Chapter IV: Sedan: Before and After (2)

Hastening back to the Château Bellevue, we were yet too late for the announcement of the signature of the capitulation. We had seen nothing of that sensational incident—if it really did occur—when von Moltke, as is related, led outside the reluctant de Wimpfen, and weakened his obduracy by pointing to the ring of field guns unlimbered, and with the gunners in position, girdling the fated city, and ready at the word to commence a bombardment which would have been the synonyme for a butchery. But we were just in time with a sharp run to see the King up to the gates of the château, followed by his son and the leading members of his staff, and to see the silent greeting—if words were spoken they must have been muttered in a low tone by men afraid to trust their voices—between the monarchs on the gravelled drive at the bottom of the steps. The “good brothers” turned, and mounting the steps, disappeared inside one of the rooms in the central block, the royal staff partly occupying one of the conservatories, partly remaining outside. The interview, that surely must have sorely tried the composure of both the parties to it, lasted barely some twenty minutes, and then Wilhelm was out and off in his carriage for a drive through his victorious Kinder bivouacking by the Meuse. He who was left in that inner room must have heard the air throb again with the cheering which came from German throats at the sight of the white-haired conqueror-king. Later in the afternoon I saw the Emperor again. He came out in front of the château to superintend the unpacking of his travelling carriage. He looked very wan and weary, although he still kept up the old impassible look. The imperial equipage in its magnificence was an extraordinary contrast to the simplicity of the modest turnout of the Prussian King. In gold and scarlet the outriders of the former glittered profusely. He of Prussia had his postboys in shoddy cloth, with glazed coverings to their hats to keep the dust off the nap.

The Emperor’s barber, with whom I had a chat as the suite waited for orders outside the château, gave me some interesting particulars regarding the last disastrous day in Sedan. The French army, he said, had its efficiency destroyed by socialism and a craving for a republic. It was in a chronic state of semi-mutiny, and many regiments would not follow their officers on any consideration. This yeasty condition of agitation made discipline an impossibility, and accounted for the disregard of discipline on their part, which had enabled the Germans so often to surprise their camps and drive them whithersoever they listed. M’Mahon was wounded in a vain attempt to excite one of these disaffected regiments to charge. The Emperor met him in the street as he was being carried half unconscious into his quarters. If my informant was truthful, Napoleon bore himself worthily during the disastrous day. Imitating his uncle at Montereau, he directed guns with his own hand, and was continually under fire. But the French were totally out-manœuvred and outnumbered. They had expected to have to cope with an army of 120,000 men; instead of this, nearly double the number started up unexpectedly, as if from the ground. The troops in Sedan candidly admitted to me that the Germans were better soldiers than themselves, although not braver men; and this is about the truth of the matter. They have a sense of responsibility which the French want; they are splendid marchers, they fight like devils, they are strong, self-contained, self-respecting, earnest, manly fellows; they have generals who know how to direct them, and officers who know how to lead them, and this is why they came to go on accordingly from victory to victory.

