, and bearing dates 
 from 1826 to 1841 ; and smooth-bore howitzers of anti- 
 quated construction. In each section of the banquette 
 there was a gun and a howitzer. In most cases the 
 ammunition by the guns was round, solid cannon-ball ; 
 the shells seemed to have been exhausted. It was in- 
 teresting to notice how stress of events had driven 
 the French from the embrasure to the overbank sys- 
 tem, which is invariably used by the Germans. There 
 were in La Bridie fronting embrasures only the two 
 guns I had noticed on the day of our first en- 
 
 * I casually learnt since returning to England, there had been some controversy 
 who was entitled to claim the priority of entrance into Paris. The matter is a 
 bagatelle, but it seems fair that justice should be done. When I got in on the 31st, 
 I went first to the American legation and afterwards to the British Embassy. At 
 neither place had anything been seen of any prior correspondent. In the evening 
 I visited a cafe, where I found the intra- Paris correspondents of the Times, Daily 
 News, Daily Telegraph, and Morning Advertiser, none of whom had seen anyone 
 from the outside before me. It was not until at least a fortnight after, that 
 General Duff assured me of his own knowledge, that Mr. Coningsby, the repre- 
 sentative, I believe, of the Echo, had entered Paris on tlie 29th. I have since 
 hud no communication with anyone who was personally cognisant of the circum- 
 stances, but of course General Duffs assurance sufficed to satisfy me of Mr. 
 Coningsby's priority, which I now most cheerfully acknowledge. There is 
 another aspect to the question. Of course, neither Mr. Coningsby nor I entered 
 Paris as a, mere personal adventure, but with a single eye to furnish the news- 
 papers we respectively represented with the earliest possible tidings of the 
 internal condition of the capital. To win a battle is one thing; to utilise 
 promptly the victory is another.
 
 THE CONQUERED. 393 
 
 trance. The other embrasures had been filled up, and 
 the guns moved aside behind to overbank protections. 
 Several, notwithstanding the change, had been dis- 
 mounted. Still the fort, judging by such evidences of 
 really serious damage, might, to all appearance, have 
 held out longer ; nothing was apparent to have made 
 it untenable. The centre yard was full of pits for 
 negativing explosions. Xo actual casemate had been 
 penetrated. But my belief is. that there were not 
 casemates enoiurh for a sufficient garrison. Around 
 the detached bombproofs in the area the blindages 
 had been utilised as barrack-rooms, and protected on 
 the roof with sand-bags, but the sides were left unpro- 
 tected in a similar manner, and the erections were 
 simply smashed into tinder. The barracks in the yard 
 were both shattered and partially burnt. Perhaps Ad- 
 miral La Ronciere, taking everything into consideration, 
 was justified in notifying that he could not face the 
 enemy with guns and men two days longer. 
 
 In the hurry of evacuation the French had left in a 
 casemate a quantity of biscuit and cognac, which the 
 German troops where philosophically enjoying -as 1 
 went round. They wanted something to harden their 
 stomachs before setting about cleansing the casemates, 
 which were like hogsties. Cleanliness could not well 
 have been insisted on under the circumstances. 
 
 Leaving St. Denis about two o'clock, I rode through.
 
 394 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the Prussian foreposts on to the neutral ground in com- 
 pany with two cuirassier officers, who turned back when 
 we had got about two hundred paces up the Avenue de 
 Paris. Had I accepted the well-intentioned advice of 
 friends, I certainly would not have adventured on the 
 expedition on which I was bound. A cool customer had 
 sent his servant in the mornino- for a great-coat I had 
 promised him when the war was over ; his selfish reason- 
 ing being that the war was virtually over as regarded 
 me, since, if I persisted in going into Paris, nobody 
 would ever hear of me more than fragmentarily. The 
 two cuirassier officers who rode with me into the neutral 
 territory took leave of me quite pathetically, and when 
 I said, " Au revoir," one of them shook his head signifi- 
 cantly. It was rather nervous work riding along a road 
 crowded with Frenchmen, not a friendly German uni- 
 form within sight, and one's self so dressed as to be 
 easily enough mistaken for one of the hated race. The 
 Porte de la Chapelle was closed and the drawbridge up, 
 while sentries marched up and down inside the closed 
 gates of the palisading. Nobody knew when the gates 
 Avould open, but there was a general anticipation that 
 they would open some time. I waited for a full half- 
 hour, while a dense crowd collected with the desire to 
 get inside, with whom I and my horse were the chief 
 topies of observation. Men laid their heads together and 
 discussed my personality. I was a Prussian, that was
 
 THE CONQUERED. 395 
 
 taken for granted. Had I countless cattle in reserve ? or 
 had I come to have speech with the authorities as to the 
 further humiliation of Paris ? I got into conversation in 
 English with a man who had been in America, but this 
 had no effect in leading my critics to suppose I was an 
 Englishman. " These Prussians, mere, they know every 
 language under the sun ; " sententiously remarked an 
 elderly gentleman with a big cabbage under each arm, 
 and a pair of red stripes down his legs. My horse 
 shared with me the public interest. But it was not the 
 interest usually attracted towards horses. There was no 
 criticism as to her points, her probable action, or her 
 soundness. Xo, " she was a fine fat animal ; she must 
 be succulent ; how well she would eat ; what would I 
 not give for a slice of her?" When I saw a gentleman 
 in a blouse produce a big knife in dangerous proximity 
 to the mare, I had serious apprehensions that he was 
 going to help himself to a buttock steak. It was very 
 curious how horseflesh had come to be accepted as an 
 ordinarv viand, not to be noted as anything out of the 
 common. On the previous day, when I had called on 
 M. Saglier, the good pasteur of St. Denis, he hospitably 
 asked me to have some dinner. I assenting, he told his 
 servant to " bring in the meat," and I made an assault 
 with vigour and perseverance on a rather ragged roast 
 joint which was placed before me, the pastor looking on 
 benignantly the while. I held my tongue till the edge
 
 39G THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 was off my appetite, and then asked the minister what I 
 was eating. " Well," said he, " of course you are eating 
 horse, and a very choice joint it is. I knew the animal 
 well. He was young and plump, and of a grey colour, 
 which it is well known indicates tenderness/' The pastor 
 had been eating horse for the last four months; not be- 
 cause he was forced to do so so long, but because he had 
 a numerous dependency of poor people, to aid whom he 
 had to practise economy. 
 
 After waiting half-an-hour outside the barred La 
 Chapelle gate, an officer appeared, and exclaimed, " A 
 la Porte de St. Ouen." St. Ouen (or Clingiancourt) is 
 the next gate to La Chapelle on the north, and we all 
 therefore made to the right, I being mounted beating the 
 others, who were all on foot. This gate was open, and a 
 gendarme examining passes. I rode on slowly, looking 
 straight between my horse's ears, and somehow nobody 
 stopped me. When I had got just inside the gate I 
 thought for certain my career was to be cut short. The 
 Ceinture Railway runs close by the inside of the enceinte, 
 and as I readied the bridge an officer came forward with 
 his hand raised. As luck would have it, a train came 
 puffing past at the moment. Jly mare thought proper 
 to go through a variety <>f fantastic gymnastic feats at 
 this apparition, the officer looking on admiringly. When 
 the train had passed, and she had condescended to come 
 down upon all fours again, the officer smiled and patted
 
 THE CONQUERED. 397 
 
 her shoulder. I smiled and raised my hat, and somehow 
 I had slidden over the bridge before he had got the buck- 
 jumping idea out of his head and the interception idea 
 into it. As I rode down the Boulevard Ornano, J came 
 upon sundry groups of half-drunk National Guards. < hie 
 of these, as I passed him, raised the shout, " A bas lc 
 Prussien ! " further flattering me bv calling me " cochon " 
 and " assassin."' Others took up the cry, and matters 
 were getting serious. The clamour was spreading, and 
 men tried to clutch hold of my bridle. I judged bold- 
 ness to be the wisest policy, so facing about, I pushed up 
 to the first man who had shouted, and proclaiming that 
 I was an Englishman come to do good if possible — not 
 harm — I reproached my denouncer for interfering with a 
 harmless and peaceable wayfarer. The demon of cowardly 
 and venomous suspicions had not yet been developed. 
 Ten or twenty days after, in such a dilemma, I should 
 have thought myself lucky to have got clear off after 
 being marched back to the guard-house, half-a-dozen 
 men at each bridle rein, as many more at each leg, and 
 forced to exhibit my passport to the officer on duty. 
 I Jut hunger is a wonderful agent in making men mind 
 their own business, and in keeping truculence in a dor- 
 mant state. I cannot say, even after 1 had passed suc- 
 cessfully the good fellow who had assailed me with the 
 cries of " cochon," that I liked the appearance of the 
 Boulevard Magenta, It was densely crowded with
 
 398 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 soldiers, and some of them might be disagreeably patriotic. 
 But no, they were all too much busied with their own 
 affairs, getting their pay and discussing events. The 
 closed shops appeared to me to be chiefly eating-houses ; 
 all the other shops appeared to be open, although there 
 did not seem to be any trade doing. The bouillon houses, 
 however, at the street corners, were open, and I after- 
 wards gathered that Duval had had exceptional advan- 
 tages extended to him. 
 
 Halting to go into a shop to make an inquiry — I was 
 not acquainted with the geography of Paris — I called a 
 soldier of the line who was strolling on the pavement to 
 hold my horse. On coming out I had a little talk with 
 him. Yes, he had had enough of it — Sacre. They had 
 nearly killed him, these terrible Prussians, and he was 
 very hungry. When would the gates open for food ? 
 When I put my hand in my pocket to find something to 
 tip him wherewithal, I discovered that I had no other 
 but Prussian money. Forgetting for the instant the 
 situation, 1 asked him whether he could do anything 
 with a ten-groschen piece. Bless you; — it was silver, 
 and might have had the devil's pitchfork stamped upon 
 it instead of the split crow, fur all that the hungry lines- 
 man cared. Three weeks after it was not wise to carry, 
 much less to show, German money. 
 
 "Paris is utterly cowed ; fairly beaten " — so said the 
 lirsL Englishman 1 met ; and his opinion was mine. Yet
 
 THE CONQUERED. 39'.) 
 
 Paris was orderly and decent, and with a certain solemn 
 morose self-restraint mastering the tendency to demon- 
 strate. The streets were crowded, almost wholly with 
 men in uniform. Civilians were few and far between. 
 Many .shops were open, but many also were elosed. 
 There was no want of hardware in Paris. You might 
 have bought enough and to spare of anything except 
 edibles. Drink was plentiful enough, but except near 
 the gate I saw not a soul drunk. The food shops had 
 nothing to show. There were confitures and preserves, 
 jellies, &c. ; but solid comestibles were conspicuous by 
 their absence. In one shop I saw several large shapes of 
 stuff that looked like lard. When I asked what it was, 
 I found it was horse fat. The bakers' shops were closed*: 
 the grating down before the butchers'. And oh, the 
 number of funerals! One, two, three; I met six alto- 
 gether in the course of my ride. Sad with an exceed- 
 ing great sadness ; such was what I found as regards 
 Paris long before I reached the American Legation ; self- 
 respecting, too, in her misery ; not blatant ; not disposed 
 to collect in jabbering crowds. Each man went his way 
 with chastened face and listless gait. 
 
 After visiting the American Legation, where undis- 
 guised wonder was expressed at my appearance, 1 made 
 my way to the Hotel de .St. Honore, to an old-fashioned 
 and well-known house kept by a worthy Priton of the 
 name of Unthank. J had nearly Idled mv wallet with
 
 400 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 newspapers, and had only stowed away, for an exigency, 
 a few slices* of ham. Did ever the rarest geological or 
 mineralogical specimen make such a sensation as these 
 slices of ham ? When I reached my quarters the servant 
 women asked permission to take the meagre plateful out, 
 and show it as a curiosity to their companions ; and 
 after the ham was eaten, stray visitors came in, attracted 
 by the tidings, and begged for a look at the unwonted 
 viands. Mr. Unthank had had for his boarder through- 
 out the siege Dr. Gordon, our medical commissioner in 
 Paris, and he took pride in asserting, that the doctor, 
 under his auspices, had lived as well as any other man in 
 Paris. When dinner came it bore out Air. Unthank's 
 boast. Positively there was a fowl — pretty well, I 
 reckon, the last fowl in Paris. Mr. Unthank had been 
 offered eighty francs for the biped Avhile yet it had its 
 feathers on, but refused it, and so we had him for dinner 
 with my ham as an accompaniment, only I stood out of 
 participation in the ham, that the rarity might go the 
 further with the others. There are advantages in being 
 a Scotsman. One of these this siege had developed in a 
 curious way. There was some store of oatmeal in Paris. 
 You can make porridge out of oatmeal ; and Scotsmen 
 not only eat, but enjoy porridge. Thus Dr. Gordon, a 
 Stratlidon man, had supped his frugal bicker of porridge 
 every morning, while men not born to the manner of por- 
 ridge were giving themselves internal uneasiness by eat-
 
 THE CONQUERED. 401 
 
 ing the stuff which bears the conventional name of bread. 
 Sharing the origin of Dr. Gordon, I shared with him his 
 bicker of porridge, and when I had scraped the dish, 
 came to the conclusion that the man who cannot sup 
 porridge deserves to starve. Yet another national dainty 
 was Unthank equal to — a tumbler of such Scotch whisky 
 toddy as I had not tasted for months. 
 
 In the evening, after paying my respects to a coterie of 
 newspaper correspondents who had been trying to dine 
 at the Cafe Gaillot, in the Rue Xeuve St. Augustine, I 
 there looked in on a party that had been experimenting 
 in dining. They had eaten ostrich, cat, dog, rat, and 
 mice. This seemed to me a hard-hearted mode of ex- 
 tracting a new sensation out of the pinch of the times. 
 Far better to have dined on horse, and given the fancy 
 price of more dainty viands, — is it not justifiable to 
 estimate tin' daintiness of a dish by its cost '. — to put bread 
 into tiie mouths of the poor suffering women and children. 
 For two days neither bread nor meat had been dis- 
 tributed in the s th arrondisseinent. Those who had no 
 money simply had to hunger. The sins for which Paris 
 had used to be famous, seemed all to belong to the past. 
 She had been half-starved, half-beaten into morality, or 
 it might have been, J ventured to speculate, that other 
 than physical influences had led her to wash and be 
 clean. 1 saw some drunkenness, but far less than I had 
 looked for among men whose clock, so to speak, had run
 
 402 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 down. A decent gloom was everywhere apparent. Some 
 asserted that the gloom was as much theatrical and 
 assumed as had been the previous valorous seeming. I 
 tried not to think so— I fain thought that I could see 
 the iron eating and burning into the hearts of those men 
 — silent with unwonted silence ; moody as they had never 
 known how to be before ; and as the downcast faces passed, 
 I drew with a mistaken sanguineness for which I do not 
 now reproach myself, a good augury from them for France 
 and Paris. 
 
 The great and beautiful feature of the siege had been 
 the absence of crime. No murders, no robberies, no 
 social crimes, but a virtue in which, to me at least, there 
 was something pathetic. I had intended to promenade 
 Paris all night, to make the most of the time necessarily 
 limited. But before ten o'clock the promenade had 
 become almost a solitary one. By nine the dim lights 
 were put out in the kiosks, and the petroleum was 
 waning in the street lamps. By half-past the cafes were 
 putting up their shutters ; the red-striped waiters look- 
 ing curiously nondescript. By ten the world of Paris 
 was left to darkness and to me, and so I went to bed. 
 The midnight air was not tortured by the sound of 
 revellers, although there were, no police to keep order. 1 
 woke up between twelve and one in the night, and the 
 silence made me for the moment think myself back at 
 Margcncy.
 
 THE CONQUERED. -iO.'J 
 
 The whole city was haunted by the peculiar half- 
 sweetish, half-foetid odour which horseflesh gives out in 
 cooking; an odour which I had learned to appreciate at 
 Metz. It permeated the deserted British Embassy, where, 
 asserting my privileges as a Briton, I stabled my horse ; 
 it lingered in tin,' corridors of the Grand Hotel, and 
 fought with the taint from wounds in evil case. The 
 Grand Hotel was one huge hospital. Half Paris seemed 
 converted into hospitals, if one miedit iude-'e by the flairs. 
 There had been more than were needed until the 
 Southern bombardment began ; and then when the hos- 
 pitals, ambulances, orphanages, and madhouses on the 
 South side had to be evacuated, there had been quite a 
 squeeze on this side of the water. Very touching was 
 the ignorance everywhere as to- the outside world. "I 
 have seen three English papers since September/' said 
 Dr. Gordon, our .Medical Commissioner. "Is Ireland 
 quiet? Is Mr. Gladstone still Prime Minister ? Is the 
 Princess Louise married?" Such were samples of the 
 questions I had to answer. The ignorance as to the con- 
 dition of the Prussians outside was equally dense. The 
 day after negotiations began, Paris had been assured 
 that the investing army had not eaten for three days; 
 and that it was Paris which was granting terms rather 
 than the other way. i was continually asked if the 
 Prussians had not been half-starved all through? What 
 they had done for quarters? Whether there were not
 
 404 THE WAE BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 400,000 at the very least surrounding Paris % Whether 
 they did not tremble in their boots at the name of the 
 Francs-tireurs ? Whether they were not half-devoured 
 by vermin ? Whether the king still resided in Versailles, 
 they had not heard of his being emperor ? and so on. 
 
 The pinch for food was worse than ever, pending the 
 result of the negotiations for its supply. The day before 
 but one the hungry populace had broken into the re- 
 served store of potted provisions in the Halle, smashed 
 all obstacles, and looted the place. From one who had 
 paid the prices himself, and had the figures down in black 
 and white without exaggeration, I got the following 
 list : — 2 francs for a small shrivelled cabbage ; 1 franc 
 for a leek; 45 francs for a fowl; 45 francs for a rabbit 
 (which may be taken for granted as cat) ; 25 francs for 
 a pigeon; 22 francs for a 2lb. chub; 14 francs per 
 pound for stickleback ; 2 francs per pound for potatoes; 
 40 francs per pound for butter ; cheese, 25 francs a 
 pound, when procurable. Meat other than horseflesh 
 was absolutely not to be procured. I was assured that 
 if I offered 50/. down in bright shining gold for a 
 veritable beefsteak, 1 should have no claimant for the 
 money ! The last cow that had changed hands was for 
 the use of an ambulance, and had fetched 80/. Those 
 that were still left could not be bought for money. 
 The bread was abominably bad, something between 
 putty and chopped straw, bound together with farina
 
 THE COS QUEUED. 103 
 
 starch : lmt its badness was not the worst thing about 
 it, that was the difficulty to ^et it at all. Gentle and 
 simple had to wait their turn outside the 1 takers' shops, 
 and the same outside the butchers'. I saw huge throngs 
 at both as 1 rode through Paris, chiefly women, waiting 
 in silent shivering in the cold. 
 
 The trees on the Boulevards had suffered less than 1 
 had been given to expect. In the Champs Elysees like- 
 wise, there was little perceptible injury, but the gardens 
 of the Tuilcries, in which wooden barracks had been 
 erected nearly all the length of the Rue Rivoli, had not 
 escaped rpiite so well. The scarcity of wood was terrible 
 in the latter days. People could not get their washing 
 done for lack of wood to heat the copper. So far as 1 
 could gather the moral effect of the bombardment on the 
 population was terrible, although unacknowledged de- 
 finitely. Alter the first day of defiance the Government 
 had felt tile pressure. .M. Jules Simon told a friend of 
 mine that the bombardment of St. Denis had shortened 
 the siege by a week. ( 'ompetent authorities estimated thai 
 Paris, had she been desperately obstinate, might have 
 gone on for another fortnight or three weeks, had the 
 pickles and preserves, and all the odds and ends now 
 sold at exorbitant prices, been taken and rationed. Cer- 
 tainly, the supply of horseflesh wa.s far from exhausted. 
 It surprised me to see so many well-appointed vehicles 
 still in the streets of Paris, with well-conditioned horses.
 
 -14)0 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Nor were the omnibuses either few or far between, and 
 their horses were in the best of condition, as were the 
 horses ridden at break-neck speed through the streets by 
 officers who looked, and who probably were, transmogrified 
 jyetits creves. 
 
 I was inside Paris, but how was I to get out ? It was 
 clear T was no use there, quite de trap in fact. People 
 who ought to know shook their heads. I must first get 
 my passport vised at the Embassy. Then I must go to 
 the Prefecture of Police and get a permit, which would 
 probably be refused, and then there was after all the 
 Prussian lines to pass. I thought it wise to have the 
 passport vised, in case of accidents. Who could vise 
 it ? Oh, Mr. Blount, the banker, who had just been 
 appointed British Consul. To Mr. Blount's I went. A 
 respectable man told me that was the wrong shop, I 
 must go to the Embassy and get my business done there. 
 To the Embassy I went accordingly. A porter, mopping 
 the .stairs, was the sole representative visible of her 
 Britannic Majesty. He sent me into a room, and pre- 
 sently a little man in slippers arrived, who told me he 
 had been summoned from some cleaning operations 
 upstairs, and was in a muddle. Inside his velveteen 
 coat was concentrated the representation of ambassador, 
 attache, consul, and the British flag generally, including 
 the lion and the unicorn. He produced the seal, and 
 had to spit on the unused wad to get juice enough
 
 THE CONQUERED. 407 
 
 for the impression. With much mental perturbation, 
 arising from thick ink and a seemingly defective ac- 
 quaintance with the art of penmanship, he succeeded in 
 achieving mv skeleton credentials, and then said I must 
 go to Mr. Blount and get his signature attached. Rather 
 a scram iv way of getting accredited as a free-horn 
 British Christian, I thought, especially when I thought 
 of the big house and the bigger item in the estimates. 
 However, I went to Mr. Blount, who was remarkably 
 civil for a consul, and owned, with ingenuous candour, 
 to an utter ignorance of his new duties. He knew 
 enough, however, to attach his name in the vicinity of 
 the imposing stamp, and then advised me to go to the 
 Prefecture. 
 
 had had enough of gyrating among officialism, and 
 determined to chance it. Trotting down the Rue Rivoli 
 r met Dr. Cormac, who, as head of the English ambu- 
 lance, supported by Mr. Wallace, had been doing very 
 good work. On my right the gardens of the Tuileries 
 were sadly desecrated, ploughed up with innumerable 
 hoof-prints of cattle, scored with tracks of provision 
 waggons. \\ ooden barracks had been built where dainty 
 Hower-pots once were. The Place du 'Prone had its 
 eastern end blocked by a gigantic; barricade, erected, as 
 I supposed, poiir jtassci' la temps; for it was impossible 
 that it could have been of any use for defensive pur- 
 poses. Once outside this, the Vincennes gate stood
 
 40S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 before me. I pulled up into a walk, and tried to look as 
 if I were doing the most ordinary thing in the world. 
 There was a cordon of soldiers across the narrow passage 
 just inside the gate. One made a half motion for me to 
 halt. I began to whistle, and looked the other way. 
 He forsook his purpose. In another minute I was in 
 the broad road outside the Vincennes gate, and was in 
 full trot through the suburb. A little beyond the fort I 
 came to the forepost line of the AVurtembergers, and 
 chancing to meet an officer I knew, rode through with- 
 out so much as bcino; challenged. 
 
 Except her forts, her garrison, and her enceinte, it was 
 curious to notice how much of an open camp Paris had 
 been all through the siege. The forepost defence line of 
 the French was hardly worth talking of as an obstruction. 
 Here and there, it is true, it was formidable. Around the 
 Chateau of Villanteneuse, for instance, there was a series 
 of works which were of a regular fortress character, and of 
 a construction which was creditable to those who had 
 made them ; but there they stood all alone, unsupported, 
 as French soldiers as well as French works have been so 
 often during this war. So the German patrols had been 
 wont quietly to walk round these Villanteneuse works, 
 and do their business on the further side, utterly nega- 
 tiving them. Non-continuity was the striking feature 
 everywhere of the French line of defences. Fort Nogcnt, 
 close on the right of which I passed in my ride, had not
 
 THE CONQUERED. 409 
 
 to all appearance suffered so much as the St. Denis 
 forts ; but I had not time to enter it and make a minute 
 inspection. Up till the hour that I left Paris no pro- 
 visions, otherwise than surreptitiously, had been intro- 
 duced into Paris. The situation, indeed, until Colonel 
 Wortlcy and .Air. Moore's prompt and prudential arrival, 
 was hardly appreciably ameliorated as compared with the 
 siege times. 
 
 Lagny I readied about six at night, and slept, or 
 rather spent the night, in the guard-room, to ensure 
 priority in the inevitable scpiceze for seats in the only 
 train for the frontier — a train leaving at the unholy 
 hour of half-past four in the morning. All day I0112; we 
 jogged on, very slowly for a Postzug, through France, 
 passed shattered Strasburg about midnight, and reached 
 Carlsruhe about two in the morning. Hurrying to the 
 telegraph ofticc, I spent the hours there till ten in the 
 morning, superintending the doings of two very pleasant 
 young ladies who had the night shift at the wires, and 
 was in the return train for the front at half-past two in 
 the afternoon (the :3rd). 
 
 Owing to an accident to the mils 1 did not reach 
 Lagny. on the return journey, till the afternoon of the 
 5th, to find that place (always crammed) now positively 
 overwhelmed by the Hood-tide of those who had quitted 
 Paris. On the Gth I rode round the east and north 
 from Lagny to Margvncy. Kverv road was thronged
 
 410 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 with tlio inhabitants of the country surrounding Paris, 
 pouring out of the city in which they had so long been 
 immured. I saw sad sights at every step ; families 
 gazing hopelessly at their shattered homes, or women 
 timidly asking permission of the Germans to be allowed 
 a corner in their own house wherein to shelter their 
 children. I saw a French nobleman visiting his own 
 chateau, asked as a guest by the German occupants to 
 drink a glass of his own wine, and proffered a shake- 
 down in one of his own bedrooms. I saw delicate 
 ladies, with jewels on their fingers, grubbing in the 
 fields for frosted vegetables ; while the bonne stood in 
 the 1 road with the sobbing children, and the father 
 mooned about picking up scraps of firewood to warm the 
 damp hearth in the wrecked chateau. I saw the stupe- 
 fied farmer gazing dreamily on the battery emplace- 
 ments cumbering his fields, and at the shell craters 
 behind them, as if the solid works were spectral appa- 
 ritions, and would melt away and leave the easy furrows, 
 if lie only looked long enough. Faces passed me not 
 good to look upon. Dark faces of French ladies inside 
 carriages, with tightened muscles, and eyes flashing full 
 of silent passion, as the German sentry stopped them in 
 the ruined village, and in the rough Teuton manner 
 demanded their papers. There were 1 lurid faces of men, 
 too, with knitted brows and suppressed angry despair 
 working in each feature. Yet the picture had its other
 
 THE CONQUERED. 411 
 
 side, thanks to French adaptability and light-hearted- 
 ness. A family finds its wine-shop empty, and the roof 
 off. In a couple of hours things are patched up some- 
 what ; the buried buttles are unearthed; and a brisk 
 over-the-counter trade is 2oin<i <)n - Another family turns 
 up in an omnibus, with impedimenta, including an assort- 
 ment of babies and green umbrellas, only to find its home 
 tenanted by Saxon soldiers. Pack closer, is the order 
 with the Teutons. Room is made for the new-comers. 
 The corporal takes the baby while the mother tries what 
 erbswurst soup is like ; and the old household settles 
 down into something marvellously like content. 
 
