Chapter I: The Early Days

He must have lived in some very sequestered vale indeed who did not in some measure participate in the thrill of excitement which ran through Britain on that day, the 15th of July, 1870, on which the Duc de Grammont in his master’s name proclaimed that France had resolved to make war with Prussia. The general impression probably was, that there would be a pitched battle the same evening, and when day after day passed and no overt warfare was reported of a more serious character than the blowing-up of a bridge, the capture of a couple of douaniers, or the harmless exchange of shots between the hostile pickets and patrols on the frontier line, the intensity of the concentrated expectancy only grew keener because of the lurid hush that preceded the breaking of the storm. In these early days, while access was possible to the vicinity of the frontier line—on the German side at least—there was little of interest to attract anyone whose mission it was to contribute what he might toward feeding the popular appetite with what has come to be known ever since the Crimean times as “War Correspondence.” But there was no lack in Germany of more interesting work than competing with Reuter in the transmission of telegrams, or in gazing continuously across the boundary line through a field-glass on the chance of seeing a few brisk little men in red breeches popping out and in among the trees. One might see with his own eyes the working of that huge machine, on the elaboration of every cog and pinion of which Von Moltke and his subordinates had bestowed so much pains. The word had gone forth for the mobilisation of the German army a few days before I reached Cologne, on the 19th July. Already, before leaving London, I had noticed and wondered what a power and scope had this machine—the German military system—that it could bridge the Channel and sweep into its feeder with a suction-power not to be resisted, Germans long resident in Britain, and unthirled from the machine save by the astriction of patriotism. There was little need in these days of July to ask one’s way to the office of the North German Consul in the city. You knew you were coming to the Consulate before you got within sight of it. The pavements were thronged by Germans who monopolised the “crown of the causeway” with a stolid masterful good humour which was not to be gainsaid. You might have walked over the heads of the densely-packed mass of men who stood about wedged in, chatting, smoking, spitting, grumbling occasionally—not viciously—at the delay they experienced in getting their passports put in order. I should think at least three hundred Germans were in waiting for their passports when I procured my _visa_. Four-fifths of the men—for the most part stalwart, lissom young fellows—were starting to join the German army. There was no compulsion on them, save what we might call moral compulsion. They might have become naturalised Englishmen on their arrival among us, or at all events when they found themselves beginning to have a stake in the country. But Fatherland was their all-in-all. They had thrown up, not a few of them, positions of high trust and considerable emolument, that they might return to serve in its ranks as private soldiers. Nor was there any impulsive, thoughtless recklessness in the step. On the contrary, many of them regretted, in my hearing, that prospects so good should thus be thrown to the winds; but in this regret was not mingled a tinge of recalcitrancy. It seemed as if they had never so much as let the consciousness dawn upon them that it was possible to draw back. What they were doing was a simple matter of inevitable duty. And it appeared to me that it was in true consistency that there should have been but little display of enthusiasm. They seemed to know each that his neighbour was genuine, without bursting out into spasmodic professions of devotion and mutual exhortations savouring of “high-falutin.” Several policemen were among the number, and I was sorry to find—while the _employés_ of private persons had not only been treated liberally as regarded the present, but in many cases, on the part both of English and foreign houses, had been promised favourable consideration on their return to claim their hurriedly-vacated situations—that the public servants had been very scurvily dealt with. One policeman, who was a third-class constable, notwithstanding that he spoke four languages, and saved the force the cost of an interpreter, had been suspended summarily immediately on his intimating that duty to his native country compelled him to quit the police; had been deprived of his uniform without a moment’s warning, and in a contumelious manner; had been refused any testimonial as to character, and finally was about to leave England, leaving behind a week’s wages which were owing to him, and payment of which was withheld. It was not a time favourable for the voyaging of the migratory Britons, who are wont to crowd the Channel boats in the later summer months. Such of our countrymen as were to be found on foreign shores were for the most part hurriedly betaking themselves to their insular fatherland to be out of harm’s way and the evil days that were dreaded; and if perchance you encountered a few with their faces turned the other way, those faces were set and anxious, for their owners were hurrying to bring home children or relatives from school or residence in some German town—peaceable enough still, but ere long, it might be, to be the scene of a battle and the victim of a hostile occupation. But the Ostend boats, for a few weeks at all events in the beginning of the war, did not miss the suspension of the tourist exodus. There was hardly standing room on their decks, thronged as they were by Germans crowding home to swell the great national army. The night I crossed I had a talk with two men who had come all the way home from New York for this purpose, having started as soon as the first tidings of a probable rupture crossed the Atlantic, and they assured me that they would be speedily followed by vast numbers. What an extraordinary compound were they of Germano-Yankee financial ’cuteness and pure single-hearted patriotic zeal! Long and regretfully did they discourse about the ill-effects of the war-panic; how this security went down seven per cent., and that ten. But their quiet, contented conclusion was, “Never mind, Germany will conquer, and what for that is the money?” No German seemed to doubt that Germany would ultimately conquer; but there were few who had not made up their minds to lose a battle or two at the outset, and that for sure the opening scene at least of the stupendous drama would be played within the borders of their native land. How the world halted between two opinions till Wörth and Spicheren gave data not to be resisted, seems strange and half unreal now when we have so long stood in the full light of after-experience.

When I reached Cologne on the 19th July, working parties had already begun to fell the trees on the ramparts and to face up the scarps of the outlying forts. A state of siege had been formally declared, so that the place might be got in trim for an actual siege if the fortune of war and the traditional dash of the French should bring the crest of the wave to lap against the hoary fortifications of the ancient Rhineland city. And then, too, not in the city alone, but in every village and parish throughout the length and breadth of the land, the great mobilisation machine—Gneisenau’s patent, with improvements by Von Moltke—was in full swing. How this machine does its work it is not easy to realise, unless one has actually watched its operation. To do this I halted for a few days, taking Cologne as headquarters, and made daily excursions into the neighbouring country where the mobilisation machine was in operation. What I saw left me divided between admiration of its quiet regularity and its surprising efficiency; and a feeling of sadness which no man with any feeling could escape. While the Uhlan patrols and the Chasseurs-à-cheval are looking at each other across the frontier, a short description of the working of the mobilisation machine may not be uninteresting.