Next morning (the 3rd September), we tried to get through Sedan with intent to go a little way into Belgium. There was thoroughfare only one way and for one class of persons. The gate was surrounded by a guard of Bavarians, and a continuous stream of French prisoners, horse, foot, and artillery, was fast passing out. We watched it for hours—it seemed as if it never would stint, and at last we abandoned the intention of getting through Sedan, and turned down the stream to the rope ferry which we had used the two previous days. When we got to the bridge over the canal, we came again upon the stream of French prisoners, flowing in the direction we were going. The tract between the canal and the Meuse is an island of some extent. The rope of the ferry was cut, and the boat on the other side. Skirting the Meuse downward for some distance, we found several ferries, but all the boats were, like the first, on the other side of the stream. The fact was, the Germans had utilised the island into a prison. They had turned the disarmed French army bodily into it to the number of some 70,000, looking to the Meuse and the canal to do the main duty of custodianship. It is true that here and there on the farther side there stood a company under arms, and that towards nightfall a chain of sentries was run along the farther banks; but I do not believe that on the island itself there was a single German. The Frenchmen had been turned on to the island just as they came out of the town. The Germans themselves were temporarily short of rations, and could spare nothing for their prisoners. But the prisoners fared better than their captors, although goodness knows how they did it. After all nobody can achieve a savoury mess under difficulties like a Frenchman, or build himself a house where another man would have to be content with the heavens for his roof. Innumerable fires had been lit, about one seemingly serving three men. The fellows dragged out firewood from recondite corners in the most marvellous manner; recklessly tore down houses, and burnt doors, window frames, and rafters; broke up carts, ploughs, fences, and everything else available. On every fire was a saucepan, and in the saucepan were potatoes, and something else. Where the potatoes came from was plain enough; we could see the fellows delving them, but about the “something else,” all that one could tell was that it smelt nice. There was a flavour of onions in the scent—I began to think Frenchmen have an onion bed somewhere about their persons—and a _soupçon_ of garlic and a gamey whiff that made one’s mouth water. Most of the men who were not cooking were building unto themselves habitations for the night. About half of them had their _tentes d’abris_, which they were rigging up dexterously, and bedding with boughs torn from the trees. The trees were put under heavier contributions to build wherewithal leafy bowers of considerable architectural pretensions, and positively I do not think that, with the exception of the extremely late-comers, a single man of the captive French army slept this first night supperless and without some cover. They were the civilest, cheeriest, best-humoured set of fellows imaginable. We two, quite alone, and unable to bestow anything—for our flasks and tobacco-pouches were but drops in the bucket, and very soon exhausted—experienced no word but of the frankest courtesy and the heartiest friendliness, alike from officers and men. The officers had been allowed to retain their swords, having given their parole, but had to accompany their men, whose disarmament had been very thorough. On the island is a handsome château, with beautiful and extensive grounds, and of the cover there afforded the Frenchmen took avail extensively. I do not suppose that in the island they had much more room than in Sedan, but they preferred it for quarters, since they could get firewood and potatoes. A few stray barrels of biscuit had been brought into the island on carts, and their contents were distributed as far as they would go, but there was not a biscuit for every twenty men of the great multitude. After some conversation with a group of captains in the grounds of the chateau, we strolled down towards the river, and accepted the invitation of a bivouac of Zouaves to join them at their supper. The mess was better than good, it was superb. It consisted of potatoes, the indescribable savoury “something,” and flesh of some kind or other. The swarthy Zouaves, in their red fezes and baggy canvas breeches, treated us like princes, but evaded a direct reply to the question what was the meat in their mess. After we had bidden the merry rascals a hearty good night, we came upon the carcass of a horse that had been killed by a shell, and there was a clean slice or two out of its flanks. I did not think it necessary to go back to the Zouaves and put it to them point blank whether they had been regaling us on horse; but, like the man in the play, I had my own thoughts on the matter. It was late before we quitted the fires on the island; and when we were once outside and realised the difficulty of finding quarters, we were sorry we had not stayed and shared the bivouac of the Zouaves. Donchery we knew to have been invaded by a whole Army Corps; Frenois was seething full of Bavarians. As we were discussing the probabilities of a bivouac we drove past the front of the Château Bellevue. All was in darkness. A happy thought struck my companion. “Let us sleep here,” he cried. The gardener seemed glad enough to have a couple of quiet civilians for his inmates. He stabled our horse and conducted ourselves into the chateau, one of the most beautiful residences, both internally and externally, I have ever seen. The dining hall, where the capitulation was signed, was a model of taste without meretricious display. It was wholly in stained oak, save the roof, which is inlaid with American maple. The windows were Gothic, and in niches round the room there were alternately mirrors and Etruscan vases. One or two large pictures were let into the panelling, and in recesses were divans. The chairs were high backed, in finely carved oak. Above this room, up a winding staircase, and on the first-floor, was the bedroom occupied by the Emperor on the previous night, just in the state he left it. Before leaving at nine in the morning, he had breakfasted with his suite in the dining hall. On its beauties, as on those of the rest of the charming villa, we were free to feast; there was nothing else to satisfy the appetite. The gardener was very hungry himself and so was his wife. Nor, according to the gardener, was there a drop of wine in the house, and appearances certainly seemed to corroborate his asseveration. It fell to me to sleep in the bed occupied by the Emperor on the previous night. Sheets and a quilt were on the bed, but one of the window hangings, with its semicircular canopy, had been torn down, and applied as an additional covering for the couch of the Emperor. He had apparently been reading in bed, for a translation of Lord Lytton’s “Last of the Barons” lay open turned on its face, on a little table by the bed-head. There seemed something of a sombre significance in the selection.

At this time the chateau was inviolate; not so much as an ornament had been touched. The beautiful clocks ticked on every mantel-piece, and the pretty knick-knacks of the young ladies were sticking on the pincushions in their abandoned bedrooms. But about five in the morning there was an incursion of a Bavarian regiment, which during the night had been on guard over the prisoners on the island. Beyond doubt they did not use the place tenderly. The Bavarians are, out of sight, the most butter-fingered of the German soldiers, and anything conveniently portable they annexed with neatness and despatch. What the men wanted was wine, and what seemingly wanton damage they did to the wainscot, panelling, &c., was in quest of it, a quest in the end crowned with success.