 Bad times no doubt those in the environs of Paris, 
 when the starving beleagured came out to ruined homes 
 and to grub for food in the fields; vet times not without 
 some redeeming features. Separated families were re- 
 uniting, and tin.' sight— -albeit there was not a little 
 pathos in it — was cheerful. My village of Andilly had 
 received a great accession of kinsfolk — so much so. in- 
 deed, that it was not able to contain itself, but habitually 
 held its coteries nl fresco in tlie mud. When I had left 
 for Paris a week before the Frenchman who, in Madame 
 Sapey's absence, did me the honour to consider himself 
 my most obedient humble servant, had neither wife nor 
 child in his lodge ; they were in the besieged city. 
 When 1 came back there was a homely air about the 
 place it had never worn before. The wife had come out,
 
 412 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 and brought the bairns with her. They were rather a 
 pallid crew, but merry with the joy of being back again. 
 When one called there came a flaxen-haired child, with a 
 "Plait-il, Monsieur'?" instead of the unshorn porter, its 
 father. When the sun came out the flaxen hair and her 
 brothers and sisters fell a playing on the lawn. What a 
 home-look the little ones gave this war-devastated region ! 
 They made it look so homely that one fell home-sick, 
 and found himself craving wistfully after the sight of his 
 own flaxen-haired ones. 
 
 For how many must it have been in those days a 
 source of congratulation that the plain of Montmagny is 
 a series of market-gardens ! You have seen in winter 
 weather a bevy of crows following the plough. Like this 
 was the swarm of French, male and female, father and 
 son, matron and child, that I saw spread over the fields, 
 grubbing for the vegetables, as I rode toward St. Denis, 
 on my way to Paris, on the 7th. Some went in strongly 
 for onions : others for leeks, which they washed in the 
 water by the roadside ; others ajmin with stick or iron 
 spike turned over the potato drills to excavate the 
 frosted tubers. Road and railway track were alike 
 thronged ever with quiet yet seemingly cheerful 
 journey ers. Cheerful, for they were already out of 
 captivity, and as yet had not conic upon the object of 
 their visit in the shape of their homes. When this stage 
 si iuu Id have been reached I trow the blithe faces crew
 
 THE CONQUERED. 413 
 
 very long indeed. There is a time to be glad and a 
 time to mourn. The em'ujrcs were glad before they 
 were warranted in being so ; there was a bitter time of 
 mourning in store for them. Ah! this life is very 
 short ! Too short, as I heard an utilitarian remark the 
 other day for a wise man to smoke bad cigars. Too 
 short also, it may be, for people to be sad before the 
 inevitable time comes. If that strange, half-frivolous 
 half philosophical French nonchalance permitted, why, in 
 heaven's name, should not these poor people be merry 
 while they might'? It is only Teutons and that nonde- 
 script amalgamation of the breeds of the universe which 
 we call Anglo-Saxon, that pulls down the lower lip in 
 anticipation. 
 
 It was a strange scene on the forepost line. The hour 
 was about half-past five when I reached it. As I had under- 
 stood, the nominal hour for closing intercommunication 
 was .six ; but on the German side the living barricade in 
 the shape of a cordon of soldiers had been put up at live 
 instead of six. In consequence, a dense mass of dis- 
 appointed people had accumulated, complaining bitterly. 
 Behind the folks on foot were long lines of carriages, and 
 the number was being continually added to. It was, 
 indeed, an important question for many. They lived in 
 St. Denis : they had no place to go to if they went back 
 to Paris, and besides, by the time they could get back 
 the Paris gates would be closed. Were they to pass the
 
 414 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 niglit on the plain ? I thought the Germans were rather 
 stern about the matter. Cavalrymen, with horses that 
 reared imposingly, rode continually across the front in a 
 succession of plunges, driving the people back as I have 
 seen a troop of dragoons clear Dame Street, in Dublin, 
 on " St. Patrick's day in the morning." On behalf of a 
 gentleman in charge of an International Society's ambu- 
 lance waggon, I appealed to the officer on duty ; but " I 
 have my instructions " was the response, which no one 
 could challenge. One could not have got into Paris now 
 without a permission. There was a regular and orderly 
 system of examining passes, both on the German side, and 
 by the French at the point where the road cuts into the 
 glacis of the enceinte. There I found an officer who 
 spoke both German and English, and who comically 
 grumbled that his linguistic accomplishments seemed to 
 doom him to permanence in his present position. A 
 trying position truly. Had I not already seen that 
 everybody was trying to get out of Paris, I should have 
 certainly said that everybody was trying to get into it. 
 Very civil was the polyglot officer, and I found myself 
 inside La Chapelle ever so much sooner than I had 
 anticipated. 
 
 " Why, they have got over it already ! " Such was 
 the remark I made to myself as I rode through Paris in 
 the dusk — a Paris no more like the Paris I had seen a 
 week before than is Niobe to a clown Grinning through a 
 
 o O O
 
 THE CONQUERED. 415 
 
 liorse-collar. Paris had in a great measure recovered 
 her spirits, and with them her complacency. The 
 general population looked no more as if all were lost. 
 Groups formed and conversed — they even enlivened into 
 gesticulation. The wineshops got up quite a creditable 
 illumination, and they were the reverse of empty. But 
 they were not so full as were the public soup-kitchens, 
 from which as I rode past I reasoned that the contents of 
 the twenty-seven trains that had come in full of British 
 provisions could not have diffused themselves quite so 
 widely as to bring plenty into every household ; and 
 there still were cues outside the bakers' shops, but there 
 was something better to wait for than in the old days. 
 True, the bread was still brown, but it was not like glue 
 jam. .-larch, molasses, brown paper, bill-sticker's paste, 
 and printer's ink, blocked together, as it had been the 
 other day. There was in it a goodly proportion of 
 wholesome British flour, and it was a toothsome morsel 
 compared to the stuff that I had loathed the other day. 
 There were many more shutters down from the shop 
 fronts than on the occasion of my first visit. \l was 
 true there was not much food about yet, and prices were 
 " famine," but still the look ahead was toward a harbour 
 of plenty pretty soon, not to misery, cold, hunger, bomb- 
 shells, and despair. So Paris had got over the terrible 
 twinge which the surrender gave her at first, and had 
 owned to herself that things were looking up. " After all,"
 
 4L6 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 I seemed to hear Paris say, " I do well to get rid of my 
 moping humour, and to abjure my intention of jumping 
 into the Seine and finding my way into the Morgue. It 
 cut me very deeply, no doubt, to have to sign that 
 convention, but only just think what I have braved, 
 done, and suffered. You can't in common decency refuse 
 to own that I am at least something of a heroine : that I 
 have deserved well of my country and of my traditional 
 reputation. Well, vive la gloire ; I have the glory if I 
 have not the success, so let me smooth my face and 
 pluck up my spirits a bit, and go out for a walk on the 
 Boulevards, and once more assert the tongue-gift I am 
 endowed with." Who could blame Paris if she reasoned 
 thus, providing only that her tongue-gift, her gloire, and 
 her shortness of memory should not combine to make 
 her forgetful of the terrible ordeal she had gone through ? 
 Keep that memory fresh in the mind of Paris — if it is 
 possible to keep any memory fresh in snch a mind, or if, 
 indeed, she knows the meaning of mental freshness — and 
 you may be easy about any more war on the part of 
 France that Paris can help. Even now, while the last 
 act of the tragedy seemed thickening, and there was the 
 possibility of a hiteh and a postponement in the dropping 
 of the curtain, Paris wanted peace at any priee, and 
 wished Gambetta dead. "No more fighting for us, 
 thank you." I do not believe, if the war had con- 
 tinued in the South, that half a hundred Frenchmen
 
 THE CONQUERED. 417 
 
 would have quitted Paris to take part in it. Over the 
 Maine of La Chapelle hung a white flag as I passed, 
 blazoned with the inscription, "La Patrie est en danger; 
 Formation des compagnies de marche ; Appel aux volun- 
 taires." Bless you, it might have been a Hebrew text 
 for all that anybody regarded it. The patrie and the 
 marching regiments mig;ht go hang; if the provision 
 trains would only come in fast enough into the Terminus 
 du Nord. Their speedy advent was indeed still wanted 
 badly. There had been no bread distributed the day 
 before in the arrondissement of Passy, and a scant one in 
 turbulent Belleville. Dr. limes had seen to the temporary 
 relief of the ambulances with a zeal and discretion that 
 could not be too highly commended. That omnibus of 
 his, which must have been like the wizard's inexhaustible 
 hat, was talked about everywhere. How he pulled out 
 of it first himself; then rabbits, turkeys, loaves, Lam, 
 vegetables, four sheep (1 don't know if they were alive), 
 and a quantity of little odds and ends, in the shape of 
 chests of Liebig and other small deer! How he consorted 
 with Dr. Ciordon, and how the energetic pair bustled out 
 the good things all round the ambulances — going the 
 length, indeed in their urgency, of requisitioning; the 
 earriag'ediorses of the Ambassador of a Foreign Power! 
 
 AY hat a contrast to the months of .March and April 
 was February in Paris, especially the first half of the 
 month ! Electioneering was going on most of the 
 
 TOL. II. Y. K
 
 418 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 time ; but electioneering surely of a very quiet kind. 
 I don't doubt that one, had he known where to look 
 for it, might have found political excitement running 
 high and waxing warm ; but I confess I felt more 
 interest in the hungry women and children than in 
 politics. In indulging this interest I went about a good 
 deal with Dr. Gordon, our military medical commissioner, 
 a man who, while singularly modest and undemonstrative, 
 was simply working like a horse to alleviate the distress 
 of this great city. His knowledge, derived from a re- 
 sidence in Paris during; the sieo-e, was now of the utmost 
 value, and the circumstances called it almost continually 
 into action. Our countrymen in Paris during the siege, 
 although few in number, had no reason to be ashamed of 
 their work. The expenditure of the British Charitable 
 Fund for the last month had amounted to 18,000 francs, 
 all contributed by British residents in Paris for the be- 
 hoof of their poorer fellow-countrymen. Over 1,200 
 poverty-stricken British subjects were regularly fed by 
 its machinery. There was another fund of a similar 
 character, organised by the Bev. Dr. Smytlie, for married 
 women who themselves were English, although married 
 to foreigners. Many of the husbands of these women 
 had been serving as soldiers ; the poor creatures had lost 
 their own nationality, and therefore could not claim 
 either for themselves or their children on the British 
 Charitable Fund. Through this medium some thirty-five
 
 THE CONQUERED. 419 
 
 women and seventy-six children had been kept alive. 
 This latter fund had also assisted a forlorn detachment 
 of converted Jews, thrown over, of course, by the Jewish 
 organisation. All those families, of which there were 
 twenty-seven, were connected with England in some 
 way or other. 
 
 Nobody could have been in Paris at this time a single 
 day without hearing something of the noble work done 
 by Mr. Richard Wallace during the siege. A rich man, 
 he had not spared his wealth, nor had he spared personal 
 exertions. At an expense of 12,000/. he had established 
 an ambulance; he had paid down 2,000?. for the behoof 
 of the victims of the bombardment ; he had set up a 
 hospital at his own expense ; and another hospital for 
 thirty patients he had established in his' own house. The 
 grateful people called him the Peabody of Paris. There 
 are some practical people across the water in our happy 
 little island. Mr. Wallace's name for charitable actions 
 had been celebrated by Paris correspondents during the 
 siege. Another victim, thought the astute begging-letter 
 writers. The first letter that Mr. Wallace opened on the 
 resumption of postal communications was abego-incr letter, 
 asking for 50/. I am sorry to have to add that the en- 
 terprising correspondent failed in his laudable object. I 
 much fear, however, after all, that the good work that 
 was being clone — the hearty genial work into which 
 everybody seemed to enter with a pleasant zest — missed
 
 420 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 a very important class. I refer to those middle-class 
 people, maiden ladies, widows with families, &c, ordinarily 
 fairly well-to-do, but whose means of living the collapse 
 of France had dried up. These people did not and would 
 not come a-begging. They suffered : aye, good friends, 
 and I fear they died of want, some of them, rather than 
 expose the nakedness of the land. They were hard to 
 get at. Much like the Scotch folk before the Poor Law 
 regime, they had an honest pride, and they would, while 
 they starved behind them, hang clean starched curtains 
 at their windows. One deeply touching instance of pri- 
 vation among such people came to my knowledge. On 
 the Dth a gentleman was distributing bread in a certain 
 quarter of Paris. He had a slice in his pocket, scraps of 
 which he was throwing to a dog. It startled him when 
 a woman ran out of a doorway and begged him to give 
 her for her child the bread he was throwing to the dog. 
 She was a lady, God help her ! the wife of a surgeon, 
 who was in the south with the army, and her infants 
 were starving. Take this fact home to ourselves — for 
 that is the only way to get at the conception of the 
 position. -Fust fancy a London doctor's wife begging a 
 
 1 J DO ~ 
 
 bit of bread from a stranger! You can't? No more 
 can 1 ; and yet here was the counterpart of the incom- 
 prehensible. We could not persuade the doctor's wife, 
 and such like; people, to come to the places of distribu- 
 tion. We did not know where they lived. Delicate
 
 THE CONQUERED. 421 
 
 work this, not tit for rough men, however bio* their 
 hearts, in great boots, with loud voices, and big beards; 
 the work was women's work. We should have seen 
 in Paris in those times some frank-faced British 
 women with energy and discrimination, yet with soft 
 voices and pleasant coaxing ways. They could have 
 done what with the best will in the world men could 
 not do. 
 
 So far as I could learn, the French surgeons in the 
 early days of the siege, when the conditions were favour- 
 able, were earnest in the pursuit of conservative surgery. 
 One of the leading advocates for this system had been 
 Dr. Mosetig, of Vienna, attached to the International 
 Society's organisation, and he had great success, espe- 
 cially in the carlv davs of the sieo-e. But as the sieire 
 progressed times changed. Circumstances became un- 
 favourable to the recovery of wounded men under any 
 surgical conditions; wards became impregnated from 
 long use with hospital taint ; rations were 1 bad ; the men 
 were physically "'bad subjects/' True, it was possible 
 still in some favoured lazarettes to pursue conservative 
 suruyrv. There ventilation was good ; patients were 
 comparatively sparse; there was a large allowance of 
 cubic space of air; and the attendants spared no pains 
 to destroy anv mysterious taint so noxious alter opera- 
 tions. A most favourable example of a pattern lazarette 
 was that kept up by Mr. Wallace, and supervised by
 
 422 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Dr. Cormac, where the sanitary conditions were main- 
 tained in thorough efficiency with hardly any regard to 
 expense. But all the receptacles for the wounded mani- 
 festly could not share this good fortune. There were 
 crowded and long occupied wards, generating pyaemia, 
 gangrene, and erysipelas ; there were overworked order- 
 lies ; and there was food of a character inevitably tending 
 to the impoverishment and vitiation of the blood. These 
 conditions presented but a poor field for the successful 
 practice of conservative surgery. Let me take two ex- 
 amples of conservative surgery, operations for success in 
 which one of the most distinguished of our British sur- 
 gcons, Sir William Fergusson, is justly celebrated. I 
 refer to the excision of the knee and elbow joints, and 
 the establishment of a juncture between the parts on 
 either side of the excised joints. The value of such an 
 operation successfully consummated is immense ; and, 
 under favourable conditions, with skill in the operator, 
 a fair bodily condition in the patient, and sedulous after 
 attention, such an operation is successful in most cases 
 to a pitch of which our ancestors did not dream. But 
 when the ward is malarious with those taints which 
 poison raw flesh surfaces ; when the patient is low 
 in habit at the time of the operation, and good nourish- 
 ment is not afterwards obtainable ; and when the dressing 
 and attendance are not scrupulously careful, it is obvious 
 that the circumstances are altered. The surgeon has to
 
 THE CONQUERED. 123 
 
 consider the practicability of diminishing the risk to the 
 lowest possible minimum. "When he excises a joint and 
 attempts a juncture, he has two flesh surfaces patent to 
 the taint ; the dressing is complicated and the demand 
 on the vital enenn* that stimulates the healing power is 
 probably larger. On the other hand, when he amputates 
 he exposes but one surface, and the other risks are 
 smaller in every way. It was by argument based on these 
 facts that toward the end of the siege conservative sur- 
 gery was gradually abandoned, except in very favoured 
 localities. I fear the success of the operating surgeon 
 had been in no case encouraging. It was hardly in the 
 nature of things that it should have been so. When 
 scientific men give to the world the results of their sur- 
 gical experience of the siege of Paris, the communication 
 cannot fail to be interesting and instructive. From all 
 that I can learn, matters would have been worse than 
 they wen 1 , had not all the victualling, medical, and sur- 
 gical arrangements been in professional hands, instead of 
 being left to the Intendaiice. Probably in the history of 
 modern organisations there' is no greater instance of stu- 
 pendous and abject failure than the French Intendaiice. 
 If it failed miserably in its obligations to the fighting 
 men. it is not to be thought that its functions would 
 have been more efficiently performed in attending to the 
 sick and wounded. This war has snuffed out the French 
 intendaiice. If there are any adaptations or copies of it
 
 424 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 in other countries, let their administrators take warning 
 by the abject collapse of their pattern. 
 
 The Paris elections of representatives to the National 
 Assembly were atrociously tame. There are few who do 
 not know what election times are in England. Beer, 
 roughs, placards, speeches, men in the gutter, couriers, 
 hustings, the man in the moon, and so forth. If one had 
 come to Paris thinking to see anything of this kind, I 
 can imagine his utter disappointment. Where are the 
 hustings ? in my innocence I asked a fellow countryman 
 more conversant than myself with the ways of the 
 natives. That was on the polling day. He laughed in 
 my face and turned away. I found out that there were 
 no nominations save in print, and so there was no use for 
 any hustings. An economical arrangement this to dis- 
 pense with the hustings ; but, then, how about the 
 sj)eeches and the show of hands ? Where was the 
 influential manufacturer and large employer of labour, 
 who rolls out his unctuous but slightly halting para- 
 graphs concerning the merits of the gentleman who has 
 found favour in his eyes ? Where were the dead cats 
 and the rotten eggs ; the Brummagen pet and his corps ; 
 the tirailleurs instructed to cheer and groan at the right 
 moment ; the heavy metal in the rear to give weight to 
 a moral conviction ? Where were the poll sheriff and 
 the nimble poll clerk; the important policeman who 
 shows you the way in, and looks the other way when
 
 THE CONQUERED. 425 
 
 you come out after having voted the wrong way and are 
 maltreated by the myrmidons of the other side ? Where 
 was the stately sheriff, Tjiuc with the declaration of the 
 poll-result known ever so long ago ? Where were the 
 candidates \ Where was anybody ? 
 
 I confess that as a Briton, wedded to time-honoured 
 traditions and more or less fond of a quiet row, I was 
 miserably disappointed with these Paris elections. Why, 
 they had the impudence to be orderly even in Belleville. 
 There was no nomination at all. Fancy the swindle for 
 a man with a dint in his temple, got by a stone cast at 
 him when "keeping the ground" at an Irish nomination. J 
 should have been deeply gratified to have seen the whole of 
 tie- 5oo or COQ candidates, after a preliminary stumping of 
 the arrondissements, give vent to their sentiments con- 
 secutively from the steps outside the Hotel do Ville. 
 The process might have been slightly tedious, but it 
 could not have failed to be instructive. The only candi- 
 date I knowingly saw during the whole of the election 
 times was M. Louis Blanc, lie was not. speaking when 
 I saw him. He was eating his breakfast : and he seemed 
 to enjoy it. I flit a craving come over me to demand, 
 then and there, that he should get on the table and 
 deliver an oration; but decency forbade the interruption 
 of a man in the middle of a plat, and \ forbore. 
 Hustings! Polling booths! Why, the recreant and 
 demoralised Parisians voted inside houses, and without
 
 426 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 rows of policemen. An election conducted in such a 
 way was a shock to one's system. Belleville should 
 have been good for a row. Belleville did not care two- 
 pence about the elections, and wanted food and fuel very 
 badly. What an opening for bribery and corruption ! I 
 believe that Dr. limes, with that big omnibus of his 
 full of " proviant," might have headed the poll in 
 Belleville, had he cared, and Mr. Richard Wallace might 
 have been returned for every one of the arrondisse- 
 ments. It surprised one to learn that so many 
 people took the trouble to vote. Who did vote ? Who 
 knew a man that voted 1 I didn't. I asked many 
 whether they voted. One man told me his boots were 
 bail, and he did not care to go out in the damp. 
 Another said that in the morning he had got some fresh 
 meat, and had spent the day in contemplation of it, in 
 preference to going to the Mairie. But there was no 
 question about it, some people did vote. I saw them 
 going in and coming out— quiet, orderly folk, mostly in- 
 clined to melancholy, and suggesting by their appearance 
 that a pot of Liebig would have done them much good ; 
 and yet such men as Gambetta, Garibaldi, and Rochfort 
 were near the top of the poll ! Were they warlike, these 
 sombre citizens, under their lugubrious aspect, and did 
 they crave war to the knife ? or was voting for the Reds 
 a kind of way they had of demonstrating their disgust 
 that they didn't see it advisable to be other than peace-
 
 THE CONQUERED. *t27 
 
 able I Were there half-a-dozen of them that thought 
 more of Gambetta than of a leg of mutton ; or who 
 would have forfeited the offer of a turkey to save Gari- 
 baldi from being "snooted'"? I candidly own I did 
 not know what to make of Paris in its present guise. At 
 times I felt prompted to pull off my hat to it, and own 
 up to its magnanimity; at other times, I asked myself 
 whether this magnanimity was not a sham, and another 
 name for utter indifference. Magnanimity or indifference, 
 one might take his choice of terms ; but the patience 
 was unquestionable. I wonder how an English con- 
 stituency would have relished being kept in suspense for 
 live days as to the result of an election. Paris stood the 
 delay like a lamb. I did not hear a grumble. The 
 papers, which gave the interim results, did not seem to 
 sell with exceptional briskness. There was no clamour 
 for placards outside the Hotel de Ville. 1 went into the 
 place where the bewildered clerks were trying to make 
 coherence out of the medley of votes and candidates. 
 1 got ill by special favour, ft struck me that if every 
 arrondissement worked as hard as the central bureau, the 
 final result might be known somewhere about the New 
 Year. A column at a time of addition was enough to 
 exhaust one of the gentlemen with red stripes down his 
 breeches ; and he was a long time in recovering from his 
 exhaustion. I asked when the final result would be 
 known. A shrug of the shoulders was the reply. "Dan-
 
 42 S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 gerous, turbulent city ! " said a member of the Englisli 
 ambulance to me, wlio bad never visited Paris before ; 
 "why, it is as docile as my village, where there is a 
 parson and one policeman." I did not at the time think 
 the critic was far wrong ; how we were both deceived by 
 appearances ! The noxious plant of turbulence was but 
 stamped down, not utterly eradicated. True, if one 
 looked hard he might, even in the times I speak of, come 
 across mild instances where the turbulence showed faintly 
 above the ground. I went to a red-hot Republican Club 
 in Belleville, where I heard some remarkably wild speak- 
 ing. One of the orators — from the conformation of his 
 legs 1 inclined to the opinion that he was a shoemaker — 
 evolved out of the fervour of his patriotic ardour a 
 strategical scheme that ought, had he only got an 
 opening, to have made him the saviour of France. Here 
 is the programme, much in the speakers own words. 
 " Ah, citizens, the hated men of the thrice-accursed 
 William are defiling the casemates of that famous fortress 
 to our west, that iron door which, locked, would keep out 
 for ever the brutal barbarian. Valerien is dragged in 
 the mire; her beauty ravished by the vile Teutons. 
 And it was a Frenchman who deliberately handed over 
 Valerien to the hateful embraces of these heathen hounds. 
 Woe is me for France, that a Frenchman could have 
 dealt this great blow to hi Patrie. Before the shades of 
 the mighty Republican dead I denounce this sham
 
 THE CONQUERED. 429 
 
 Republican Jules Favre ; this chicken-hearted miserable 
 
 pseudo-patriot ; this vile panderer to the passions of the 
 conqueror. Not now, it may be, is the time for just 
 retribution ; but, sacre, away in the vista of the future I 
 see a guillotine and the heads of traitors ! " Wild 
 cheering followed, led off by a little man so covered with 
 •'•' Huff" that one would imagine he had been tarred and 
 feathered, or was developing an incipient feathered state, 
 but who, I was informed, was a journeyman flock-bed 
 maker. I don't doubt but that he might have been very 
 terrible in his wrath — this little fluffy advocate, for the 
 reign of terror, but when not in wrath he looked rather 
 insignificant, and had a look as if used to be thrashed by 
 his wife. When the cheers had subsided the bandy- 
 legged orator went on in a practical vein. " Well, 
 traitors have yielded Valerien : that dire fact confronts 
 us. Is it to be said that the men of Paris are so nerve- 
 less as to sit still and look up, and see tin 1 wretched 
 Prussian Hag flouting a French sky on the battlements 
 of Valerien? Perish the thought. Xo ; let 20,000 
 patriots conic forward. We shall select a leader, and he 
 will lead us in the dead of night up the side of Valerien, 
 and we shall fall upon the dogs, the thrice damnable 
 Prussian dogs, and butcher them as they snore their 
 Teuton snore. A has !es Pruasiens ! .1 Mont Valerien! 
 A Mont Valerien ! " And the bandy legs jumped off 
 the tribune with a tragic wave of his right arm over his
 
 430 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 head. His views as to the location of Mont Valerien 
 were not apparently well defined ; or if so, were erroneous. 
 He got as far as the door and had a drink of water : 
 then he came back. Perhaps the virtue went out of him, 
 because those present, on whom he may have counted as 
 the nucleus of his 20,000 recruits, confined themselves 
 solely to cheering, and showed no anxiety to go out in 
 the Mont Valerien direction in the damp night air. 
 
