Chapter II: Saarbrück and Spicheren (1)

On the morning of the 2nd of August, when the Hohenzollerns were lounging in their sunshiny bivouac, the French Emperor, with his boy, was travelling by train from Metz to Forbach. The German videttes down in the valley heard the gusts of cheering with which Frossard’s soldiers welcomed the Head of the State and his heir. Ignorant of the cause, some put the cheering down as a response to the announcement of a French success somewhere; others ascribed it to an extra issue of beer. How could the honest Uhlans discern that the father had come to the frontier to make a military promenade to tickle wherewithal the Parisians, and that “Lulu,” as they irreverently called the heir to the imperial diadem, was with his father that he might obtain his baptism of fire?

The night had passed in extreme quiet all along the frontier, and in the morning it seemed as if the 2nd was to be as monotonous as had been the 1st. General von Klepsal and another brigadier went on reconnoitring expeditions, and came back again to a placid breakfast. A couple of guns with their detachments, part of the batteries that had arrived the previous night, went up the Saar to St. Arnual, and finding nothing threatening there, the officer brought them back. Two more, on their return, went out in the same direction, their functions appearing purely those of patrol. Two guns were leisurely got up on the height above the town at the Bellevue, and there remained. The soldiers in the barrack-yards, and in the several posts around the environs of the town, slept and smoked and gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the officers sat under the trees drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole place seemed oppressed by the drowsy effect of a fervently hot day.

A little after ten, having crossed over the Saarbrück valley from the night’s bivouac, I leisurely climbed the slope of the Bellevue height. There was no bustle on the road, and I saw nothing out of the common on our side as I reached the Exercise Platz at the top. But across the valley on the French side there was a sight to see. I use the terms “right” and “left” with reference to my position, looking across at the French, whether in speaking of their attack or of the German defence. On the left, then, of the bastion-like plateau, already mentioned more than once, there runs tortuously a fine road leading up out of the valley intervening between the German and the French frontier positions. It conducts over the brow of the hill, skirting the right of a wood, and behind this wood and hill it had long been known that the French were located in force. Near the top this road throws out two branch roads, which both also lead down into the valley. One is a rough country road that skirts the right edge of the plateau; the other is a mere green track, of, however, some breadth, which crests the plateau, and tumbles off its edge down the abrupt poplar-clad slope that parts the upland from the valley.

Down all these three roads were streaming dense and glittering currents of French troops; the stream on the great road flowing swiftest and farthest. The sun struck on the bright bayonets, and threw out from the grey and green background the scarlet-legged infantrymen. Those came on in the true careless irregular French style, about six abreast, with hardly a pretence at formation, but with a speed that was remarkable. The moment that the head of the column touched the valley it broke like spray. As file after file reached a certain point it became dissipated; the men composing it extended at a run farther and farther, till by the time that the heads of all three columns were in the valley, an unbroken line of skirmishers was drawn several hundred yards to the front. Then began the steady deployment of company after company, battalion after battalion; and almost before one had realised the position, a long dense line had been ruled along the bottom of the valley behind the fainter line of the skirmishers. Squadrons of cavalry streamed down, and, forming line at a gallop, rapidly overtook the infantry. Passing through the intervals, they re-formed and pushed on to occupy and cover the flanks of the advance.

While this was going on in the valley the stream from behind the wood and the hill seemed to flow from a source that never would run dry. It was hardly a gap that was caused in it by the two batteries of field artillery that came down and wheeled off the road on to the verge of the plateau, the gunners unlimbering and standing ready by the venomous pieces that looked across at us with their wicked black mouths. Higher up on the crest there was visible another field battery, apparently of larger guns. In all, before I had to quit the heights, I am satisfied that from 6,000 to 7,000 French troops were in sight. The peculiarity of the movements I have just described was their perfect quietness and uninterruption. The French tirailleurs were already breasting the slope that led up to the positions held by the Germans; their main advance was more than half across the valley, and yet not a Chassepot gave tongue. The range must have been within 300 yards, and still the Frenchmen pressed on with lissom agility, but without a single shot. On the German side there existed as profound quietness; either side seemed reluctant to begin the ball.

