Chapter II: Pucella Rapta (1)

After all our long waiting from day to day in anticipation of the capitulation of Metz, that event came upon us with a strange suddenness. It had only been a few days previously that it was mentioned in the general orders from head-quarters that the negotiations had been definitively broken off; and when men heard this they set their teeth hard, and prepared for another spell of waiting, variegated with fighting. But there had been symptoms of the end being imminent in the haggard deserters who came among us from day to day, with their longing looks at our black bread and flesh. Orders had been issued to the railway people in Saarbrück to have material in readiness for repairing the railway communication direct into Metz; and this was another symptom. But still, when the report ran round the regiment, on the afternoon of the 27th, that the capitulation had actually been negotiated, some found it difficult to realise the fact—confirmation was wanting. It was true that the day before the generals commanding the several army corps had been summoned to Frescaty by an order of Prince Frederick Charles, and that some of us had the “straight tip” under promise of the profoundest secrecy; but everything looked so much in the ordinary way, that people could not realise the fact of the capitulation. Men went on the field watch as usual, and the confronting foreposts still continued to exchange shots. No white flag was visible, and the unbelieving Thomases of the 4th shrugged their shoulders, and would have none of the tidings. But general orders are convincing arguments, and even the unbelieving Thomases took to clapping their hands and capering, when the news came under the sign manual of the chief of the staff.

At twelve o’clock on the forenoon of the 28th each of the outlying fortresses was taken possession of by two battalions of German infantry, a squadron of cavalry, one heavy battery without tumbrils, 100 artillerymen with the complement of officers, and an engineer detachment. The following is the apportionment of the force of occupation. The troops occupying

St. Quentin were found by 18th Infantry Division.
Plappeville ” ” 3rd Army Corps.
St. Julien ” ” 1st Army Corps.
Queleu ” ” 8th Army Corps.
St. Privat ” ” Hessian Division.

At the same hour a battalion of the 7th Army Corps marched forward, and took possession of the Porte Serpenoise, one of the gates of Metz, and another battalion from the same corps occupied the Porte Moselle. Two hours before the occupation of the forts, I should observe, there were sent forward from each of the occupying detachments an artillery officer and a small body of under officers, accompanied by engineers, to take over the powder magazines and the respective forts, and they sent out the report to the effect that all was in order before the troops were allowed to march in. This precaution was no doubt dictated by a recollection of the catastrophe at Laon.

It was in orders that at one o’clock on the 28th the French army should formally lay down its arms. By reason of the confusion which reigned everywhere this disarmament was protracted and piecemeal, a large proportion of the force not disburdening themselves of the now useless arms till the following morning. There was no set ceremony, yet the affair was imposing from its very simplicity. It was conducted in detail, each corps laying down its arms in the neighbourhood of its own station. I saw several regiments of the 3rd Corps d’Armée—that of Lebœuf—disarm themselves. In straggling masses the men defiled past, piling their arms in great heaps at the word of command from their own officers, who laid down their swords as the men did their chassepots, building quite a little heap of them to the right of the great stacks of rifles. The disarmed French troops then returned into their bivouacs, which they occupied for one night more, before quitting for other bivouacs round which should stand German sentries. For this last night they preserved a semblance of freedom. The Germans left them to themselves. Except in the forts and at the two gates I have mentioned, not a spiked helmet was to be seen nearer Metz than had been seen a week before. The _Feldwachen_ were mounted as usual, the _replis_ were established, and the troops stood fast as ever in their long and weary watch around Metz. Indeed, in the course of the night there was a slight skirmish somewhere between Vautoux and Mey, conducted on their own account, as I afterwards learned, by a few men who thought proper to repudiate the capitulation. So late as when I passed Little Belle Croix on the forenoon of the 29th, I heard a few dropping shots on the slope to the right, but whether they were fired in anger I never was able to learn.

On the morning of the 29th October—sombre day for the French arms—the Frenchmen came forth and rendered themselves to their captors—corps by corps, and under the command of their own officers. The 6th Corps (Canrobert’s) came from its bivouac by Woippy to Ladonchamps, where on the 7th so many of its members had stained the soil with their blood. Their prison-bivouac was on the plain in the rear of the wrecked and burnt village. The 7th Corps, that of Ladmirault, came out over the ridge between St. Quentin and Plappeville, and found quarters, inhospitable enough I fear, on the bleak plateau of St. Maurice. The Imperial Guard marched down to Longeville, crossed the railway bridge at Tournebride, passed on to Frescaty to the left, and found their bivouac in the plain between Orly and Augny. The garrison of Metz itself, consisting of about 20,000 men, chiefly of Mobile Guards, marched by Le Sablon, past the ruined village of Magny, and so forward to the outskirts of St. Thiebauldt. The 2nd Corps (Frossard’s), with Laveauconfied’s division, and the 4th brigade came out past La Posette on the great Strasburg chaussée, and found their bivouac behind the village of Ars Laquenexy. The 3rd Corps (that of Lebœuf) came out among us of the 1st German Army Corps along the chaussée leading to Saarlouis.