 On one of the early days of the armistice a friend of 
 the English ambulance came in, and asked me whether 
 I cared to accompany him on a journey round Paris, of 
 a somewhat exceptional nature. For some two or three 
 months he had been living in the neighbourhood of 
 Lagny, and had made friends of many of his humble 
 neighbours ; when they heard that he was going into 
 Paris, they had come to him, not a few of them, and 
 begged him that he would carry a letter, it might be, or 
 a few francs, or a piece of meat, find out their friends in 
 Paris, and distribute unto them the tokens from outside. 
 We started in a dog-cart, the well of which was full of 
 provisions. Our first visit was to a lady in the Rue de 
 Pome, a daughter of the Mayor of Lagny. For her 
 Mr. Job had a letter. Although in such close proximity, 
 there, had been no communication between father and 
 daughter for three months. It was pitiful to sec the 
 face grow pale, half in fear, half in hope, as the tremb- 
 ling hand went out for the letter : and then there was
 
 THE CONQUERED. 431 
 
 a burst of tears, and a sudden exit through a side 
 door. Like, an April morning presently came back the 
 lady ; the news was good, but, although the face was 
 blithe, she had not quite conquered the tears and the 
 twitching at the corners of the mouth. There was 
 another emotion expressed in the face of her little 
 daughter, when Mr. Job, who had quietly disappeared 
 for a minute, re-entered with a fine turkey. The voumr 
 fairy fell a-dancing round the respectable bird, clapping 
 her hands and singing merrily. The breakfast stood on 
 the table, the piece de resistance being curried horseflesh 
 — a dish I venture to recommend. This was a house- 
 hold in which money was plentiful, and distress had laid 
 on its hand comparatively lightly. 
 
 Our next call was in a very different quarter, oil' 
 northward and eastward into the dangerous Belleville. 
 Belleville the dangerous was, however, as tame as if it 
 had no savagery in its nature. Up through the narrow 
 streets of the Quartier du Temple we drove, between the 
 tall hiai---. reminding one of the old town of Edinburgh, 
 into the traditionally most turbulent and revolutionary 
 pari of Paris. £i Ah, here is a mob. at last,"' 1 remarked, 
 as we wheeled into a narrow Rue, blocked at the upper 
 end by a dense mass of people. Now we shall see what 
 we shall sec. \\ hat we did see was this. Some two 
 hundred and fifty poor wretches, men, women, and 
 children, waiting in the slush outside a wood-yard, to
 
 432 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 get a chance of buying a few sticks at the price of 
 twenty centimes per pound. Bethnal-green the squalid 
 never turned out pallider brats than those of Belleville ; 
 fearsome to look at were the creatures that ouo-ht 
 
 o 
 
 to have shown chubby faces and plump cheeks, by 
 reason of their great hollow hungry eyes and pinched 
 wan faces. It fell out that the family of which we were 
 in search dwelt opposite this same wood-yard, in a great 
 old house that must have once belonged to a somebody. 
 What a noble trait is that French one of neatness unto 
 the death ! Here in this single room, most of the 
 belonoino-s of which had o-one to swell the height of 
 the Mont de Piete, and in the cupboard of which a 
 mouse of the slenderest appetite could not have picked 
 up a living, everything was trim and tidy as if the times 
 were good and the cupboard shelves had been groaning. 
 Look at the group which the letter Mr. Job has brought 
 draws together. A man in uniform, a brother of Ma- 
 dame, reads the letter. Another sister that has tried 
 to listen for a while has broken down utterly, and 
 leans on the shoulder of the National Guardsman, both 
 her hands covering her face. A child in bewilderment 
 is pulling her skirts as she looks up ; and Madame her- 
 self is a stud\'. A pretty little woman, with a thin face 
 and a neat figure, trying so hard to be civil to the 
 Messieurs, to thank them, and to appear as if, for the 
 moment, there was no other object in her life but to
 
 THE CONQUERED. 433 
 
 show her gratitude. But, poor creature, the letter from 
 her husband — a husband in a Lagny lazaretto, what of 
 him was left, for he had lost a leg since his wife had 
 bidden him good-bye in July — that letter is being read, 
 and she is only catching fitful scraps of sentences. I 
 notice her, as she talks with us, set her head to one side, 
 for all the world as you will notice a bird do, to catch a 
 word, and the eye wanders from Mr, Job to the fraternal 
 Xational Guardsman. Mr. Job has money for Madame. 
 Madame takes the big five-franc pieces, and tries to 
 write a receipt, but her hand will not steady itself some- 
 how. Although the face is tolerably calm in seeming, 
 the shaking hand betrays the hidden emotion. Not 
 money alone lias Mr. Job ; in the money part of the 
 transaction he nets only as a go-between ; but it is his 
 own act and deed to have brought this fine leg of 
 mutton. Is he going to be mobbed as he lugs it out 
 of the well of the dog-cart? The haunters of the out- 
 -ide of the wood-yard crowd around us densely; the 
 wan-eyed children concentrate their gaze on the succu- 
 lent mutton, their mouths watering visibly, so that you 
 may see them actually slavering, as dogs do when they 
 -mell cooking : the men and women shoulder each other 
 to get an eligible position for a view. " Mon Dieu, all 
 that meat for one family !— fortunate family!" Madame 
 -uddenly becomes a personage. And we, what are we? 
 Englishmen ! Ah! God bless England, then! Has
 
 434 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 England any more legs of mutton to spare ? suggests 
 a good lady with a dirty face and a practical turn of 
 mind. England, as presently represented, had not ; but 
 England could spare a few cuts for the children off a 
 sausage coil ; and so we drove away out of Belleville, 
 not shot at, not jumped upon, our coats whole, and no 
 mud upon them but that thrown up by the wheels of the 
 dog-cart. 
 
 We wanted now to find a family at lie St. Louis. 
 There was a child in the case, and Mr. Job had promised 
 some relative outside that for the behoof of the child he 
 would hand to the mother a couple of tins of concen- 
 trated milk. Want had driven the family from the He 
 St. Louis. They had flitted to Montrouge somewhere, 
 and we had to go find them. There was a chance, 
 too, of seeing what the bombardment had done. The 
 first trace of it we came to was a shattered and burned 
 house in the Avenue de la Conservatoire. The Eue 
 d'Enfer had probably attracted more than its proportion 
 of shells in consequence of its name, yet even here you 
 had to use your eyes very keenly to see much damage. 
 There was a hole in the side of the Hospice des En- 
 fants Assistes, and the " porochial " character of the 
 Mairie had not availed to avert the hole made in its 
 gable. But the physical effects of the southern bom- 
 bardment, so far as my observation went, had been 
 trivial. The head of the family of which we were in
 
 THE CONQUERED. 4!3o 
 
 search was an artilleryman of the National Guard. We 
 went to the house of his captain. Captain civil, hut 
 did not know in the least where any of the men of his 
 company lived. He had a list of their names, that was 
 all. The addresses were the adjutant's duty, and he 
 gave us the adjutant's address. Him we routed up, only 
 to find that in his opinion, if to have the addresses of 
 the men was anybody's duty at all, it was the captain's. 
 Certainly he had no addresses. " Curious state of things," 
 1 remarked ; " suppose you wanted a man in an emer- 
 gency, or suppose he did not turn up when wanted 
 at the rendezvous, how could you lay salt on the tail 
 of your bird?" Monsieur the adjutant shrugged his 
 shoulders, and said he daresay the man would be got at 
 somehow in such a case; if not, it was but one man, 
 and one man mattered no great deal. " But you have 
 no addresses at all," said I, " and one man may swell 
 into your whole company." Another shrug, and a " Qui 
 sait '. ' so the adjutant concluded the conversation. "With 
 infinite trouble we at last found the family ; the father 
 was on duty. The child had pulled through the priva- 
 tions of the siege, and was in a condition to appreciate 
 tin- milk Mr. Job brought for it. AVe had still one other 
 place to visit, a hospice for orphans in the Rue Bossuet. 
 There was a letter in Air. -lob's pocket for the Sister 
 ►Superior from her sister, who has been working among 
 the wounded in La cjnv ; and there were sundry comes-
 
 4-'36 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 tibles in the well of the dog-cart for the orphans. As 
 Ave drove along the Boulevard Michel we passed great 
 flocks of sheep being driven in, with a crowd of children 
 following them, as at home you will see the young ones 
 hanging round a Punch on its way to a good pitch. 
 There was a man, too, leading a solitary cow. Whether 
 he intended to exhibit the quadruped at so much per 
 head, and therefore was desirous to conceal it as much as 
 possible from the public gaze, just as a showman makes 
 the giant stop inside the caravan, I don't know ; but he 
 had covered up the beast with a rug which hid all but 
 legs, tail, and head. The milky mother was a decided 
 sensation in the Boulevard Michel. When we reached 
 the hospice, we found the orphans at what I supposed 
 was their supper — horse broth and brown bread. The 
 well of that dog-cart was a phenomenon. White loaves, 
 three legs of mutton, a turkey, and half a cheese taken 
 out at last emptied it. We made a kind of trophy of 
 them on the table amid wondering half-timid joy on the 
 part of the orphans, and genially grave thanks from the 
 sisters in their white starched hoods. The well bcino; 
 empty, our work was over for the day. 
 
 Paris had been kept wonderfully clean during the siege, 
 and that cleanliness had averted any raging epidemic, 
 such as was engendered by the foul squalor that con- 
 taminated the air and everything else around Metz. 
 I»ut 1 saw during my drive an immense deal of a
 
 THE CONQUERED. 437 
 
 certain low, sluggish type of fever, hearing a close 
 resemblance to the " famine-fever," of which during a 
 day's walk with Mr. Catlin, of the Cow Cross Mission 
 I noticed so much in London some eighteen months 
 ago. The women and children were the commonest 
 victims. It does not force you to bed, except in its last 
 stages, this famine-fever ; but any one with eyes in his 
 head can see its victims dying as they trail their limbs 
 listlessly about. The skin is thin, dry, and tight, but 
 has a dull opacity that speaks of the liver action being 
 deteriorated, and of pores refusing to fulfil their duty; the 
 eyes have a tired, faded out-look ; and the whole frame 
 seems gradually withering away. I think a full meal of 
 victuals, granting that it could be eaten, would kill one 
 tolerably far gone in this disorder. I wished that I were 
 a man of leisure, and had a big cellar of generous port 
 wine, and a. large consignment of quinine tincture. 
 
 Paris seemed different from Metz in one important 
 and creditable particular ; there had been no hoarding of 
 secret stores of food on the part of "business" men, 
 speculating on a market. In the interval between the 
 sio-niiirr of the Convention and the rolling in of pro- 
 visions from outside, these hoards would have come to 
 the front had there been any. But the shops were barer 
 then than in the middle of January.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 
 
 It was early stirring in the Reservoir on the morning 
 of the 1st of March — of the eventful clay of the Ger- 
 man entry into Paris. By four o'clock its passages 
 resounded to the clink of swords and spurs. Already 
 by that hour the silence of the broad bare streets of 
 Versailles was broken by the tramp of many horses, as 
 the 14th Hussars rode out to keep the ground. When 
 I started at six, day had already nearly broken — a 
 morning cool and grey. We passed on the road a 
 battalion of infantry — an a early bird ; " it had halted 
 and piled arms till comrades should turn out and come 
 up. The long forest road was traversed by only an 
 occasional orderly of the impatient 11th Corps Artillery. 
 Ville d' Avery, once the home of the 6th Jiigers, when- 
 ever that gallant regiment happened to be " at home " 
 from forepost work, and whither many a gallant fellow 
 had been carried back from the foreposts to die, seemed 
 tenanted only by three old women and a grey terrier dog. 
 Beyond lay the pretty little cemetery of the Jiigers,
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 439 
 
 decorated with its wreaths, and here had halted a soli- 
 tary company of infantry. As the men stood gazing 
 on the graves of their comrades, yon might have taken 
 them, in the dim grey morning, for phantom mourners 
 over the gallant children of the Fatherland. 
 
 As from above St. Cloud we sighted the river, we 
 became sensible of the magnitude of the general advance 
 toward the common centre, the Bois de Boulogne. Long 
 before, the barracks of Versailles, once the quarters of 
 the soldiery that was the pomp and pride of the Empire, 
 were pouring out their stalwart men in spiked helmets. 
 To Xeuilly, from the trim parterres of Nanterre and the 
 river slopes of Conrbevoie, the pickelhaubes were pres- 
 sing forward. From the garrison-crater of Valerien ran 
 down its grim sides lava streams of living armed men 
 — men these of the mediatised provinces, Hesse, Wei- 
 mar, Coburg Gotha; men with memories of Courcelles, 
 of the ravine of Gravelotte, of that deadly march 
 up the Meuse from Donchery, and on to the plateau 
 over against Sedan; with recollections of sorties, of 
 typhus, of the knee-deep mud and the fearful mortality 
 of the siege of Metz ; yet brisk, healthy, and hearty 
 now as if fresh from quarters at home. St. Cloud — - 
 burnt and shattered — had given up the men who may 
 be said to have bivouacked in its roofless houses — the 
 Sclave-faced Silesians of the Sixth Army Corps, who, 
 disappointed of blood at Sedan, had led the still blood-
 
 440 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 less advance upon Paris, and were now to share the 
 honours of the entry. From Sevres the ghastly — a mild 
 souvenir to them, it might be of Bazeilles — had marched 
 out already the blue-clad Bavarians, glad as ever to 
 stand in line alongside of the more lasting North Ger- 
 mans. Did they think, as they skirted the Seine, of the 
 soil of Worth, soaked inch deep with their south -land 
 blood ? Those who had seen the 1st Corps before Von 
 der Tann led it on the Orleans war path would have 
 recognised, had they seen it now, but few familiar faces 
 in the ranks. The bodies of the rest are mouldering 
 under the damp sod of the south. But new stuff has 
 replaced the staunch old " cannon-fodder." The Sixth 
 Corps and the Bavarians fraternise warmly ; Silesians 
 and " Pandours " are kindred stuff. Assuredly neither 
 corps deserves the biting sarcasm which Frederick the 
 Great vented on his Pandours : " You dogs, do you wish 
 to live for ever ? " 
 
 They are over the river already, these ever-forward 
 Uhlans ! Lo, their pennons on the further side as they 
 circle among the trees, and hark ! from the village of 
 Boulogne comes on the morning; air the swell of martial 
 music. It is German music, for the French do not 
 play the " Pariscreinzugs March." If the Germans ever 
 want a new motto to stick under the eagle, I would fain 
 recommend " Up in the morning early." Attention to 
 it lias won not a few of their victories ; this musical
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 44 L 
 
 corps over the water must have acted upon it " bright 
 and spry " this morning. In twenty minutes more the 
 slopes above the Longchamps race-course are chequered 
 with dense masses of the dark-coated guardians of the 
 .Rhine. Hauptmann von Bock's pontoon bridge was 
 already half bordered with wreaths of laurels ; on 
 the Bois de Boulogne side a triumphal arch had been 
 erected. Look at the enthusiasm, and in truth taste, 
 with which this rough-handed fatigue party are twining 
 yet more wreaths and festoons. From the bridge of 
 Xeuilly — it was eight o'clock — the artillery of the 
 22nd Division is moving down the broad straight road 
 through the Bois to form near the crest of the slope 
 opposite the pavilion. Meanwhile, the infantry of the 
 6th ( 'orps are streaming over the Sevres pontoon bridge 
 and forming in the glades and the open places on the 
 bight of the loop. Staff officers, conspicuous among 
 whom are now Bavarians in their blue uniforms, are 
 galloping across the plain after the reckless and slightly 
 purposeless manner of staff officers of every nationality. 
 Not an acre of the wood but is sedulously patrolled by 
 the Hussars; their bright blue uniforms and red-bordered 
 new shabracques glancing between the trunks of the 
 trees and through the denser thickets. Here comes the 
 Got ha Regiment, not, however, headed by the Ilerzog. 
 From the other direction comes at a crashing gallop, in 
 squadrons, the 1 lth Hussars, the Frankfort Regiment;
 
 442 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the squadrons get to charging pace as they wheel 
 round a clump, and are stead)'' in position before your 
 admiration of their galloping has subsided. By half- 
 past nine the formation is gradually taking shape. 
 Hark ! there is a cannon shot, and another. Are they 
 from Paris, or arc the gunners in Versailles fouling their 
 tubes with the blank cartridge of a Koyal Salute as the 
 Emperor leaves the Prefecture ? Crash ! another kind 
 of music. With a quick bicker of the drums, there 
 strides through the trees of the south and athwart the 
 slope, a battalion of Bavarian infantry, with the black 
 shaving brushes crowning the helmets ; they wheel, form 
 columns of companies, and take ground with faces to- 
 ward the Grand Stand. There comes yet another and 
 another battalion of the blue Bavarians, with Uhlans 
 and Artillery following, till the whole of the regiments 
 representing the 1st Corps (Hartmann's) is in position. 
 
 By ten o'clock, when the Bavarians were fairly in posi- 
 tion in the centre, the infantrymen of the 6 th Corps, who 
 had previously been lying down on the breast of the slope 
 on their left, had fallen in and moved out into the plain 
 in close columns of companies aligning on the Bavarians 
 on their right ; the latter, a Grain aligning on the division 
 of the 11th Corps forming the right of the line. The 
 long line stretching from end to end of the racecourse 
 was everywhere four companies deep. It was broken by 
 narrow intervals marking the distances between the bat-
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 443 
 
 talions— intervals that one unaccustomed to the aspect of 
 the formation of troops might hardly have discerned. 
 The second line — at a distance of four hundred paces in 
 rear of the first — was composed alternately of regiments 
 of cavalry and batteries of artillery. The intervals in the 
 second line are wider than in the first. The general 
 esplanade in front of the grand stand is kept clear, but 
 the "ring" before it is crowded with a brilliant and kalei- 
 doscopic throng of mounted officers — Uhlans, Dragoons, 
 Hussars, Cuirassiers, and Staff; the pride and pomp of 
 military Germany. It is swept away to the right, as if 
 some invisible besom were in action on it, leaving the 
 racecourse "finish" bare, and the level beyond, where so 
 often have stood the carriages of the monde and demi- 
 monde of Imperial Paris, without a living thing on it but 
 the inevitable dog. There is a sedulous dressing up of 
 
 O O J. 
 
 the first line, till, standing bv the side of the right-hand 
 man of the right-hand regiment, and resting the barrel of 
 a rifle across his chest, you might have sped the bullet 
 down the line and harmed never a man. Across the ex- 
 treme right behind the troops are drawn, in a wide seg- 
 ment of a semicircle, and in clumps here and there, the 
 carriages of those who have the right of entry within the 
 cordon formed bv the Hussars. .Behind them, again, is a 
 lofty batt lenient ed tower, sweeping from its summit the 
 whole line from the right to the left. Not a few think 
 the parapet surrounding the toy windmill, some 150 yards
 
 444 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 to the front, the most eligible point of view. You may 
 meet English and American ladies there, interspersed 
 with doctors and journalists of all nations. I think not 
 a few of the smarter of the latter, and all the artists, 
 whose name is legion, would take in preference to the 
 battlements of the lofty tower, if they only knew what a 
 coign of vantage they afford. 
 
 The front of the Prussian divisions on either wing is 
 clear. Before the centre of the Bavarians in the middle 
 stand two mounted men, the Imperial Crown Prince, the 
 commander of the third army, and his Flilgeladjutant. 
 A few straggling horsemen saunter with seeming aimless- 
 ness about the grand stand, and the pause of expectancy 
 becomes almost painful. The second line — the cavalry 
 and artillery interspersed — turn the interval to account 
 by perfecting the accuracy of its dressing. Each indi- 
 vidual corps and battery was long ago dressed to death as 
 regards itself, but it is now the somewhat defective align- 
 ment which is being seen to. 
 
 At ten minutes past eleven, without a moment's warn- 
 ing, a wild cheer of enthusiasm flashes along the line. A 
 clash of music as the bands burst into " God Save the 
 King." Half-a-dozen horsemen are galloping up from 
 In 'hind an angle of the stand, straight to the right of the 
 line. The leader, an upright, broad-shouldered old man, 
 with snow-white hair, half halts his horse with a hand- 
 wave of salutation, as he reaches the Imperial Crown
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 115 
 
 Prince, then gallops on with the latter hanging close on 
 his flank. He pulls his horse on its haunches as he 
 reaches the flank, and the " windmill battery" bursts out 
 into a "hip, hip, hurrah/' a waving of handkerchiefs, and 
 a clapping of female hands. No need to tell England at 
 this time of day that the white-haired soldier on the 
 noble black horse is Kaiser "Wilhelm of Germany. The 
 densely packed staff that has been in waiting in front of 
 the right come prancing up as the Emperor wheels his 
 horse's head to the left, and commences his slow march 
 along the front. Two horsemen are before him. An 
 interval, and then the grand old man proceeds alone, the 
 solitary focus of the splendid picture. This great day 
 for the Empire of which he is the ruler seems to have 
 cured him of his ailments. Where is the lumbago, the 
 gradual decay, the breaking up about this fresh-coloured 
 old chieftain, with the eye like a hawk? His crest is as 
 erect, his back as straight, his seat as firm, his bridle- 
 hand as light on the black horse, as those of his gallant 
 son, who seems so proud of his father. Verily he reneweth 
 his youth as doth the eagle, this stalwart, sempervirent 
 Monarch of the Teutons. His son follows him half a 
 horse's length behind him, and then, princes, powers, and 
 potentate- — half the Gotha Almanack. Great heavens! 
 are these deep-throated men of the mediatised provinces 
 under the belief that if thev but cheer loud enough, the 
 roar of their Hal clamour will echo in billows of sound
 
 446 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 across that Rhine which so well they have helped to 
 keep \ Sharper and shriller, but to the full as loud, and 
 with a hot ring in it as when steel, not iron, is struck by 
 the hammer, bursts out the cheer of the children of King 
 Ludwig. Germans, allies of Prussia not in name alone, 
 but iu heart, the alliance sealed loyally by a deluge of 
 Bavarian blood, they have earned good right and title to 
 stand here in line to-day, and to claim the low bend of 
 appreciation that the Emperor of Germany accords them. 
 But although the Bavarian troops cheer the Emperor of 
 Germany and King of Prussia, the Bavarian bands will 
 by no means strike up the Prussian National Hymn. For 
 has not Bavaria a national lied of her own, a wild fanciful 
 air, befitting the landsleute to whom it appertains ? 
 
 The Kaiser is not well among the Bavarians till the 
 22nd division is bodily out into the plain in dense 
 masses ; having left-wheeled, they stand looking at the 
 Emperor's back. The distant, and yet more distant roar 
 of cheering comes to us on the right from the far away 
 left flank formed by the 6th Corps, and then, as the Em- 
 peror turns the left flank, and comes towards us again 
 along the front of the second rank — the cavalry and artil- 
 lery — the cheering draws nearer and nearer. As its right 
 flank, in its turn, is gained, and the head of the staff 
 turns away toward the pavilion, men notiee, and the 
 kindly German hearts swell at the sight, that Royal 
 father and Royal ^on have drawn together- — horse head
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4 1 7 
 
 to horse head. Etiquette is potent, but more potent still 
 is love ; and surely if ever there was love between father 
 and son, it is between these two. See ; the proud father 
 lays his hand on the neck of his son's horse, and the 
 staff fall back in delicacy as the two converse. Then 
 spurs go into the horses' sides, the raking black goes to 
 the front again, followed by the white-heeled chesnut. 
 The staff dash through an interval of the 22nd division, 
 and the Emperor takes up his position in front of the 
 east end of the pavilion. 
 
 The drums crash out, and the marching past has begun 
 with the infantry, the 83rd Regiment leading. The for- 
 mation is close columns of companies. The Prussian 
 marching is very fine, but the infantry men hardly show 
 so well in columns of companies as when marching in 
 fours. Let the civilian onlooker regard the sloped arms — 
 indication that this is a display in time of war, and not 
 a bath-brick and pipe-clay review in the piping times of 
 peace. Before night it was not utterly impossible that 
 these now sparkling bayonets might have their sheen 
 smirched with blood. To my thinking the triumph of 
 the Prussian marching past was reserved for their Artil- 
 lery, which went past in a manner simply perfect. No 
 dress parade on Woolwich Common, after a month's pre- 
 liminary battery drill, ever surpassed it. In a military ex- 
 perience of not a short duration, I never saw finer dressing 
 than that displayed by the companies of the Bavarian
 
 448 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 battalions, as they stood waiting on the racecourse for 
 the word to march. Away goes their general staff in 
 advance, the white cocks' feathers of the chiefs floating 
 out in the air like handfuls of snow-flakes. The leading 
 battalion follows, at a short, jerky quick step, to the 
 music of a curious breakdown jig, such as I have often 
 heard in pantomimes. It made a tidy marching step, 
 and the Bavarians did their best ; but a martinet would 
 have thought more of them had he never seen them in 
 motion. As with the Prussians, their Artillery excelled 
 their infantry in marching past. But writing of marching 
 past, what shall one say of a detachment — a column — a 
 what shall I call it ?— of half-a-dozen ambulance waggons 
 in line dressing as true as the smartest horse artillery in 
 the world ? What a gallant show make the light blue 
 and white pennons of the Bavarian Uhlans as they sweep 
 down the slope in quarter squadron formation to take up 
 their station in the marching-past order ! The flashing 
 lance-heads seem dressed as smartly up in the air there 
 as the noses of the horses arc in the ranks. Truly a 
 gallant and chivalric sight these brilliant lancers of the 
 Pfalz, sharing, to the mind of an old cavalry man, with 
 the Dragoons and Hussars the chief honours of the day. 
 Out rings the clarion of the trumpets, clash goes the 
 silver music of the kettledrums, tempered by the deep 
 notes of the ophiclcide. The horses, ever lovers of sweet 
 sounds, arch their necks, champ the bits, and toss flecks
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 449 
 
 of foam back on the polished leathers of the riders. The} 7 
 are as proud as if they realised the meaning and the glory 
 of the day. 
 