The German position demands a short explanation to aid in the comprehension of what took place. The height known indifferently as the Bellevue Height and the Exercise Platz is a natural rampart thrown up between Saarbrück and the frontier. It is depressed a little to the left of its centre, and the southern eminence is in its turn slightly cleft, the _coll_ to the right being surmounted by a pleasure-garden and serrated with terraces. The lumpy hill on the left slopes more gently on the French side than on the German, and extends eastward so as to form a cover to the village of St. Arnual, lying about three miles nearer Saarguemines than Saarbrück. This height, or rather these series of heights, present tempting opportunities for taking up a strong defensive position. But they have two fatal defects. The frontier valley circumvents them both to the right near Schönecken and to the left a little beyond St. Arnual. Thus from either hand the heights may be turned, the valley of the Saar penetrated, and Saarbrück taken. Of this formation the French were evidently aware. They presently began to echelon their advance, and to bring up their left shoulders as if they meant sweeping round the height to the left, and pouring into the Saar valley _viâ_ St. Arnual. And it seemed as if the German disposition had anticipated this intention. The German force was indeed so weak that it was hopeless to attempt keeping the whole line; and, so far as it had been made available at all, the concentrations tended towards the defence of the St. Arnual gap. On the heights, then, when and for some time after the French made their appearance in the valley, there was hardly anything but the ordinary outposts and supporting detachments. I question, indeed, if there came any reinforcements at all on to the berg. What force there was extended itself in a thin line along the crest, taking advantage of a scooped-out road that traversed that direction. It was policy on its part to delay firing as long as possible, since the paucity of its fire would betray its weakness. And it was evident that the French did not half like the berg, with what secrets there might be concealed behind it, but inclined rather to the St. Arnual direction, although cautious not to offer their flank towards the berg.

But the long silence of the Germans appeared to give rise to the impression on the part of the French that after all there could be nothing formidable in that position, since opportunities so tempting were not taken advantage of. So with one impulse the French echelons brought forward their right shoulders, re-formed a continuous line, and confronted now the swell of the height directly in front of Saarbrück. Their tirailleurs opened a spattering fire, and then the Germans replied. This was the moment of the bursting of our little Saarbrück bubble. The French opened fire all along their line, sweeping the height with a storm of Chassepot bullets. Their artillery took up the sombre music from the plateau over against the valley, and the height was at once untenable. I was behind a tree in front of the Exercise Platz when it began. What of German defence there was lay entirely to the left of me, and there was nothing between the Frenchmen and the trees but a Uhlan’s horse careering wildly, riderless. This isolation might have been of service as not calculated to draw the French fire, had the gentlemen who plied that fire only been aware of it; but to make sure they blazed away at the height all along its length. Bullets had struck the tree behind which I stood, and a shell had ploughed a spiteful furrow athwart the Exercise Platz in my rear. Evacuation seemed eminently advisable, and so I started at a run and got into the dip of the road without any casualty. The fusiliers were making a short rally on the bank above it, and the ping of the bullets flew over the road high above my head. As I stopped to take breath, a fusilier on the edge of the bank was shot through the back and came crashing down the shrubs on to the road at my feet. His back was broken, I think; anyhow, he could not move the upper part of his body, but he took a grateful pull at the flask which I held to his lips. As I passed downward towards the town I found the Uhlans drawn up in the shelter formed by the bend of the road as it winds up to the Bellevue. The whizz of the bullets coming over the bank above them, and the sight of the beaten-back fusiliers, convinced them of the inadvisability of proceeding further. They went about and retreated through Saarbrück, over the bridge through the suburb of St. Johann, and having passed the railway station took post on a road leading into the interior. Just as I turned the corner which brought me in sight of the Uhlans a shell burst in the centre of a knot of fusiliers who were hurrying down the road. Had the party been in the shell itself, it could not have been more effectually shattered. A sergeant and five men were struck down by this one shell—how many of these were killed I did not stop to look.

By this time the French had crowned the heights all along, and were driving the German fusiliers down the inner slope towards us; and they had been very quick with their artillery. Already they had got one battery on to the _coll_ at the pleasure-garden, and another showed its teeth through the trees of the Exercise Platz. One could see the quick flashes in rapid succession. All Saarbrück and St. Johann were of course fully commanded. The town was naturally in a state of intense excitement, but the people in the houses lining the street that leads to the height stuck to their homes like rabbits to their burrows, even when the shells were crashing into the houses and sweeping down the thoroughfare. There was partial safety in the cross streets, where they were lined with houses on both sides, although occasionally a shell would play old gooseberry among the tiles, and make one think of Fleet Street chimney-pots in a gale of wind. But there was a space on the road to the railway station, whither I was walking, where there were no houses, and this had to be traversed before the road, turning with a sweep towards the railway station, could be reached. The townspeople were banked in masses at either verge of this _via dolorosa_, and now and then a small boy ran the gauntlet. A burgher tried it, and got a chassepot bullet through the fleshiest part of a very goodly corporation.