By the 6th of September the King of Prussia was in Rheims, the self-constituted guest of the Most Reverend the Archbishop in that ecclesiastical dignitary’s palace, hard by the historical old cathedral. There had been but a short stay for the German hosts on the field where they gained laurels so green and yet so bloody. The blood tint had hardly died out of the Meuse, the unburied dead yet festered in the sunheat, and the ruins of Bazeilles yet smoked and stank, when the vanguard of the Crown Prince’s army shouldered their packs and trudged away up the valleys of the Argonnes towards the fertile vine-lands of Champagne, marching nearly due southward but with their faces ever set Paris-ward, and “Nach Paris!” ever on their lips. Royal head-quarters made a long pause in the old cathedral city, while men all over Europe were asking one another whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually ended the war, and looking for the white dove of peace to alight on the blood-stained battle-field. But the Revolution had taken place in Paris, and the leaders of the new Republic were flushed with the chimera that Republican institutions and untrained hordes of patriots, which at the talismanic name of “Republic” were sure to rush to arms eager to fight and proud to die for _la Patrie_ emancipated, could cope with the generalship and the trained and victorious armies that had crunched the disciplined soldiers of the Empire as a boy cracks a nut. It was from the crisis of Sedan that may be dated the falling away of British sympathy from the German side. Wise and considerate men at home, who in the beginning had seen and readily owned to the justice of the cause in which Germany had fought and conquered, let their reason and their logical perception become enfeebled by a sympathy for misfortune which did honour to their hearts. With others the keynote to the changed feeling was kindliness for a Republic, a gushing abstract love for an institution which they reckoned a synonym for the truest of all national liberty. A judicious alternative to this mild phase of mental aberration might have been discovered in an enforced residence in Paris during the months of March and April last. When Wilhelm went to war in the name of the German Fatherland, he put forth that he warred not with the people but with its ruler. That ruler gone, he was bound to look to some person or to some body, as the successor of the captive Emperor in some kind of right or other to dispose of the destinies of France. He could not make peace with the French nation in the gross; that nation must set up, whether for peace or for war, something tangible to be treated with by the victor, if it was to be peace; to direct war, if the nation’s fiat was for war. The Provisional Government assumed this province, and was tacitly accepted by France. Then the nation through this, its mouthpiece, instead of suing for peace, instead of asking what terms it might expect if it should sit down content with the punishment it had received, cried “War, war to the hilt, war without a thought, a dream, a hint of negotiation!” Wilhelm had no help for it, but to accept what was virtually a new challenge, and fight on. And that challenge gave to him a new antagonist. He now fought, no longer with the man who was his prisoner, but with the French nation, with whom up till then he had proclaimed that he had no quarrel, and he fought with it, because it had taken up the quarrel that might have gone with the _Déchéance_, and made it its own. The German did not quit his first position; France and the French drove him out of it whether he would or not. There was no alternative but to march on defiant Paris. Sympathy is a beautiful feeling; but its failing is that very often it clouds discrimination. Under the influence of effusive sympathy for France, who has not heard men plead—“Ah, but in the hour of her triumph Germany might have shown her magnanimity and offered terms to poor France, instead of coldly standing at attention waiting for her beaten foe to humiliate herself by suing for terms.” For Germany to have acted thus would not have been magnanimity; it would have been quixotry, and quixotry certain to have been misinterpreted by France. Because the German arms only occupied as a formality a corner of Paris for a couple of days, did not Paris send up the defiantly-complacent yelp that it was fear which had made the occupation so transient and partial? Can international history point to a precedent in which the unquestioned victor, unweakened either by a single reverse or by a long war, fighting in a cause acknowledged as just by all the world, took the initiative in offering terms, either directly or indirectly, to an adversary so stubborn and haughty that it seemed like enough the profferer would have had them flung back in his teeth? Who ever heard of the gladiator in the arena, or the pugilist in the ring cry, “Hold, surely there is enough,” while the opponent proclaimed himself still full of fighting, and refused to be led away by what in this case was an Europeful of judicious bottle holders?