It is unnecessary to waste space in describing in detail the Prussian military system, now adopted by all the German States. If there are those among my readers who are not, by this time, familiar with these details, it may be taken as pretty certain that such would obdurately skip a paragraph furnishing them now. All that seems necessary is to point out that there are three strata of fighting men in Germany—the regular army, the “reserve,” and the landwehr. It is a mistake into which many fall, and among others the _Times_ in a leading article in the earlier days of the campaign, that the reserve is “in the rear of the regular army.” This is not the case. The war strength of a regiment is just double its peace strength, and the increment consists of the reserve. The blending of the two in time of war is thorough and complete. The medalled men of 1866, and of the Sleswig-Holstein campaigns, called up from reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers who are serving their first period of three years. Bayonet for bayonet, the old and the young soldiers balance each other, and the amalgamation is perfect between dash and steadiness—between whatever recklessness there may be in the bravery of youth, and the staid valour of maturer years. It is an utter mistake to think of the Prussian army or the Prussian reserves, as a militia similar to our highly estimable but rather weak-kneed “constitutional force.” The British militiaman has, in very few instances, been a soldier otherwise than in the militia. He is quite a militia veteran, if he has gone through his month’s drill once a year for four or five years, and he is not liable to serve abroad. The Prussian reserve man, in whatever stratum he may be, can point backward to three full years spent in active soldiering with the colours of his regiment. He has his drill every year, like our respected militiaman, but he is liable for foreign service, and that, too, even after he is out of the “reserve,” and in the ranks of the landwehr.

The mobilisation machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of which are the head-quarters of the army corps recruited from that district. Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilisation to the towns, the villages, and the quiet country parishes. The authorities there make out individual summonses, appointing day and place for the gathering, and these are left at the “respective places of abode” of the reserve men. Max has married, and children have begun to toddle around his modest table. He is in the midst of his harvest, and Gretchen is daily expected to add to the population of the Fatherland. Carl is to be married next week; he has bought his humble plenishing, and the priest or the minister has been spoken to. Hans is just entering into partnership; he has built new premises, and his presence may be essential to make the spoon—his absence will spoil the horn. Heinrich is on the eve of emigrating. His traps are bought, and his ticket is paid for. But the burgomaster’s clerk, or the orderly corporal, comes round one pleasant summer evening, and serves on one and all a certain bit of paper. Max, when he reads it, growls “Donner wetter,” and actually lets his pipe out in the dismal pause that follows its perusal. Carl walks off with it to his sweetheart, and there is a blubbering match. But when the appointed day arrives, Max and all the rest of them come to the front—genuine children of the Fatherland. Max leaves the harvest _in statu quo_, kisses his Gretchen, and wishes her well through her trouble, slobbers the bairns, and strides off to the muster—the wallet on his shoulder, into which Gretchen has crammed a couple of shirts, a lump of _schwartz brod_, a few slices of _schinken_, and a coil of fearfully and wonderfully made sausages—a little unaccustomed water in his eye, and a queer lump in his bare brown throat. Carl puts off his wedding indefinitely, and war becomes his mistress, _vice_ the other _fräulein_, superseded for the time being. Heinrich postpones expatriation, perhaps to enrich the soil of France with certain phosphates, the product of the decomposition of bones. Hans leaves the new business and partner (an “exempt” let one hope) to take their course; he for the time has other fish to fry. The contingent of the village, duly called over and found complete, is sent off towards head-quarters. By the way it meets other contingents, till finally, as the rendezvous is reached, the several contingents make quite a procession in traversing the streets. Now, it can be recognised what a pure democracy, in a social sense, is the Prussian army. In the same file walk the labouring man and his master’s son, the farmer’s boy and the banker’s clerk. And if you follow them till they have got their uniform, it is likely enough that you will find the labouring man, who already has his medals on his breast, wearing the gold stripes round his throat, and the petty centurion over his quondam superior, to whom he sayeth, “Do this,” and he doeth it.

One is able also to recognise in this procession the genuine military experience of Prussia. Many of its members look louts—they drag their legs as if they had never been an hour at the goose step, and their shoulders are as round as if they had never learned the meaning of suppling motions. One of our smart sergeants of Charles Street would emphatically d——n the lot all round as “heart-breaks.” But the heart-breaks have seen and done what, in all probability, the recruiting-sergeant has only a very faint conception of. They have seen and shared in the shock of battle—they are veterans. Two-thirds of the number wear the war-medals of former campaigns. Max was at the storming of the Dannewerk; Heinrich plied the needle-gun at Königgratz. Let us follow the party to the arsenal. On the road there is not a drunken man to be seen, and there is no need of carts or ambulances to carry the weary and footsore, for there are none such. “Falling out” is a trick that the Prussian reserve men do not seem to have learned. At the arsenal they get their uniforms, and on the peg whence each military suit is taken, is hung up the civilian raiment, there to await its owner on the return of peace. If the unclaimed personal flotsam and jetsam is a perquisite of King Wilhelm, the worthy old-clo’ men of the Juden Strasse have had a fine harvest of it. For Gretchen may have been a widow before her baby was out of long clothes, and the priest may have never been called upon to marry Carl. The serving-out process is admirably systematic, betokening a state of active preparation highly creditable to the quartermaster’s department. However, it takes the best part of a day ere the clodhopper of the morning is fully transformed into the soldier. And what a transformation is that effected by a spiked helmet, pair of breeches, and boots! The man is a different being now. The slouch has gone from his shoulders, his chest is thrown forward, his legs straightened, his chin “well off the stock” (in military phrase), his step brisk, and his carriage altogether soldierlike. The associations of the uniform have done it all. And now, as these newly re-made soldiers crowd the streets, one can gauge their military physique with some precision. They are not trim, dapper men. The regimental tailor of a British crack regiment would have been in despair over the gaunt, long-thighed, big-jointed, thin-flanked fellows, all corners and muscle. But it is clear they are as tough as whip-cord, and strong, lasting, useful soldiers. Their sobriety and docility are simply astonishing. They go about the business of the hour as if they were working for their own hand; and now, in the evening, although the town is swarming with soldiers, it is as quiet as if there were not a man beyond the ordinary garrison. No piquets promenade the thoroughfares to pick drunken men out of the gutter, or to apprehend rioters; the barrack-gates are not infested by hordes of soldiers’ women, and are not the theatres of scenes calculated to make decent people shun the vicinity. All is orderly, decent, and reputable.

We have an impression among us—and I confess I shared it—that he makes the best soldier who is the most of an _enfant perdu_. Cut your soldier off from all civil associations—no matter if from all associations of civilisation as well—make the army his trade, the barrack-room his home, and alternate the canteen with the low public-house as his chosen haunt. Let every douce civilian body wag his head in a half-kindly, half-chiding way over the soldier, regard him as more or less God-forgotten, yet still a fine fellow in his way, and capital food for powder. Let the soldier accept this view of himself, drink his pay, wax his moustache, wink at the girls, and swagger about the world in peace time—and in war? Of course your reckless scapegrace, without a tie in the world, who carries his life in his hand, is just the man to make a dashing charge, to cover himself with glory, to start the bells a-ringing and the park guns a-firing, and—to drink himself to death with the multitudinous pots which a temporarily proud and grateful civilian population press upon his acceptance.

