Chapter I: The Siege (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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