While the King abode in Rheims, waiting for what never came, and while Europe was talking and scheming, and France was hardening her heart and stiffening her neck, the German armies were deploying into a grand line for the advance on Paris. Three great roads converge toward Paris from the east of France. On the southernmost of these leading from Châlons, through Tour de Montaimé, by Montmirail, Coulommiers, Chaulmes, and Brie Comte Robert, the head-quarters of the Crown Prince of Prussia it was arranged should march. The northern route is _viâ_ Laon, Soissons and Dammartin, but the fortresses of the two first-named towns still held out, so that the 12th Army Corps and the Prussian Guards had tracks farther to the south perforce allotted to them. The central road from Châlons through Epernay is cut near Dormans, by the road that comes from Rheims, by Ville en Tardenoise, and thence continues its course through the beautiful valley of the Marne, threading successively, as in a string, the pretty towns of Château Thierry, La Ferté sous Jouarre and Meaux. Meaux was a pretty town once before the deluge came upon it. This central road was set down as common property for the right flank of the fourth army and the left flank of the third. Along it lay the track of the 6th Army Corps, which, spared at Sedan, was to head the advance on Paris. Later it was to be traversed by the 2nd Bavarians, and later still by the 11th Army Corps, which had been left in the rear when its fellows marched out of the valley of the Meuse.

Dispositions covering a front so extensive, and having an object so vast and so momentous, were not made in a day. The men had to be rested after feats of fighting and marching not surpassed in the history of the world; supplies had to be accumulated near; communications had to be everywhere perfected and made good. Meanwhile the King took his ease in the archbishop’s palace. Bismarck, in his yellow and white cap, stalked about the town alone, disregarding with a grim indifference the crowds of beggar boys who fancied they could recognise benevolence in the fact that they were not summarily sworn at by reason of their importunity, and only found out their mistake when they had haunted the stern man persistently to no purpose for half the length of a street. Moltke paced the aisles of the cathedral for hours at a time, with set face and abstracted eye, his hands ever clasped behind his back. Captains and subalterns, dashing Freiwilligen and gay Vicefeldwebel, made merry over the flowing champagne in the hotels and cafés, and wished that there was a Rheims at every halting spot. The soldiers ate and drank, sauntered and stared; dealing justly in uncouth and fragmentary French with the shopkeepers of the town, and essaying in a sheepish way to make a little love to the girls, whose coquetry overcame even the conventional hatred. But although _festina lente_ was the motto, there was no time to be wasted. On the 7th of September General von Tümpling, commanding the 6th army corps, had already his head-quarters in Dormans. The German Uhlans who, when they had ridden into Rheims on the Sunday previous, had all but seen the backs of Vinoy’s men retreating, were far up the valley feeling the front at least two days before I reached Dormans on the 8th of September. I wonder how many British tourists are familiar with the rich, placid beauty of the valley of the Marne, otherwise than as seen from the window of a railway carriage. It will amply repay a much more detailed inspection. On the afternoon I climbed a little hill above Dormans, which overlooks the valley for several miles in both directions, and the view well repaid the exertion. On either side of the river lie flat and fertile “haughs,” as the alluvial tracts are called in Scotland; and out of them rise almost imperceptibly the swelling knolls clad with vineyards in which the frequent villages nestle snugly. I counted ten villages from my hill-top. The whole valley was as quiet as if there was nothing but peace in the world. Presently, from one of the villages over against me, there arose the swell of military music; the band of a regiment was quartered in it, and was treating the villagers to a concert. I do not think I ever saw such a wealth of fruit of all kinds as there was around Dormans. For the first time I realised how the Israelites might have been compelled to resort to a stake borne by two men to carry wherewithal the trusses of grapes from the vines of Eshcol. Apples and pears hung by the roadside like hips and haws in our hedgerows at home, alternated by trees laden with delicious golden plums. It made one glad that the troops were marching in peace through the valley of Dormans. It would have been desecration to sully this Eden by making it a battle-field. A quiet race were the people of the valley, sighing for quietude and for liberty, without plebiscites, and without severe taxation, to till their soil and live prosperously in their quiet way. They craved a strong and moderate Government, be it what it might—monarchy or republic. The landlady of an auberge where I halted for a short time put the matter to me very pithily. “I don’t care a sou about politics,” said she, “and we have been taught to abhor the Prussians, and specially to detest Bismarck; but, oh, how heartily do I wish that in France we had such a one as Bismarck!”

Now that the strain of the forced marching was somewhat abated, it was instructive to note how the Germans were resuming their rigour in little matters of detail and discipline. I saw the officer of the day turn out the quarter-guard the evening I arrived in Dormans, and he bullied the men as if the regiment had been in barracks, because their buttons were not polished and their coat-cuffs not turned down. The soldiers were everywhere brushing and beating their clothes, or mending holes in them. In a shoemaker’s shop there was a comical-looking row of soldiers, all sitting solemnly against the wall, each with a boot in his hand, waiting for his turn with the funny little French shoemaker, of whose continual jabber they understood not one word, but courteously replied with the invariable “Ja! Ja!” The Dormans tailor was hard at work repairing officers’ uniforms; I wonder whether he was patriotic enough not to utilise the “cabbage.”