Why? Wherefore should a man fight any better because he is a disreputable scapegrace? You talk of a stake in the country having a tendency to stimulate patriotism in civil life. Why should the same cause not have the same effect in military? Whether do the “tears fall and blind” the soldier most, when the band strikes up “The girl I leave behind me,” if she be an honest woman, a true wife, and the mother of his children, or some dirty garrison trull hardly troubling to see him off in her anxiety to make the acquaintance of his successor? In most of the printsellers’ windows in London is an engraving representing a farewell between an officer and his wife, as he quits for foreign service. I often appreciated the true sentiment of Millais’ picture, yet never more so than during those early days when the mobilisation mill was grinding. The husband, leaning from a carriage window, stretches forth his hand, which the wife clasps in both of hers, gazing into his face in a speechless yearning agony of parting. I witnessed the scene, with variations, dozens of times in town and country Rhineland. Now it was a sun-burnt woman with tanned cheeks, and deeper tanned hands, grim, thin-cheeked, and angular-featured, who gripped the hand of a slightly greasy, equally brown man, in a blue slop, and boots suggestive of small boats. But the look out of the eyes was the same as in the picture; and the hussar officer had no fuller heart as the bell rang and the train started, than had the greasy _landmann_ as he turned away with the broken muttered “Goot behüte Dich,” and pulled his cap over his eyes for a spell before he re-lit his pipe. Did the _landmann_ fight any the worse, think you, because he had left behind him in the village the sunburnt _frau_ and their young ones, than would your dashing devil-may-care, who goes jauntily away to the war with a laugh and a jeer? I venture, for my part, to think not.

After a run to Frankfort-on-the-Main in connection with the great “legitimation” question, I set my face at length, on the 24th July, towards the frontier. France was still unaccountably holding her hand, and every day Germany was breathing the freer, as the high-pressure mobilisation machine rapidly and efficiently overtook its work. Even pessimists dared to hope that the Turcos might not, after all, be quartered on them the day after but one; and the confidence was steadily gaining ground that the army to inaugurate invasion would consist not of Gauls but of Teutons. Men came to realise with flashing eyes and speech unwontedly excited, how the lean, silent man, in his bureau in Berlin, was fulfilling the engagement, which not a few thought an impossible boast unworthy of Von Moltke.

The 24th of July was among the last of the days for ordinary traffic on the Rhine Valley Railways, till the hosts had done passing on their way to battle. Mayence was quite on a war footing. Bingerbruck—the terminus of the line which quits the Rhenish system and runs up the Nahe, towards Saarbrück, was totally blocked for civilian passengers and given over to the transport of troops and munitions of war. With a permission from General Von Göben, commanding the 8th Army Corps, I found no difficulty in travelling by the military trains, and capital fun it was. I went up the Nahe in a long Noah’s ark style of railway waggon, in one corner of which I found sitting room on my knapsack; and my fellow-passengers were thirty-nine men of one of the regiments of the Prussian Guard. Better fellows there could not be—all civil, jolly, and well bred. The sergeant of the squad was a medical student, who had temporarily given up learning how to cure, to betake himself to the practice of the art of killing, and several of his comrades were the sons of merchants. As the train jogged along at a very slow pace, for it had sixty carriages, and contained about two thousand men, the soldiers were vehemently cheered by the crowds collected at every station and every wayside village. Of course they cheered back again, the bugler or the drummer giving vent to his patriotic emotions on his instrument; while occasionally the spirit moved a grave young man—who looked as if he were doing chronic battle with a huge brazen serpent, but who was merely a trombonist or ophecleidist—to send a stave gurgling and throbbing through the many involutions of his fearful and wonderful instrument, that emerged at length from the big end in a deafening roar. We exchanged cigars. My soldier friends proffered me brown biscuits harder than the nether millstone, and seemed seriously hurt when I could not make an impression on them. Water-bottles, containing something that was not water, went the round; then came a song, something, of course, about the “Vaterland,” and so we moved on merrily. Those water-bottles served out to the Prussian troops are very different to the horrible wooden tubs, with the inevitable leak, which British soldiers are condemned to carry, cursing them as they go. They are flat glass flasks, securely covered with stiff leather, and have a screw stopper. No fall will break them; they are cooler than wood, and they lie conveniently on the side opposite the sword. It was at Kreuznach where we had the earliest opportunity of recognising a fact with which all the world is now familiar, the extraordinary marching power of the German troops. A battalion marched in during the evening, after a fifteen miles’ tramp in heavy marching order, under an intensely hot sun, and the men wearing new boots. Powdered thick, as the sturdy square-built fellows were, it was plain they were good, if need were, for another fifteen miles. I saw a battalion in complete marching order come into Bingen the night before. It had marched about ten miles, and was, of course, powdered white with dust. The pace at which the battalion passed could have been but little short of four miles an hour. The men marched four abreast, with considerable intervals between the files, so that the air circulated freely. But there was no straggling all over the road; a single word of command would have sufficed to bring the battalion into regularity of formation; and, notwithstanding the length of the march, and the rate at which the ground was covered, only one man had been compelled to fall out.

I suppose it is pretty well appreciated by this time everywhere, how much this remarkable power of the Germans to march long distances quickly, and that for consecutive days, helped to win for them their victories. Yet, without having personally witnessed their endurance displayed, often under unfavourable conditions, it is difficult for one to believe in the possibility of the accomplishment of perfectly well authenticated feats. I have known men march thirty English miles a day for three consecutive days. It must be remembered, too, that when the day’s march was over the troops had to do their fire-lighting and cooking, and, indeed, had occasionally to go some distance for the food to cook. Nor must it be forgotten that the German troops on the march almost invariably bivouac in the open. They carry no tents—an excellent arrangement in fine summer weather, when it is a positive pleasure to sleep “under the beautiful stars,” but one that is very trying when the weather is broken and inclement. They carry burdens on the march much heavier than the kit of our English soldiers, and in the burning dog-days they plodded sturdily forward all day long, yet I only heard of a few cases of sunstroke. I attribute this exemption to the comparative sobriety of the German soldiery. It was not long ago—nor is the case an isolated one—that a loud clamour was raised in England because a regiment had been marched some distance in the sun with the result of several sunstrokes, one of which was fatal. Those who cried shame over the trifling Kingston march should have seen the Germans striding steadily forward, the thermometer at eighty or eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty rounds of ammunition, huge greatcoat, camp kettle, sword (a useless encumbrance), spade, water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends dangling about them, with perhaps a loaf, like a curling stone, under the arm, and without the remotest symptom of sunstroke. But then they had not been drunk with bad beer or worse spirits the night before, and it is this over-night intoxication to which, I think, inquiry would demonstrate that cases of sunstroke on the march are mostly attributable. So steady and unfluctuating are the marching pace and endurance of the German troops, that it must be a miscalculation on his own part if a leader is out in a reckoning having these conditions for its basis. The generals know what the men can do, and feel assured that they will do it; and this confidence enables them to devise strategical combinations in the full conviction, which is never falsified, that the troops will turn up at the appointed place true to time, and ready, too, for fighting, no matter how long and severe the road has been.