 But enough, surely, of marching past. Getting tedious 
 is the spectacle, and a fortiori its relation must do after 
 a short time. Yet it is not fair to quit the subject with- 
 out one word. These troops, reader, passing there daintily 
 clean in serried files that would have rejoiced the heart of 
 an adjutant of the Guards, these troops have had other 
 work for the last six months than to study the trimness 
 of drill and dressing. Fighting, falling;, bivouackino-, 
 earthworking, marching for hours, weeks, months at a 
 stretch, there are few soldiers, according to the rules of 
 the old school, whose parade neatness would not have 
 deteriorated. The secret lies here, that in the thick of 
 the fiLfhtinrr, marching 1 , and bivouackino- time was found 
 in these German ranks for such divertissement as the 
 goose-step. 
 
 For the march-past spectators had mostly forsaken 
 other points and converged on the neighbourhood of the 
 shattered Grand Stand. A strange scene it was to be 
 sure — ladies, correspondents, artists, royal servants, field 
 postmen, aye. marketeiiders even, male and female, pack- 
 ing pretty closely here within the odour of royalty. I 
 have a fancy that that black servant of Prince Carl is a 
 cynic, standing there showing his big white teeth, and 
 looking for all the world like a Zouave that has seen the
 
 450 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE A^D GERMANY. 
 
 error of his way and adopted the Fatherland and a cos- 
 tume with buttons. When the heads of the 11th Corps 
 column and of that of the Bavarians showed themselves 
 conspicuously on the road toward Paris, having wheeled 
 left-about after marching past, and strode away toward 
 Paris, I fear the stalwart Silesians got scant recognition 
 of their smart marching past. There was a general rush 
 Parisward of the non-officials, eager to conquer even the 
 victors in celerity. But those who waited saw a right 
 genial and soldier-like sight after the last of the 6 th Corps 
 had filed past. The Kaiser turned his horse and met his 
 son face to face. Hand went out to hand, and the grip 
 was given of love and mutual appreciation. Then the 
 Staff came forward — the Princes, Poins, and "Lairdies" — 
 and they had doffed bonnets and congratulatory words 
 for their monarch. It was truly the right time for con- 
 gratulation — the morning of the consummation of triumph. 
 You were saying in England the triumph was remorseless 
 and over stern. Look for the refutation of this inside 
 Paris ; on the day when what I am writing of was being 
 transacted ; — inside Paris, where the cowardly yelpers of 
 the canaille were impotently hauling about their pitiful 
 field-pieces in quarters you might be sure enough would 
 not be visited by the German men-at-arms ; throwing up 
 trumpery barricades, from which, as ever, they would run 
 like hounded foxes, yelling trahison ; assailing with their 
 venomous rancour honest neutrals who meant them no
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4-51 
 
 evil ; and clamouring that, because Paris was not wholly 
 occupied, Paris was not utterly at the feet of the con- 
 queror. Say, I pray you, did such a citizenhood de- 
 serve — had they earned the Quixotic consideration that 
 would tempt soldiers in war time to yield the price of 
 their victories and of their losses ? Say you not rather, 
 now that prejudice has cooled, that it might have been the 
 best thing that could have befallen this impotently trucu- 
 lent populace that they should have been made to pass 
 through the burning fiery furnace of the uttermost 
 degradation of humiliation ? 
 
 The heads of columns took two ways through the Bois, 
 the Prussians all but skirting the enceinte, the Bavarian 
 Uhlans adventurously plunging into the bosky dells of 
 the wood — wherein indeed these slashing soldiers lost 
 themselves, and threatened to become Teutonic babes of 
 the wood, but for certain awe-stricken Frenchmen, who 
 put the advance guard right at least half-a-dozen times. 
 The ignorance on the part of the Bavarians of the topo- 
 graphy of the Bois de Boulogne lost them the priority. 
 "When we gained the open, lo ! on our left front was 
 Rittmeister von Yachtmann's scpiadron of the 13th 
 Hussars, followed by the stall' of the 22nd Division. It 
 was too airii'ravatine- - to sec in the near foreground the 
 grizzled grey whisker of General von Sehaehtmeyer, com- 
 mander of the 1 1th Corps, and not to see the full face of 
 him. Five minutes' gallop sufficed for this. The Porte
 
 452 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Maillot was reached ; there was a brief parley about a 
 certain gate which had been walled up, a move forward, 
 and we were in l'Etoile that spreads its rays inside the 
 gate. A few forlorn, but self-respecting douaniers kept 
 over it a nominal guard ; farther inside were some green- 
 coated gendarmes, and von Yachtm aim's Hussars held 
 the gorge of the Avenue Beaugar. In the centre sat 
 grey von Shachtmcyer, pulling his grizzled moustache ; 
 he had his dispositions to make, and these were seemingly 
 aided by capillary cxercitation. A man of prompt action 
 is von Schachtmeyer. " The 22nd Division will march 
 on to the Place du Roi de Rome, and there pile arms ; 
 the Bavarians will march by the Arch of Triumph, down 
 the Champs Elysees, on to the Place de la Concorde ; 
 the 6th Corps will follow, and occupy the Place de 
 l'Etoile and the Champs Elysees themselves — and now 
 Vorwdrts ! " 
 
 At the word the cavalry trumpets ring out, and the 
 officers shout " March ! " On they go up the deserted. 
 Avenue, followed by the 80 th Regiment playing lustily 
 the Paris March. On, through the appalling solitude of 
 the Avenue Beaugar, across the Place d'Eylau, where 
 -stood a solitary horseman, and up the Avenue deMalakoff 
 to the Place du Roi de Rome. There were those anions; 
 the on-lookcrs who had seen the French soldiers march 
 with their English allies into the grim fortress from 
 which this avenue takes its name. Where were the men
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 45-"5 
 
 who stormed the Mamelon, the dauntless and crafty 
 campaigners of the Crimea ? Alas ! their courage 
 sapped, their craft gone, they, and men who should 
 have been such as they, were languishing in the German 
 prisons, and the conquerors of the new era of warfare 
 were marching' in triumph over them up the Avenue 
 named after one of their deeds of prowess. The head 
 of the long snaky column marches steadily on through 
 curious groups — for the Avenue de Malakoff is densely 
 populated, and its inhabitants cannot resist the humili- 
 ating fascination — till at length it reaches the Trocadero. 
 Lo ! before the Teuton host lies Paris as in a panorama. 
 Over against rises the gilded dome of the Invalides. 
 Arc the ashes of the First Xapoleon quiescent in the 
 sarcophagus to-day 1 Behind, the grand pile of the 
 Arch of Triumph rears its head. In the distance rise 
 the towers of St. Sulpice, the Pantheon, and Notre 
 Dame. At our feet winds the Seine, striped out with 
 its beautiful quays, esplanade, and bridges; beyond the 
 Champs de Mars, (dad with the white tents of the 
 French. On the Field of the God of War a dense 
 mass has collected of French soldiers, no longer war- 
 riors. And what effect has this rich and varied pano- 
 rama on the German soldiery I Business first of course. 
 They tramp on with the stolidity of perfect discipline, 
 form companies on the grassy slope leading down to the 
 river, and pile arms with mathematical precision. And
 
 454 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 then they are free to stare and wonder. It is blank 
 wonderment at first; then the gradual davvn of profound 
 silent admiration. The wistfulness of that concentrated 
 fixture of the multitudinous eyes ! And then a man 
 with a deep sigh, such as a man heaves after a long pull 
 at a beer flask, gasps out the single word, " Wuncler- 
 schon ! " He breaks the ice. There is a chorus of 
 " wunderschons," and the Teutons, with that love of 
 pure beauty which is one of their best attributes, fall to 
 quiet, thoughtful comment on the glories of Paris. They 
 lie down on the grass, and drink their fill of the sight ; 
 they roll it like a sweet morsel under their tongue ; 
 they lave themselves, so to speak, in the beauties of the 
 beautiful city. The Pont du Champs de Mars down 
 below has its German end still held by a Zouave guard, 
 and they have run a rude barricade across it, consisting 
 of a mule cart and a few baskets. A company is 
 marched down ; it halts, and the hauptmann rides out 
 and parleys with the Zouave officer amid the intense 
 interest, not unmingled with hooting, of the densely 
 lined quay on the opposite side. The fezzes cross the 
 bridge, and the spiked helmets occupy the hither end ; 
 straightway the two sentries of the "double post" are 
 stalking to and fro as if they had held the ground from 
 beyond the memory of man. Up on the brow of the slope 
 his Reverence, the division chaplain, on a white horse, is 
 gazing open-mouthed on the scene ; but never mind
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 455 
 
 him, let us push now to the Arch of Triumph. As we 
 walk along the Eue du Eoi cle Rome, we see the chalk 
 marks of the Quartier-meister already on the doors, 
 and the German flag is floating from the conciergerie 
 window of the Commandant. The neighbourhood of 
 the Arch of Triumph is densely crowded with the 
 infantry of the Gth Army Corps halted, with portly 
 old von Trumpling sitting in his saddle at their head. 
 Thickly interspersed with them were Parisians, chiefly 
 of the lower order. Boys, tatterdemalion gamins, were 
 in wild profusion — young rascals of wonderful panto- 
 mimic ability, with a concerted shrill whistle that 
 drowned or discorded the music of the bands. Already 
 the versatile rogues had learned to mimic the harsh 
 words of command and the somewhat clumsy gestures 
 of the men. Impudent varlets they were, and they had 
 apparently already gauged the good temper of the 
 Hussars who kept the ground, for they mocked without 
 ceasing, in apparent certainty of impunity. But clear 
 the way, ye gamins ! At a lumbering canter come some 
 oigantic cuirassiers of the Guard Corps, and then the 
 general staff. No, good friends with the broad Sclave- 
 features, ye stout Kinder of von Trumpling, you need 
 not glance so keenly up at the arch there. For the 
 Emperor comes not, neither comes his, son, yet the blood 
 royal of Prussia is not unrepresented. For there is 
 Prince Albrecht, of the cavalry, and burly Admiral
 
 456 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Adalbert, looking uncommonly like the late Sir Charles 
 Napier, and as bad a rider as are most sailors. And 
 here is a face familiar to and honoured by me, by reason 
 of sincere respect and many kindnesses — the face of the 
 Heir Apparent to the throne of Saxony, at once a 
 Prince and a soldier. And he of Saxe Coburg Gotha, 
 and Luitpold of Bavaria, and Leopold of Hohenzollern, 
 and, not to waste the readers' time and my own ink, 
 the whole ruck of the " Zweite Staffel," the blue- 
 blooded band of " wee German lairdies," not a few 
 of them very big in bodily bulk and in their own 
 conceit. 
 
 Following the general staff come the Bavarian troops, 
 marching still to the breakdown in half-company 
 columns. The men of the Gth Army Corps follow 
 them towards the Place de la Concorde, and we fall 
 into the tide on the broad side-walk. The soldiers 
 already billeted are staring out of window or loitering 
 by the doorways. I ask a Hessian dragoon what he 
 thinks of Paris. " Oh, it's very fine," he replies, much 
 in the tone of the Scotch baillie who thought Edinburgh 
 could not hold a candle to Peebles. "But" — there 
 was a "but" in every fibre of the tone — "but he had got 
 nothing to eat yet, and there was no straw for his own 
 or his horse's bed." Not surely a fierce requisitionist 
 this man, whose summum bonum in the bed line lies in 
 a lock of straw. Wood was another want which the
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 457 
 
 occupants of the little theatres on the Champs Elysees 
 were fast repairing by dragging out and chopping up the 
 chairs and benches, with which they lit their al fresco 
 fires in the garden plots. The 22nd Division men on 
 the Trocadero had been able to stack arms and lie 
 down. Not so their comrades on the Place de la 
 Concorde. There were too many disturbant elements 
 simmering in the vicinity. It is true that single officers 
 walked unmolested through the crowds on the side- 
 walks, that the Princes rode leisurely to and fro, the 
 cynosures of all eyes. But there was an ugly yeasty 
 throng, not so much in the Champs Elysees as in the 
 Place de la Concorde. Here the Bavarians stood to their 
 positions looking up at the statues of the chief French 
 cities, the faces of which were each veiled in crape. 
 Through the film of black, German Strassburg looked 
 down dimly upon the German soldiers, her pedestal still 
 bedight with the wreaths and garlands which grateful 
 Paris had affixed thereunto. Down the vista of each 
 entering street was apparent first a thin and vacillating 
 line of red-breeehed troops of the French line, nearer 
 now to the Germans than ever they had dared to come 
 before. Behind this line again a densely-packed crowd 
 of angry, truculent faces, with a dash of the wolf about 
 the eyes of them, bloodthirsty, yet cowards the whole 
 pack. Looking at them is one man by the statue of 
 Rouen here, whom not to name would be to leave my
 
 •158 THE WAR BETWEEN" FEANCE AND GEEMANY. 
 
 description very incomplete — a tall strong man, in a 
 Cuirassier uniform without the cuirass, but with the 
 helmet, Paris looks at the keen eyes, the brusque 
 moustache, and the square lower jaw, as if it ought to 
 know them, yet is not quite sure about it. Take your 
 helmet off, Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen, and let 
 the gazers have the worth of their money in a long 
 stare. 
 
 And this allusion to the iinpotently furious population 
 leads up to a narrative of the aspect which Paris pre- 
 sented when the German occupation began. I had 
 striven exceedingly hard to think well of Paris under 
 this tribulation of hers. Nor had I been altogether with- 
 out justification. Only on the 28th of January, when 
 everybody was talking of revolution and anarchy, I had 
 made a perambulation of the quarters whence were re- 
 ported the chief disturbances, and had come back unmo- 
 lested ; and after what I had seen, with the word 
 " calumniation " ready on my lips. The silence and 
 solitude of the Avenue Beaugar, by which we had 
 entered Paris, had seemed very pathetic. The proud 
 beauty, I said to myself, is veiling her eyes from her 
 humiliation. The Avenue de Malakoff took the edge off 
 the sentiment, and it vanished utterly when a little 
 woman who kept an auberge, where I quenched my 
 thirst in beer, importuned me to bring her as many 
 Prussian customers as possible, and did not hesitate to
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 159 
 
 designate tliem as bons garcons. She might have been 
 an isolated case ; but the aspect of the Champs Elysees 
 clenched the nail. All Paris was there, as you may have 
 seen on a day when there was a grand Imperial pageant. 
 Ladies in dainty dresses and high -heeled boots tripped 
 about ; chevaliers of France, with the ribbons in their 
 button-holes, gratified their curiosity at the expense of 
 their honour. The windows were so full that I imagine 
 some of them must have been let for money. But it was 
 the conduct of what may be designated the mob, that 
 disgusted me most. Touch a German soldier they dared 
 not. They cowered — half a hundred of the white- 
 blooded hounds — before a solitary Uhlan strolling his 
 horse listlessly about. But let them only catch an un- 
 fortunate civilian, and then just mark their valour. Fortu- 
 nately they were too limp and vague to know how to take 
 life adroitly, else many a murder might Lave been done 
 in Paris this afternoon. Say you I speak from prejudice ? 
 My prejudice, if I had any, was fain to lie the other way. 
 I speak from sore-boned experience. As I walked down 
 the Champs Elysees, the Crown Prince of Saxony with 
 his staff rode by. His guest for many a week before, 1 
 would have eaten dirt had I not raised my hat to his 
 Royal Highness. Tie returned my salute, and, beckon- 
 ing to me, shook hands, and a short conversation ensued. 
 After I had taken my leave, Count Urztheim, his aide- 
 de-camp, rode after me to communicate from the Prince
 
 40 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 a piece of information which he was kind enough to 
 think would he of interest to me. My companion and 
 myself soon found that this episode had gained us the 
 marked attention of about a hundred of the hungry 
 prowlers after heroic seizures on which no risk was 
 attendant. We thought little of the demonstration at 
 first, and tried to lose our suite by turning back in the 
 rear of the Bavarians, and halting there, but our uncon- 
 cern seemed but to aggravate the patriots. After much 
 consultation a little party came forward and civilly re- 
 quested us to accompany them to a certain post. 
 Although apprehensive of the consequences, we were 
 unwilling to appeal to the Bavarian officers, and so be 
 the possible means of precipitating a fracas ; we there- 
 fore complied. No sooner were we outside the German 
 quarter than the tactics were changed. My friend was 
 torn away from me, and for many hours I saw no more of 
 him. Cries of " Mouchard," " Sacre Prussien," "Cochon," 
 assailed me. Somebody hit me over the head with a 
 stick; another kicked me from behind; vet another 
 tripped me up. I went down, and the patriots jumped 
 oji me with sabots. I struggled up, and hitting out right 
 and left, made my way to an officer of the National 
 (iua rd. lie laughed and turned away. Then they got 
 me down again, striking each other in their eagerness to 
 have a blow at me. Some clamoured, "To the Seine 
 with him," but others, the majority, were for the police
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 461 
 
 station. Thither, accordingly, I was conducted in a novel 
 fashion, on my Lack and dragged by the legs, a distance 
 of some .'300 yards. . Needless to say that my coat was in 
 ribbons, my head was cut, my back bumped into bruises, 
 my legs torn nearly out of the sockets. Great powers! 
 how 1 longed, as they dragged me along, for a single sec- 
 tion of the old Royal Dragoons, or that I might have a 
 chance at but three of the cowards at a time ! Chucked 
 inside the police station like a bale of goods, I was con- 
 veyed by a back door, and in the pleasing companionship 
 of a drunken woman, a blouse who had stolen a lump of 
 putty, and a tatterdemalion who had been seen selling 
 a couple of cigars to a German, to a certain prefect, a 
 venerable gentleman in a white tie. I sent a note to the 
 British Embassy, whence emanated with creditable 
 alacrity the porter, an official whom I had learnt to 
 look upon as the British Embassy incarnate. The be- 
 nevolent prefect released me, and I was glad to slink 
 home in my soiled and tattered clothes. I paid another 
 visit, however, to the Place' de la Concorde. There I 
 noticed what seemed threatening symptoms. The French 
 mob was sorely taxing the patience of the- Bavarians, 
 whose blood was beginning evidently to rise. I should 
 in no wise have wondered, I said to myself, as I turned 
 away, if there were wild work before morning ; and it 
 struck me with surprise that the Germans had not cleared 
 their quarter and held it militarily. But it was not for
 
 462 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 me to stay and watch what might befall. There was 
 other work before me. It was past five o'clock, and I 
 had to be outside the enceinte, by six. A dog-cart, with 
 a stout horse, was waiting for me by the Madeleine. 
 Bruised, sore, with the blood and mud yet unwashed 
 from the back of my head, I had still my programme to 
 fulfil. Up the Rue de Lavalette, almost deserted ; along 
 the flank of the Terminus du Nord, and so into the Rue 
 de La Chapelle at a smart trot. La Chapclle was up, and 
 its truculent dwellers scowled and muttered at us as we 
 passed. My driver, a Frenchman, lost his nerve, and 
 began to tremble. I made him change places, and got 
 hold of the reins myself. A long look ahead showed me 
 no babies and no barricades, so I dropped the whip over 
 the good horse's flank, and let him have his head. Before 
 we got to the Porte they were yelling after us like a 
 pack of mongrels, " Prussien ! " " Prussien ! " "A bas le 
 Prussien ! " Only once through the gate, and they might 
 yell till they burst. But, lo ! the drawbridge was up. 
 There faced me, as I drove up, the grim faces of a couple 
 of mitrailleuses, pointed down the Rue. And the pursuers 
 were hot on our heels. Away to the left, clear and de- 
 serted ran the intra-enceinte road leading to the srate of 
 >St. Ouen. I turned the horse's head down this and 
 sprung him into a gallop. .1 had sunk my tail before I 
 reached the gate of St. Ouen, which was open, and 
 through which I drove without interruption. Then
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 463 
 
 there was the ten miles' trot out to Margency, where 
 General von Schlottheim had kindly given me permis- 
 sion to use the head-quarter telegraph wire, and then, 
 without a moment to spare, another drive back to St. 
 Denis, to catch there the train leaving Paris at nine p.m. 
 for Calais. I reached England at six the following 
 evening, handed in the " copy " I had written on the 
 way, and was on the way back in the mail train by nine 
 o'clock the same night. 
 
 When I got back to Paris on the forenoon of the 4th, 
 I found that the Germans had cleared out that morning, 
 and that Paris was in ecstacies over her triumph. Lives 
 there the man who understands Paris and the rationale 
 of its shifting moods I Man, say I ! He must be some- 
 thing nmre than man — a creature gifted with the powers 
 of penetration of an augur, and with a variety of other 
 all but impossible qualifications. I could not, for the life 
 of me, understand Paris. I could not, being as 1 hope a 
 reasonable man paying poor-rates, and having a respect 
 for constituted authorities, get any further insight into 
 the inscrutable mystery of Paris than the acknowledgment 
 that she " is a thins; which no fellow can understand." 
 She has as many notes as an /Eolian harp. In the 
 beginning of February she had been in abject despair. 
 She was decent then, and I had felt bound to respect the 
 dignity with which her quiet despair manifested itself. On 
 the 1st of March she had been rabid yet cowardly; sub-
 
 464 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 limely foolish ; utterly lost to a sense of . dignity or even 
 of shame ; truculent where she dared to he so ; utterly 
 contemptible in every respect in the eyes of those who 
 would fain have respected her most. By the 4th of 
 March the wheel had come round full circle. The Ger- 
 mans were gone. "Kichard is himself again." Paris 
 was full of complacency, the logic of which was not easy 
 to understand. Here, so far as I could make out, was 
 the process of reasoning : — " The hated intruders have 
 gone away after a very brief stay. They meant to stop 
 ever so much longer. The Prussian Guards made sure 
 they were coming in. The Saxons were dying to do the 
 same, and are dying now with disappointment. But the 
 aspect of Paris struck terror into the Teuton soul. The 
 foe bundled out in hot haste, awed by the black thun- 
 der-cloud of the impending storm. On the whole their 
 evacuation is rather more creditable to Paris than victory 
 gained in a set fight. They have practically run away. 
 We are free from the incubus : let us be ourselves again. 
 We have, so to speak, scowled them out ; now let us 
 smile at the success of our scowl." 
 
 " Smile " is hardly the word ; it seemed to me Paris 
 was to-day positively on the broad grin of complacency. 
 She had legitimately earned her triumph. With the 
 stern rigour befitting the circumstances, she had actively 
 discountenaced anybody holding communication with 
 the foe. She had jumped upon men unfortunate enough
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4(J5 
 
 to know any member of a confraternity of nations num- 
 bering some forty millions of souls ; she had stripped 
 women naked who had dared to smile upon the Teuton 
 satyrs. Let me not malign Paris. In some cases she had 
 not stripped the women naked ; I had heard of instances 
 in which bonnets, stockings, and boots had been left. 
 ►She had sacked a cafe where a few German officers took 
 supper, thereby pro tanto purging herself of the unclean 
 thine - . I believe an extensive use was being made of 
 Condy's disinfecting fluid and chloride of lime in the 
 Palais de F Industrie, the theatres on the Champs Elysees, 
 and other public buildings occupied by the Germans. 
 Deodorisers had been largely strewn over the thorough- 
 fares used by them, and the chain of the enclosure 
 around the Arc do Triomphe, over which the young- 
 hussar lieutenant jumped his horse, had been removed 
 and replaced. The original chain was no doubt being 
 melted down into axles for dung-carts. 
 
 The foes having recoiled in rapid panic from the con- 
 sequences which they had so rashly and unthinkingly 
 braved, Paris remained the virtual mistress of the field. 
 Why should she not enjoy her triumph ''-. She was doing 
 so. Her valiant soldiery, now that peace was signed, 
 'looked and spoke as if it were by a crowning and special 
 exercise of their mercy that the Germans were allowed 
 to exist in the neighbourhood, and as good as intimated 
 that they only did so on sufferance, and to give them 
 
 VOL. II. i' 11
 
 466 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 time to pack up their portmanteaus without undue 
 bustle and haste. The streets had burst out into sudden 
 liveliness. All the shops were open. It was a beautiful 
 day, and everybody was out walking and enjoying the 
 triumph. It was a singular evidence of the moderation 
 of the Parisians that there was at night no movement in 
 favour of a general illumination. Cynics may say that 
 a lack of gas prevented this demonstration, but I for my 
 part am inclined to believe that the reason was based 
 upon much higher grounds. Since I had been in Paris, 
 I had observed how much the Parisians had before now 
 held aloof from their favourite exercise of sitting in front 
 of the cafes. Those few who dared to be outre and to 
 break the rule sat as if they had the stringhalt, with 
 their legs ignobly tucked under them. Mark the con- 
 trast to-day. Everyone was sitting in the sunshine 
 outside the cafes, and everybody was stretching his legs 
 as well out before him as their natural configuration 
 and the condition of his boots would legitimately permit. 
 There was a method in this seeming trifle. The straddle 
 of the Parisian legs intimated the rehabilitation of the 
 self-complacency. 
 
 In one of Mr. Dickens's novels, somebody calls atten- 
 tion to the mystery attending the disappearance of dead 
 donkeys and old postboys. Had the sagacious observer 
 in question been in Paris at this period, I think he 
 miirht have added a third wonderment to his list.
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 407 
 
 What on earth had become of the crowd — crowd is too 
 good a word — of the scum of wretches that had inun- 
 
 o 
 
 dated the German quarter and its environs on the 1st? 
 Where were the stunted, thin-faced, evil-eyed, scraggy- 
 necked, knob-jointed, white-livered horde of miscreants 
 that had yelled and whistled and swore and shrunk into 
 their clumsy sabots or rotten high-lows when a German 
 looked their way ? Where the noble bands of patriots 
 that had stripped wretched women and painted the 
 German colours on their naked flesh ? Where the three 
 hundred heroes, none above five feet three inches in 
 height, who had achieved the gallant exploit of my 
 capture, and, with such Herculean exertions for the 
 behoof of la patrie, dragged nie along in the gutter? I 
 protest I could not find a trace of them, nor could I find 
 anybody who knew anything as to their whereabouts. 
 Certainly they were not myths. My knuckles demon- 
 strated unto me the certainty that they were not 
 "trifles light as air," even if my back and ribs had not 
 been confirmatory. And I think I should have known 
 some of my more particular friends again if I could only 
 see them. My supply of cartes de visite was unfor- 
 tunately short, but I took the liberty of distributing a 
 few souvenirs, which were not so graciouslv received as 
 might have been, but yet might have served for purposes 
 of identification. But the whole horde had utterly 
 vanished — faded clean out of sight. People told me I
 
 468 THE WAR BETWEEN" FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 could find a large proportion of its members in Belle- 
 ville. I went to Belleville in the afternoon, but saw 
 nobody I knew, and not many of the pattern of my 
 friends. Did they live habitually in the cellars, these 
 interesting contributions to the aggregate of the popula- 
 tion of Paris, and never came up but when there was 
 some work to be done that was after their own hearts \ 
 There are roughs in London. These I know where to 
 find. They are something like roughs, too. The K 
 division of police runs small, and a good Shoreditch or 
 Whitechapel rough has no objection, when occasion 
 demands, to cope singly with any member of that 
 respected force. But the Paris rough, as he demon- 
 strated himself on the 1st of March, is individually a 
 contemptible creature. Physically he is a cross between 
 a cat and a rabbit. His lust for blood beats that of a 
 stoat — and it is here wherein he differs from your 
 British rough, who hates blood except under the skin in 
 the shape of extravasation — but his cowardice interferes 
 with his realisation of the treat. Where he gets to when 
 times arc not favourable for the free development of his 
 idosyncrasy was to me one of the chiefest of the many 
 puzzles which this strange city afforded. 
 