Each corps, as it marched out, was received by the German troops covering the respective section of the environment. They were led by their own officers, who formally handed over their men to the German officers, and then they were at liberty to quit their ranks and return to Metz, there to wait the trains which should convey them into captivity across the German Rhine. It should be mentioned that their parole was accepted from none of the officers of the army of Metz, a stringency adopted in consequence of the numerous defaults of honour perpetrated by officers released on parole after having been made prisoners. The men under the command of their under-officers were then marched out to the bivouac places, which had previously been partly prepared, wood for fires having been collected and a supply of provisions being ready for distribution.

I was with the 1st Army Corps when it took up its position to receive the corps of Lebœuf. From all the villages around, the villages inhabited for so many weary weeks, the villages made memorable by fights, by burnings, by graves, by sickness, and by deaths, streamed the regiments on to the chaussée. There had been much rain during the night, and although the sun broke out about ten o’clock, the watery haze hung about the bottoms of the valleys and the mud splashed as the troops strode through it. Mud! why we had had nothing but mud for weeks, and should we mind it now, looking at the errand on which we are bound? No. The “Wacht am Rhein” rises lustily from the pioneers in the front, and the regiments as they come down the side roads catch up the strain. On we go past the Brewery, with the grenade pits, the graves, and the entrenchments around it—itself a mere heap of shattered bricks—on to the gentle slope behind the village of Lauvallière. Then right and left wheeled the heavy columns, leaving the chaussée open, and a parallelogram of about 100 feet in width on each side of it. In front of the Brewery stood the artillery, before the artillery the serried ranks of brass-spiked helmets all the way down the gentle slope, almost to Lauvallière. Arms were piled, and there the Germans waited for the advent of the men with which it almost seemed, through the length of time that the armies had confronted each other, that they could claim a kind of personal acquaintance. While the troops waited I pushed forward towards Metz to meet the Frenchmen. Already, it is true, we had plenty of Frenchmen, but they were all civilians, and there were Frenchwomen too, and French children. The road had been opened in the morning, and they came crowding out, the poor creatures who had abandoned their village homes and crowded into the town when the pennons of the Uhlans had shown themselves on the fringes of the villages. On they came, waggon load after waggon load, with their trumpery household goods and their agricultural implements piled on the waggons behind the women and children. They knew not what it was that they had come out for to see. Perhaps they expected to find their cottage homes as they had left them—not roofless, wrecked, utterly ruined, as was the grim reality. Lauvallière seemed to give the first shock to their cheerfulness. Gaunt and grim stood its houses, burnt to the shell, the graves lying all around, the holes in the fields where the shells had burst, the breastworks behind which had stood the German foreposts. As each waggon and each knot of peasants came into Lauvallière there was a halt, and full many a “Mon Dieu!” In Lauvallière there was a large tannery, which must have employed many workmen, and been an important and profitable concern. It was now a mere shell—not a fragment of the woodwork is left. I chanced upon its owner standing on the bluff over against his property, and gazing upon it in moody silence. Twenty paces farther on I came on a little group, the extreme pathos of which made my heart swell. It was a family, and they sat in front of what had once been their home. That home was now roofless. The stones of the walls were all that was left. The garden was a wreck, and the whole scene was concentrated desolation. The husband leant against the wall, his arms folded, and his head on his chest. The wife sat on the wet ground, weeping over the babe at her breast. Two elder children stared around them with wonder and unconcern—too young to realise the misfortune which had overtaken all the family. The silence of the grief-stricken group was more eloquent than any words. No home, no food, a waggon, and a couple of starved horses, a field with four graves in it. This is the brief summary of the belongings and condition of the family. All were alike; although this family was the one I happened to see, because their home lay on my road in Lauvallière, some similar piteous sight must soon have been visible by every house in every village all around Metz. What need for me to occupy space by writing of what every one with a grain of human sympathy in his composition can picture and mourn for himself?

The stream of _émigrés_ continued as I came up the slope on to the flat, on the edge of which lay the improvised fortification of the village of Belle Croix. Belle Croix was ghastly in its utter solitude. Burnt and shattered by German shells, it must nevertheless have been a very strong position. All round the entrenchment across the road, was a moat of some depth. The angles were stockaded, the walls loopholed, and there still stood in position a couple of field guns, which, as the Germans had known to their cost many a time, were located with great skill. Owing to the block caused by the entrenchment the road had been diverted. It had been little enough used before this morning. The grass grew thickly on the chaussée between Lauvallière and Belle Croix. As the peasant waggons came crowding out, they stuck in the heavy mire of this détour, and many were the _sacrés_ before they were started again, the lean horses being too weak to pull them through the heavy ground. When I had passed Belle Croix I could not help owning to myself that I had never till then succeeded in forming a proper conception of the real strength of the natural position of Metz. On the right, with a valley intervening like a deep trench, lay the blunt-topped mountain, crowned by Fort St. Julien. On its slope were the bivouac fires of the troops of Lebœuf. Nothing could venture on this slope—a great natural glacis—so long as Fort St. Julien thought proper to forbid the passage. On my left, also on an eminence, although from the positions whence I had previously seen it, it appeared to be on a flat, lay Fort Queleu, square and massive, dominating the plateau to the left of the chaussée. But this plateau is closed in Metz-ward by a fortification all to itself—the great earthwork of les Bottes, whose grenades had so often burst in disagreeable proximity, and which now stood solitary and empty, with not even a sentry on its earthen summit. Over the top of Fort les Bottes were visible the towers of the cathedral, and the picture was framed in by the background of that great elevated ridge of which the two chief peaks are crowned by Forts St. Quentin and Plappeville.