Von Tümpling seemed in no hurry to advance from Dormans. Had he been dallying in Rheims, one might have apprehended that he had found his Capua, but pleasant place as was Dormans, every one said there were more eligible quarters and equally beautiful spots farther down the valley of the Marne. The truth is he was waiting till the 3rd army on his left should get approximately abreast of him. He was certainly near enough to his own front. On the 9th we started off with intent to make Château Thierry before we halted. About eighteen kilometres from Dormans we came to a bridge. The bridge itself was sound enough, but on the other side of it an embankment on which the road was made had been cut across by a trench. This was evidently the work of an enemy, but of an enemy destitute of the guidance of engineers, and ignorantly eager to oppose the German progress. As might have been expected, the pitiful trench had been no great obstacle. It had been partially and hastily bridged, and thus we knew that friends were still ahead. About a kilometre farther we entered the village of Crezancy. Nobody had anything to say to us as we passed through the village; but when we got on the top of the hill beyond it, we found a sergeant’s guard along with an officer. The latter told us that the post was the extreme infantry advance, and that we must not pass it. A few horsemen were scouting farther, but he had no assurance as to the state of the country, and he could not allow us to go on any farther. He was a fixture, he understood, for the day, and the forward movement had for the time been arrested. So there was no resource but to return to Dormans, where we learned that the head-quarters of the 6th Corps were not to move till the 11th, and perhaps not then.

Impatient of the inaction, it occurred to us on the morning of the 9th to start off in a southerly direction, inclining a little to the rear, so that thus we should strike the head of the more southerly advance. The place where we intersected the first east and west road was a village called Igny-le-Jard. There were no Germans there, and the villagers said they had seen none but a few scattered Uhlans. Our road then lay through a fine forest, intersected with rides for hunting purposes, and full of deer. At Mareaille, on its farther side, we came upon an advanced infantry-post—there was nothing beyond except cavalry, said the officer who commanded the handful of men. A few miles farther to the south, and we reached the charming village of Corbellieu, lying snugly by the little river Surmelin. In the environs was a beautiful chateau, surrounded with grounds, everywhere adorned with parterres of flowers, and intersected by artificial streams and lakes, crossed by bridges of fanciful construction. For miles the road lay through avenues of fine trees, on either side of which were rich farms or beautiful villas. We had passed Corbellieu for some miles, still edging rearward, when the towers of a castle became visible, and soon we entered the pretty village of Montmort, at the end of which, raised high over it on an eminence, partly natural and partly artificial, stands the castle of the same name. At one time, I doubt not, a castle of great strength must have occupied the summit of the commanding eminence. The site is one which the castle-builders of the middle ages must have thoroughly appreciated. From the wall encircling the esplanade I dropped an apple sheer into the street, two hundred feet below; a double moat surrounds the abrupt height, the top of which is reached externally by winding paths; internally, by a winding staircase up a turret built into the rock. The castle itself is comparatively modern. It was the property and the residence of the Marquis de Montmort, who, along with his daughter, had very sensibly remained at home to receive the Germans instead of running away into Paris. He had for his guests the head-quarters of a brigade of the 5th Army Corps, the officers of which, in consideration of the courtesy of the Marquis in doing the honours of his own house, exerted all their efforts to prevent intrusion on his privacy and towards the preservation of the amenities of the charming place.

Quitting Montmort we pushed on a few miles farther south to Etoges, which is on the great road. No German sentries were posted outside of it. We traversed it from one end to the other, and found it wholly French. Having left our carriage at the village auberge, we strolled towards a fine chateau in the environs, at the gate of which a courteous French gentleman accosted us. He was the son of the owner of the chateau, M. de Kirchener, son of an engineer officer who distinguished himself greatly in the Prussian service in the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. M. de Kirchener is himself married to a sister of the Duchess de Montebello. The old gentleman himself came out to meet us, in a little trepidation, and knotting around his waist as he came a scarf of the “Succour for the Wounded” pattern. The father and son courteously joined in urging our removal from the auberge to the more pleasant quarters which the chateau afforded; and there we spent the night with not a German soldier, so far as we knew, nearer to us than the outposts outside Montmort. There were, however, German troops nearer Paris than Etoges, two squadrons of cavalry having passed through it in the morning.