 Quiet head-quarters ordinarily were those of Prince 
 George at Le Vert Galant. But on the night before the 
 review at Villiers, on the 7th of March, there were no 
 cards, and the bureau was full of the staff immediately
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 169 
 
 after coffee-time. For any quantity of organization had 
 to be perfected for the morrow, and then there was after 
 to-morrow also to be seen to. For in a day or two the 
 Saxons were to quit the face of Paris to occupy the 
 Ardennes, with head-quarters at Kethel. 
 
 There was not a little disappointment in the Maas 
 Army that it had not fallen to its lot to see the inside of 
 Paris. But the reparation for the disappointment was 
 thorough. To whatever quarter others might point as 
 the scene of their exploits, they were reviewed far away 
 therefrom. Even the Guards — forming as they did a 
 portion of the Maas army — were brought to Longchamps 
 to be reviewed, away from Le Bourget, so wedded to 
 their name, from Pierrefitte and Stains, the gallantly 
 held forepost villages, in [order that there might be no 
 Prussian element in the force which the Emperor re- 
 viewed on the scene of a victory won by Saxon and 
 Wurtemburger arms. It is not easy to conceive of a 
 greater compliment paid to soldiery than that which the 
 Emperor paid in this review to the fighting men of his 
 allies. Located as he was at Versailles, he did not see 
 the deadly struggles of the 30th November and 2nd of 
 December. But on the ground where the review of the 7th 
 of March was held it scarcely lay with any one to ask for 
 corroborative proof of the narrative given by the despatches. 
 The Saxons and Wlirtemburgcrs might have said to any 
 one asking for a sign and token, " Si monumentum qua>
 
 470 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ris, circumspice." For the review was held at Villiers, 
 the key of the position in the desperate fights of the 
 30th November and 2nd December. Monuments of 
 valour were everywhere around ; honour was done to 
 men on the very spot where they had gained and main- 
 tained their fighting fame. Look up and around, 
 Emperor-King ! and realise what these troops battled 
 against in the days I speak of. See how close is Avron, 
 its bluff then crowned with the big naval guns that 
 helped to shatter Brie, and made this Villiers here a place 
 to wonder at and shudder at, till such time as the masons 
 shall have made good the damages. Frowns out upon 
 the Horseshoe that grim Fort Nogent there, that could 
 throw shells cveu into Champs, and lower down the 
 batteries of Faisanderie and Gravelle contributed to the 
 dominance now happily departed. From the south-west, 
 Charenton casts a baleful side-look on Champigny and 
 Chennevieres ; its squint is ugly now, even when we 
 know it is harmless. Monuments of Saxon and Wiirtem- 
 burger valour! I have named some, for they have had 
 to be valorous men that stood up against the impact of 
 the projectiles cast by these now harmless forts. Other 
 monuments were there, too, in abundance. Kaiser, you 
 can look no whither but you look on graves of brave 
 men who died for you and the Fatherland ! From 
 where we stood as the Emperor rode on to the field, we 
 could sec many of the mounds over the trenches which
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 471 
 
 served as graves. We were standing within view of the 
 spot where I shook hands with the two Saxons, boy- 
 lieutenants of the 108th, as the regiment went out to 
 close quarters, and when it came back it had left the 
 lads needing nothing but the grave a little way to the 
 front yonder. Monuments for Saxon braves ! Surely 
 the laurels were already growing thick over the dead 
 brows, for they must have been well watered. Aye, 
 watered by the tears of women in the quiet villages of 
 the Saxon Switzerland. Watered by the tears of such as 
 the lone mother, who wanted to know about her boy who 
 " has blue eyes, flaxen hair, and a green stone ring on 
 one of the fingers of the right hand." Watered by the 
 tears of the woman of Kamcnz, one of whose sons lies 
 two hundred yards nearer Brie than where we stood ; the 
 other had by this time begun to limp on one leg about 
 the lazarette. Monuments — aye, if of loss, also of valour. 
 There is Brie below us, held by a single regiment for 
 hours against an army. To the left is Champigny, to 
 hold and to retake which the Wiirtemburgers poured out 
 their blood as if it had been water, and counted their 
 lives but as dross. On this peninsula was enacted the 
 turning-point scene of the siege of Paris. Had these 
 
 O J. O 
 
 25,000 men not been staunch, 100,000 Frenchmen 
 would have been outside the ring of environment. Let 
 Deutschland never forget, while grateful memory is left 
 her, what she owes for these two momentous days to the
 
 472 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 Saxons and Wurtemburgers. But for them it might 
 have been that Kaiser Wilhelm would have been in other 
 plight than reviewing troops here to-day in peace. 
 
 As we left Le Vert Galant early in the morning, and 
 took the pleasant winding road through the forest of 
 Bondy, one would have been puzzled what to say of the 
 weather. Now it smiled, now it looked uncommonly 
 like weeping; yet still there was no rain. Around 
 Chelles were halted the cavalry and artillery of the 23rd 
 division (Montbe's), and over the pontoon bridge at 
 Cournay, and so along the south bank to Neuilly. The 
 last time I had passed this way the riding was hardly so 
 pleasant, as those great shell holes gave evidence. Then 
 up on to the broad flat upland between Neuilly and 
 Villiers, with Brie on its right front — the very tract for 
 which the French fought so fiercely on the 2nd. It was 
 fringed with battery emplacements. The most reckless 
 aide-de-camp dared not gallop over it, for there were 
 shell holes at every second horse length over the whole 
 surface. The ground did not admit of such a formation 
 as that which was effected at Longchamps. Somebody 
 had to stand out and go to the rear, and as the com- 
 mander of the Maas Army was a Saxon, he chivalrously 
 ruled that his countrymen should give the pas. On the 
 rig] it of the first line stood the Wiirtemburgers, with 
 their artillery and cavalry in another line behind them ; 
 on their left the Bavarians, with their artillery and
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 473 
 
 cavalry arranged similarly. At a considerable distance 
 in the rear, and rather behind the Bavarians than the 
 Wiirtemburgers, was the Saxon infantry, with its cavalry 
 and artillery in its rear. There was no selection here of 
 one battalion of each regiment, as at the review in the 
 Bois de Boulogne. Each battalion was represented, but 
 its number was restricted to 500 men. Judging from 
 appearances, several of the battalions, particularly among 
 the Bavarians, hardly knew how to complete even this 
 muster, notwithstanding the recent reinforcements. The 
 troops on the parade were as follows : — The Wurtem- 
 burger Division, consisting of twelve infantry regiments, 
 of one battalion each (the Wiirtemburgers have not yet 
 adopted the Prussian arrangement of three battalions in 
 a regiment), four cavalry regiments, and proportional 
 field artillery, the whole under the command of General 
 von Obernitz ; the 1st Bavarian Army Corps, under the 
 command of General von Der Tann, and the 12th (Royal 
 Saxon) Army Corps, commanded by Prince George of 
 Saxony. The latter corps comprised the 23rd division, 
 commanded by General von Montbe, the youngest 
 divisional general in the German armies, and contained 
 the 10 1st, 102nd, and 103rd regiments, and the gallant 
 Scliiitzcn regiment ; and the 24th division, commanded 
 by General von Nehrhoff, containing the 105th, 106th, 
 and 107th regiments, and the Saxon Jiigcrs. There were 
 but two regiments of Saxon cavalry on the field ; the
 
 474 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 rest, quartered at Compiegne, after taking part in the 
 campaign of the North, were too far off to be present at 
 a review ordered on so short a notice. All the artillery 
 of the 12th Corps was on the field. 
 
 By half-past ten all were in position. Most of the 
 troops had come long distances to the field, and the 
 contents of haversacks were being investigated. Quick - 
 sighted men those Saxons in the rear ; they saw the 
 eldest son of their king coming up from Noisy le Grand, 
 and burst into a hearty cheer. The Prince had a detach- 
 ment of Cuirassiers for his escort, and was accompanied 
 by his staff. One word with his brother, and then he 
 rode on to the right of the first line, and met General 
 von Obernitz, of the Wurtemburgers. After a short 
 conversation, he started for a tour of the lines. Before 
 half-past eleven he was back, and everything was ready. 
 But the videttes of the staff on the brow of the hill, 
 among the flags and the triumphal arches, and the 
 artificially-planted fir trees, and the rows of graves, were 
 still motionless. The Emperor was late. Half-past 
 eleven had been his set time, and he came not for 
 another hour. The sky became overcast ; rain began to 
 fall just as we heard the sound of distant cheering. The 
 Emperor's road lay right athwart the forefront of the 
 battle-fields of the 30th November and 2nd of Deeembcr. 
 He had crossed the Marnc at Joinville under a triumphal 
 arch. Before lie came to the railway arches he had
 
 THE COXQUEROHS. 475 
 
 passed the spot where 800 French dead arc buried in 
 one little field ; his road was lined with graves right up 
 to the big mounds under the park walls. This park — 
 the mansion in which had been inhabited by a French 
 lady, its courageous owner, right through the siege — he 
 entered, and exchanged his travelling carriage for the 
 back of a light chestnut horse. The Imperial Crown 
 Prince, who accompanied him, rode to-day the same dark 
 chestnut that had been his mount on the 1st. And then 
 the Imperial party topped the rising ground between the 
 flags, and the bands struck up. There was a little 
 cheering, but not much. The Emperor rode to the 
 front, and was met by the Crown Prince of Saxony. 
 The meeting was very cordial. Then the parade in- 
 spection at once began, the Emperor, the Crown Prince 
 of Saxony, and the Crown Prince of Prussia riding side 
 by side. The Wiirtemburgcr infantry cheered mode- 
 rately ; the Bavarians were altogether silent. The 
 Emperor playfully buckets his horse over the shell holes, 
 and when the end of the first line was reached gave the 
 stall' a stretcher over some very rough country to the 
 head of the second. There was more cheering among 
 the artillery and cavalry, both Bavarian and AVurtem- 
 burgcr. From the end of this line to the Saxons was 
 quite a long canter. Some dodged it, and turned up in 
 a good place when the " check " came -before the Saxon 
 Guards ; but the Emperor sent his horse gaily over big
 
 476 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 ridges and furrows, and through vineyards and battery 
 emplacements, only turning aside when graves came in 
 the way. The Saxons were not enthusiastic. They were 
 mad to be home, and they had just been ordered to 
 march into " other cantonments in the Ardennes." But 
 presently they got over the sulks and cheered a little, 
 especially the cavalry and artillery in the second line. 
 Then the Emperor diverged to look into a siege battery 
 on the Saxon left flank, and then there was a gallop back 
 to a flagstaff in front of another battery, and the march 
 past began — the Wtirtemburgers first. 
 
 Rio;ht well do the Wiirtembergers march, with a long 
 and yet decided step, and differing from us as regards 
 their marching in this — that they swing in cadence the 
 disengaged arm. Here comes Colonel von Brandenstein 
 of the black whiskers, he who headed the assault which 
 retook Champigny. Behind the infantry are the cavalry, 
 and I notice Rittmeister Count Kronsfeld, who headed 
 the only cavalry charge in the history of the siege of 
 Paris. Of the Bavarians, but that they marched past 
 splendidly, I have nothing to say, because I was not of 
 their exploits the eye-witness. But here comes our own 
 kindly Saxons, Prince George at their head. Here is 
 Colonel Abendorff, who had three horses shot under him 
 over the way there, and never a hair of his head singed. 
 Jog on there, good old Oberst Hausen of the Schutzen 
 Regiment ; Kaiser "Wilhclm never looked on a better
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 477 
 
 soldier than thee — and that regiment of thine, what 
 valour it displayed, and what losses it sustained, fol- 
 lowing thee ! There is " little Hammerstein," now a 
 captain, but only a lieutenant on the 2nd of December, 
 who though but a lieutenant yet commanded his battalion 
 as it marched out of the fray, so deadly had been the 
 slaughter of the officers. With a lone: English seat in the 
 saddle comes General von Montbe, by whom I stood on 
 the 21st of December, when the shells tumbled on to his 
 chateau in Clichy. And here comes Colonel Dietrich, 
 of the 103rd, whom I have not seen since he turned 
 aside from his dead Landwehrman in the park of 
 Eaincy. Behind him is a face I know well. Aha ! 
 Major von Schonberg, you may now soon see Frau 
 Majorin, and I hope it may be my lot to drink one day 
 with you a glass of beer in Kamenz ; and here is Ham- 
 merstein and Kirchbach, and the adjutant and the 
 doctor, the staunch fellows with whom I spent Christ- 
 mas night under the lee of Avron. I wonder, von 
 Xanthier, if that is the saddle you found on Avron ? 
 Gott in Ifimmel ! Here comes Under-officer Schultz, 
 as wooden as ever, yet with a kindly side glance for his 
 Crown Prince, as he goes past pointing his toes as if for 
 a wager. 
 
 The pageant is over ; the last of our friends are past. 
 The Emperor King makes off for Ferriercs, the Crown 
 Prince of Saxony going with him. Soon the environs
 
 478 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 of Paris will know no longer the Maas army. In two 
 days the head-quarters were off to Compiegne, and all 
 would set their faces homeward. Their home lies to- 
 wards another point of the compass from mine, and so I 
 take my leave of my comrades of two eventful months 
 — comrades from whom I received kindnesses never to 
 be forgotten. From prince to private I have experienced 
 hearty Kameradschaft. The obligations I rest under to 
 his Eoyal Highness the Crown Prince, General Schlott- 
 heim, and other members of the staff, are greater than I 
 can describe. But the feeling of the staff permeated 
 right down. I do not think there is a man in the Maas 
 army who did not know me by sight, and was not 
 aware of my avocation. We had been together in fair 
 weather and in foul. We had made merry together. I 
 had stood by and seen them fight ; my hand had been 
 pressed by the dying among them. I had looked down 
 upon not a few of them in the trench that did service 
 for a grave. So let me take my hat off to the Maas 
 army, in kindly and fraternal adieu, wishing well right 
 heartily to every man in its ranks. 
 
 With the departure of the Emperor, the disrup- 
 tion of the armies, and the ratification of the peace 
 preliminaries, the German position in the neighbourhood 
 of Paris assumed a new phase, the unexpected prolonga- 
 tion of which must be inexpressibly wearisome to the 
 homesick troops. The events referred to, to sj)cak of
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4/9 
 
 small things after great, set at liberty the newspaper 
 correspondents who had been with the German armies 
 before Paris — more fortunate the correspondents than 
 the soldiers, in that it was free to them to return home 
 when they listed. I did not immediately avail myself 
 of my privileges in this way. Ever since Sedan a 
 change in the state of feeling between England and 
 Germany had been observable, as expressed in the press 
 of both countries. "With an army in the field as far 
 away from Germany as from England, it is obvious that 
 the medium referred to was the only one at one's com- 
 mand through which to discern the nature of the rela- 
 tions between the two nations. But, in common as I 
 dare say with many, I had learned to recognise the fact 
 that the tone of a press is not always to be relied on 
 as a wise and correct enunciation of the vox populi. 
 The press of England evinced a jealousy lest German 
 successes, followed by German unity, should stimulate 
 Germany to a new role of general aggressiveness. The 
 press of Germany, whether actuated by a spirit of irri- 
 tated defiance, thrown off its balance by the flush of 
 triumph, or accurately reflecting the tone of the nation 
 which was its constituent,! could not tell, was characterised 
 bv an arrogant arbitrariness which seemed in a great 
 measure to justify the expression of feeling on the part 
 of our own journalists. A short visit to Germany oc- 
 curred to me as the readiest way of arriving at some
 
 480 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 estimate of German citizenhood as regards the 
 alleged aggressive tendency of Germany superinduced 
 by her acknowledged military supremacy and her suc- 
 cesses in the Avar which has just terminated. It was 
 obvious that a flying visit — and that was all that was in 
 my power — did not admit of one hearing and seeing 
 sufficient to enable him to speak with any great weight 
 or assurance on a subject covering so wide a field ; but, 
 as feathers show which way the wind blows, indicice 
 showing how the current of popular opinion sets will 
 ever present themselves, unless a man goes about with 
 his eyes and ears hermetically sealed. I desired also 
 to see something of the manner in which the Germans 
 should welcome home the first fruits of the victorious 
 army, and also to witness the arrival of the Emperor in 
 his capital after so long an absence. Before going to 
 Berlin I spent a short time in Cologne and Bonn. 
 
 Before speaking of the feeling and temper of the 
 German civilian citizenhood as to the future policy of 
 Germany, let me first say a word as to the army. You 
 don't keep men in the field for some eight months, and 
 win ever so many battles, without making professional 
 fighting animals of at least some of them. Officers, for 
 instance, to whom piping times of peace would bring 
 monotony, sluggish promotion, and the routine of garrison 
 duty, lusted for continuous war with somebody, no 
 matter whom. 1 venture to say that if England de-
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 481 
 
 clared war to-morrow with any state in the known world, 
 without the semblance of a provocation, the officers of 
 the British army would hail the announcement with joy. 
 Wherefore, when I heard in the Officer-Casino in Gonesse 
 just before the armistice, a knot of young guardsmen 
 praying for more fighting ; and when one iad turned to 
 me, and, clinking glasses, benignantly announced that 
 the Queen Elizabeth Eegiment would before two years 
 were over be besieo-ino- Windsor Castle (which he evi- 
 
 CD CD \ 
 
 dently took to be our strongest fortress), I did not 
 conclude that the German army was eager for a quarrel 
 with England ; but only asked my young friend whether 
 he had learnt to swim. I had only to go outside into the 
 road or up to the battery, or on to the outposts to find 
 how the men of the army were sighing and longing for 
 peace. They would do their duty to the last; would have 
 followed my fire-eating youngster to the cannon's mouth; 
 but they were hungry for home with an exceeding great 
 hunger, and candidly owned that they wanted no more 
 war in this their generation. For whereas young von 
 Fahnrich was a professional soldier, they were citizens 
 made soldiers by force of circumstances, and longing to 
 return to their citizenhood. Depend upon it that so long 
 as Germany wishes for peace she will never be embar- 
 rassed by the clamours of her army for war. 
 
 What said the citizens then: the patves conscripti who 
 sat at home when the young men went to the war ; the
 
 482 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 * 
 
 women of the nation, who in a free and cultivated people, 
 such as the Germans, exercise so great an influence over 
 the national bias and impulses ? There seemed to me a 
 surprisingly universal unanimity of conviction that Ger- 
 many must be peaceful in the future, come what may, 
 save absolute loss of honour. Flags were flying, crowds 
 were cheering as the military train went by ; but the 
 people was shuddering and quivering again under the 
 price of the victory. Wherever I went, I found under the 
 pride and the bursts of gladness, stimulated by such a 
 sight, a deep feeling of melancholy. The mourning ware- 
 houses in Cologne and Bonn must have driven a fine trade 
 this winter. The streets swarmed with men on crutches. 
 I met a pleasant group in the Rheingasse of Bonn one 
 forenoon — four of them — and there were three capable 
 legs among the four. They bore the number of a regiment 
 that I knew before Metz, and which afterwards went to 
 the north ; and we had a little chat together. Private 
 soldiers all the four, mark you ; but let me give their 
 professions, because it is of importance to my argument. 
 One was the son of a master tailor ; the second was the 
 tenter of a steam-engine in a factory; the third had 
 been the apprentice of an emigration agent ; and the 
 fourth had had a shop of his own which his absence at 
 the war had ruined and shut up. Hard, was it not, to 
 lose a leg and your living at one coup, even if it be for the 
 Fatherland? It is owing to the presence — and, accord-
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4S- , 3 
 
 ing to her military constitution, the inevitable presence 
 — of such men in her ranks that Germany is perforce a 
 country averse from war. It is because so many of 
 this class are now no longer in her ranks, because they 
 are rotting under the soil of French battle-fields, that 
 she shudders and blenches at the name of war, even 
 while she cheers her heroes. It is because she feels that 
 the war has cost her so much of her lifeblood, of the 
 real bone and sinew of her stirring business population, 
 not of mere waste cannon fodder, that she has exacted 
 terms so hard from France — terms that, as she reckons, 
 make it impossible that France in sanity will ever again 
 disturb the peace of the Fatherland. 
 
 ►Statistics of relative losses in such a war as that just 
 < >ver, I take to be of little value. In any war it seems to 
 me that you must regard, not so much the quantity as 
 the quality of the losses, if you wish accurately to gauge 
 the virtual depletion of either contending nationality. 
 So far as I was able to learn, the French loss lay for by 
 far the most part at either end of the social string. The 
 old maxim of nohlcssc oblitjc held good at all events to 
 an extent which was not discreditable. Then there was 
 a great gulf, for the bourgeoisie had an intense respect for 
 their skins. The Frenchmen of the rank and file who 
 have fallen victims in this war may be said, and that 
 without any intention to impugn the value of their 
 
 sacrifice, to represent quantity rather than quality. 
 
 i i -i
 
 484 THE WAR BETWEEN" FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 They were rank and file, and their best friends could say 
 little more of them. The army never was able to claim 
 to be a national one in the highesl sense. What sort of 
 an army is that of Germany as to its rank and file has 
 never been rightly appreciated, spite of explanations, 
 however long and lucid, as to its character as a distinc- 
 tively national army. Those familiar with German 
 newspapers know the death notices surviving relatives 
 and friends are fond of inserting to commemorate their 
 deceased kinsfolk. The idea occurred to me to go 
 through a file of the Cologne Gazette for a month, and 
 extract the professions of such deceased private soldiers 
 and non-commissioned officers of the German armies as 
 were commemorated therein in this way. I made no 
 selection, but took name after name, wherever I found 
 the profession designated. Here, copied from my note- 
 book as I took them out, is the list of professions, rigidly 
 restricted to private soldiers and non-commissioned 
 officers : — Tavern-keeper, medical student, merchant, 
 clothier, cabinetmaker, son of a public accountant, 
 master modeller, steamship superintendent, upholsterer, 
 barrister, schoolmaster, lecturer in a, public school, head 
 forester, medical student, engineer, post-office clerk, son 
 of chief administrator of mines, academy student, son 
 of a superintendent, brewer, the Count of Salm Hoog- 
 straetcn, medical student. Of course many hundreds 
 died uncommemoratcd, who were not, in the sense to
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 4S5 
 
 which I am referring, such valuable members of society. 
 But then, when the dead list of the rank and file of an 
 army must perforce, from the constitution of that army, 
 comprehend men so valuable as the above in a politico- 
 economical sense, who will have hardihood enough to say 
 that the nation owning that army dare crave for war, or 
 indeed have any other feeling thereanent but that of 
 horror — a horror only to be overridden by the strongest 
 necessity ? 
 
 Experience has convinced me of the inutility of " in- 
 terviewing." You set a man at once to weighing his 
 words, and he either gammons you intentionally, bun- 
 comises, or is reticent, so as to bo of no service. Every- 
 bodv who knows Bonn knows the Rheinccke, and every- 
 bodv who knows the RUeinecke knows the nightly mect- 
 inf of responsible citizens over the bottle of Rhine wine. 
 The night of my arrival 1 sat down at the end of the 
 long table, with the Cologne Gazette in my hand as a 
 make-belief, and, keeping my mouth shut, kept my ears 
 open. Of course there was not a word save about the 
 war and matters thereanent. A corpulent gentleman 
 was great on tactics, and while he was rather deprecia- 
 tory of the Duke of Mecklenburg, expressed profound 
 admiration of von Werder. But what chiefly struck me 
 was the conversation as to the terms of the peace. A 
 epuiet, sagacious person' said plainly he thought the 
 money indemnity was too great. It was not an indem-
 
 4 SO THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 nity lie said, it was a premium on war. Another struck 
 in with the rejoinder that the indemnity was exacted, 
 not alone for the money charges which the war had cost 
 the Germans, but for the cost of life and blood, as well 
 as the stagnation of profitable industry which it had 
 caused. The quiet man sighed as he replied that there 
 were losses for which no money indemnity could com- 
 pensate. " Do you think," said he, " I reckoned my poor 
 dead Carl by the milliard ? " On the territorial annexa- 
 tion all were united. It was a necessary preservative of 
 peace for Germany. But for this necessity, Metz was a 
 nuisance rather than otherwise. One gentleman was not 
 contradicted when he alleged that if Germany could have 
 got a guarantee against any future aggressiveness on the 
 part of France, she would not have demanded an inch of 
 territory — not even Alsace. " What do you mean by a 
 guarantee though ? " asked his neighbour ; — " A French 
 guarantee ? " " Gott hewahr ! " was the emphatic re- 
 sponse — " Thiers' guarantee to-day might be kicked to 
 the devil in two years by an Orleanist, the weak Pre- 
 sident of a red-hot Eepublic ; no, I mean an European 
 guarantee/' Then a Professor of the University made 
 an observation which I quote simply as an indication of 
 the horror with which the possibility of a future war is 
 regarded. " Sooner," said he, " than in ten or twelve 
 years' time my sons should run the chance of being 
 maimed and killed in a war with France, I would gladly
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 487 
 
 sec now every village in France burnt, every deed done 
 against her, even to actual extermination of her popula- 
 tion, that would guarantee us against the possibility of 
 our peace ever again being disturbed by her." It is 
 strange how intense can be a craving for peace that can 
 prompt to a contingent blood-thirstiness so uncompro- 
 mising as this. 
 