It was just beyond les Bottes that I met the first French soldier—a cavalryman of the line. The fellow was as drunk as he well could be to be able to move at all. He staggered forward in tacks, dropping his kit piecemeal as he came. At a bend in the road behind Four-à-Chaux, I came upon the head of the prisoner column, marching onward to their reception at the Brewery. The men were in a very miserable state, covered with mud, wet, sodden seemingly, indeed, through and through with wet, many of their faces blotched and scabbed with scurvy, and quite one-third in a state of drunkenness. Not a few were in a state of bestial drunkenness, their clothes disarranged, and decency utterly disregarded. A little farther on, and right and left, lay the great bivouac before Fort Belle Croix. The troops were being collected by their officers in pelotons previously to being marched out, and several columns were already converging on the great chaussée. As each body got the order to go forward a cheer came from the slovenly and dislocated ranks, and from the columns on the march there broke out at intervals a fitful chorus of some lively marching song. Most of the officers were grave, taciturn, and downcast. Surely they must have despised the reckless throng which they nominally commanded. The men obeyed their officers and regarded the sound of the bugle after a fashion, but it was evident that they were utterly unaffected by the catastrophe which had befallen the arms of their country, and were eager only to get somewhere where a full meal of victuals awaited them. Poor wretches, after all it is not fair to be too severe on their disorganisation. How near actual starvation they had come to before their leader would give up the game, their faces pale through the dirt of days, their lean frames with the rags hanging about them, told far more powerfully than protestations, and were the most convincing reply to the easy untruths of those who would have had Europe believe that Metz was betrayed.

Passing the columns of prisoners at a canter, I was back again before the Brewery ere the front of that column had reached the place where stood the Germans waiting for them. The dismounted cavalry came first, followed by the artillery; last of all came the infantry of the line. The cavalry seemed to have lost all self-respect; they greeted the Germans with cheering, and several men broke from the ranks and slouched forward through the mud with intent to salute with a spirituous kiss the German officers standing in front of their companies. It was curious to notice the opposite idiosyncrasies of the two nationalities. Grave and stern stood the German victors, with, as it seemed, a silent pity rather than contempt for the demented tatterdemalions who proffered them the undesirable greeting; while the Frenchmen chattered and gesticulated, “sacréd” and spluttered, sang and laughed, as they slouched through the gauntlet of humiliation. The officers quitted their commands as each reached the alley fringed by the German battalions, and returned to Metz or the vicinity. The prisoners, comprising the whole of the 3rd Corps, till the day before under the command of Lebœuf, and numbering about 23,000 men, were escorted to a position between Château Gras and Retonfay, where was fixed the site for their bivouac. The guards for the French prisoners were contributed in rotation by the several divisions. The daily quota for the bivouac at Château Gras was four battalions of infantry, one battery of artillery, and one squadron of cavalry. In command of it had been placed Colonel von Deitzen Hennig, of the 4th regiment, his adjutant being Lieutenant von Verzin. Food had been collected for the supply of the prisoners, who had, of course, to bivouac in the open air. From the 30th daily drafts, each 3000 strong, were despatched toward Germany _viâ_ Saarbrück and Saarlouis. In all the capture consisted of 173,000 men, including three marshals, forty-seven general officers, and 6000 regimental officers. General Kummer, the general in chief command of the Landwehr, was appointed interim Commandant of Metz. General von Kastrow took the control of all arrangements connected with the transport of the prisoners and the quartermastership generally of the district around Metz and as far as Thionville. The German troops which had formed the besieging army were not, it was arranged, to enter the town, except when marching through. Metz was, with the forts, in the meantime, to be garrisoned by the Division Kummer and the 7th Army Corps. The circle of environment was, however, greatly reduced in size from the day after the surrender. The 2nd Army Corps drew inward to Montigny. The 8th came on to Magny, the 10th to Woippy. The 18th infantry division, charged with the custody of the Imperial Guard, lay now at Longeville, Moulins les Metz, St. Ruffine, and Longeau. The 1st Army Corps came forward closer under the wing of St. Julien. The foreposts were still to be maintained, the chain of communications being kept up just as in the old days. It was anticipated that by seven days all the prisoners would have been sent away.