A day or two before our _Militär-zug_ got to Kreuznach there had been a panic in that mildest of all German watering places, and the visitors had quitted hotels and lodging-houses with as much precipitation as if the town had been warned that the fate of Gomorrah was to overtake it next day. Princesses—German—thankfully accepted places—not seats—in coal waggons; and duchesses—German also—prayed to be allowed to squeeze into the goods vans. But I met one sturdy Briton who, although his wife and children were with him, valiantly refused to quit. He had lived three years and more among the Germans, and from his experience of them was thoroughly convinced that Kreuznach was not to be violated by a French foot; so he was living on here contentedly, with all the healing waters in the baths to himself.

The Kreuznach arrangements for the comfort of the troops _in transitu_ may be taken as an example of that which was in force during this period at every considerable railway station in Germany. The magistrates and leading citizens had formed themselves into a committee, and they and other townsmen provided as much good bread and meat and as much wholesome Rhine wine as the soldiers could conveniently stow away. As each train came up, the wine, mixed with water, went round in pails, the solid viands on huge trays. When a regiment halted long enough, it was marched into a large shed and liberally regaled.

Our _Militär-zug_ stuck fast at Kreuznach on the morning of the 25th July, and nobody in authority seemed to have the faintest idea when it or another train would proceed in the Saarbrück direction. When the evening came, and with it continued haziness on the part of the officials, I came to the resolution of walking to Kaiserslautern, a town on the Palatinate Railway, about midway between the Rhine at Speyer and Saarbrück, in the expectation of finding trains still running on the line between it and the latter place. Before I quitted Kreuznach three battalions of infantry and one regiment of cavalry had arrived by train, and commenced the march up the Nahe Valley by the road, taking billets for the first night, some in Kreuznach, others in the villages up the valley. The infantry battalions were composed of men of splendid physique, as became the “Queens Guards;” the cavalry, which were dragoons, impressed me less favourably. It was surprising to find train after train discharging its contents at Kreuznach, instead of proceeding to a point much nearer the frontier; but the explanation indicated great sagacity. The infantry battalions comprised a large number of newly-mobilised men. A march was necessary to season these, and in fact the whole body, and to make the new boots fit easily and comfortably. A constant stream of troops was thus to continue pouring up the roads of the Nahe Valley; their concentration was easy at any given point: and, if need were, supports could have been expeditiously brought up the railway to unite with them. A very large army might in this way have been massed at any point on the slope of the Saar water-shed, looking towards France, or on or inside the frontier itself, with a punctuality and precision impossible were the railway only to be resorted to. It may be mentioned that while this Nahe Valley itself is rugged and precipitous in the extreme, its right and left banks—the former looking towards Mayence, the latter towards Coblentz—form rather broad plateaus of favourable configuration for the march of troops, although obstructed and narrowed in places by forests. The railway runs almost in the river bed, and between Kirn and St. Wendel bores no fewer than twelve tunnels through the rocks. Preparations were in progress for facilitating the blowing up of these tunnels, it case it should have become necessary to make the railway useless.

All night long I trudged along the country roads in the direction of Kaiserslautern. After ten o’clock not a soul was to be seen, and I doubtfully held on the road, guided by the compass and by an occasional friendly finger-post. The road is fringed by frequent villages, but whether they were occupied by soldiers or not it was impossible to tell. As I progressed in the early morning, and presently approached Rockenhausen—a small town—rather more than half-way to Kaiserslautern—I found the country being gradually more and more densely billeted. At Rockenhausen my pedestrian powers gave out, and I had to drive for the remainder of the journey, the troops becoming more plentiful as I proceeded, till at Kaiserslautern it seemed as if I had reached the head-quarters of a considerable army. There I found the railway, and a train which conveyed me first to Neunkirchen, where the Nahe Railway was rejoined, and thence down into Saarbrück. At Neunkirchen first became visible the earnest of actual warfare, in the shape of the well-known white flag with the red cross floating over occasional buildings along the line; but not a single soldier, far less an enemy, was to be seen. The children played merrily in the smiling villages as if the millennium had arrived; the smoke poured from the chimneys of the factories, and from the pit-heads on the grimy embankments the output of coal and iron was progressing as if France and Germany had sworn indissoluble brotherhood. When we reached Saarbrück we found the station crowded with nonchalant civilians, male and female. The streets wore the most everyday aspect; the shops were open, the working folks were strolling in from the townlands, and the young ladies daintily promenaded, exciting a flutter among the trim subalterns. A sentry on the door of the hotel inhabited by the military commandant, a little piquet of Uhlan lancers in a corner of the market-place, and the eloquent white flags constituted the few tokens of war visible.

Although the early operations of which Saarbrück formed the centre have been snuffed out by the stupendous fighting to which they were merely the overture, yet they ought not to be without some little interest, if the analogy be followed that people are found listening to the overture without impatience. This summer, doubtless, the quiet frontier town will be swarming with visitors, and with such the use of their eyes will supersede topographical description. But _non contigit cuique adire Corinthum_—everybody will not go to Saarbrück, and a few lines about the localities will scarcely be greatly out of place. The railway line traversing Saarbrück, crossing the frontier beyond it at right angles, and stretching away to Forbach, and thence to Metz and the heart of France, emerges in a south-westerly direction, out of a range of wooded knolls that bound the Saarbrück plain on the north-east. These knolls, becoming quite a chain farther to the south, have as their backbone the Bavarian frontier, which runs almost parallel with the Saar Valley nearly as far as Saarguemines, about ten miles to the south-east of Saarbrück, at the point at which converge the Prussian, Bavarian, and French frontiers. In the centre of the valley into which the railway line runs down from these heights stands Saarbrück, a well-built, clean, and business-like town, penetrated by the river Saar, which is crossed by three bridges, of which one is the railway bridge. The portion of the town north of the Saar is called St. Johann, that to the south is Saarbrück proper. Each of the bridges connecting these two had its thoroughfare, at the time of which I write, partially obstructed by casks filled with stones, while other casks stood in readiness to block the remainder of the passage. Traversing Saarbrück, the Forbach road encounters westward a very abrupt rise, up which it winds with twists and cuttings, and finally has a somewhat deep cutting through the crest and crown of the ridge. The ground on the face of this slope is very much broken, and, with the town and the bridge at its foot, is calculated materially to dismember an army that might be forced backward off the plateau of which it forms the margin towards Saarbrück. Emerging on this plateau, we find it falling with a very gradual slope down into a valley that lies parallel to the ridge, bounded on the further side, both to the right and left, by densely-wooded rising ground. From the centre of this valley there runs up at right angles another valley, in the throat of which, and directly opposite the centre of the ridge above Saarbrück, lies the French town of Forbach, at a distance of five miles. This valley is bounded on its left, as one looks from Saarbrück, by an abruptly-rising series of heights, crowned with a table-land. Those heights project boldly into the first-named valley, almost in the form of a natural bastion, gliding gradually away further on the left into the lower wooded slopes. These heights, with their bluff bastion-like termination, form the famous “Spicheren-Berg.” Across the débouchement of the transverse valley into the parallel valley runs the imaginary frontier line; traversing on one side the wooded rising grounds at Schönecken, on the other the Spicheren-Berg, crossing the railway, and going first north-west and then due west to the right, while on the left it trends away in a south-easterly direction till it strikes the Saar, which continues the boundary till the projecting frontier point near Saarguemines.