 It was quite in consonance with the German character 
 that there should not be any manifestation of cock-a- 
 whoop exultation among the people by reason of the 
 victorious campaign just concluded. The feeling of 
 sedate satisfaction seemed to find vent chiefly in flags 
 and universal good humour. You might jostle anybody 
 you liked; and whereas he might under normal conditions 
 growl not a little, now he turned unto you a smiling face 
 as if to say you might do it again and he would not 
 quarrel with you, so complaisant was he in his quiet real- 
 isation of what the Americans call a " o;ood time." It 
 seemed as if in those first weeks of peace most people 
 were celebrating the event by refraining from doing any 
 work; and stationing themselves from day to day in 
 great groups in the neighbourhood of the railway sta- 
 tions, to watch their fighting brethren pass through on 
 their way home. A considerable proportion of the popu- 
 lation of Bonn had apparently permanently bivouacked 
 in the avenue adjoining the railway station. Hour after 
 hour they stood there — -men, women, and children, as if
 
 488 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 they could never have enough of gazing. They stood 
 under a perfect forest of flags, and they had made a kind 
 of bower with evergreen branches, which was turned to 
 the practical use of a depot for refreshments, to be served 
 to the occupants of the passing trains. On an average 
 there was one of these about every hour, and a curious 
 sight the military train was. For the two days of my 
 stay in Bonn the passing troops chiefly consisted of 
 Westphalian Hussars, and those bold warriors took huge 
 delight in mounting upon the tops of the carriages, and 
 from this elevated position waving hand flags while they 
 cheered vehemently. A vocal contingent inside sang 
 without intermission the " Wacht am Rhein." At the 
 sight of the train the waiting crowd would waken up 
 and burst into reciprocal cheering. The sedate satisfac- 
 tion for the time gave place to a modified ecstasy. The 
 boys clambered up beside the Hussars and gave the tenor 
 to the bass cheering of the soldiers. The women pushed 
 to the front regardless of the squeeze. A blousy frau is 
 in the first rank, baby in arms, shouting an inquiry, ad- 
 dressed miscellaneously, about a certain Johann, who, 
 probably enough, occupies the position of male parent to 
 the embryo Hussar in her arms. A hairy Hussar leans 
 over a truck, deftly kisses the frau, and annexes felo- 
 niously the. baby, which he elevates triumphantly into 
 mid-air, the young Teuton crowing and kicking in huge 
 enjoyment. A baby in a military train, full of Land-
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 489 
 
 wehrmen coming home from the war ! Here is a prize, 
 indeed. The frau .seems half pleased, half inclined to 
 be frightened, as her urchin is passed hand over hand 
 along the roofs of the carriages, each temporary possessor 
 of the living morsel giving; it a kiss and a cunning tickle 
 that speaks of paternal habit before he parts with it. 
 Curious how a baby may dispel the grave forebodings of 
 a pacific professor. Such a grave and reverend seignor 
 stood beside me as the train came up with its cheering 
 freight. "Alas!" quoth he, "for the evil influences of 
 war. I recognise in these faces a savagery that was not 
 to be seen when the fellows passed through, six months 
 ago, on their way to the war. They have tasted blood, 
 and the fell meal shows itself in their faces." Truly, in 
 a sense, the Professor was right. The faces had got 
 bronzed and hair matted. There was a truculency in 
 their aspect, and a buccaneering air discernible, that 
 might be taken as a memento of high-handed requisi- 
 tioning and long chases after Francs-tireurs. I think the 
 air was in a great measure assumed for the occasion, for we 
 know the weakness of human nature. But the baby 
 drove the savagery out of the faces, and stamped out 
 the buccaneering swagger, so that Herr Professor owned 
 himself satisfied, with the reservation that he hoped all 
 tlic Hussars were married men with families. 
 
 None of the Bonn Johnnies coming marching home 
 arrived in this particular train I am speaking of, with
 
 490 THE WAR BETWEEN" FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 the exception of a single Landwehrman. I saw this 
 Landwehrman disembark. He was a living proof that 
 fluids of an inebriating; character exist on the road 
 traversed by the train previous to its arrival in Bonn. 
 In point of fact, our Bonn Landwehrman was pretty 
 considerably drunk. But drunk as he was, it was plain 
 that he realised the fact that he had his character to 
 maintain in his native place. It was with portentous 
 solemnity that he emerged from the station, inadver- 
 tently carrying his arms reversed. A porter followed 
 bearing his knapsack. Another brought his havresack, 
 his drinking flask with the cork out and plainly empty, 
 and a few other trifles. Once outside, our Landwehr- 
 man halted and blandly surveyed his fellow-townsmen. 
 It seemed as if he was about to give them his blessing;. 
 But he had forgotten to report himself at the Etappen 
 Commando. You should have seen the effort he made 
 to straighten himself up, and go right about into a 
 creditable manner. While he is complying with the 
 demands of discipline, there is a stir in the throng, 
 which results in the advent of the identical frau, whose 
 baby the Hussar had looted. She has recovered said 
 baby, severely tousled. It appears that the solemnly 
 inebriated is Johann, the lawful spouse of the frau, and 
 parent of the baby, as well as of a ladder-like assortment 
 of elder hopes. The frau, it is clear, admits the prior 
 claims of the Etappen Commando, nor seeks to intrude
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 491 
 
 on the interval sacred to duty. She compensates herself 
 for the self-restraint by tumbling bodily, baby and all, 
 upon Johann the moment he gets outside. There is a 
 curious miscellaneous group, in the posturing of which 
 baby gets squeezed and begins to squall, Johamrs face 
 appearing at intervals from behind his wife. In the 
 glimpses it is apparent that Johann is blubbering. The 
 frau unlocks herself, and presents unto her husband their 
 family member by member, till the top step of the 
 ladder is reached, and then a sort of informal procession 
 is formed for the homeward route. Johann is visibly 
 limper under the influence of family emotion, yet he 
 straightens himself up every now and then, and throws 
 out his shoulders as he glances down at the iron cross in 
 his button-hole. He is denuded of every impediment. 
 A mob of children surround him and the frau, contend- 
 ing for the honour of carrying something belonging to 
 the hero. A neighbour has the baby, so that the frau 
 may devote herself exclusively to Johann. Probably 
 enough on the morrow you might have met that honest 
 fellow in his civilian clothes going about the avocation 
 he had relinquished when called on to go and fight for 
 the Fatherland. 
 
 In the throng continually by the railway station one 
 could not but be sensible of a certain sombreness in the 
 dress of the women. Likely enough at first one did not 
 come to draw any inference from this. There was the
 
 492 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 sombreness, just as when a cloud comes between the sun 
 and a landscape, a mere fleeting accident. But the 
 sombreness of colour in this throng was no fleeting 
 accident. You came to realise that before you were 
 a strange number of women dressed in black, in which 
 crape profusely showed itself. Crape and cheering ! 
 Mourning and the joyous reunion of husband and wife, 
 father and children ! Were these kill-joys of malice 
 prepense who came out among us with their weepers and 
 weeds to dull with their trappings of woe the gladness 
 and the triumph \ Ah, for these crape-wearers — and 
 they are many this day all over the Fatherland — there 
 was no joy, no gladsome reunion. Your triumph ! 
 What was your triumph to this pale woman with the 
 drawn face and haggard eyes, and with the three 
 children, who now looked wonderingly into their 
 mother's face, and now joined, unwitting of their be- 
 reavement, in the fun of their young comrades, to whom 
 the war had left fathers 1 One asked himself why they 
 came here % Why does the moth come to the candle 1 
 There must, I suppose, be a kind of pleasurable torture 
 in a fresh pang, a kind of exquisite poignancy not to 
 be resisted. One saw but little manifestation of acute 
 emotion among those sable-clad spectators. Surely in 
 most cases the bitterness of death must have been 
 past. 
 
 The train rolled on with its huzzaing freight, and
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 493 
 
 the bustle in the crowd lapsed for a while. But not 
 for long. Here conies an hospital train, its engines 
 decorated with evergreens. If you look at the windows 
 of the longr carriages, built on the American model, you 
 may see the poor wounded fellows raising themselves on 
 their elbows in their narrow cots, to look out upon their 
 countryfolk. It is only for privileged people that there 
 is admission to the platform of the station while the 
 ambulance train is drawn up there ; sympathisers, how- 
 ever warm, are in the way when delicate work has to be 
 done systematically. On the platform one sees ready 
 a number of mattressed stretchers, for Bonn has no fewer 
 than fourteen lazarcttes, and in addition numerous pri- 
 vate families have virtually turned their houses into 
 hospitals. Members of the committee come out of their 
 store-room, and take each so many carriages to supply 
 with such refreshments as the inmates may be allowed 
 to receive. Here is the head doctor, a tough old boy to 
 be sure. The first time I saw him was in the chateau at 
 Amelange, on the 7th October, a suture-needle behind 
 his ear, and his hands in such a state that I respectfully 
 declined to shake them. Since then he has been all 
 through the northern campaign, and is doimj £Ood work 
 right to his own door. An upright man and a just, he 
 candidly owns he has not time to gossip, and must go 
 see to the disembarkation of such of his patients as are 
 to be left in Bonn. Here is one of them, a hollow-eyed
 
 494 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 under-officer, on this stretcher, with his coat thrown 
 over him. He seems all but comatose, yet see how he 
 manages feebly to disengage a hand to turn out the 
 breast of his coat, so as not to hide the iron cross 
 hanging there. By the look of him, I fear it will task 
 the Bonn surgeons to bring him round. Here is the 
 head doctor in a passion, and bullying quite vehemently. 
 Well, after all, doctor, it is natural enough. He is a 
 Bonn man, it seems, this hussar Wachtmeister, and these 
 are Bonn-folk that are crowding about him. But the 
 doctor is right ; you must let the air in about him, good 
 people, and so give ground. The Wachtmeister seems a 
 philosopher, lying there with one of his legs the Lord 
 knows where. There is a quiet, amused smile on his 
 handsome face, and he seems to be relishing his cigar. 
 It is clear the Wachtmeister does not quite belong to 
 himself. A strapping, good-looking girl has quietly but 
 potently taken possession of him, and none challenge her 
 title. She stands fast by the head of the stretcher, while 
 the rest give ground at the mandate of the surgeon, and 
 there is the air of conscious property in the business-like 
 manner in which she gives her directions as to lifting 
 and moving her complaisant goods and chattel. A brave 
 girl truly — fit to be a soldier's wife of the Mrs. Colonel 
 O'Dowd stamp. If the doctor cared to lay his finger on 
 her pulse this minute, I'd bet a good deal he'd find 
 it over a hundred ! How near she is to hysterics those
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 495 
 
 tell-tale twitcliings about the corners of the mouth and 
 swellings of the throat give evidence, yet gallantly she 
 maintains her composure, and gives her instructions as 
 if she were telling the people how to boil a potato or 
 scrub a floor. 
 
 It froze hard in Berlin during the night preceding 
 March the 17th, the day of the Emperor's home-coming; 
 and morning brought bright sun and cloudless sky. It 
 brought also an universal ebullition of bunting. A crowd 
 had collected in the morning under the statue of the 
 Great Fritz opposite the Imperial Schloss. The crowd 
 was drawn by a banner which floated from the pedestal, 
 having a long poem stamped on the black and Avhitc 
 linen. " Hail Kaiser Wilhelm, hail to thee and to the 
 brave German host thou lcadest back from victory, ghost- 
 like from afar. Like the clash of distant bells sounds 
 the glad cheering of the conquerors. Old Fritz looks 
 down with proud glance upon his descendants, approv- 
 ing greatly their valour." So opened the poem which 
 struck home to the sympathies of the crowd so heartily 
 that a policeman relaxed into rubbing his hands. Mean- 
 time an adventurous youth, with a flag in his hand, had 
 climbed up, and sat astraddle of Old Fritz's helmet, 
 waving his banner proudly. All the forenoon the pre- 
 parations in the way of decorations and for thv illumina- 
 tion steadily went on. The lazarettes were not behind- 
 hand in an humble way, and it was touching to sec the
 
 496 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 poor broken fellows elaborating their simple decorations. 
 At one o'clock came guard-mounting. On this important 
 day the guard was found by the 2nd Guard and the 
 Kaiser Franz Regiments, and consisted wholly of soldiers 
 who had come back from the war. I recognised anions 
 the stalwart fellows, marching to the strains of the Paris 
 March, not a few old familiar faces that brought to mind 
 Le Bourget, Stains, Pierrefittc, and Le Blanc Mesnil. 
 Long before four o'clock every street was crowded, the 
 throng being specially dense by the station, where the 
 great people had begun to arrive to await the Royal 
 arrival. The Princess Frederick Charles, Queen Eliza- 
 beth, and the Baden family were among the earliest 
 arrivals. A great cheer rang out as Count Bismarck, 
 bluff and smiling, drove up with his wife in an open 
 carriage. In the reserved portion of the platform all 
 were in uniform or court dresses. Here was staunch old 
 Marshal vonWrangel in the uniform of a -White Cuirassier, 
 rather bandy, but good seemingly for another twenty 
 years. Here was Prince George, more familiar with the 
 pen — a bad one — than the sword, wrapped in a large 
 cloak, with an attendant bcarino; his helmet of state. 
 He had a chat with a Jiigcr private with one leg, who 
 had got somehow in the forefront. Here too was General 
 Vogel von Falkcnstein, grey and grim ; and von Stein- 
 mctz, all the way from his Posen governorship. But the 
 list was too long for enumeration. Every pillar of the
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 497 
 
 lono- station was in a flutter of fla^s : on those on either 
 side of the royal passage were blazoned the words Metz 
 and Strasburg, while over the statues of Victory behind 
 were Sedan and Paris. Was it by accident or design 
 that opposite the platform on a siding an ambulance 
 train had been halted, from the windows of which pallid 
 faces looked out with hollow eyes on the brilliant scene ? 
 Its roof was clustered with convalescents, and a little 
 squad of men maimed at Spicheren and Courcelles gave 
 Steinmetz a cheer — old " Immer Vorwiirts," as they 
 lovingly styled him— and so with gossip and endless 
 kindly salutations the moments of expectancy fleeted by. 
 Twenty minutes later, at the sound of a shrill distant 
 whistle, out of the waiting-room stalked Count Bismarck 
 in full war paint ; Wrangel doffed his plumed helmet ; a 
 stream of ladies and children followed Bismarck's stalwart 
 form; in three minutes more a near rumble, and the train, 
 bedizened with flags, rolled into the siding. Three carriages 
 passed a flight of steps, and the fourth came into sight ; 
 there rose a mighty cheer, and at the window stood the 
 Emperor Wilhelm, framed as in a picture. The old 
 man's face was working as the cheers rang in his ears. 
 He was down the steps and kissing the Dowager Queen 
 Elizabeth. What ! would the women of his family mob 
 him, then, as they crowded round him for his kisses, while 
 Grandchildren huno- about his knees ? No wonder that 
 he had to brush his eyes with the back of his hand as he
 
 49 S THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 struggled through the women folk before him. In his 
 path stood the white figure of Wrangel, the rays of the 
 setting sun flashing on his snow-white hair. The soldier- 
 patriarch raised his hand, and tried to lead off a cheer, 
 but his voice failed him, and the tears rolled clown his 
 face. His master, not less moved, kissed his servant on 
 either cheek. The two old soldier comrades embraced, 
 while one of Steinmetz's wounded fellows headed, from 
 the top of the carriage, a real rousing cheer. Then the 
 Emperor grasped Bismarck by the hand, and kissed him 
 too. He served von Steinmetz in the same manner with 
 special cordiality, as if to refute the calumnies anent that 
 gallant soldier. He kissed his way right through out of 
 sight into the waiting-room, the Empress following him 
 with a look of conscious ownership ; and so exit Kaiser 
 "Wilhelm. 
 
 Behind him as he came from the carriage was a younger 
 face, that of his son. I wondered the Princess Avas not 
 jealous to see all these pretty girls, princesses, grand 
 duchesses, and what not, hugging her husband " with 
 effusion." But not she. She had fast hold of his right 
 arm, and she looked about so proudly and gladly, the 
 light of love in every feature. Her back hair had come 
 down and it streamed over her shoulders in beautiful 
 confusion. It was comical to see how she gently extri- 
 cated " Our Fritz " from the press, when it seemed as if 
 there had been enough of the kissing. But, then, the
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 499 
 
 Prince had hairier faces to kiss, and more stalwart forms 
 to embrace ere he reached the haven of the saloon. Yon 
 Roon, von Meydcm, all the well-known Versailles faces ' 
 followed, and then the women burst into the reserved 
 space, and hugged and kissed the staff men who be- 
 longed to them as thev came out of the carriages. 
 The scene was like an April day, showers and sun- 
 si line, tears and smiles in about equal proportions — 
 all state and ceremony went down before the gush of 
 homely affection. The Emperor almost at once passed 
 to his carriage, and drove off unescorted at a trot, fol- 
 lowed by carriages containing the Eoyal Family and the 
 other personages, along the Thier Garten, through the 
 Brandenburg gate, and down Unter den Linden to the 
 Palace, amidst immense cheering. As he passed under 
 the arch the Imperial flag was run up on the palace. 
 The cheering continued after he alighted. His Majesty 
 lingered on the threshold, and at length went in ; but 
 his subjects were not to be denied, and he had to appear 
 again on the balcony, helmet in hand and rlie Empress 
 on his arm. Ifis last appearance was at the window of 
 tin.' corner room where he showed himself on the decla- 
 ration of tin- war, and here lie listened to the Wacht am 
 Ivhein, sung by the crowd. The Imperial Crown Prince 
 had also to conic repeatedly to an open window of his 
 palace, accompanied by his wife and their children; the 
 eldest boy, dressed in full Uhlan uniform, especially
 
 500 THE WAR BETWEEN TRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 delighting the people. The Princess, with her eldest 
 son, had accompanied the Empress to Wildpark. 
 
 On the morning of the 22nd March, the Emperor's 
 birthday, Berlin received her first regular consignment of 
 home-coming warriors, in the shape of the 1st Battalion 
 of the 2nd Guard Landwehr Begiment. The battalion had 
 gone out over 1,000 strong ; I do not care to estimate 
 how far beneath that number it mustered as it marched 
 down the Linden on the bright March morning. It was 
 never my fortune to see the Guard Landwehr men fight, 
 but Versailles correspondents have told Britain in graphic 
 language how they held the park-wall of St. Cloud 
 against all comers in the fierce fight of the 19th of 
 January. It was no child's play that day, as this bat- 
 talion gave proofs in its shortened column of fours as it 
 strode along behind the band of the 3rd Guard Begiment, 
 who played their comrades in. Nearly all the men had 
 bound green wreaths round their helmets. Some had 
 stuck nosegays in the muzzle of their needle-guns ; others 
 carried chaplets on their bayonets. Big muscular fellows 
 all of them, of set frames and mature years, hair to the 
 eyes, and clumsy rather of build and gait, but of rare 
 weight and toughness — troops that evidently knew the 
 meaning of fighting, and had good fight in them as a 
 matter of course and quite in the way of business. 
 
 After their Kaiser had had a look at them, and they 
 had marched past the palace, the battalion broke into
 
 the; conquerors. 501 
 
 companies, cacli company taking a different direction to 
 a halting point. I accompanied the 2nd company 
 through the Friedrich Strasse to the top of the Ja^er 
 Strasse. While it was in tlie Linden rigorous discipline 
 was the order of the day. But it relaxed somewhat in 
 the Friedrich Strasse, and the people got among their 
 martial fellow-citizens. It made one laugh, though mirth 
 was not the sole emotion, to see the women claim their 
 husbands, throw arms round their necks and kiss them 
 heartily ; while the honest fellows, fain to reciprocate, 
 had still to keep step and not materially lose their dress- 
 ing. Once the women-folk got possession of the men 
 that belonged to them, there was no parting these twain 
 of one flesh, and so the fours became eights in many 
 cases ; in yet others an indefinite number, as when the 
 women had 1 tabes in their arms and when elder children 
 got a hold of their father somewhere, and objected to 
 leave go of him. One woman I saw with two babes, 
 plainly twins. She wanted to hug her husband ; but if 
 she did she must drop one of the babies. A comrade, 
 whom no wife claimed, and who was, I suppose, a sort of 
 Landwehr Brother tlieeryble, genially relieved her of 
 one baby, which he carried with singular address on his 
 left shoulder. The young one pulled the nosegay out of 
 the muzzle of his needle-gun carried on the other 
 shoulder. And so the company struggled on under diffi- 
 culties, striving to be martial to the last, but visibly em-
 
 502 THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY. 
 
 barrassed by family considerations, till they readied the 
 top of the Jager Strasse, where they halted. " Front," 
 was the sergeant's word of command ; but with nominal 
 intervals and doubled files, how to perform it was rather 
 a puzzle. Somehow a double line did get formed ; but 
 the sizing was queer, resulting from the fact that it was 
 partially composed of women, who, clinging fast to their 
 husbands' arms, came " Front" along with them. "With 
 the "Stand at ease" came unreserved intercourse. 
 Friends trooped around, handshaking was incessant, the 
 hairy Landwehrmen grinned and perspired with exuberant 
 joy. The lieutenant-colonel rode by, waving his kindly 
 adieu to the men who had so staunchly stood by him 
 when he led them to victory ; they fell in and carried 
 arms to the bluff old soldier, responding to his " Adieu" 
 with a hearty cheer. Then the captain, who had been 
 transacting a little family recognition on his own account 
 on the pavement, strode out among his men, and they 
 formed a circle about him as he began to speak. Orders 
 as to disposal of arms and accoutrements, rendezvous for 
 pay, &c, were the matters with which he had first to 
 deal ; then his voice changed, as, after a little pause, he 
 addressed his command as " comrades." " We have been 
 together, men," said he, "through the campaign. I 
 inarched you out of Berlin, and now I march you back 
 again. Not all indeed that went out with us have come 
 back with us. God so willed it that some should have
 
 THE CONQUERORS. 503 
 
 fallen in the Avar, but they died for King and Fatherland. 
 You have done your duty, men, as good Prussians, and 
 so now adieu !' ; "Adieu !" came back from every throat 
 in answer, and with the response the company was dis- 
 banded. The men were free to kiss wives, hug bairns, 
 and shake hands with friends. Surely no better finis can 
 I hope to find for my book than the captain's little 
 speech, the men's hearty respectful adieu, and then — 
 wives, children, and friends. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BrtADBUKV, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WUITEFKI A IIS.
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKE1TS 
 
 LIST OF NEW WORKS. 
 
 VOLS. ITT. & TV. of HER MAJESTY'S TOWER. 
 
 P.v W. IIEPWORTII DIXOX. DEDICATED BY EXPRESS 
 PERMISSION* TO THE QUEEN. Completing the Work. Demy 
 8vo. 3().s. Third Edition. 
 
 Contents :— A Favourite ; A Favourite's Friend ; The Countess of Suffolk ; To the 
 Tower; Lady Catherine Manners; House of Villiers ; Revolution; Fall of Lord 
 Bacon; A Spanish Match ; Spaniolizing; Henry De Vere; The Matter of Hol- 
 land : Sea Affairs; The Pirate War: Port and Court; A New Romanzo ; Move 
 and Counter-move; Pirate and Prison ; In the Marshalsea : The Spanish Olive ; 
 Prisons < ipened; A Parliament; Digby, Earl of Bristol ; Turn of Fortune; Eliot 
 Eloquent; Felton's Knife: An Assassin; Nine Gentlemen in the Tower; A 
 King's Revenge ; Charles I. ; Pillars of State and Church; End of Wentworth ; 
 Laud's Last Troubles: The Lieutenant's House: A Political Romance; Phi- 
 losophy at Bay: Fate of an Idealist; Britannia: Killing not Murder; A Second 
 Buckingham; Roger. Earl of Castlemaine : A Life of Plots; The Two Penns; 
 A Quaker's ( 'ell; Colonel Blood: Crown Jewels; King and Colonel ; Rye House 
 Plot : Murder ; A Patriot : The Good Old Cause; James, Puke of Monmouth; 
 The Unjust Judge : The Scottish Lords : The Countess of Nithisdale : Escaped; 
 Cause of the Pretender; Reformers and Reform; Reform Riots; Sir Francis 
 Burden : A Summons to the Tower; Arthur Thistlewood; A Cabinet Council; 
 Cato Street; Pursuit; Last Prisoners in the Tower. 
 
 "Mr Dixon's lively and accurate work." — Times. 
 
 "This book is thoroughly entertaining, well- written, and instructive.'' — E.raminrr. 
 
 '•These volumes will place Mr. Dixon permanently on the roll of Knglish authors 
 who have rendered their country a service, by his putting on record a truthful and 
 brilliant account of that most popular and instructive relic of antiquity. 'Her 
 Majesty's Tower ;' the annals of which, as related in these volumes, are by turns 
 exciting and amusing, while they never fail to interest. Our ancient stronghold 
 could have had no better historian than Mr. Dixon." — I'ost. 
 
 ■■ By his merits of literary execution, his vivacious portraitures of historical 
 figures, his masterly power: of narrative and description, and the force and grace- 
 ful ease of his style, Mr. Dixon will keep his hold upon a multitude of readers." — 
 llhutr.it.:) X.ir*. ' 
 
 "Those volumes are two galleries of richly painted portraits of the noblest 
 men and nii-t bril'imt women, bo-ides, other- commemorated by English 
 history. The grind old Royal Keep, palace and prison by turn-, is reviviHed ill 
 tli, ■■ vo'umes. which close the rri rrative, extending from the era of Sir John Eliot, 
 wh.. saw I! ileiu'h die in Palace Yard, to that of Thistlew i. the la t prisoner Im- 
 mured in theTower. Few works are given to u-. in these davs. so abundant in 
 ty 11 d re eiircli a- Mr. Dixon's. '—Xt.m.l.ir.t, 
 
 •'This intensely interesting work will become as popular as any book Mr. 
 Dixon has written."— Mwtt.i.r. 
 
 " A work always eminently readable, often of fascinating interest." — Kchn. 
 
 " The most brilliant and fascinating of Mr. Dixon's literary achievement.-." — Hun. 
 
 ■■ Mr. Dixon has aeeompli-he i hi- task well. Kew subjects of higher and more 
 general interest than tin' Tower could hive been found. Around the old pile 
 cling ist romantic in our history. Toll ve made himself the trusted 
 
 and aeeepteil hi-torian of the Tower i- a task on which a writer of highest reputa- 
 tion miiv well be proud. This Mr Dixon has don,.. He has. moreover, adapted 
 his work to all classes. To the historical student it presents the result of long 
 and sue,', ---ftil research in sources undiscovered till now; to the artist it give- the 
 most g'owing pi, -iiire yet. p,-rh ip-', produced of the mote exciting scenes of national 
 history: to the general reader it offers fact with all the graces of tic. an. Mr. 
 