After I had seen Lebœuf’s command taken over by the 1st Army Corps, I returned towards Metz, meeting on my way a stream of straggling soldiers who had missed their corps, and were staggering out under loads of tents, blankets, and what not. The environs of the town were very desolate and very filthy. Mud, raw horseflesh, burnt-out bivouac fires, huts made of the branches of trees, old women, and skeleton horses, were the leading characteristics. There was no difficulty in getting into the town, where I found the shops all open, but with no great show of edibles. Meat hung in the butchers’ shops, although it was chiefly, if not altogether, horse; the cafés were crowded, and there appeared no exhaustion in the stocks of the shops devoted to the sale of any material. Tobacco was plentiful, wine, spirits, and liqueurs in great abundance. Making my way to the Hôtel de l’Europe, I found it crowded with French officers, and I also found there one Englishman, Dr. Ward, of the International Society for the Succour of the Wounded, who had just been decorated by the French military authorities for his attention to the wounded; and two Americans, Dr. Good, of the same society, and who had also been decorated; and Mr. Eustis, a commercial gentleman, who had spent forty-eight days of the siege in prison under suspicion of being a spy. The spy mania had raged very strongly in Metz. Seventy-eight persons were arrested on suspicion in one day. Eight in all I was told had been shot as convicted spies, including the notorious Shieull, to whose adroitness and accurate information the French believe Von Moltke was indebted for his knowledge of the weakness of the French dispositions on the frontier, and for the hint which he utilised into the successes at Wörth and Weissenburg. The following is a statement of the tariff of prices for food ruling in Metz three days before the capitulation, supplied by the manager of the Hôtel de l’Europe:

Beef 8 francs per lb.
Horseflesh 10 centimes to 2 francs per lb.; “choice
horse,” the tender loin, fetches the latter price.
Eggs 1 franc each; have been 1f. 20c.
Fowls 20 francs each.
Pike (fish) 8 francs per lb.
Coffee 6 francs per lb.
Ham 8 francs per lb.
Cheese 40 francs per lb. (nominal, all done.)
Salt 5 francs per lb.
Geese, fat 65 francs per pair paid yesterday.
Oats 120 francs per sack of 200lb.
Chocolate 5 francs per lb.
Bread White, none since 16th October; brown,
4½ sous per lb.
Mutton None for two months.
Wine Plentiful, and old prices maintained;
bottle of champagne for 7 francs.

Notwithstanding these extraordinary prices, the tariff in the Hôtel de l’Europe was much the same as usual. I dined there in the evening at the _table d’hôte_ for seven francs, including half a bottle of wine. Breakfast was _à la carte_, about seven francs; bottle of champagne, seven francs. We had four courses for dinner, the waiter said none were horseflesh, and it is not seemly to call even a waiter a liar. The room was crowded with French officers. I dined at the same table with Colonel Michel Ney, a nephew of the historical Marshal. He had received some half-dozen sabre-wounds in the cavalry fight at Vionville, and was only half recovered. At the same table also sat General Duplessis, a French officer of distinction, who also had been severely wounded. In the evening there was a tremendous rush of German officers into the hotel, and quarters became impossible at any price. Forty officers were sent bedless away from the Hôtel de l’Europe, and I was indebted to a good-hearted American for half his bed. The French and German officers fraternized a little in the _salle_ after dinner. At first the Frenchmen were a little inclined to be sulky and reserved, but the heartiness of the Germans soon thawed the ice, and the champagne promoted the flow of kindly feeling. I was told that in the forenoon, when the officers of the Imperial Guard said adieu to their men, profuse tears were shed by both. There was no such emotion manifested by Lebœuf’s corps.

In the afternoon of the 28th, when the news of the capitulation was made known, there had been a sort of revolutionary riot in Metz. The National Guards made a display of refusing to give up their arms, ran to the Place d’Armes, where they congregated in large numbers and several shots were fired. The cathedral rang the alarm hell and the shops put their shutters up. The editor of one of the ultra journals was the ring-leader; mounted on a white horse, with a pistol in his hand, and others in his belt, he hounded on the mob to yell for Bazaine’s blood. That distinguished person, however, with great discretion, remained in his quarters in Ban St. Martin. The mob, composed in a large proportion of civilians, laid hold of an officer of the Imperial Guard, and holding pistols at his head, forced him to carry in the front the Republican flag. A hint from the mayor that the Germans would be sent for to put down the disturbance had its effect after the gamins had roared themselves hoarse shouting “Vive la République!”