All along this imaginary line, the hostile piquets and videttes confronted each other. As one stood on the Forbach road, looking up the transverse valley toward Forbach, he saw below him a Prussian piquet of Uhlans and infantry, and on the little knolls in advance, the videttes circling singly, their lance-pennons fluttering in the wind. Several hundred yards further away, by the side of the Forbach road, was a big block-house, which served the French as a piquet-house. Outside this the Frenchmen were to be seen sitting or lounging about in considerable numbers. In their front was the chain of their videttes. All along the frontier line to the right and left of this point, there ran this arrangement of videttes and piquets. The French Chasseurs had a camp of about fifty tents some distance to the right of the Forbach road, and occupied the wood behind it, seemingly in some force. Towards Saarguemines, French and Prussian soldiers confronted each other in larger bodies; but in this important part of the frontier, where Prussia and Bavaria are, as it were, projected some distance into France, they kept at a rather more respectful distance from each other. In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves on the Spicheren-Berg, and no shattered men lying in the Lazarettes, or littering the platform of the railway station in the blood-stained stretchers, the piquets and videttes formed quite the diversion of the Saarbrück people. After work was over, the labouring people used regularly to take a stroll up the heights, to watch the dropping fire, which was lazily maintained, fain to see a German marksman prove his skill by hitting a Frenchman. Both sides were very cautious, and few casualties took place. As yet the Saarbrück hospital contained but two wounded Germans, both linesmen of the Hohenzollern regiment. The French were reputed to be in force at Forbach, as many as 15,000 men. Saarbrück was, however, in no trepidation, and kept a good face up with its little garrison of one battalion of the 40th infantry (the Hohenzollern regiment) and the 7th (or Rhineland) Uhlan regiment. Now and then a German and a Frenchman appeared to lose their temper, and blazed away at each other as fast as they could load. As regards aim, there was nothing to boast of on either side.

A plucky little cavalry expedition, which had the crowning merit of being successful, occurred opportunely enough to furnish the Saarbrückians with fresh gossip-matter, and the little garrison with encouragement. About the 20th July, a detachment of thirty Rhineland Uhlans left Saarbrück, under the command of Lieutenant von Voight, charged with the duty of destroying a viaduct on the railway line which connects Metz with Saarguemines, Bitche, Hagenau, and Strassburg. A single glance at the map will show the reader the great use of this line to the French. Branching off from the Forbach-Metz railway, near Cocheren, a little place a few miles inside the frontier, it skirts the frontier throughout its whole length, and admitted of the speedy transport of supports all along it. To interrupt the communication thus afforded, was manifestly of immense importance to the Germans, and the point selected was a viaduct of considerable height, a little on the Saarguemines side of Bitche. The little band proceeded first inland to Neunkirchen, where the services were enlisted of a body of miners from the ironworks and collieries there, men experienced in the conducting of blasting operations, and ready to face danger for the sake of Germany. Those were mounted on led horses, and the detachment proceeded to Zweibrucken, whence the frontier was reached at a point almost due south. It was found that the French were on the frontier line in considerable force, sufficient to frustrate efforts made to get at the bridge on two successive nights. To cut the line of outposts would have been easy, but the aim was not to do so, but to blow up the viaduct, and to effect this it became obvious that a flank movement of rapidity would have to be executed. A few riding-lessons were given to the mining engineers, to enable them to sit the troop horses at a gallop; and then, on the night between the 24th and 25th, the frontier was crossed, without molestation, at a secluded point to the right of where the French were on the outlook. A gallop of about seven miles brought the party to the bridge. The engineers went to work at once, the Uhlans covering the working party on both sides. In a very short time the viaduct blew up with a grand explosion, and the French, then for the first time becoming aware of how they had been circumvented, hurried from the frontier inland to the spot. The Uhlans kept them at bay till the artificers had completed the work of destruction. A large quantity of material, both warlike and commercial, was destroyed, the engineers remounted, and the party galloped back, reaching German soil without a single casualty. The Uhlans met with an enthusiastic reception, when they rode back into Saarbrück after their little exploit.