Next morning (the 10th) we started westward for Montmirail, with intent to traverse a district memorable in the first campaign of 1814 as that in which, in a rapid series of battles within a very small space, Napoleon destroyed the army of Blucher. Soon after quitting Etoges we came upon the fine plain of Champ Aubert, on which was fought the battle of the 10th February, 1814. A monument stands in the centre of the battle-field, erected by “the Emperor Napoleon III.” A couple of kilometres farther on we reached the village of Vauchamps, outside which took place the battle of the same name on the 14th February, in which Blucher’s discomfiture was consummated. Passing through the pretty little town of Montmirail, we crossed a deep gorge and came out on a noble plateau, almost on the verge of which stands a fine fluted column, surmounted by a gilded eagle and bearing on its pedestal the announcement, dated 15th August, 1866, that “this monument was erected by the orders of the Emperor Napoleon III. to indicate the spot on which stood the Emperor Napoleon I. when he directed the efforts of the French army in the battle of Montmirail on the 11th February, 1814.” On the other sides of this pretentious monument are the names of the other victories:—Feb. 12th, Les Caquerets, Nesle, Château Thierry; Feb. 11th, Montmirail, Marchais; Feb. 10th, Champ Aubert; Feb. 14th, Vauchamps.

At Montmirail we passed through the advance brigade of the 5th Army Corps, which we had seen in Montmort the day before. The previous day had been a rest day, and the troops were fresh and thoroughly in good condition and spirits. About six miles in front of Montmirail, at a village called Vieuxmaisons, we found the battalion quartering itself which constituted the vanguard. There was nothing beyond except a few cavalry outposts, and although it was ascertained that there were no French troops in the immediate front, there was reason to believe, the officer told us, that there were detached little parties rancorously scouring the country, who might be more awkward customers for people like ourselves to encounter than regular soldiery. His advice coincided with our own opinion that we had got to the end of our tether on this lower road. There would be a further advance next day, no doubt, but in the meantime Vieuxmaisons afforded nothing whatever calculated to sustain life, it having borne the brunt of a squadron of hussars on the previous night. The officers of the 58th, a fine Silesian regiment, made us heartily welcome to a share of their rations, but thought it advisable to regain the valley of the Marne. So with a hearty farewell to the good fellows of the Posener Regiment, we struck across the low sierras to Château Thierry, crossing as we did so the scene of the battle of Nesle and close to Château Thierry the battle-field of the same name, where Napoleon annihilated the remains of the corps of Sacken, which he had beaten previously at Montmirail; and on our arrival found that Von Tümpling’s head-quarters had come on into Château Thierry in the course of the afternoon. Château Thierry was taken and retaken several times, and three times sacked in the campaign of 1814, but had long lost the traces of its early misfortunes. On the occasion of the present visit of the Prussians there was no sack, and, indeed, very little scarcity. The people had for the most part stayed at home, and, disregarding the lies of the French newspapers as to the conduct of the German troops, had laid in goodly stores of eatables and drinkables, for which they found a ready market, at no doubt remunerative prices. A sagacious citizen told me he would not at all mind if the Prussians were to stop a month in the place, for they were far better customers than French soldiers, and most of the population seemed to be much of his mind. The officers chiefly frequented the Café du Midi, close to the Hôtel de l’Eléphant on the esplanade, and consumed their beer and coffee much as if they had been in the Fatherland. In this place I saw the first manifestation of a feeling of impotent insolence on the part of Frenchmen. As most readers are doubtless aware, it is the custom in Germany to bow to the company on entering a café, and to remain uncovered while the stay lasts. While the café was at its fullest two young Frenchmen of the town entered with some noise, and without any recognition of the company laid hold of cues and monopolised the only billiard-table. At first they were unobserved by the German officers, but their loud laughter and exclamations presently attracted attention. Each wore his cap cocked on his head, and they two were the only covered persons in the room. A German lieutenant quietly arose, and removing the cap of one of them made him a bow, quietly said, “Pardon, Monsieur,” hung the cap on a peg, and sat down. The young fellow looked as if he would fain be angry if he dared, but thought better of it, and went on with his game. His companion did not take the hint, but cocked his cap all the more defiantly, and I heard him whisper to his companion that he would not have stood the insult if offered to himself. A German officer sitting near me heard this too. He got up, walked solemnly to the Frenchman, took off his cap, chucked it out of the door, looked the Frenchman in the face for a minute, and then went back to his seat. The young fellow made a lame attempt to explain that he wore his cap because he had a cold, but nobody noticed him, and the pair went off, looking as impudent as they thought was safe.