It seemed it had not been until ten days before the capitulation that the troops of Bazaine’s army were forbidden to enter the town of Metz. Up till then they had circulated freely in the town, using the cafés, and spending their money in the shops. Until six days before it, a ration of bread of 100 grammes had been issued to each soldier. Since then they had had no rations, except horseflesh. The townspeople had been on bread rations as well as the troops, the rations consisting of 200 grammes of brown bread. Those who were able paid for their ration, the poor receiving it gratuitously. It surprised me that Metz had been able to hold out so long. The place had not above 50,000 inhabitants, if so many, and with no previous warning it had supported for seventy days a gross population of 230,000 mouths. These are the official figures. The dearness of provisions had been progressive. For instance, on the 16th of August butter had already reached the fancy price of 4f. per pound. On the same day chickens ranged from 6f. to 8f. At the date of the capitulation, butter could not be procured at any price, and the same might be said of chickens. Metz had certainly not capitulated for want of munitions of war. The fortress had ample supplies still left. Although Metz was an arsenal, no manufacture of cannon or projectiles had gone on during the siege. There had been no occasion for any such work, and if there had, the want of coals would have presented an insuperable obstacle. Powder had, however, been made in large quantities. All the coal used in Metz comes from Saarbrück, and there had recently been great scarcity—so much so that an order had been issued a week before the capitulation that the gas in the town should be extinguished at seven o’clock, under a heavy penalty. Candles were plentiful, and the deprivation was therefore not so seriously felt.

Of sick there were altogether, in and around Metz, on the date of the capitulation, about 20,000 soldiers, of which about 9000 were wounded men. The latter had chiefly been wounded in the sorties. Of the wounded in the battles of Courcelles and Gravelotte most were either recovered or dead. Very many mutilated men were to be seen in the streets. Latterly almost every operation had ended fatally. Pyæmia, hospital gangrene, and typhus had their sway on frames previously debilitated by hardship and famine. Of hospital stores the greatest lack was in the matter of leeches. For two of these Dr. Ward had on the previous day paid 180 francs. His colleague was down with brain fever, and he paid this wildly fancy price to save his life.

Three or four newspapers continued to be daily printed in Metz up to the capitulation. Since no outside information had reached the town for so long, the newspapers had chiefly concerned themselves with local gossip, hopes, fears, and canards. A file of one of them was a curious sight. The stock of paper had long run out, and the journals had been printed one day on red paper, another on blue, a third on buff, and so on—advertisement placard paper having necessarily been had resort to. The last issue of one journal was printed on brown packing paper.

All the afternoon of the 29th, the division of General Kummer came pouring into the town, with bands playing and colours flying. The great Landwehrmen stared around them with undisguised curiosity at the nut which they have found so hard to crack. The townsfolk jabbered among themselves as the troops defiled, and there were not a few scowling faces. What cared the Landwehrmen for the scowling faces? From the slush and mire of Maizières and Ladonchamps they had come into a reasonable prospect of beds and bottles of wine. They were quartered for the most part in the Caserne du Génie, the Hôtel de Ville, and other public buildings. The officers were in private houses. Ye gods! with what zest did they devote themselves to champagne in the _salle_ of the hotel! Generals, lieutenants, Vice-feldwebels, all in the lump were there, and one and all speaking after the German manner, at the top of their voices—the din was deafening. The French officers cleared off early to bed, all save two, who sat on moodily in a corner, pulling their moustaches and drinking absinthe—the poison that has sapped the virility of the French army.

Some officious patriots had made themselves busy during the night of the 28th, with the statue of Marshal Fabert in the Place d’Armes. When capitulation was first mooted, a wreath of immortelles and laurel was woven round his head, and a flag stuck in his hand. On the morning of the 29th, the Marshal appeared draped in a full suit of crape, with a hole in it, through which was visible the inscription—the words which the gallant Marshal addressed to Louis XIV:

Si pour empêcher qu’une place
que le Roi m’a confiée
ne tombât au pouvoir de l’ennemi,
il fallait mettre à la brêche
ma personne, ma famille et tout mon bien,
je ne balancerais pas un moment à le faire.

Bazaine had not quite the grit in him to act up to the programme chalked out by the staunch old Marshal.

Two or three days elapsed after the surrender of Metz before a regular and reasonably quick postal service was established from the city, and for any one to whom time was an object it was necessary to despatch letters from Courcelles, the interim terminus of the railway. To reach this point I quitted Metz early on the morning of the 30th October, compelled to wriggle now right, now left, to circumvent the numerous entrenchments still blocking up the main roads.

On my way from Colombey to Courcelles my track lay through the prisoner-bivouac of the 2nd French Army Corps (Frossard’s). It was a very miserable scene. The fires of the previous night had burnt out, and the morning fires had not been lit. The miserable prisoners lounged about in seeming utter despair, the fine rain wetting them through and through, and keeping soft the mud with which their coats were plastered. Some few had erected tents, but the great mass had spent the night in the open standing round the fires, for to lie down must have been impracticable. I saw a couple of corpses lying in the ditch by the roadside, and was told that six or eight poor wretches had succumbed to exhaustion and exposure during the bitter night. If it was any consolation to the prisoners, their German guards were in as miserable a plight as their captives. The chain of sentries posted all round slouched backward and forward on their posts, and the fixed corporal-schafts leaned gloomily on their weapons. In the road in front of Ars Laquenexy a kind of market had been established, but the dealers had hardly waked up under the tilts of the carts. They were marketenders chiefly from the German frontier about Saarlouis, and the bulk of their wares consisted of spirituous liquor. The French prisoners were by no means short of money. All the cash in the bank and military chest in Metz had been disbursed in paying up the troops’ arrears of pay, and there were plenty of francs in their pockets.