As yet the evil days were not, and it was not easy to realise the wrath to come, as one sat by the table d’hôte, in the sunshiny Rheinischer Hof, clinking glasses with those right pleasant comrades, the officers of the Hohenzollern battalion. Over the good Rhine wine, the projected undertakings of the patrols were freely discussed, and there existed for a few of us a standing eligibility for the reception of stray French bullets, in return for the trifling inconvenience of getting up in the small hours, and accompanying the patrol of the morning. The narrative of one of those expeditions—it was made, if my notes are correct, on the 28th of July—will suffice as a sample. In the grey dawn, a small party of the 40th, consisting of twelve men and two under-officers, started from the barracks, to reconnoitre the frontier line; and this party I accompanied. It was about four in the morning that we reached the top of the rising ground outside Saarbrück, of which I have had occasion to speak so often. Everything seemed quiet in the valley below, and we went onward to the right front, in the direction of a little house that is very close to the frontier line. We found it unoccupied, save by an old woman, who dwelt in it contentedly while the bullets were hourly whistling over her roof. She told us with a yawn that all was quiet, and we went forward again, inclining to the right to gain the cover of the edge of a wood that occupies a rising ground, over the summit of which goes the frontier line. Skirting this wood for some distance, we had crossed the frontier, and were in French territory, still without seeing anything in the shape of French troops. Suddenly there came a piff-paff of smoke from behind a tree, a little way up the knoll, less than one hundred yards to our right. There was but one shot, but the cover was so dense that, for all we could tell, the wood might be alive with Frenchmen; so we discreetly slanted away to the left, crossing an interval of open ground near the railway line, and then striking into a wood which occupies an isolated knoll that rises out of the valley. The trees in this wood are much less close than in the other, and we thought that if any Frenchmen were in it, we could hardly fail to see them. The aim of the reconnoitring party was to get to its left edge, as far forward as possible, so as to be parallel with the French vidette, and to have the opportunity of investigating, at as short distance as possible, the dispositions of the French in the neighbourhood of their piquet-house on the Forbach road. We had got about half through the wood when we heard a wild screech directly in our rear, and between us and home. Turning round I saw about twenty red-breeched French soldiers dancing about excitedly, and alternating gesticulations with the discharge of their rifles. They were within a short eighty yards of us, and, if they could have shot straight, had as easy a mark as might be. They had to all appearance been lining the edge of the wood where it fronted Saarbrück, and we had unwittingly turned their flank. If they could only have kept down their excitement, and held their tongues, they might literally have stalked us from behind, for we had not the remotest suspicion that there was anything in our rear, and the party was concentrating its attention on its front. The coolness of the under-officer who commanded the little party was inimitable. He was smoking his morning pipe, and never troubled to take it out of his mouth. He grunted an order or two, which brought us out of the wood on to the plain on its left, across which we struck steadily, slanting inward toward our outpost on the Forbach road. The Frenchmen continued to fire after us for some time, and managed to hit one of the men on his pouch. Had the shot taken effect, it would have penetrated the wrong way for honour, but the ball was a spent one. We ultimately got back to breakfast all right, the under-officer’s pipe still in full blast.

On the same day, when the one o’clock _table d’hôte_ was in progress, a report was brought in that the French were moving cannon over the brow of the Spicheren-Berg, on to a little table-land about half-way down the slope. Of this little plateau they were very fond, having continually their sharpshooters posted all round it. On the previous evening, a French general had reconnoitred from it the German slope of the valley, and, as reported by a countryman, had put a number of questions to the rustics, as to the position of Saarbrück, and the strength of the force occupying it. Immediately the drummers paraded the town, beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied each of the bridges, the cavalry sent a detachment on to the height, while the rest remained standing to their horses in the Central Platz, and a third company of the Hohenzollerns marched up the hill, and took up a position of watchfulness just behind its crest. On the summit, besides the Uhlans, there was a considerable collection of civilians, eagerly watching the disposition of the cannon on the plateau. Crowds ever have a tendency to draw fire, so I gave this one a wide berth, and sat down some distance aside, on a spot whence a view of the whole front was commanded. There were six field-pieces in all, which seemed to be drawn by infantry men into position. What the object was did not seem very apparent. It might be, I thought, that under the diversion of a cannonade on the left, an attempt might be made to steal round on the right, and get into Saarbrück by a _coup de main_, or, again, to ascertain the range might have been all that was intended.

Presently there came a thunder plump, which sent the civilians crowding inside a little beer-house called “The Belle Vue,” that stands on the brow of the hill, just off the road. Almost immediately I saw a puff of smoke come from the mouth of one of the cannon, and a shell struck on the road close by the beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a stampede on the part of the civilians out of the beer-house, and they scuttled vigorously under cover over the hill. They were only just in time. Indeed the house was by no means empty when another shell, ricocheting off the road, struck its front, went through the wall as if it had been paper, and burst inside, blowing out the windows and part of the roof. Another followed, also striking the front, but it did not burst. Three more shots were fired, one of which wrecked an outhouse behind the beer-house, and then the French gave over firing, and withdrew their cannon from the plateau backwards out of sight. When the artillery had been withdrawn I entered the beer-house, which already had been re-occupied by its inhabitants. The women-folk stood weeping and bewailing the mischief. A more complete wreck, indeed, I never saw. Two rooms had been blown into one, the bar knocked into little pieces, the table, at which I had drunk a glass of seltzer-water a couple of hours before, split up into tinder, and a great gap torn in the floor, exposing the cellarage, where there had evidently been a smash royal among the bottles. The French practice was by no means bad. Three shots out of six struck the house. It was shut up, and there was no more cool seltzer-water after a hot walk on the hill.

The incident of the afternoon stimulated the videttes with unwonted alertness, and they blazed away at each other till it was nearly quite dark. One of the last shots fired killed an Uhlan who was making the patrol. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and must have died instantaneously. I was on the height when the infantry men carried in the corpse on a stretcher improvised of their guns. The drops of blood pit-patted on the road as they carried him past me, his cloak thrown over his limbs. But his face was bare, and I knew the man at once. I had given him a cigar in the afternoon as I met him on the Forbach road going out on vidette. Quite a lad he was, with the down hardly grown on his cheek, and likely enough a mother might have been thinking of him to-night, little knowing that he was lying stark and cold, waiting for a grave.

In the sunshiny bloodless days of the end of July, spy-hunting was another great diversion to idle men. Not that the German patrols thought or looked upon it by any means in the light of an amusement; on the contrary, they regarded it as a very serious and responsible occupation indeed, and, not having as yet got the gauge of the French _fainéance_ in this important department of military operations, gave open ear to all the stories about suspicious persons having been seen which were retailed to them by wiseacres. On the forenoon of the 30th of July I witnessed with great amusement one of these expeditions. To a sergeant in command of a detachment came a young civilian in a light coat, who had seen a person, looking very like a Frenchman, prowling about away to the right of the German advanced centre. Sergeant, on receiving the information, solemnly draws his sword, and then betakes himself to consideration. Having finished his cogitation, he takes his pipe out of his mouth and orders out a party of four Fusiliers. The squad start at a brisk walk, headed by the sergeant, who brings his sword down to the “right engage” as he proceeds. Getting excited, he begins to run, and his men run after him. The civilian in the white coat accompanies the sergeant. An eminence is reached commanding rather an extensive view. Nobody is to be seen. Sergeant turns on to civilian resentfully, reproaches him for being the communicant of a canard, sheathes his sword, re-lights his pipe, and commences a return with his party at his heels. The civilian, whose _amour propre_ is wounded, suddenly detects a crouching individual in the foreground, and there is triumph in the tone in which he calls the sergeant back. Sergeant wheels about, pouches his pipe, draws his sword, and then looks in the direction indicated. Having marked his prey, he with his party starts off at top speed down the hill, and captures the crouching individual, who finds himself between a file of men, with the sergeant’s sword in the immediate foreground, before he can collect his senses. When he has accomplished this, crouching individual explains with some indignation—its vent impeded by the necessity for keeping his pipe alight—that he has been specially commissioned by the German Commandant to watch the French, and, if possible, to get among them. The sergeant, in fact, has apprehended his own spy. Sergeant seems inclined to look foolish, and of course gets angry at the civilian again. Civilian, however, is prepared to vindicate himself. He has seen another “suspicious” close to the edge of the wood to the left, and the sergeant, mitigating his choler, makes off for this supposed spy No. 2. I should have mentioned that a little procession of loafers has from the first dogged the heels of the party, and that suggestions are freely tendered by everybody at once, including the small boys. When spy No. 2 is reached he is found to be a sheepish-looking rustic in a ragged blue blouse, who is sitting on the dyke-side with a female, presumably his sweetheart. The account he gives of himself is not considered satisfactory—indeed he can give no coherent account at all, the proximity of the sergeant’s sword having apparently addled him. Accordingly he is made a prisoner in due form. The Fusiliers fix their sword-bayonets and take position on either side of him. The sergeant, with his sword still at the “right engage,” marches bravely in the van; the civilian looks as if he had saved the Fatherland; the small boys whisperingly compare notes as to the personal appearance of the “spy,” who they seem to consider deserves to be shot on the spot. And so the procession takes its way to the Commandant’s quarters, where it probably turns out that the “spy” is no spy at all, but a bumpkin German to the soles of his huge brogues.