On the 12th the head-quarters of the 6th Corps moved forward to the village of Nogent l’Artaud; but as several regiments had gone forward, we did so too, in hopes of being able to spend the night in La Ferté sous Jouarre. From Nogent the valley of the Marne is exceptionally beautiful and fertile. The villages are plentiful and full of good houses, lavishly decked with flowers, and every slope is covered with vineyards. At times the valley is so narrow that there is room only for the river and the road, and the railway has to betake itself into a tunnel; then it widens into a charming flat on which lies a pretty village. I do not think that I ever saw a more beautiful village, both externally and internally, than Charly, about two miles west of Nogent. Almost all the houses were villas, and they stood embowered among trees amid a wealth of flowers. The soldiers, of which the place was full, seemed imbued with the influence of its beauty, and respected its amenity as far as was possible. From Charly we went forward to Croutes, and then on to Luzancy, where we found the 51st Regiment quartered, and then we knew that there was no La Ferté for us that night. The 51st constitute the extreme infantry advance, and whenever one saw it one might be sure there is nothing further but a handful of horsemen. Luzancy, a very little place, was full to repletion. We returned, therefore, to Croutes, and found as much crowding there; so, instead of retracing our steps to Nogent, we crossed the Marne and made for the railway station of Nanteuil-Saacy, which we saw opposite with a couple of houses beside it. One of the houses was deserted and stripped. In the other we found a man and his wife, but the lady was doing her duty by her country in this its hour of need by adding a unit to its population. In these circumstances we took up our quarters in the waiting-room of the station, sleeping on the seats, and lighting our fire to boil our coffee-water with a basketful of used tickets. Next morning we came on to La Ferté in advance of head-quarters.

The white fog so characteristic of the Marne valley was still hanging over the pretty town of La Ferté, when, about half-past four in the morning of Wednesday the 14th, we drove over the quaint old bridge on our road forward to Meaux. All round lay the 6th Army Corps, the honest fellows still slumbering soundly in the semi-darkness. As we drove forward through the fog, there were but few signs of our having been preceded by any large body of men. As day broke, the soft roadsides showed tokens of having been trodden by cavalry, and the hoof-prints had not been beaten out, as they invariably were, when infantry men had come tramping after the horsemen. Seven miles beyond La Ferté, still in the thick fog, we reached the village of Trilport, about three miles from Meaux, and here were a few men of the 51st, and a slender guard in front of the Mairie. The sentry shouted something unintelligible as we passed him—it was not “Halt!” and so we did not care to pull up. But when we had traversed quite half the fine bridge which forms a continuation of the little town, a “Halt!” in loud and peremptory tones, came from a dim figure half obscured by the fog. It came again still sharper and louder as we continued to advance, our horse having a good deal of way on him. Then the figure stretched out an arm, and, snatching the bridle, sent the animal back on his haunches, shouting as he did so, “Donnerwetter! can’t you see the bridge is down?” Down it certainly was, and very near down were we, too, in the fog. The arch nearest Meaux, one of considerable span, had been utterly shattered by gunpowder, and the débris lay in the water, creating quite a tempestuous little rapid. As we were thanking and questioning the sentry, a gust of wind suddenly swept the fog away, and there became visible, two hundred yards or so up stream, the wreck of the fine railway bridge, all three arches of which had been blown up. Gaunt and grim stood the shattered arches in the sombre light of the morning, contrasting strangely in the sullen ruin of their appearance with the busy scene in the intervening space. The pioneers of the 6th Corps were just finishing a bridge which they had hastily improvised. A pontoon train was hourly expected, but meanwhile the pioneers with their axes had constructed a very creditable pile bridge. Now they were causewaying the approaches to the timber platform with grassy sods sliced from the bank. It was good to see the system and purpose with which everyone worked. An officer stood by formally to superintend operations, but he seldom needed to take the cigar from his mouth to utter an order. The division of labour principle was carried out to its fullest extent, and the result was speed, order, and efficiency. As a special favour, this gentleman permitted our carriage to cross before the bridge was quite finished, and in advance of a battery of artillery, the horses of which were champing their bits with impatience at the halt in the chill morning air.