In Courcelles I saw the arrival of the first column of prisoners to be sent down by the train to Saarbrück. There were 2000 of them, and five trains, each containing the same number, were being despatched every day. Poor fellows, they seemed very miserable, but they bore their misery with a fortitude which filled me with respect. The rain poured down upon them in a deluge as they stood in the road, which was a foot deep in mud, of the consistency of pea-soup. Here they had to wait for about an hour, while the arrangements for their transit were being completed, and it was good to see the courtesy and quiet fortitude which they manifested. I went among them in the mud. Everywhere the poor fellows stepped aside with a half bow to let me pass. If one accidentally jostled me, the “Pardon, Monsieur,” was prompt and warm. I found these French prisoners here as ignorant as those whom I had seen at Sedan. Some of the sergeants asked me for news of the outer world, but the men seemed chiefly concerned to know whither they were going, and what kind of country Germany was. I named several towns as among their probable destination, leading cities of Germany, but very few had more than heard of them, and knew nothing either of their magnitude or of their locality. At last the prisoner-train was ready, some sixty carriages packed as closely as the men could sit or stand. Several open trucks had been brought into requisition, and it seemed to me as though the men were actually stacked upon them, so thickly were they packed. With a whistle the heavy train sluggishly set itself in motion, and away it rolled with its freight of Frenchmen down what was once one of the most charming valleys in France. The Frenchmen were prisoners on their way to expatriation, the valley was a wilderness. On the ramparts of St. Quentin, which from a distance overlooked the scene, paced the square-built men with the brass-spiked helmets. The virgin fortress of France, never till now profaned by the foot of an invader, was held by the Landwehrmen, and the streets of the town echoed to the clash of the German subaltern’s sword.

As I drove out across the glacis of Fort Belle Croix, I was struck with the alteration which had taken place there since the previous day. Then the whole expanse swarmed with life. Cavalrymen, artillerymen, infantrymen, were blended in chaotic confusion, out of which it seemed impossible to evolve order. Now the expanse lay blank and bare. Cavalrymen, artillerymen, infantrymen, had been drafted off it. Nothing was left but the mud and a few horses, too debilitated to be removed, and dropping, even as I passed, into the slush out of which they should never rise. There was a horse market in Metz on the 30th, or rather just outside the gate. I imagine a good many horses changed hands to which the parties who disposed of them would have had some difficulty in proving a valid title. Prices ranged from a franc and a half up to five pounds, but this latter was a fancy price, and only given for an officer’s charger of breeding and substance.

After seeing the prisoner-train leave Courcelles, I drove away northward, and after visiting the headquarter staff of the 7th Army Corps at Puche, and my friends of the 4th regiment at Retonfay, went into the lager of Lebœuf’s corps on the slope between Château-Gras and Retonfay. It was getting towards evening by this time, and I was in the right time for seeing the Frenchmen making their preparations for bivouac. What splendid fellows they were to be sure at this kind of work. Already the tents had a drain through each to carry off the surface water. The great poplar trees on the chaussée—those that the Germans had left standing—were falling fast. Those that the Germans had felled the Frenchmen were chopping up into lengths, and carrying off to the bivouac fire. Others stood round the bivouac fires or lay on curious improvised beds, contrived with dexterously-placed stones to keep their constructors out of the mud. In the blaze of the fires were pots and saucepans; rather than part from a saucepan when he has once secured it, I believe a French soldier would lose one of his boots. The pots and saucepans were simmering merrily and emitting a fragrant odour—whence it was derived I could not guess. The rations had been meat and biscuit; nothing else save salt. The men had dug up again the already thrice turned over potato fields and might have got a few tubers. But potatoes, and meat, and biscuits were impotent to create the pleasant odour, one of the recondite mysteries of French cookery.

The atmosphere after the capitulation was full of stories of the prices paid in Metz during the siege for articles of food. Most of these were to be taken _cum grano_, since the beleaguered, now that it was all over, not unnaturally took a pleasure in piling on the agony. But the one which I am going to narrate I had from an undeniable source, and I give it as illustrative of the profligate frivolity among the wealthier and more aristocratic officers, which has been one of the chief causes of the ruin of the French army. There had been in Metz during the siege a certain lady of the Parisian demi-monde, who had come to Metz when the Emperor came, and could not get away when he retired _viâ_ Verdun to Châlons. Two officers of the Garde Impériale had been rivals for this lady’s affections. The lady, it seemed, had a fanciful and delicate appetite, and one day in the early part of the last month of the siege she expressed a fervent wish to be regaled on turkey and truffles. “Ah, you know that is an impossibility,” was the rejoinder of one of the swains. “I don’t know that,” said the other, eager for an opening; “I shall try what I can do.” The other, in his jealousy, offered to bet 500 francs that he would not succeed, and the wager was accepted. The officer came to the landlord of one of the hotels and gave him the commission, adding that money was no object. The head waiter went on a foraging expedition, and after two days’ search brought the officer a turkey and truffles, with a little bill for a thousand francs; so the gay guardsman won his bet and lost 500 francs.