Sunday, the 31st of July, was a day of fast, humiliation, and prayer for the success of the German arms, appointed by an edict of King Wilhelm. It was kept devoutly. Men in Saarbrück went to church this day who had not darkened the church door for years. The garrison, as well as a great proportion of the townsfolk, attended the great church in the central Platz, whither I also turned in with the rest. The piled arms, with the bayonets fixed, that flanked the principal entrance, spoke of war time. The Covenanters worshipped their God with their weapons in hand—

“The lyart veteran leaning on his spear.”

The German soldiers left their arms outside the church, but ready to be grasped and used at a moment’s notice. The preliminary music was emblematic. It began with a low wail of pain and sorrow. The nation confessed its many sins, and bemoaned its unworthiness of the favour of God. Then broke out sharp and shrill the urgent call to arms. Then followed a bicker and clash as of two mighty hosts joining the battle one with the other. After the loud din of the fray there pealed forth the joyous notes of triumph—victory had been won, and the appropriate finale was the ever-noble _Te Deum_. Then arose the preacher, an old man with a worn ascetic face, snow-white hair, eyes that sparkled like live coals under excitement, and a voice that pealed like a trumpet to the uttermost corner of the great church, and thrilled the auditor with its indescribable vibration. His discourse was the music done into words. After telling the people in sternly plain language that they were wicked enough to have forfeited the Divine favour, he implored them to merit it by humiliation, repentance, and faith. Then, raising his voice, he spoke of the goodness of Germany’s cause,—how that she courted not war, but for her honour’s sake accepted it when forced upon her. The colour came into the withered cheek, and the right arm swayed above the head as if it grasped a sword, as the old man fervently enjoined the duty of patriotism and invoked the blessing of Heaven on the arms of Germany. The most casual observer could notice the thrilling effect on the audience. It would scarcely have been surprising had a cheer broken out from the people who hung on the preacher’s words.

Not a dozen miles from this Saarbrück church a very different scene was meanwhile being enacted. A detachment of forty infantry men, part of the garrison of Saarlouis, was patrolling the frontier between Geisweiler and Ludweiler, when, about half-past eleven in the forenoon, they came suddenly on a body of French, consisting of three companies of infantry. These were invaders, for the soil was German; and, notwithstanding the discrepancy of numbers, the children of the Fatherland steadily advanced to the encounter. The hostile bodies were already exchanging shots when a squadron of French Chasseurs suddenly dashed into the arena, and, with loud cheers, charged over the broken ground towards the Germans. These waited till the horsemen, disorganised by the nature of the ground, had come within point-blank range, and then gave fire in a volley. French saddles were emptied, and the Chasseurs whirled hurriedly away to the left. The Germans, encouraged by this triumph, pressed forward to meet the French infantry. Several volleys were exchanged, the Germans still pushing on, till at length the Frenchmen withdrew in a rout, throwing off their knapsacks as they ran to lighten their flight. On the field lay dead eight French soldiers and one officer. The Germans sustained inconsiderable damage. Two were severely wounded and several slightly.

The ex-Emperor Napoleon has placed upon record his piteous testimony to the skill with which the German Commander-in-Chief masked his dispositions till the hour came for the veil to be drawn aside with a result so disastrous for the French arms. If there was bewilderment and ignorance on the French side of the frontier, there was scarcely less puzzlement for those who were on the German side of the hedge. The secret was so well kept that not a glimmer of it had dawned on Saarbrück on the last day of July. When the war was declared the garrison of Saarbrück consisted of a battalion of infantry and a regiment of Uhlans. A fortnight had passed, and the reinforcements might have been reckoned by the half-dozen. It was known that Frossard, with a whole army corps, was looking across at Saarbrück over the ridges of the Spicheren, and nobody had the means of knowing what everybody knows now, the reason, so discreditable to French organization, which prevented him from blowing out of his path the sparse picquets and patrols, and invading the territory which had its frontier only nominally guarded. Men asked each other if it were possible that the Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. The infantrymen and the Uhlans were manipulated dexterously and assiduously to make it seem that a battalion was a brigade, and a few hundred horsemen a powerful cavalry force; yet it was felt universally that the place was held only by dint of sheer impudence—for there were no supports of importance as yet nigh at hand—and that the bubble must burst summarily if Frossart should fling aside his unaccountable inactivity. With long faces and boding hearts the townspeople, striving still to wear an aspect of confidence, muttered amongst themselves, “How long, how long?” Students of military topography, men who read Lavallée and pored over their maps, failed not to arrive at the conviction that somewhere between the Moselle and the Vosges lay an eligible tract for an invasion of France. The French frontier here, as it stood before the recent annexations, was unnatural in a physical sense; and therefore it was weak. The prominent natural features—the rivers and hills—ran transversely to the boundary line, and the valleys accordingly afforded so many natural roads whereby the country might be penetrated. Were the hills which separate these straths rough and prominent, the difficulty of penetration would have been greatly increased from the danger that presented to an invading army of being taken in flank; but hardly anywhere is such their characteristic, and the low hills and insignificant heights may be swept by an army advancing up one of the shallow valleys. This configuration, in combination with the artificial frontier line, leaving, as it were, so many open portals inviting to the entrance of France, Vauban, the great French engineer, had devoted his energies to the erection of artificial guardians over the frontier naturally so open. On the Moselle he fortified Metz and Thionville. The Vosges bulwark is strengthened by Bitche and Phalsburg; but there lies a wide plain between the Vosges and the Moselle, with nothing in the shape of natural or artificial defence. Vauban had fortified Saarlouis, but in 1815 the Allies deprived the French of Saarlouis, which was now in the possession of a German garrison, and instead of being a protection to the French frontier was a thorn in its side. The result seemed to be that a German army could advance, plunge into France, elude Metz by way of Nancy, and reach the basin of the Marne without encountering any other obstacle than Toul. Once in the Marne basin, the road to Paris was open.