The broken bridges on the Marne, at Trilport, were not the only obstacles which the French engineers had attempted to interpose between the Germans and Meaux. There was the tunnel at Nanteuil, a really serious impediment. Had all the French operations on this line been as thorough as this, the German advance would have been materially delayed. But in other cases the engineers must either have been consummately stupid or have built largely on a supposititious stupidity on the part of the Germans. When they destroyed the bridges in the direct line, they invariably left standing some convenient substitute capable of being utilised by the easy expedient of going a few hundred yards either right or left. Thus a mile beyond the Trilport ruin a bridge on the canal had also been destroyed. But a wily Uhlan had ridden down the towing-path till he came to a handy if rather narrow wooden structure, about half a mile to the left, and then come back on to the chaussée, and chalked on a convenient post the laconic but intelligible word “Links.” “Links” (left) we went accordingly, crossed the canal, and reached the outskirts of Meaux, where there was another bridge down. This time the direction was “Rechts,” and obedience to it soon brought us into the town, where there were nothing as yet but a regiment of hussars and a few sergeants that had come on in advance to take up quarters in the town and the neighbouring villages for the troops. In the course of the afternoon the greater part of the 6th Army Corps arrived in the neighbourhood of Meaux; comparatively few men, however, being quartered in the town itself, in anticipation of the accommodation requisite for Royal head-quarters, which were expected from Château Thierry next day. General von Tümpling had his head-quarters at Quincy Segy, a little village with a beautiful château, about six kilometres to the south of Meaux, but divided from it by a more serious obstacle than the trivial distance, in the shape of a destroyed bridge on a branch of the canal. A Jäger regiment formed the infantry foreposts in a line of villages, the centre of which was Claye, about five miles to the front; and the 8th and 9th Regiments of hussars were on patrol and vedette duty out to the front of the Jägers. They had pushed reconnaissances as near to Paris as the village of Gagny, close under Fort Nogent, and their report was that there was no French force outside the ring of forts. But there had been a few trifling skirmishes between detachments of French cavalry covering the engineers in their work of destruction, and the German patrols. Two or three German dragoons had been shot and a few French prisoners taken. And the 5th Army Corps’ advance guard lay around Coulommiers, considerably to the left rear. To the north, and also rather in the rear, was the bulk of the Maas army, but its cavalry were reported to have pushed patrols on the north-west, close up to Gonesse and Montmorency.

On the morning of the 16th, while riding out to the cavalry foreposts in company with a hussar officer, we suddenly came, on the great road in front of Claye, on a little posse of French lancers, following a civilian who carried a white flag. On the top of a little knoll the lancers halted, and then retreated, leaving the “parlementaire” to come forward alone. When he came within hail, it turned out that he was the Second Secretary of the British Legation in Paris, and the bearer of a communication from Lord Lyons to Count Bismarck. He got a mount from one of the hussars, who vacated his saddle for the purpose, and was escorted into the camp by a sergeant and a couple of men. Great interest was naturally excited among the German troops when the news spread of the advent of a “parlementaire.” A report had been current a couple of days before that the defence of Paris was abandoned, and although that had been contradicted, a wide-spread belief existed that the Parisians were not prepared when confronted with the actual realities of a siege, to let the matter go to extremities. The arrival of the English secretary was accepted as in support of this view, and everybody was anxious for the King and Bismarck to come on toward the front. The Royal head-quarters arrived early in the afternoon of the same day, and I learned, however, in the course of the evening, from a reliable source, that Mr. Malet was the bearer of a communication emanating, in the first instance, from Lord Granville, having for its object that proposal relative to mediation which led to the historical interviews at Ferrières, which Jules Favre terminated by futile gasconade.

Mr. Malet was courteous enough to give a few details regarding the condition of Paris, and the incidents of his journey from the capital to the German foreposts. He described Paris as being in a seething and excited condition, with divided councils, and a huge mass of pseudo-soldiery, the individual bravery of each individual component part of which might be unquestionable, but the general discipline of which was so loose and flaccid as almost to disentitle, in his opinion, the body of semi-armed men to the appellation of soldiers. He had spent a night on his road, and the Gardes Mobiles where he halted had made the cheerful suggestion that he should sleep “under the beautiful stars.” Mr. Malet, reserving the question whether he would have any objection to sleep “under the beautiful stars,” if they were visible, pointed out the fact that they were not, and requested other sleeping accommodation than that afforded by the earth as a mattress and the sky as a canopy. This he ultimately obtained, his escort sleeping in the adjoining shed. He saw evidences of the most flagrant disregard of discipline on the part of the troops lying outside the defences of Paris. The men coolly refused to get up and take their turn of duty on guard when ordered to do so by their officers, although, to judge from appearances, there would have been no hesitation had the order been to get up and go into action. It says not a little for Trochu that he could have constructed a measurably serviceable army out of materials so unpromising.

Mr. Malet returned towards Paris next morning, leaving in the same way as he had come, under an escort of German hussars. Those who knew the nature of the risk he ran felt considerable apprehension for his safety. In the course of the morning the French had fired upon two flags of truce, and it was just a chance if Mr. Malet should be recognized. However, he got among the defenders of Paris without detriment, and, as we afterwards learnt, reached the British Embassy—there was yet a British Embassy in Paris—in safety.