As I was driving out to Courcelles my coachman quietly told me that his wife and three children were starving. When we returned at night I went with him to ascertain the circumstances for myself. He guided me into a part of the town close to the middle branch of the Moselle, inhabited only by the poorest of the poor. I had before then only been on the top of the crust which overlay the misery caused by this siege. I had dined and eaten dessert, I had called for wine, and lo it was forthcoming. So far as concerned the hotels, the world seemed to wag very much as its wont. I saw no ghastly faces in the streets pallid with want, as were the faces of those citizens of Antwerp, who cheered the lean Stadtholder when he swore to eat his boots before he would surrender. But it was not because there were no pale faces and attenuated forms in Metz that I did not see them in the streets, but because the miserable ones cared not to make a parade of their misery. It was a sorry sight the squalid room of the coachman presented. Of bread the family had not had a morsel for three days; then they had received as ration two pounds for six. One of the six—an infant two years old—wants rations no more. The little body lay on two planks under the window, the victim of bodily exhaustion, from deficient and improper food. How could a child of two years survive on sinewy horseflesh, in scanty quantity, and on a casual morsel of bread, the meal of which was mixed with sawdust and chopped straw to make it eke out? All up and down the poverty-stricken street the wretchedness was much the same. Horseflesh and want of salt had killed off the children like flies. The mortality among the little ones had been frightful. The elder children were covered with blotches and scorbutic sores, caused by want of salt and of variety in their food.

As regards the inhabitants of Metz itself, it seemed likely that the misery would soon come to an end. There was no want of wealth in Metz, and the rich citizens were reported to be public spirited. Now that food could be bought, it was sure to be bought and distributed freely. But no such amelioration was to be expected for the wretchedness—a wretchedness almost without hope—of the villagers inhabiting the country around Metz. They had nothing—not even a roof above them, in the pittiless rain. Of their cottages nought was standing but the bare walls, often pounded with shells. Their gardens were waste, their cattle were gone, their furniture was wrecked, their straw was dung, their fields lay fallow and studded with graves. A day spent in the misery around Metz must have made as water a heart hard as the nether millstone. But help came to the helpless. It will be long ere “the Friends” will cease to be remembered by the simple peasant people whom they helped through the ghastly slough of despond.

The railway into Metz having been opened on the 30th, a convoy of 300 generals and superior officers went off at five o’clock in the afternoon. On the 31st, at 10.30, a train left for Mayence, _viâ_ Nancy, for the accommodation of generals and chief staff officers. A regular series of trains was organised on the 1st of November for regimental officers. The first, leaving at 9.30, accommodated the officers of the garrison; the second, at 1.30, for the officers of the Imperial Guard, cavalry of the reserve, and engineers. At 1.30, the officers of Canrobert’s corps (the 6th), and division of Forton. At 4.15 a train took off the officers of the 2nd Corps (Frossard’s), and the brigade Lapasset; and at 6.15, the 3rd Corps (Lebœuf’s). Great consideration was invariably shown by the German authorities for the officers, and careful arrangements were made for the wounded and sick French, chiefly under the supervision of German doctors.

I spent the afternoon of the 31st in inspecting, so far as time would permit, the fortifications of the town of Metz, and those constituting its exterior defences. What I had already gathered concerning the natural and artificial strength of the forts of St. Quentin, St. Julien, Plappeville, St. Eloy, and Queleu I found more than borne out by personal investigation. Whoever holds Metz holds an impregnable fortress. Nothing can so much as get at the fortress of Metz proper while the outworks hold out, and there is no reason that, properly garrisoned and provisioned, they should not hold out for ever. It might be possible to batter down St. Eloy or Queleu, the others cannot be got at advantageously in any way on account of the strength of their natural position. The weak point of the fortress is towards the east, between Queleu and St. Julien; but the complement of the defence on that side is made up by the “provisional” earthwork of les Bottes. From what I heard I think it probable that the day after the 14th of August, the Germans, if they had made a dash, and had been prepared for severe losses, might have effected a lodgment in front of Fort Belle Croix in this direction, and, indeed, if all tales were true, might have pushed their way into the town itself. We all know how easy it is to be wise after the event. The English army in the Crimea was abused for not going straight into Sebastopol two days after the Alma, instead of sitting down on the bleak plateau over against the fortress. Had its leaders known the state of the fortifications, no doubt the weary winter and the heaps of dead might have been spared to Britain. So with the Germans before Metz. I was assured that so confident were the French of success—so ridiculous did they think the idea that it was possible to invest Metz—that it was not till after the battle of Forbach that serious efforts had been made to place the fortress in an efficient state of defence. The guns were not mounted till then behind the embrasures. Les Bottes was unfinished—a mere heap of shapeless earth. Even now it was not properly finished, and looked as slovenly a piece of fortification work as I ever saw put out of hand by troops who asserted they had engineers in their ranks. Nevertheless, it had a front, and guns mounted on that front. The Germans, ever masterful and prompt, would not, I was satisfied, delay long to alter les Bottes from a “provisional” into a permanent fort. Subsequent events bore out this anticipation; and, with their efficient and thorough system of administration, Metz, if impregnable hitherto, will be henceforth, if such a thing can be, doubly impregnable.