But there were no signs of a German army on the frontier, and every day, it was argued, must be adding to the strength of the French army now standing stockade-wise across the track. But surely the province of a defensive stockade was one hardly in accordance with the precedents or idiosyncrasies of the armies of France. Why the men in red breeches lay so long basking in the sun on the slopes of Spicheren we could not comprehend, but the day must surely be near now, we said one unto the other, when they would gird up their loins and roll their columns on over the Exercise Platz and across the Saar into the Köllerthaler Wald or the Pfalz. And in their path stood but an open town, a couple of bridges half barricaded with barrels, a battalion of infantry, and a regiment of Uhlans.

The 1st of August, while the French were yet supine, brought to Saarbrück what all hoped was the earnest of a host, not alone of resistance, but invasion. On the afternoon of that day the third battalion of the 40th, two companies of its first battalion, and two batteries of artillery, reached the vicinity and made their bivouac on a flat upland in front of a wood. They had left Trèves a fortnight before, and marched down by what seemed strangely easy stages. As soon as the news of their arrival reached Saarbrück, I went out to the encampment with some friends, carrying boxes of cigars, which form an excellent introduction to German troops everywhere. The first bivouac we saw, it naturally interested us greatly, and the reader may care to read of it as a type of the system. It was a very pretty sight. On the left were the artillery, the guns regularly parked, with the ammunition-waggons in their rear, and in front of each line so formed the picquet ropes, with the horses fastened to them, and the harness deposited on the ground behind them. The forge was alight, and the farriers busy shoeing horses, while the armourer had also his fire alight, and was tinkering some small arms. Further on the right was the battalion of infantry, or rather the two half-battalions, each of two companies. The Germans always bisect their battalions in this way, both in camp and in action—a little interval constituted the separation. In the fore-front lay or sat the officers, enjoying their Rhine wine. In their rear, in the centre, was the battalion colour in its cover, and stuck deep in the ground, with the drum-major’s halberd alongside of it, and the drums and instruments of the band lying all around it. Then came a straight row of knapsacks, each surrounded by the rolled great-coat, just as the front rank had deposited them. About ten paces to the rear was another similar row, and in the interval stood the stacks of piled needle-guns. This formation existed mathematically right away to the rear. The men were dispersed in various directions, but none strayed to a great distance, the limit being marked by a cordon of sentries. There was a crowd round a beer cart, another round a wine cart. There was soon a crowd round us as we produced the cigars we carried. On a knoll sat a band of singers chanting a song of Fatherland. A squad, whose bivouac lay in an orchard, engaged themselves in shaking the trees and eating the fruit as it fell. Others, again, amused themselves by gymnastic exercises, running races, or jumping against each other. Evidently they were as fresh as if they had not marched a mile; yet they had been on the road fourteen days, and had never had their clothes off, lying in the bivouac night after night. In the rear, close to the wood, the pioneers had dug trenches and gathered wood. The fires were alight, and slung on poles extending from bank to bank were the simmering camp-kettles, evolving a very savoury odour. What were their contents was not difficult to guess. In the ditch by the woodside lay some yet warm bullock hides. The animals had been slaughtered, cut up, and the pieces were in the pot, all within a couple of hours of the halt. Meanwhile, the men stayed the edge of their appetite with the black bread and the beer, of which latter there was a plentiful supply. The dusk gradually began to gather. The kettles were taken off the fires, and their contents distributed. The men ate and were filled, and then gathered round the fires to sing and to gossip. The good people of Saarbrück had come up among their countrymen in some numbers, and great was the fraternisation. In the foreground, by little camp-tables, which had sprung up as if by magic, the officers sat clinking their glasses of Rhine-wine and smoking placidly, as they listened to the band which played for half an hour before the watch-setting at nine o’clock. Then the “lie down” sounded, and the men, unrolling their cloaks, gave themselves a shake, put their heads upon their knapsacks, and in less than a quarter of an hour there arose a sound of conscientious snoring, to which a marsh full of frogs was not fit to hold a candle. The officers sat later by lantern light; but they, too, one by one quitted the social circle, and stretched themselves on their cloaks on the ground. By-and-by there were left, tarrying over the wine cup, only a burly senior captain, the jovial adjutant, and a silent lieutenant, the last of whom I had at intervals suspected of being asleep, but who always livened up to fill his glass as the bottle passed him. Then they, too, “turned in,” if the phrase is allowable, when everything was outside, and, excepting the chain of sentries and the quarter guard, the whole camp was wrapped in the deepest slumber.

At three punctually the bugler of the night sounded the reveille, and the camp awoke and rubbed its eyes, with many yawns. Cloaks were rolled, and the fragrance of the morning pipe scented the cool clear air. The cooks stirred the unextinguished embers of the fires and piled on the billets. The camp-kettles were again strung on the cross-poles, this time filled with coffee, and in about three-quarters of an hour from the reveille some 1,500 men were masticating the black bread and drinking the black, milkless coffee out of their mess-tins. Then the band played again, and the men got under arms and answered to the roll-call. This done they were ready for the road, the hour being half-past four A.M. Had there been a march they would have journeyed till about eight or nine, taken a rest during the heat of the day, and probably have done a few miles more in the cool of the evening. But no marching was in orders for the day, and so the arms were piled again, and the men were free to do as they liked, always keeping within the limits indicated by the sentries. Many went to sleep again, others betook themselves to tailoring jobs with as much aptitude as if they were genuine sons of the goose, and occasionally with a little disregard to the critical niceties of decorum in the way of costume. Others did nothing but smoke in all the luxurious _dolce far niente_ of perfect idleness. Ten minutes would have sufficed to see the camp struck and the troops on their march. It was impossible to conceive men in better heart; officers and men alike self-reliant, buoyant, and ready for anything, in the fullest conviction that they could not be beaten.

This Trèves contingent brought in three spies—rather a curious assortment. One was a French officer; the other a clergyman, or at all events a person who wore the dress of one; the third, outwardly and visibly, was a woman. For a couple of days she had dogged the Hohenzollerns, who, with all chivalry, had refrained from prying very closely into her business; but one morning a sergeant, of a matter-of-fact turn of mind, interviewed the lady, and the result was the discovery—I fear I perpetrate a bull—that she was a man. The make-up was of a character to do some credit to the sergeant’s power of observation.