Chapter XVIII: In the Enemy's Hands

We must now devote a short chapter to the fate of young Frankenburg.

Ignorant that his friend Pierrepont had fallen--and a knowledge thereof would have served the latter but little--Heinrich, in his present capacity of adjutant, had to keep at his post and go on with the regiment, which, like the others, carried all before it.

The French, aware of the vital importance of keeping possession of a hill on their right, as soon as their troops began to fall back before those battalions sent forward by General Steinmetz, threw up some earthen works, in rear of which their 62nd regiment of the line lay down, while several batteries of artillery fired over their heads, raining grape and shell upon the fast-advancing Prussians.

For three hours the fighting was desperate there--the slaughter on both sides woeful! Again the French fell back, and the Prussians brought up battery after battery of Krupp guns to the summit of the abandoned height, the gunners using their whips and spurs, the officers brandishing their swords and shouting, 'Vorwarts! vorwarts!' with their horses at a gallop.

In the ardour of the pursuit, or in terror of the dreadful sounds which shook the air, the horse ridden by Heinrich, having got the bit of the bridle firmly wedged between his teeth for a time, darted with his rider to the front at racing speed, and fairly carried him through the line of the retreating French!

Shot after shot was fired after him, but he escaped them all, and ere long found himself in a village, the main street of which was crowded by Francs-Tireurs, who seemed to have expended all their ammunition, as they pursued him simply with fixed bayonets, yells, and ferocious maledictions; for, as the Prussians gave no quarter to this species of volunteer force, they were not disposed to give any in return, so Heinrich began to give himself up for lost.

An alley opened on his right, and by it he hoped to gain the open country. He spurred his horse and shouted; he urged it with leg and hand and voice, and forced it to the right down the alley, followed by a shout of fierce derisive laughter, the source of which he soon discovered to be the fact that the alley had no outlet, and that he was fairly entrapped in a narrow _cul-de-sac_!

To take a pistol from the holsters, to leap from his horse, make a dash into the nearest house, was to Heinrich but the work of an instant; but he had barely closed and secured the door, ere the human tide of the Francs-Tireurs, intent on revenge and bloodshed, came surging wildly down the alley against it.

The house had been abandoned by its owners. He sought for the back-door, but there was none. He could only drop from an upper window into a garden; but his uniform would cause him at once to be recognised, and instant death was sure to follow. Not a moment was to be lost! He looked wildly round him. On a peg there hung a loose, coarse peasant blouse of blue cloth. He tore off his uniform, threw it and his helmet aside with his weapons, donned the blouse, and was just in the act of dropping from the window, when his exulting pursuers, who had soon forced the door, burst into the room, with cries of:

'Tué, tué!--justice, revenge!--revenge for the Francs-Tireurs!'

The garden-wall was uncommonly high, the gate securely locked; outlet there was none; and in another minute Frankenburg found himself in the hands of a score of these French volunteers, so many of whose comrades had been--no doubt, barbarously--put to death by the Prussians, simply for being found with arms in their hands, so that to look for mercy was vain. Their grasp was upon him; and in their desire to destroy him, they actually impeded each other, and for a second or two it seemed doubtful whether he was to perish by the charged bayonet or the whirled butt-end of the chassepot, as he was hustled and dragged hither and thither from hand to hand.

'Checkmated--cornered!' thought he, as the faces of Herminia and all at home came before him; 'to die thus--and at the hands of these rascally French peasantry.' Suddenly one exclaimed:

'Un espion--un mouchard! A Prussian disguised in a blouse--he was about to become a spy!'

'L'espion, l'espion!--a rope, a rope!' cried the rest, catching at the new idea with extreme fervour. 'No, no--bayonet him!' cried one.

'They hanged my brother at Borny,' said another;' so, by Baalzebub, let us hang him--hang him, Etienne!'

Heinrich's blood ran cold at this horrible suggestion.

'I did but seek to escape, messieurs, in exchanging my uniform for this dress,' said he.

'Oh, of course--of course!' they cried, with fierce mockery and cruelty flashing in their eyes.

'I did it but to save my life,' he urged. 'Diable--of course!'

'I am but one man among hundreds,' he continued.

'And so shall die--tué! tué!' cried they altogether.

'You are a band of cowards!' exclaimed Heinrich, defiantly; 'I do not fear to die. Hurrah for Germany!'

'Hah, ha! hah, ha!--à bas le Prussien!' they chorused.

One now appeared with a rope, which he had procured somewhere, and a cold perspiration burst over the brows of Heinrich.

'I am the Graf Von Frankenburg,' he urged, almost, but not quite, piteously. 'I am an officer of the Thuringians--let me die the death of a soldier, not that of a felon.'

'You are the Graf Von Frankenburg?' said one; 'be it so. The higher the rank the greater the disgrace in dying the death of a spy; so, coquin, hang you shall.'

Resistance was vain; the iron grasp of many was on each of his arms, and he was as helpless in their hands as an infant. His father, his mother, his love--the bright-haired Herminia!--what horror would the story of his fate cost them! It was too dreadful to think of; it was madness!

'Oh,' thought he, 'that I had but died on yonder field, and not thus--not _thus_--in the hands of wretches such as these!'

He disdained to ask for mercy, and resolved to die with dignity even the horrid death to which they had doomed him. But little time was given him for reflection, and none for prayer; yet a cry certainly escaped him, and a nervous shudder, when he found a corporal actually adjusting the hastily constructed halter about his neck. An involuntary effort he made for resistance or escape, and then stood still and passive.

'Throw the end of the rope over that apple-tree,' was the command of the corporal; and after one or two efforts it was thrown over a suitable branch, 'Stand aside, comrades,' was the next command; 'whip him up now, and make fast the rope to the branch below.'

While a mocking shout burst from the band, and many brutal and irreligious speeches were made, some crying piteously, 'Bon voyage, Monsieur le Comte--bon voyage, mon Prussien,' the noose closed and tightened round the neck of Heinrich. His eyeballs seemed to start from their sockets, dark purple overspread his face, and he was swung up to the branch, where he dangled in convulsive agony, swinging and swaying to and fro, with a hoarse, rattling, gulping sound in his throat, and with his feet about eight feet from the ground.

The other end of the fatal rope was made fast to a lower branch, and then the Francs-Tireurs rushed away, with mocking shouts, to join their comrades, and left the unhappy Heinrich--the 'Prussian spy,' as they falsely affected to call him--to his miserable fate.