Chapter XVII: Facing a Battery of Mitrailleuses

The night passed over quietly, and without alarm; but with dawn of day came an officer of Uhlans, attended by a trumpeter, flying at full speed along the line of advanced posts, calling in all the out-pickets, while the King was probably already telegraphing to Berlin as usual:--

'Another new victory! Thank God for His mercy!'

Referring to the official pietism of the Prussian monarch at this crisis, a very impartial historian of the war says thus:--'How little his armies were controlled by regard for humanity--the most essential element of any religion--will appear in lurid colours. Abu Bekr, the successor of Mohammed, enjoined his soldiers not to kill old people, women, or children; to cut down no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of corn; to spare all fruit-trees; and slay no cattle but such as they could take for their own use. But the Prussians made a desert of France, burned villages and small towns, and treated old people and women with horrible barbarity. But they were prodigal of religious words, and words with many have too often a greater weight than facts.'

But with all this, it should be borne in mind, from past experience of French invading armies, how would those of the Emperor have behaved had they reached Berlin?

One of a thousand of such episodes, as were daily occurring along the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine, would no doubt have desolated for ever the household of M. de Caillé but for the timely arrival of Pierrepont and his twenty Thuringians.

Aware of this, when the Uhlan trumpet sounded, Célandine de Caillé, like most young girls, a light sleeper, heard it before the war-worn Charlie, and pale and startled, came forth in the prettiest of morning robes to bid him farewell, and to stuff his havresack, and the havresacks of his men (though they were Prussians), with all that the Bavarians had not consumed last night.

Charlie thought how fresh and radiant the young girl looked in her white morning dress, with blue breastknots, and a ribbon of the same colour in her hair, a soft light shining in her blue eyes, and a little colour in her peach-like cheek, that reminded him of Ernestine; but, ah! who was like Ernestine?

A soldier fresh from one battle and going forth to fight another is an object of interest to all; but a handsome, frank, and free-hearted young fellow, like Charlie Pierrepont, was doubly so to an impassionable girl like Mademoiselle de Caillé; thus her blue eyes filled with tears as he kissed her tremulous little hand, which, like her taper arm, came so delicately forth from the wide-laced sleeves of her dress.

'Why are there tears in your eyes, Mademoiselle?' asked Charlie, with a kind smile.

'Because, Monsieur, I pity you.'

'Pity me!'

'Indeed I do, Monsieur. Most earnestly.'

'And why?'

'Because you are too young, and too good and kind, to be killed. Oh!' continued the girl, looking up in his face, 'I implore you to go home--home to your own England--home to your mother, if you have one, and leave these odious Prussians to fight their own battles.'

'It is too late, my pretty friend.'

'How so?'

'The die is cast that makes me--Prussian.'

'Will another horrible battle be fought to-day?' asked Monsieur de Caillé, who now made his appearance.

'I am sure of it, Monsieur,' replied Charlie.

'_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_' exclaimed Célandine, clasping her hands, and looking upwards; 'and you will be in it?'

'Undoubtedly, Mademoiselle.'

She drew very close to Charlie, and said, in a low voice,

'Pardon me, _mon ami_--but--but when were you last at mass or confession?'

'We don't attend to either much in the 95th,' was Charlie's evasive reply; 'besides, our Herr Pastor is a Lutheran.'

The sweet French girl eyed him wistfully.

'You are too good and humane thus to die like a heathen!' said she, 'and many more will die to-day. Promise me, Monsieur, that you will wear this.'

And from her white neck she took a little holy cross and medal, suspended by a blue ribbon, which she passed over Charlie's head.

'For your sake, then,' said Charlie gallantly.

'For your own, rather. Whether you believe in such things or not, it will do you no harm to wear it.'

'_Très bon_, my child!' said the old gentleman; 'but Monsieur has a cross already,' he added, patting the iron one at the breast of Charlie's blue tunic.

'And now I must go,' said he, putting on his helmet; 'there sounds the trumpet again.'

As he bade them adieu and left them, the French girl, with a quick pretty action, flicked some holy water in his face from a Dresden china font that hung inside the door of the dining-room, and the glittering drops fell on his moustache and silver gorget, which the Prussians still wear, or at least wore then; and father and daughter stood sadly in the porch, looking after their protector as he marched off at the head of his men, for Charlie, though a thorough English gentleman, was, as some say, 'the soldier all over, but the soldier adventurer--the soldier of fortune, rather than the soldier of routine.'

Charlie, we fear, and are ashamed to admit it, did not pray often. 'It wasn't much in his line; besides, what was the Herr Pastor paid for?' but as he marched back to headquarters on the Bellecroix road, at the head of his picket, he prayed in his heart that no harm--no perils, such as those of last night--might ever again menace that frank, engaging, and innocent young girl at the Chateau de Caillé.

But he had not seen the last of that old mansion.

By this time, a considerable portion of the German army had penetrated so far to the west and north-west of Metz, as to be almost already between Marshal Bazaine and Paris! The line of the invading forces was thus so greatly extended that the French generalissimo dared not make any offensive movement against them, but was compelled to retreat along the highways that led from Gravelotte to Verdun.

Charlie had barely rejoined his regiment, and exchanged a few words with Heinrich, Schönforst, and other friends, when the order came for the line to advance, as the French were in position at Vionville, covering the whole southern road to Verdun, with a front extending to the village of Gorz, eight miles south-west of Metz; and in their martial ardour to meet the enemy, many of the Thuringians, as the march forward began, struck up the fine war-song of Arndt.