 Dixon's 1 k i- admirable alike for tie' general vii w ,■• hi-tory it presents, an 1 for 
 
 the beauty and value of it- -ingle pictures." — ,v« > ,;;/ Tim.,% 
 
 1
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 DIARY OF THE BESIEGED RESIDENT IN 
 
 PARIS. Reprinted from " The Daily News." With several 
 NEW LETTERS and PREFACE. 1 vol. 8vo. 15s. 
 
 " ' The Diary of a Besieged Resident in Paris' will certainly form one of the most 
 remarkable records of a momentous episode in history." — Spectator. 
 
 "The title of this work is familiar, and as we have reason to know pleasantly 
 familiar, to our readers. To them a large portion of the contents of the volume 
 are well known in the necessarily fragmentary and interrupted form in which 
 they first appeared in our columns. In the continuous shape in which they are 
 now presented, with the gaps filled up by the insertion in the proper place of let- 
 ters which arrived too late for publication, they will not, we believe, be less accept- 
 able. Of the characteristic of thes-e letters it is not for us to speak. The unprece- 
 dented interest which they excited as they appeared, and the demand for their 
 republication which has been urged from many quarters, are a better criticism 
 than any which it would be becoming in us to offer. We will only add that, in its 
 collected form, the ' Diary of a Besieged Resident ' fills a large and handsome 
 volume of nearly four hundred pages." — Daily Ifetcs. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF GREECE. By the Right 
 
 Hon. Sir Thomas Wysk, K.C.B., Late British Minister at Athens. 
 With an Introduction by Miss Wyse, and Letters from Greece to 
 Friends at Home, by Dean Stanley. 8vo. 15s. 
 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF COUNT 
 
 BEUGNOT, Minister of State under Napoleon I. Edited from the 
 French. By Miss C. M. Yongk, author of the " Heir of Redclyffe," 
 &c. 2 vols. 8vo. (In April.) 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILIAM BEWICK, 
 
 THE ARTIST. By Thomas Landseer, A.E. 2 vols. 8vo, with 
 Portrait by Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A. (Just Ready.) 
 
 THE FALL OF THE SECOND EMPIRE ; or, 
 
 Romance and Reality of Imperial France. By Azamat-Batuk, 
 Special Correspondent of " The Pall Mall Gazette." 2 vols, 
 post 8vo. (Just Heady.) 
 
 FAIR FRANCE : Impressions of a Traveller. 
 
 By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," &c. 8vo. 15s. 
 
 "A book of value and importance, and which is very agreeable reading. It is 
 bright and spirited, and evinces as much as ever the acuteness of perception and 
 the powers of observation of the writer." — Post. 
 
 "A pleasant book, conceived in a large, kindly, and liberal spirit."— Daily Newt. 
 
 "This volume will be found pleasant reading." — Athenaeum. 
 
 "A good book on Franco is just now most welcome, and this is emphatically a 
 good book. It is charmingly readable." — Globe. 
 
 " This is a truly fascinating volume. The book has nothing to do with the present 
 crisis. It is La Belle France : — Paris, with its quiet churches and its gay carnival 
 crowds, and the old provincial cities like Caen andChartres — that is here described 
 as it was before the black waves of invasion rolled over the land. Years must pass 
 before it will be possible for any to see Fair France as our author was privileged 
 to see her; and this lends a special interest to the pictures here presented to us. 
 There is much that, is very beautiful and charming in these recollections. This it 
 is hardly necessary to say to any who know and can appreciate the author of 
 •John Halifax.' " — Eclto.
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 FREE RUSSIA. By W. Hepworth Dixon, Author 
 
 of ' ; New America,'' " Her Majesty's Tower," &c. Third Edition. 
 2 vols. 8vo, with Coloured Illustrations. 30s. 
 
 '■Mr. Dixon's book will be certain not only to interest but to please its readers 
 and it deserves to do so. It contains a great deal that is worthy of attention, and 
 is likely to produce a very useful effect. The ignorance of the English people 
 with respect to Russia has long been so dense that we cannot avoid being grateful 
 to a writer who has taken the trouble to make personal acquaintance with that 
 seldom-visited land, and to bring before the eyes of his countrymen a picture of 
 its scenery and its people, which is so novel and interesting that it can scarcely 
 fail to arrest their attention. " — Saturday Review. 
 
 " We claim for Mr. Dixon the merit of having treated his subject in a fresh and 
 original manner. He has done his best to see with his own eyes the vast country 
 which he describes, and he has visited some parts of the land with which few 
 even among its natives are familiar, and he has had the advantage of being 
 brought into personal contact with a number of those Russians whose opinions 
 are of most weight. The consequence is. that he has been able to lay before 
 general readers such a picture of Russia and the Russian people as cannot fail to 
 interest them." — Athenxum. 
 
 •■ Mr. Dixon has invented a good title for his volumes on Russia. The chapter on 
 Lomonosoff. the peasant poet, is one of the best in the book, and the chapter on 
 Kief is equally good. He gives an interesting and highly picturesque account of 
 the working of the jury system in a case which he himself saw tried. The de- 
 scriptions of the peasant villages, and of the habits and manners of the peasantry, 
 are very good; in fact, the descriptions are excellent throughout the work." — Times. 
 
 •■ Mr. Dixon has succeeded in producing a book which is at once highly valuable 
 and eminently readable. In our judgment it is superior to any work that has 
 
 pro led from Mr. Dixon's pen. and we heartily recommend it to our readers. 
 
 The information he conveys is very great, his judgments are evidently the result 
 of much retlection, and his style is singularly forcible and picturesque." — Standard. 
 
 " We heartily commend these volumes to all who wish either for instruction or 
 relaxation." — Examiner. 
 
 " In these picturesque and fascinating volumes, Mr. Dixon carries his readers 
 over a wide range of country, from the Arctic Sea to the southern slopes of the 
 I'ral range, from the straits of Yenikale to the (Julf of Riga, and, by the force of 
 brisk, nervous ami picturesque language, makes them realize the scenery, man- 
 ners, politics, poetry of every mile of ground over which he conducts them." — 
 ifornvi'j I'ust, 
 
 "Mr. Dixon's 'Free Russia,' is another valuable addition to the books of travel 
 which he has given us. It reveals to our view the great mysterious people of 
 Kastera Europe." — Daily Telei/raph. 
 
 '■This is a more important and remarkable work upon the great Muscovite 
 Empire than any foreign traveller has ever even attempted, much less accom- 
 plished. Thanks to the writer of these splendid volumes, 'Free Russia' is brought 
 clearly, boldly, vividly, comprehensively, and yet minutely, within the ken of 
 every intelligent reading Englishman. The book is in many parts as enthralling 
 as a romance, besides being full of life and character." — Hun. 
 
 " ■ Free Russia ' is one of the most remarkable books that has ever been written 
 in our times, of the value of which it is impossible to speak in terms too highly 
 commendatory." — Messenger. 
 
 " Mr. Dixon is delightfully readable. 'Free Russia ' has afforded us a great deal 
 of pleasure. It is the best work of its clever and versatile author." — Illustrated .Win. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF SOCIETY IN FRANCE 
 
 AND ENGLAND. By Lady Clementina Davies. 2 vols, crown 
 8vo. (In the Press.)
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 VOL. I. OF HER MAJESTY'S TOWER. By W. 
 
 HEPWORTH DIXON. DEDICATED BY EXPRESS PERMIS- 
 SION TO THE QUEEN. Sixth Edition. Demy 8vo. 15s. 
 
 Contents: — The Pile — Inner Ward and Outer Ward — The Wharf — River Rights — 
 The White Tower — Charles of Orleans — Uncle Gloucester — Prison Rules — Beau- 
 champ Tower — The good Lord Cobham — King and Cardinal — The Pilgrimage 
 of Grace — Madge Cheyne — Heirs to the Crown — The Nine Days' Queen — De- 
 throned — The Men of Kent — Courtney — No Cross no Crown — Cranmer, Lati- 
 mer, Bidley — White Roses — Princess Margaret — Plot and Counterplot — Mon- 
 sieur Charles — Bishop of Ross — Murder of Northumberland — Philip the Con- 
 fessor — Mass in the Tower — Sir Walter Raleigh — The Arabella Plot — Raleigh's 
 Walk— The Villain Waad— The Garden House—The Brick Tower. 
 
 "From first to last this volume overflows with new information and original 
 thought, with poetry and picture. In these fascinating pages Mr. Dixon dis- 
 charges alternately the functions of the historian, and the historic biographer, with 
 the insight, art, humour and accurate knowledge which never fail him when he 
 undertakes to illumine the darksome recesses of our national story." — Morning Post. 
 
 " We earnestly recommend this remarkable volume to those in quest of amuse- 
 ment and instruction, at once solid and refined. It is a most eloquent and graphic 
 historical narrative, by a ripe scholar and an accomplished master of English dic- 
 tion, and a valuable commentary on the social aspect of mediaeval and Tudor civil- 
 ization. In Mr. Dixon's pages are related some of the most moving records of 
 human flesh and blood to which human ear could listen." — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 "It is needless to say that Mr. Dixon clothes the gray stones of the old Tower 
 with a new and more living interest than most of us have felt before. It is need- 
 less to say that the stories are admirably told, for Mr. Dixon's style is full of vigour 
 and liveliness, and he would make a far duller subject than this tale of tragic suf- 
 fering and heroism into an interesting volume. This book is as fascinating as a good 
 novel, yet it has all the truth of veritable history." — Daily A'eics. 
 
 " Tt is impossible to praise too highly this most entrancing history. A better 
 book has seldom, nnd a brighter one has never, been issued to the world by any 
 master of the delightful art of historic illustration." — Star. 
 
 "We can highly recommend Mr. Dixon's work. It will enhance his reputation. 
 The whole is charmingly written, and there is a life, a spirit, and a reality about 
 the sketches of the celebrated prisoners of the Tower, which give the work the 
 interest of a romance. ' Her Majesty's Tower' is likely to become one of the most 
 popular contributions to history." — Standard. 
 
 " In many respects this noble volume is Mr. Dixon's masterpiece. The book is a 
 microcosm of our Knglish history; and throughout it is penned with an eloquence 
 as remarkable tor its vigorous simplicity as for its luminous picturesqueness. it 
 more than sustains Mr. Dixon's reputation. It enhances it." — Sun. 
 
 "This is a worl; of great value. It cannot fail to be largely popular and to main- 
 tain its author's reputation. It bears throughout the marks of careful study, keen 
 observation, and that power of seizing upon those points of a story that are of real 
 importance, which is the most precious possession of the historian. To all historic 
 documents, ancient and modern, Mr. Dixon has had unequalled facilities of access, 
 and his work will in future be the trusted and popular history of the Tower. He 
 has succeeded in giving a splendid panorama of English history." — Globe. 
 
 "This charming volume will he the most permanently popular of all Mr. Dixon's 
 works. Under the treatment of so practised a master of our English tongue the 
 story of the Tower become^ more fascinating thun the daintiest of romances." — 
 examiner.
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 VOL. II. OF HER MAJESTY'S TOWER. By 
 
 W. HEPWORTH DIXOX. DEDICATED BY EXPRESS PER- 
 MISSIOX TO THE CJUEEX. Sixth Edition. Demy 8vo. 15s. 
 
 Contents: — The Anglo-Spanish Plot — Factions at Court — Lord Grey of Wilton — 
 Old English Catholics— The English Jesuits— White Webbs— The Priests' Piot 
 —Wilt' in Court— Last of a Noble Line— Powder-Plot Room— Guy Fawkes— 
 i irigin of the Plot — Vineg ir House — Conspiracy at Large — The Jesuit's Move — 
 In London— November, 100-j — Hunted Down— In the Tower— Search for Gar- 
 net— End of the English Jesuits— The Catholic Lords— Harry Percy— The 
 Wizard Earl— A Real Arabella Plot— William Seymour— The Escape— Pursuit 
 — Dead in the Tower —Lady Frances Howard— Robert Carr — Powder Poisoning. 
 
 FitoM the Times: — "All the civilized world— English. Continental, and Ame- 
 rican — takes an interest in the Tower of Loudon. The Tower is the stage 
 upon which has been enacted some of the grandest dramas and saddest tragedies 
 in o n- • tional annals. It. in imagination, we take our stand on those time-worn 
 wa K and let century after century Hit past us. we shall sec in due succession the 
 in f the most fain i i men ml iu ely women of England in the olden time. 
 
 We shall sec them jesting, joust ng. love-making, plotting, and then anon, per- 
 haps. ■ their souls t i <•> 1 in the presence of a hideous masked figure, 
 bearing an axe in his hands. It is sueh pictures as these that Mr. Dixon, with 
 con- h s ii histor al limner, has set liefore us in these volumes. Mr. 
 Dixon dashes off the scenes of lower history with great spirit. His descriptions 
 are given with sueh terseness and vigour that we should spoil them by any attempt 
 at e. indexation. _.\s favourable examples of his narrative powers we may call at- 
 tention to the story of the beautiful but unpopular Elinor, yueen of Henry 1 11.. and 
 the 'i — riptiun ol Anne l.oleyn s llrst and second arrivals at the Tower. Then wo 
 have the story of the hold Bishop of Durham, who escapes by the aid of a cord 
 bidden in u w ne jar; and the tale of Maud Eitzwalter, imprisoned and murdered 
 by the caitiff John. Passing onwards, we meet Charles of Orleans, the poetic 
 trench Prince, captured at Agincourt, and detaiued for tlve-and-tweuty years a 
 prisoner in the Tower. Next we encounter the baleful form of Richard of Gloucester, 
 and are tilled with indignation at the blackest of the black Tower deeds. As wo 
 draw nearer to modern times, we have the sorrowful story of the Nine Days' 
 1,'ueen, poor little Lady Jane 1 1 rey. The chapter entitled "No Cross, no Crown" 
 is one ol the most affecting in the book. A mature man can scarcely read it with- 
 out feeling the tears ready to trickle from his eyes. No part of the tlrst volume 
 yields iu interest to the chapters which are devoted to the story of Sir Walter 
 iialeigh. The greater part of the second volume is occupied withthe story of the 
 l iunpowder Plot, The narrative is extremely mil-resting, and will repay perusal. 
 Another can.*, rrh'-ln\ possessed of a perennial interest, is the murder of Sir Thomas 
 Hverbury by Lord and Lady Somerset Mr. Dixon tells the tale skilfully. In cou- 
 n. we may congratulate the author on this, his latest work. Both volumes 
 are decidedly attractive, and throw much light on our national history, but wo 
 tinnk the palm of superior interest must be awarded to the second vuiume." 
 
 FitoM iiiK Atiikn.kim: — "The present volume is superior in sustained interest 
 to i hilt by which it was preceded. The whole details ate so picturesquely narrated, 
 that the reader is carried away by the narrative. The stories are told with such 
 knowledge of new facts as to make them like hitherto unwritten chapters in our 
 history." 
 
 Fi.om niK Mousing Post: — "This volume fascinates the reader's imagination 
 
 and stimulates his curiosity, whilst throwing il Is of pure light on several of tho 
 
 nil >st perplexing matters of .lames the Knsis reign. Not inferior to any of the 
 author s previous .vorks ol history in respect of discernment and logical soundness, 
 it e. pi. iN them iu luminous expression, and surpasses some of them in romantic 
 interest."
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 ANNALS OF OXFORD. By J. C. Jeaffreson, 
 
 B.A., Oxon. Author of " A Book About the Clergy," &c. Second 
 Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 30a. 
 
 Contents: — The Cross Keys; King Alfred's Expulsion from Oxford; Chums snd In- 
 mates; Classical Schools and Benefactions ; Schools and Scholars; On Learn- 
 ing and certain Incentives to it ; Colleges and Halls ; Structural Newness of 
 Oxford ; Arithmetic gone Mad ; Reduction of the Estimates ; A Happy Family ; 
 Town and Gown ; Death to the Legate's Cook ; The Great Riot ; St. Scholastica ; 
 King's College Chapel used as a Playhouse ; St. Mary's Church ; Ladies in Resi- 
 dence ; Gownswomen of the 17th Century ; The Birch in the Bodleian ; Aularian 
 Rigour; Royal Smiles : Tudor, Georgian, Elizabeth and Stuart ; Royal Pomps; 
 Oxford in Arms; The Cavaliers in Oxford; Henrietta Maria's Triumph and 
 Oxford's Capitulation ; The Saints Triumphant ; Cromwellian Oxford ; Alma 
 Mater in the Days of the Merry Monarch ; The Sheldonian Theatre ; Gardens 
 and Walks; Oxford Jokes and Sausages; Terras Filii ; The Constitution Club ; 
 Nicholas Amhurst ; Commemoration ; Oxford in the Future. 
 
 "The pleasantest and most informing book about Oxford that has ever been 
 written. Whilst these volumes will be eagerly perused by the sons of Alma Mater, 
 they will be read with scarcely less interest by the general reader." — Post. 
 
 " Those who turn to Mr. .Teaffreson's highly interesting work for solid informa- 
 tion or for amusement, will not be disappointed. Rich in research and full of 
 antiquarian interest, these volumes abonnd in keen humour and well-bred wit. 
 A scholar-like fancy brigntens every page. Mr. Jeaffreson is a very mode! of a 
 cicerone; full of information, full of knowledge, 'The Annals of Oxford' is a work 
 which well deserves to be read, and merits a permanent niche in the library'' — 
 The Graphic. 
 
 "Mr. Jeaffreson is, par excellence, a popular writer. lie chooses what is pic- 
 turesque and of general interest. * * No one can read these Annals of Oxford 
 without feeling a very deep interest in their varied contents. * * .Mr. Jeaffre- 
 son's sketch of the University under the Stuarts and Georges is most entertaining 
 and instructive." — Athemeum. . 
 
 "These interesting volumes should be read not only by Oxonians, but by all 
 students of English history.'' — John Bull. 
 
 " This work will add to Mr. .Teaffreson's reputation, not only as an agreeable 
 writer, hut a careful explorer, who carries on his investigations out of the beaten 
 track. We have perused these goodly volumes with much interest. They con- 
 tain lively descriptions of many of the leading events in connexion with the rise 
 and development of the University; events, too, which have materially influenced 
 our national history; and no unbiassed reader can glide through his pleasant 
 pages without acknowledging the fair and candid spirit in which Mr. Jeaffreson 
 has executed his task." — Oxford Chronicle. 
 
 A BOOK ABOUT THE CLERGY. By J. C. 
 
 Jeaffreson, B.A., Oxon, author of "A Book about Lawyers," "A 
 Book about Doctors," &c. Second Edition. 2 vols 8vo. 309. 
 
 "This is a book of sterling excellence, in which all — laity as well as clergy — will 
 find entertainment and instruction : a book to lie bought and placed permanently 
 in our libraries. It is written in a terse and lively stylo throughout, it is eminently 
 fair and candid, and is full of interesting information on almost every topic that 
 Berves to illustrate the history of the English clergy" — Times. 
 
 " Honest praise may bo awarded to these volumes. Mr. Jeaffreson has collected 
 a largo amount of curious information, and a rich store of facts not readily to lie 
 found elsewhere. The book will please, and it deserves to please, those who like 
 picturesque details and pleasant gossip." — i'all Mall Gazette.
 
 13, Great Marlborough Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 A CRUISE IN GREEK WATERS ; with a Hunting 
 
 Excursion in Tunis. By Capt. Townshend, 2nd Lifo Guards. 
 1 vol. 8vo, with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 "Capt. Townshend writes about the foreign hinds he hits visited with pood hu- 
 nt >ur and intelligence. His pictures of life in Algiers are vivid and truthful, and 
 his narrative of boar-hunting in Tunis is especially worthy of notice." — Athenxum. 
 
 "A thoroughly pleasant and agreeable book, full of picturesque descriptions of 
 notable places, and the present condition, and appearance of some of the most in- 
 teresting countries of Europe." — Examiner. 
 
 " The most attractive and interesting book of travels of the season, full of acuta 
 observation, picturesque description, and exciting adventure." — United Service Mag. 
 
 A RAMBLE INTO BRITTANY. By the Rev. 
 
 G. Musgrave, M.A., Oxon. 2 vols., with Illustrations. 24s. 
 
 "Mr. Musgrave is a man of considerable information, and good powers of obser- 
 vation. His book is interesting and amusing. He sketches the Breton landscapes 
 with force and spirit." — Pall Afall Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Musgrave always writes pleasantly, and manages to combine instruction 
 and entertainment in very agreeable proportions." — Examiner. 
 
 "A valuable, pleasant, and instructive book." — Post. 
 
 WILD LIFE AMONG THE KOORDS. By 
 
 Major F. Millingen, F.R.G.S. 8vo, with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 " Major Millingen's interesting volume reads pleasantly as a journal of travel 
 in districts never that wo know described before. Major Millingen is a shrewd 
 observer. He gives an interesting account of the Koords. and describes the mag- 
 uilicent scenery of the country with skill and felicity." — Saturday Review. 
 
 " A thoroughly interesting work, which we heartily recommend." — Examiner. 
 
 A HUNTER'S ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT 
 
 WEST. By Parker Gillmorb (" Ubique"), author of "Gun, Rod, 
 and Saddle," &c. 1 vol. 8vo, with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 " A gooil volume of sports and spirited adventure. We have thoroughly enjoyed 
 Mr. Uillmore's work. It would be difficult to speak in too high terms of his pluck, 
 enterprise and energy " — Pall Hall Gazette. 
 
 "An interesting, amusing, and instructive book." — Examiner. 
 
 " A volume of exceeding interest, full of exciting and spiritedly told adventure." 
 — Sunday Times. 
 
 ■■ Mr. i iillniore is a keen sportsman and a fearless explorer. His work Is full of 
 interest and adventure, and is as well written as it is amusing." — Messenger. 
 
 A TOUR ROUND ENGLAND. By Walter 
 
 Thor.nbdry. 2 vols, post 8vo, with Illustrations. 24s. 
 
 " Mr. Thornbury is deservedly popular as a pleasant, genial writer, and has writ- 
 ten two most amusing volumes on some of the most interesting places in Eng- 
 land, which we have read with considerable interest, and can heartily recom- 
 mend." — Examiner. 
 
 "All who know Mr. Thornbury 's racy, vivid, and vigorous style, and his plea- 
 sant and graceful way of presenting information to the reader, will be sure to 
 become familiar with his travels through England." — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 ••The reader can scarcely fail to tlnd in this hook many picturesque incidents and 
 legendary anecdotes alike new and entertaining." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "English tourists should get Mr. Thombury's charming book. It contains a largo 
 amount of topographical, historical, and social gossip." — Sun. 
 
 TURKISH HAREMS & CIRCASSIAN HOMES. 
 
 By Mrs. Harvey, of Ickwell Bury. 8vo, with Coloured Illustra- 
 tions. (Just Ready.)
 
 13, Great Maryborough Strket. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 THE SEVENTH VIAL; or, THE TIME OF 
 
 TROUBLE BEGUN, as shown in THE GREAT WAR, THE 
 DETHRONEMENT OF THE POPE, and other Collateral Events. 
 By the Rev. John Cumming, D.D., &c. Third Edition. 1 vol. 6s. 
 
 " Dr. Cumming is the popular exponent of a school of prophetic interpretation, 
 and on this score has established a claim to attention. His book furnishes an 
 instructive collection of the many strange portents of our day. Dr. Gumming takes 
 his facts very fairly. He has a case, and the gravity of the subject must command 
 the attention of readers.'' — Times, March 6. 
 
 " A. deeply interesting work. We commend it to all who wish for able and honest 
 assistance in understanding the signs of the times." — Record. 
 
 " This book is intensely interesting from beginning to end, and is marked 
 throughout by the same earnest and conscientious tone which characterises all Dr. 
 Cumming's writings on this, his favourite subject." — London Scotsman. 
 
 LIFE AND REMAINS OF ROBERT LEE, D.D., 
 
 F.R.S.E., Minister of Old Greyfriars, Dean of the Chapel Royal of 
 Holyrood, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. By Robert 
 Herbert Story, Minister of Rosneath ; with an Introductory 
 Chapter by Mrs. Oliphant, author of " The Life of the Rev, Ed- 
 ward Irving," &e 2 vols. 8vo, with Portrait. 30s. 
 " We need make no apology to our readers for calling their attention to the life 
 and writings of a man who, by the force and energy of his character, has left an 
 indelible mark on the annals of his country. It is but a small thing for a man to 
 leave a mere name behind him, even though that name be famous ; it is a far 
 higher merit to bequeath to posterity a living influence, and this Dr. Lee has cer- 
 tainly accomplished. We cordially commend the perusal of this book to every- 
 body." — Times. 
 
 SPIRITUAL WIVES. By W. Hepworth Dixon, 
 
 Author of ' New America,' &c. Fourth Edition, with A New 
 Preface. 2 vols. 8 vo. With Portrait of the Author. 30s. 
 "Mr. Dixon has treated his subject in a philosophical spirit, and in his usual 
 graphic manner. There is, to our thinking, more pernicious doctrine in one chap- 
 ter of some of the sensational novels which find admirers in drawing-rooms and 
 eulogists in the press than in the whole of Mr. Dixon's interesting work."— Examiner. 
 
 LUCREZIA BORGIA, Duchess of Ferrara; A 
 
 Biography : Illustrated by Rare and Unpublished Documents. By 
 William Gilisekt. 2 vols, post 8vo, with Portrait. 21s. 
 
 " A very interesting study of the character of Lucrezia Borgia. Mr. Gilbert ha8 
 done good service in carefully investigating the evidence on which the charges 
 rest which have been brought against her, and his researches are likely to produce 
 the more effect inasmuch as their results have been described in a manner likely 
 to prove generally interesting. His clear and unaffected style is admirably adapted 
 for biography. That .Mr. Gilbert will succeed in amusing and interesting his readers 
 may be safely predicted" — Saturday Review. 
 
 THE LIFE OF ROSSINI. By II. Sutherland 
 
 Edwards. 1 vol. 8vo, with lino Portrait. 15s 
 
 " An eminently interesting, readable, and trustworthy book. Mr. Edwards was 
 instinctively looked to for a life of Rossini, and the result is a very satisfactory 
 one. 'Die salient features of Rossini's life and labours are grouped in admirable 
 order; and the book, while it conveys everything necessary to an accurate idea of 
 its subject, is as interesting as a novel." — Sunday Timet.
 
 13, Great Marlbokouoh Street. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 NEW WORKS— Continued. 
 