From what I learned, there had been a good deal more of huckstering than patriotism among the civilian population of Metz. There was a reason for the _émeute_ on the evening of the 28th. The wily burghers had been keeping back their stores for a market, while their poorer fellows hungered because of the high prices, and the army starved. Horses were dying daily for want of forage; yet the Germans found stores of hay and corn quietly stowed away in unlikely places. It was the same with other articles of consumption, and the administration seemed to have been either not strong enough or not cunning enough to make everything forthcoming for the common good. Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers, but I take leave to doubt whether our shopkeepering idiosyncrasy would have developed itself in such a manner. I could not help having a quiet chuckle at the douce burghers, whose market Bazaine had spoiled. How they hated him for it! And they spoke their minds right venomously after the French manner.

If one listened to all he heard, he was bound to accept the conclusion that Bazaine was a renegade and traitor of the largest possible calibre. It seemed, according to the gossip of the natives, savage that their canny little scheme for putting money in their purses had failed, that Bazaine nourished the design of having himself declared Regent of France, and that he only relinquished this ambitious project for the consideration of a fabulous subsidy, contributed I could not exactly learn by whom. It was useless to point out to the angry and disappointed cits that on the face of it this was rubbish, and that Bazaine kept his upper lip straight and his face to the foe so long as, and indeed longer than, he had an army capable of fighting, marching, or standing up to be shot down. If he had had subordinates honest and capable of co-operating with him, had he been unfettered at the outset, and had the discipline and _moral_ of his army not been deteriorated before he took the command of it, it might have been that the chroniclers of this war would have had a different tale to tell.

It was with a deep interest that I listened at the table d’hôte the same evening to the despondent remarks of a venerable French gentleman, who had been a colonel at Waterloo. The old man had the water in his eyes as he spoke of the depreciation in the character of the forces of his country. The cause that had wrought the curse of deteriorated discipline was, according to him, the pernicious itch for popularity with which all the French superior officers were bitten. Canrobert, he told me, had been the great initiator of this popularity-hunting fever. In his rough, bluff way he used familiarly to appeal to the private soldiers as “his children” whether their rations were what they liked, and if an ill-conditioned fellow, thus encouraged, vented a grumble, he would turn on the colonel and blow him up sky-high. One very pregnant observation he made, a remark which I had thought of all the evening, and doubly significant as coming from a Frenchman and an officer. “Surely,” said I, “this will bring the French to their senses, and we must have peace in a very short time. And just as surely that peace,” I continued, “must be a permanent one, for the French army, with all its craving for _la gloire_, must realise the fact that there is not much in the way of _la gloire_ to be got by being greedy for the Rhine.”

“I don’t know,” said the old man, mournfully. “Logically you are right, no doubt; but severe as the lesson has been, I question of its effect. It is the officers of the French army who chiefly are the clamourers—senseless and frothy clamourers—after _la gloire_. They shrieked for war, enervated with lust and absinthe as they were, ignorant of their duties, their minds uncultivated, and debilitated with luxury. I fear they are too far gone, too utterly vitiated and emasculated mentally, to be able to draw the conclusion from the premises; and I should not be surprised if, a year hence, you may hear the parole loafers who are swinging about the streets to-day, yelling for war again, as unprepared to pursue it to success as they were when this one was entered into, and as reckless and regardless of consequences as they were then and are now.”

Just conceive what France must have come to when one of her _anciens militaires_ could speak thus! That the officers of his army were, in his opinion, so utterly spineless as to be unable to recognise the fact that they had been beaten, the causes which had led to their defeat, and the utter impossibility that unless they purged and lived cleanly they could make even a fair fight of it against the cool-headed and heavy-handed German! The whirligig of time brings round many curious changes, but it is utterly outside the nature of things that Frenchmen as they are, as I saw them in this war from day to day, can ever, given what advantages they may, be a match in warfare for a people so constituted as those which dwell in the Vaterland. The hot iron of adversity brands deep, and has a wonderful power to cure ailments, but if the surface is so calloused that the iron will not mark, how can the beneficial result be achieved?

The old gentleman was specially severe on the Zouaves. When these regiments were first constituted, he said the ranks were really full of fighting men. But as their fame grew they became fashionable, and then their ruin set in. The ranks were crowded by young sprigs who had no other thought than a picturesque uniform, waxed moustaches, the demi-monde, and absinthe; and the once stout and capable regiments had lost their prowess and become enervated and flaccid. This view may be exaggerated—the _ancien militaire_ of the table d’hôte was not the first man that ever put forth the opinion that “the service is going to the dogs, by Gad;” but it is in a measure confirmed by the events of this war, in which the French infantry of the line displayed far greater valour and patient endurance than the pet regiments.