In the ranks of this regiment, as in others of the Prussian army, were many well-born and gently nurtured young men, bred to professions or businesses, and who could speak several languages, and take their place in good society, but were dragged away from their avocation, hearth, and home, by the Prussian military system. There were others, again, grey, brown, and hardy men, who could digest sutler's beef and eat such ammunition bread as the Kaiser's commissariat supplied, sleep in their spike-helmets as soundly as in a velvet night-cap, feel, by a bivouac fire, as comfortable as if in the Grand Hotel at Cologne, and march to be maimed or massacred, to wound and to slay, with genuine Teutonic taciturnity and phlegm.

The battle of the day began on some wooded hills above the pretty red-tiled village of Gorz, near a pleasant stream that meanders between fields and beautiful coppices from Mars-la-Tour to the Moselle.

By sheer force of numbers, the Prussians, while giving and receiving a storm of musketry, pushed into the woods, driving the French skirmishers before them. Those who were spectators saw the little scarlet kepis of the latter dispersing in succession amid the white smoke and green foliage; then the dark-coated Prussians, with their spike-helmets and goat-skin packs, disappeared also in pursuit. What happened in this part of the battle no one knows, or ever will know, as it was entirely in the dense woods and deep valleys, and thus no general view could be obtained; yet it is to this part of the field we have to refer, for there fought the 95th regiment.

From one wooded slope to another the French fell back, fighting desperately. In the valleys, the din of war rang with a hundred reverberations. Shrieks, cries, and hoarse cheering shook the very woodlands, and the smoke curled up from the latter as if they were on fire. White puffs and red flashes seemed to burst from every bush and tree. Now and then the bayonets flashed, or a tricolour appeared amid the foliage; but on, almost without check, went the Prussians, over ground strewn with the terrible _debris_ of men, gun-carriages, limbers, and horses, in many instances blown literally to pieces, for the whole ground was ploughed by shot and shell, and sown with rifle bullets.

Charlie's regiment, with the 40th, 67th, and 69th, was ordered to surround and storm a cottage mid-way on the Gorze road. The reason of four battalions being sent to storm a mere cottage was that it was held by a half-battery of French mitrailleuses, which did frightful execution in their ranks as they advanced.

Forward they went at a rush, the living tumbling over the fast-falling dead, these dreadful cannon belching death and destruction from amid the foliage in front, with that horrible shrieking sound peculiar to their discharge, and Charlie felt the _streams_ of shot as they passed him.

A wild cry of agony, amid many others, made him look to his right. There lay Schönforst and half his company writhing or dead in one bloody heap; and the next moment it was Charlie's turn.

He felt as if a hot sword-blade had entered his breast--there was a heavy blow, a sharp tearing of the body, an emotion of rage or anger--a loud cry escaped him, and he fell on his face, enduring terrible agony. He staggered up, just as the attacking force swept over him to assault the battery, but fell over on his side, and lay with the blood pouring from his chest.

Wounded at last--perhaps mortally! was his first reflection; for he could feel that the bullet was in his body still. Life, death--the past, the future--'the possible heaven, the impending hell'--all flashed upon him, with thoughts of his own misery in lying there dying, helpless, and so far from Ernestine!

A faintness came over him, from which he was roused by feeling some one opening his tunic.

'Where are you wounded?' asked a familiar voice, and Charlie found the doctor of the regiment--with all of whom, we have said, he was a great favourite--bending over him kindly, with the hospital attendant of his company.

'In the breast,' he gasped.

The doctor had but little time to lose, and the bullets were _pinging_ past him and his patient in every direction.

'The bullet is lodged near the spine,' said the doctor, 'and it must be cut out, but not here.'

'Is--is the wound dangerous?' he faltered.

'Not very; but great care will be requisite.'

Whether on the part of himself or his medical attendant Charlie did not inquire; the tone in Which the doctor said 'very' lessened his hopes.

'God's will be done,' said he; and there flashed on his memory all that little Célandine de Caillé had said to him that morning about religion; while the doctor put a pad on the wound, bandaged it, and hastened to look at Schönforst, but he was long since past all aid, and stone-dead.

Save the moans, cries, and interjections--pious, fierce, or despairing--of those around him, Charlie heard little more but the occasional boom of the heavy guns as the tide and din of the battle rolled away towards Gravelotte; and great faintness, like a kind of sleep, stole over him. From time to time the acute agony of his wound roused him, and amid his terrible thoughts, ever present were the images of Ernestine and his family.

The emotion of faintness increased as the day wore on and evening came. He saw many around him die, and thinking that his own time would soon come too, he thought once more of the French girl's words, and strove to fashion a prayer or two, but they were little else than pious invocations.

Dying, as he certainly deemed himself to be, his thoughts flashed incessantly to her he loved; her whose soft hand might too probably never be in his again; anon to his boyhood's home in Warwickshire; the voices of his father and of his dead mother came drowsily to his ear; the soft English faces of his sisters floated before him. Oh, how hard it was to lie there bleeding, and too probably dying, when they were all making merry, perhaps, in that drawing-room which he remembered so well, and many of the pettiest details of which, even to a crack in the ceiling, came strangely back to memory now, with scraps of songs and forgotten airs.

Would the Krankentrager never come to take him away? Had the doctor and hospital attendant both forgotten him, or had been killed? The latter, too probably.

So the long, long day of anxiety, thirst, and agony passed away, and sunset came on. Charlie watched it fading on the distant woods and green slopes of those lovely Lorraine valleys, till the mellowing haze of twilight blurred all the landscape into gloom, and the silvery moon and the evening star came forth in their beauty to light up the carnage of the past day.

Neither the doctor nor the hospital attendant of his company had forgotten poor Charlie; but strange to say, when they came to look for him with a party about midnight, no trace could be found of him save a pool of blood on the grass where he had lain.

So the Countess, perhaps, had her wicked wish fulfilled at last, and fate had removed 'the intruder,' as she named him, for ever from the path of Baron Grünthal!