 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST IN JAPAN 
 
 AXD MANCHURIA. By Arthur Adams, F.L.S., Staff-Surgeon 
 R.X. 1 vol. 8vo, with Illustration.-;. 15s. 
 
 •• An amusing volume. Mr Adams bus acquired a body of interesting informa- 
 tion, which he has set forth in a lively and agreeable style. The book will be a 
 favourite with naturalists, and is calculated to interest others as well." — Daily Xeics. 
 
 "A very good book of its kind. The author is an enthusiastic naturalist, taking 
 especial interest in entomology. He is also quick to observe the physical aspects 
 of nature, and the leading characteristics of ihe people he visits. He has come 
 across smue very humorous incidents iu hia travels, and these he always describes 
 iu a lively and amusing style." — Globe. 
 
 FRANCIS THE FIRST IN CAPTIVITY AT 
 
 MADRID, and other Historic Studies. By A. Baili.ie Cochrane, 
 M.P. Second Edition. 2 vols, post 8vo. 21s. 
 •• A pleasant, interesting, and entertaining work."' — Daily Xeirs. 
 
 EASTERN PILGRIMS : the Travels of Three Ladies. 
 
 By Agnes Smith. 1 vol. Svo, with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 "A pleasantly written record of Eastern Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, 
 and i Ire ri>, \\ ritten by a lady, and narrating the pilgrimage of ladies, it has an 
 interest of its own. The tone is devout, and altogether the book deserves our 
 warm commendation." — A', cord. 
 
 MY HOLIDAY IN AUSTRIA. By Lizzie Selixa 
 
 Eden. 1 vol. post 8vo, with Illustrations. 10s. Gu. 
 
 •'A pleasantly-written volume. " — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Miss Eden enjoyed her holiday, and her readers will share her pleasure. 
 Her Work is easy and fluent in style, lively and pleasant in matter." — Athenxuvu 
 
 A TRIP TO THE TROPICS, AND HOME 
 
 THROUGH AMERICA. By the Marquis of Loene. Second 
 Edition. 1 vol. Svo, with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 "The tone of Lord Lome's book is thoroughly healthy and vigorous, and his 
 remark's upon men and things are well-reasoned and acute." — Timet. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF QUEEN IIORTENSE, MOTHER 
 
 ()F XAPOLEOX HI. Cheaper Edition, in 1 vol. (is. 
 •' A biography of the beautiful and unhappy yueen, more satisfactory than any we 
 have yet met with." — Ihulij Xeirs. 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AXD ART. 
 
 By Mrs. Elms. Author of ' The Women of England,' Ac. 1 vol. 
 or ,\ n 6vt>, with line Portrait. 10s. tid. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By Cardinal 
 
 Wiseman. 1 vol. Svo, o^. 
 
 FAIRY FANCIES. By Lizzie Selixa Edex. II- 
 
 lust rated by the .Marchioness of Hastings. 1 vol. 10s. 6d. 
 
 ■■'The Wandering Eights'— the lirst of the 'Fairy Fancies'— is a more beautiful 
 
 production, truer to the inspiration . . l Nature, and more likely to be genuinely 
 
 attractive to the imagination of childhood, than the famous '.story without an 
 
 End."'— K.mmim-r.
 
 THE NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HURST & BLACKETT. 
 
 RALPH THE HEIR. By Anthony Trollope, 
 
 author of " Framley Parsonage," &c. 3 vols. (In April.) 
 
 HER OWN FAULT. By Mrs. Spender, author of 
 
 " BrotLters-in-Law," &c. 3 vols. 
 
 MARQUIS AND MERCHANT. By Mortimer 
 
 Collins. 3 vols. 
 
 RIDDLES OF LOVE. By Sidney Laman Blan- 
 
 CHARD. 3 vols. 
 
 " This very pleasant novel is a picture of real life, full of interest. Mr. Blanchard' b 
 pen is always elegant, iluent, and pointed." — Morning Advertiser. 
 
 RODERICK. By the Author of " John Arnold." 3 v. 
 
 " A pleasing, bright, and decidedly amusing novel." — Messenger. 
 
 MARTHA. By William Gilbert, author of " Shir- 
 ley Hall Asylum," &c. 3 vols. 
 
 '" Martha ' is one of Mr. Gilbert's best books. The character of Martha is an 
 admirable picture. Mr. Gilbert has given it a reality and power which will secure 
 it a permanent recognition in English literature.'' — Spectator. — "A thoroughly good 
 novel.''' — Daily News, — "A story of remarkable interest. It is full of merit." — Post. 
 — "The best of Mr. Gilbert's novels. It is a book of extraordinary interest, viva- 
 city, and power. The narrative is worked out with the skill only attained by great 
 genius." — John Bull. 
 
 CHECKMATE. By J. Sheridan Le Fanu, author 
 
 of " Uncle Silas," &c. 3 vols. 
 "A very well written novel. The plot is constructed with wonderful ingenuity." 
 
 — Examiner. "Written with masterly power." — Globe. — " From the first 
 
 paj^e to the denouement the author excites, sustains, and baffles our curiosity.'' — 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. "A thrilling story." — Spectator. "This exciting novel 
 
 is redundant with such power and consummate art that an enthralling interest 
 takes complete possession of the reader." — Messenger. 
 
 DRAWN FROM LIFE. By Archibald Forbes, 
 
 Special Military Correspondent of the Daily News. 3 vols. 
 
 "We cordially recommend this book. It certainly merits success. Our author, 
 the excellent special correspondent of the Daily News, a Highlander, describes 
 Highland life with accuracy ; a soldier, he depicts a soldier's career with spirit. 
 The narrative, moreover, is exciting and romantic." — Athenaeum, 
 
 " A healthy, manly book, which interests by its honest purpose and by its graphic 
 delineations of scenes which we can readily believe are all drawn from life." — 
 Examiner. 
 
 " A thoroughly well written and interesting story." — Daily News. 
 
 " This narrative is full of life and interest." — Standard. 
 
 " This work is far more interesting than nineteen out of twenty novels." — Scotsman. 
 
 TWO FAIR DAUGHTERS. By Percy Fitz- 
 
 Gerald, M.A., author of " Bella Donna," &c. 3 vols. 
 
 "A very attractive and enthralling tale. It is one of the most brilliant achieve- 
 ments of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's pen. The character of the Doctor is a masterpiece, 
 and his two daughters are as charming and delightful heroines as novel reader 
 could desire." — Sun. 
 
 "A fresh, natural, and humorous story, excellently put together, and growing in 
 interest to the very end." — Echo. 
 
 10
 
 THE NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HURST & BLACKETT. 
 
 MY LITTLE LADY. 3 vols. 
 
 "There is a great deal f fascination about this book. The author writes in a 
 clear, unaffected style. She has a decided gift for depicting character: while the 
 descriptions of scenery scattered up and down the book convey a distinct pic- 
 torial impression to the reader. The scenes in Florence are singularly rich in 
 local colouring and picturesque details. All this part of the narrative is very in- 
 terestingly told. It reads like the experiences of an actual life." — Timet. 
 
 " This book is full of life and colour. The scenes in which the incidents are laid 
 pourtray the experiences of a mind well stored to begin with, and quick to receive 
 impressions of grace and beauty. Finally, there is not a line in it that might not 
 be read aloud in the family circle." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 •' This story presents a number of vivid and very charming pictures. Indeed, 
 the whole book is charming. It is interesting in both character and story, and 
 thoroughly good of its kind.'' — Saturday Review. 
 
 " A book which can be read with genuiue pleasure. The aim of the story is high 
 and its moral excellent, and the -Little Lady' is thoroughly worthy of her name." 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 "One of the most remarkable and most interesting tales which has been for 
 pome time submitted to the public." — Horning Post. 
 
 SIR HARRY HOTSPUR. By Anthony Trollope, 
 
 author of " Framley Parsonage," &c. 1 vol. 10s. (id. 
 
 " In this novel we are glad to recognise a return to what wo must call Mr. Trol- 
 lope's old form. The characters are drawn with vigour and boldness, and the 
 book may do good to many readers of both sexes." — Times. 
 
 •••Sir Harry Hotspur,' it appears to us. is decidedly more successful than any 
 other of Mr. Trollope's shorter stories. The author has shown in this brilliant 
 novelette that he can interest his readers by rapid and direct sketching as well aB 
 by the minute details and patient evolution of little traits of character that mark 
 his larger works. No reader who begins to read this book will lay it down until 
 the last page is turned." — Atlienieum. 
 
 "A novel of remarkable power." — Examiner. 
 
 "One of Mr. Trollope's very best tales." — Spectator. 
 
 THE THREE BROTHERS. By Mrs. Olipiiaxt, 
 
 author of " Chronicles of Carlingford," " Salem Chapel," Arc. :> v. 
 
 " Tlie novel-reading public may look forward to no small pleasure in the per- 
 usal of this latest issue of one of their best and favourite writers. It is bright and 
 sparkling, and full of keen observation, as well as of a genial, kindly philosophy." — 
 Saturday /ievieic. 
 
 A BRAVE LADY. By the Author of "John Hali- 
 
 fax. Gentleman," Arc. 3 vols. 
 
 "A very good novel— a thoughtful, well-written book, showing a tender sym- 
 pathy with human nature, and permeated by a pure and noble spirit." — Examiner. 
 
 DIARY OF A NOVELIST. By the Author of 
 
 '• Rachel's Secret," "Nature's Nobleman," Arc. 1 vol. 
 
 " There is much to like about this hook. It is graceful, feminine, anil unaffected ; 
 the writing is lucid and lluent, and we put down the book with a most favourable 
 
 impression." — /'all Mail Gazette. "A book to read, not once, but many times. 
 
 All who can do so should possess it for themselves." — Literary World. 
 
 QUEEN OF HERSELF. By Alice King. 3 vols. 
 
 "Miss King writes gracefully and with good purpose. Her novels aro always 
 interesting, and • yueeu of Herself is true, vivid, and marked by uuuiual power.'' 
 —Examiner. " A story of the very best class.' — Afestengtr.
 
 WLvfotx the (B&ptml Ipatroitrtgc ai Per gfajtstn. 
 
 Published annually, in One Vol., royal 8vo, ivith the Arms beautifully 
 engraved, handsomely bound, with yilt edges, price 31s. 6c/. 
 
 LODGE'S PEERAGE 
 
 AND BARONETAGE, 
 
 CORRECTED BY THE NOBILITY. 
 
 THE FORTIETH EDITION FOR 1871 IS NOW READY. 
 
 Lodge's Peerage and Baronetage is acknowledged to be the most 
 complete, as well as the most elegant, work of the kind. As an esta- 
 blished and authentic authority on all questions respecting the family- 
 histories, honours, and connections of tho titled aristocracy, no work has 
 ever stood so high. It is published under tho especial patronage of Her 
 Majesty, and is annually corrected throughout, from the personal com- 
 munications of the Nobility. It is tho only work of its class in which, the 
 type being kept constantly standing, every correction is made in its proper 
 place to tho date of publication, an advantage which gives it supremacy 
 over all its competitors. Independently of its full and authentic informa- 
 tion respecting the existing Peers and Baronets of the realm, the most 
 sedulous attention is given in its pages to the collateral branches of tho 
 various noble families, and tho names of many thousand individuals are 
 introduced, winch do not appear in other records of the titled classes. For 
 its authority, correctness, and facility of arrangement, and the beauty of 
 its typography and binding, the work is justly entitled to the place it 
 occupies on the tables of Her Majesty and the Nobility. 
 
 LIST OF THE PRIN 
 
 Historical View of the Peerage. 
 
 Parliamentary Boll of the House of Lords. 
 
 English, Scotch, and Irish Peers, in their 
 orders of Precedence. 
 
 Alphabetical List of Peers of Great Britain 
 and tho United Kingdom, holding supe- 
 rior rank in the Scotch or Irish Peerage. 
 
 Alphabetical list of Scotch and Irish Peers, 
 holding superior titles in the Peerage of 
 Groat Britain and the United Kingdom. 
 
 A Collective list of Peers, in their order of 
 Precedence. 
 
 Table of Precedency among Men. 
 
 Table of Precedency among Women. 
 
 'the Queen and the ltoyal Family. 
 
 Peers of the Blood ltoyal. 
 
 'the Peerage, alphabetically arranged. 
 
 Families of such KxtLuct Peers as have left 
 Widows or issue. 
 
 Alphabetical List of the Surnames of all tho 
 Peers. 
 
 CIPAL CONTENTS. 
 
 The Archbishops and Bishops of England, 
 Ireland, and the Colonies. 
 
 The Baronetage alphabetically arranged. 
 
 Alphabetical List of Surnames assumed by 
 members of Noble Families. 
 
 Alphabetical List of the Second Titles of 
 Peers, usually borne by their Eldest 
 Sons. 
 
 Alphabetical Index to the Daughters of 
 Lukes, Marquises, and Earls, who, hav- 
 ing married Commoners, retain the title 
 of I. ady before their own Christian and 
 their liusband's Surnames. 
 
 Alphabetical Index to the Daughters of 
 Viscounts and Barons, who, having 
 married Commoners, are styled Honour- 
 able Mrs. ; and, in case of the husband 
 being a Baronet or Knight, Honourable 
 Lady. 
 
 Mottoes alphabetically arranged and trans- 
 lated. 
 
 "A work which corrects all errors of formerworks. It is a most useful publication. 
 Wo are nappy to bear testimony to the fact that scrupulous accuracy is a distinguish- 
 ing feature of this book.'' — Times. 
 
 " l .odge's I'eerage must supersede all other works of the kind, for two reasons: first, it 
 is on a better plan ; and secondly, it is better executed. We can safely pronounce it to be 
 the readiest, the most useful, and oxactest of modern works on the subject." — .Spectator. 
 
 "A work of great value. It is tho most faithful record we possess of the aristo- 
 cracy of the day." — Post. 
 
 •■The best existing, and, we believe, the best possible Peerage. It is the standard 
 authority on the subject." — Standard.
 
 HURST & BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 OF CHEAP EDITIONS OF 
 
 POPULAR MODERN WORKS, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY MILLAIS, HOl.MAN HUNT, LEECH, BIRKET KOSTEH, 
 JOHN GILBERT, TENNIEL, SANDYS, &C. 
 
 Each in a Single Volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. 
 
 I.— SAM SLICK S NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 '•The first volume of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Cheap Editions 
 forms a very good beginning to what will doubtless be a very successful undertaking. 
 ' Nature and Human Nature 1 in one of the best of Sam Slick's witty and humorous 
 productions, and is well entitled to the large circulation which it cannot fail to obtain 
 in its present convenient and cheap shape. The volume combines with the great recom- 
 mendations of a clear, bold type, and good paper, the lesser but attractive merits of 
 being well illustrated and elegantly bound." — Post. 
 
 II.— JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 
 " This is a very good and a very interesting work. It is designed to trace the career 
 from boyhood to age of a perfect man — a Christian gentleman; and it abounds in inci- 
 dent both well and highly wrought. Throughout it is conceived m a high spirit, and 
 written with great ability. This cheap and handsome new edition is worthy to pass 
 freely from hand to hand as a gift book in many households." — Examiner. 
 
 "The new and cheaper edition of this interesting work will doubtless meet with great 
 Buccess. John Halifax, the hero of this most beautiful story, is no ordinary hero, and 
 this his history is no ordinary book. It is a full-length portrait of a true gentleman, one 
 of nature's own nobility. It is also the history of a home, and a thoroughly English 
 one. The work abounds in incident, and is full of graphic power and true pathos. It 
 is a book that few will read without becoming wiser and better." — Scotsman. 
 
 III.— THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. 
 
 BY ELIOT ^rt'ARBURTOX. 
 
 " Independent of its value as an original narrative, and its useful and interesting 
 information, this work is remarkable for the colouring power and play of fancy with 
 which its descriptions are enlivened. Among its greatest and most lasting charms is 
 its reverent and serious spirit" — Quarterly Review. 
 
 IV.— NATHALIE. By JULIA KAVANAGH. 
 
 " ' Nathalie' is Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and 
 attractive. Us matter is good. A sentiment, a tenderness, are commanded by her 
 which are as individual as they are elegant." — Atfwnmum. 
 
 y._A WOMAN S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 "A book of sound counsel. It is one of the most sensible works of its kind, well- 
 written, true-hearted, and altogether practical. Whoever wishes to give advice to a 
 young lady may thank the author tor means of doing so." — Examiner. 
 
 VI.— ADAM GRAEME. By MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 ■•A story awakening genuine emotions of interest and delight by its admirable pic- 
 tures of Scottish life and scenery. The author sets before us the essential attributes of 
 ( hristian virtue, their deep and silent workings in the heart, ami their beautiful mani- 
 festations in lite, with a delicacy, power, and truth which can hardly be surpassed. "-J'ost 
 
 VII —SAM SLICK'S WISE SAWS AND MODERN 
 INSTANCES. 
 
 '•The reputation of this book will stand as long as that of Scott's or Bulwer's NotcIs. 
 Its remarkable originality and happy descriptions of American life still continue tho 
 sub jectof universal admiration. The new edition forms a part of Messrs. Hurst and 
 Blackett's Cheap Standard Library, which has included some of he very best ipocimeng 
 of light literature that ever have been written." — Metsengtr. 
 
 10
 
 HURST & BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 (continued.) 
 
 VIIL— CARDINAL WISEMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 THE LAST FOUR POPES. 
 
 " A picturesque book on Eome and its ecclesiastical sovereigns, by an eloquent Roman 
 Catholic. Cardinal Wiseman has treated a special subject with so much geniality, that 
 his recollections will excite no ill-feeling in those who are most conscientiously opposed 
 to every idea of human infallibility represented in Papal domination." — At/tenxum. 
 
 IX.— A LIFE FOR A LIFE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 " In ' A Life for a Life ' the author is fortunate in a good subject, and has produced a 
 work of strong effect." — Atlienxum. 
 
 X.— THE OLD COURT SUBURB. By LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 " A delightful book, that will be welcome to all readers, and most welcome to those 
 who have a love for the best kinds of reading." — Examiner. 
 
 "A more agreeable and entertaining book has not been published since Boswell pro- 
 duced his reminiscences of Johnson.'' — Observer. 
 
 XI.— MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS. 
 
 " We recommend all who are in search of a fascinating novel to read this work for 
 themselves. They will find it well worth their while. There are a freshness and ori- 
 ginality about it quite charming " — Athenaeum. 
 
 XII.— THE OLD JUDGE. By SAM SLICK. 
 
 " The publications included in this Library have all been of good quality ; many give 
 information while they entertain, and of that class the book before us is a specimen. 
 The manner in which the Cheap Editions forming the series is produced, deserves 
 especial mention. The paper and print are unexceptionable ; there is a steel engraving 
 in each volume, and the outsides of them will satisfy the purchaser who likes to see 
 books in handsome uniform." — Examiner. 
 
 XIII.— DARIEN. By ELIOT WARBURTON. 
 
 " This last products in of the author of ' The Crescent and the Cross ' has the same 
 elements of a very wide popularity. It will please its thousands." — Globe. 
 
 XIV.— FAMILY ROMANCE ; OR, DOMESTIC ANNALS 
 OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 BY SIR BERNARD BURKE, ULSTER KING OF ARMS. 
 " It were impossible to praise too highly this most interesting book. It ought to be 
 found on every drawing-room table." — Standard. 
 
 XV.— THE LAIRD OF NORLAW. By MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 "The 'Laird of Norlaw' fully sustains the author's high reputation." — Sunday Times. 
 
 XVI.— THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN ITALY. 
 
 " We can praise Mrs. (Jretton's book as interesting, unexaggerated, and full of oppor- 
 tune instruction." — Times. 
 
 XVII.— NOTHING NEW. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 " ' Nothing New ' displays all those superior merits which have made ' John Halifax 
 one of the most popular works of the day." — Post. 
 
 XVIIL— FREER' S LIFE OF JEANNE D'ALBRET. 
 
 "Nothing can be more interesting than Miss Freer's story of the life of Jeanne 
 D'Albret, and the narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive." — Post. 
 
 XIX.— THE VALLEY OF A HUNDRED FIRES. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS." 
 
 " If asked to classify this work, w » should give it a place between ' John Halifax ' and 
 The Caxtons.' " — Statulard.
 
 HURST & BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 (CONTINUED.; 
 
 XX.— THE ROMANCE OF THE FORUM. 
 
 BY PETER BURKE, SERGEANT AT LAW. 
 
 " A work of singular interest, which can never fail to charm. The present cheap and 
 elegant edition includes the true story of the Colleen Bawn." — Illustrated Xeics. 
 
 XXI.— ADELE. By JULIA KAVANAGH 
 
 •• • Allele ' is the best work we have read by Miss liavanagh ; it is a charming story, 
 full of delicate character-painting." — Athenxum. 
 
 XXII.— STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OE "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 " These ' Studies from Life ' are remarkable for graphic power and observation. The 
 book will not diminish the reputation of the accomplished author." — Saturday Review. 
 
 XXIII.— GRANDMOTHERS MONEY. 
 
 " We commend 'Grandmother's Money ' to readers in search of a good novel. The 
 characters are true to human nature, the story is interesting." — Athenxum, 
 
 XXIV.— A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 BY J. C. JEAFFRESON. 
 
 " A delightful book." — Athenxum. " A book to be read and re-read ; fit for the study 
 as well as the drawing-room table and the circulating library.'' — Lancet. 
 
 XXV.— NO CHURCH. 
 
 " We advise all who have the opportunity to read this book." — Athenxum. 
 
 XXVI.— MISTRESS AND MAID. 
 
 k» " 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 "A good wholesome book, gracefully written, and as pleasant to read as it is instruc 
 tive.'' — Athenaeum. "A charming tale charmingly told." — Standard. 
 
 XXVII.— LOST AND SAVED. By HON. MRS. NORTON. 
 
 " ■ Lost and Saved ' will be read with eager interest. It is a vigorous novel." — Timet. 
 "A novel of rare excellence. It is Mrs. Norton's best prose work." — Examiner. 
 
 XXVIII.— LES MISERABLES. By VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 AUTHORISED COPYRIGHT ENGLISH TRANSLATION. 
 "The merits of 'Les Miserables' do not merely consist in the conception of it as a 
 whole; it abounds, page alter page, with details of unequalled beauty. In dealing with 
 all the emotions, doubts, fears, which go to make up our common humanity. M. Victor 
 Hugo has stamped upon every page the hall-mark of genius." — Quarterly Review. 
 
 XXIX.— BARBARA'S HISTORY. 
 
 BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 "It i not often that we light upon a novel of so much merit and interest as 'Barbara's 
 History.' It is a work conspicuous for taste and literary culture. It is a very graceful 
 and charming book, with a well-managed story, clearly-cut characters, and sentiments 
 expressed with an exquisite elocution. It is a book which the world will like. This is 
 high praise jf a work of art. and so we intend it." — Times. 
 
 XXX.— LIFE OF THE REV. EDWARD IRVING. 
 
 15 Y ^UlS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 "A good book on a most interesting theme." — Times. 
 
 " A truly interesting and most affecting memoir. Irving's Life ought to have a niche 
 in every gallery of religious biography. There are few lives that will be fuller of in- 
 struction, interest, and consolation." — Saturday Rerieip. 
 
 "Mrs. Oliphant's Life of Irving supplies a long-felt desideratum. It is copious, 
 earnest and eloquent." — Edinburgh Revuic. 
 
 15
 
 HURST & BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 (CONTINUED.) 
 
 XXXI.— ST. OLAVE'S. 
 
 " This charming novel is the work of one who possesses a great talent for writing, as 
 well as experience and knowledge of the world. ' St. Olave's ' is the work of an artist. 
 The whole book is worth reading.'' — At/ienacum. 
 
 XXXII.— SAM SLICK'S AMERICAN HUMOUR. 
 
 " Dip where you will into the lottery of fun, you are sure to draw out a prize." — Post. 
 
 XXXIII.— CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 " A more charming story, to our taste, has rarely been written. The writer has hit 
 off a circle of varied characters all true to nature, and has entangled them in a story 
 which keeps us in suspense till its knot is happily and gracefully resolved. Even if 
 tried by the standard of the Archbishop of York, we should expect that even he would 
 pronounce 'Christian's Mistake' a novel without a fault." — Times. 
 
 XXXIV.— ALEC FORBES OF HOWGLEN. 
 
 BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D. 
 
 " No account of this story would give any idea of the profound interest that pervades 
 the work from the first page to the last." — Athenosum. 
 
 XXXV.— AGNES. By MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 " ' Agnes ' is a novel superior to any of Mrs. Oliphant's former works." — Athenaeum. 
 "A story whose pathetic beauty will appeal irresistibly to all readers." — Post. 
 
 XXXVL— A NOBLE LIFE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 "This is one of those pleasant tales in which the author of 'John Halifax' speaks 
 out of a generous heart the purest truths of life." — Examiner. "Few men, and no 
 women, will read ' A Noble Life ' without finding themselves the better." — Spectator. 
 
 XXXVIL— NEW AMERICA. By HEPWORTH DIXON. 
 
 " A very interesting book. Mr. Dixon has written thoughtfully and well." — Times. 
 Mr. Dixon's very entertaining and instructive work on New America." — Pall Mall Gaz. 
 "We recommend every one who feels any interest in human nature to read Mr. 
 Dixon's very interesting book." — Saturday Review. 
 
 XXXVIII.— ROBERT FALCONER. 
 
 BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D. 
 
 " ' Bobert Falconer ' is a work brimful of life and humour and of the deepest human 
 interest. It is a book to be returned to again and again for the deep and searching 
 knowledge it evinces of human thoughts and feelings." — Athenceum. 
 
 XXXIX.— THE WOMAN'S KINGDOM. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 '■'The Woman's Kingdom' sustains the author's reputation as a writer of the 
 purest and noblest kind of domestic, stories. — Athenieum. 
 
 XL.— ANNALS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE. 
 
 BY GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L. 
 
 "A racy, well-written, and original novel. The interest never flags. The whole 
 work sparkles with wit and humour." — Quarterly Revietc. 
 
 "This is a very interesting novel: wit. humour, and keen observation abound in 
 overy page while the characters are life-like." — Times. 
 
 XLL— DAVID ELGINBROD. 
 
 BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D. 
 " ' David Klginbrod ' is a novel which is the work of a man of true genius, and dis- 
 plays nn original vein of reflection. There is much in his book besides a plot— there is 
 good writing, there is good thought, and there is a strong religious feeling which will 
 attract the highest class of readors." — Times. 
 
 16 
 
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