My companion and myself got through in safety, and then were in a kind of triangle, off which goes the road to the station on a little rising ground, another road parallel to the frontier, and yet another across the bridge. The base of this triangle is formed by the Hotel Hagen, in which we sought refuge on finding that the railway station had been selected as the spot where the Germans were to make a final stand with the artillery which they had brought up from the bivouac. In the lee of this Hotel Hagen were collected several detachments of infantry. Others held the bridge over the Saar, that is to say, they occupied the houses commanding it. A bee-line, drawn from the cannon on the Exercise Platz to the cannon on the esplanade in front of the railway station would pass over the Hotel Hagen, and also over the bridge. The French were shelling the houses on the bridge; they were shelling the troops in the triangle in front of the hotel; they were replying with shells to the German shells from the railway station. Thus the Hotel Hagen was rather warm quarters. There was this additional complication,—that exit in any direction whatever seemed to involve more risk than staying still; so we stayed still, my companion and I. We found three or four more Englishmen there, some ladies, and a heterogeneous collection of _Zimmermädchen_ and _Stallknechts_. The landlord of the Hagen was the coolest customer I have ever met. His house was being knocked about his ears, glass and crockery smashing in all directions. This exemplary Boniface asked me coolly, under these circumstances, for four groschen, the price of a bottle of seltzer-water that I had forgotten to pay for the night before. He gave me change for a thaler with the profoundest phlegm, and then grumbled that his _table d’hôte_ had been bedevilled for the day. Bedevilled it certainly was,—at least that was the fate of the dinner. A shell had burst right in the big square stove on which is done all the cooking of a German hotel. Potatoes bespattered the roof, and gravy flowed on the floor. Some of the pans yet simmered on fragments left of the stove; others were made pancakes of against the walls. The landlady and her maidens went off into hysterics, and we had to carry them into the cellar under the back yard, a shell bursting in that enclosure as we carried them down. The staircase leading to the first floor was shattered, and communication cut off. The fronts of the houses on the opposite side of the triangle were riddled, as indeed was the Hotel Hagen. We here heard for the first time the mitrailleuses at work. They plied from the Exercise Platz down on the bridge, and the bullets spattered very closely together along the narrow track. The report was very curious and distinctive. It sounded more like the tearing sound of one of those diabolical contrivances which silly people were wont to use at Greenwich Fair, and which gave one a lively sensation of his coat being torn down the back. Any one who is too young to remember this pleasing noise may form some conception of the report of the mitrailleuse by listening to a police-rattle. It is unquestionable that the mitrailleuse fire swept the bridge thoroughly; nothing could live where its hail fell. Then the smoke began to rise where the shells had set fire to the wood-work. A building in front, one on the flank, and another in the rear of us, were all blazing. The troops under our lee scuttled off under the shelter of a wall to the railway station, and so out into the open country beyond, several of them falling in the movement. Others took their places, coming in from St. Arnual, and later those evacuating the town and falling back from the bridges; and they, too, took the same course, and also suffered more or less. All the while the German artillery from the station were firing directly over our heads, replying to the French fire on the heights, while the French continued to pour shells back in return.

Then the cry arose that the French had descended the slope and were actually in Saarbrück. This was confirmed from the fact that the German guns ceased firing, and it seemed that they were drawing off. Clearly we were left behind. We were, it is true, in the rear of the force to which we were attached; a safe position—but only in an advance. It appeared certain that all St. Johann, including the railway station, would be in the hands of the French in an hour or two. Four Englishmen in the Hotel Hagen, acting under the advice of a German correspondent of remarkable equanimity, concluded to wait the course of events, in the hope that if St. Johann were taken by the French to-day, it would be retaken by the Prussians to-morrow. The certainty of this was not quite apparent, and I thought it my duty, looking to the enjoyment of postal facilities, therefore, to get out of the place with all convenient speed. We left the Englishmen playing whist in the breakfast-room, and we—that is, an Austrian friend and myself—quitted the rickety shelter of the hotel, and made a run direct for the sheds near the railway station. To do this we had to cross the line of fire, and that, too, where the shells were bursting thickest. There was no help for it, for there was no other road. We ran—I own it. I think I ran faster than ever I did in my life. My friend was hit on the calf of the leg by a stone thrown up by a bursting shell, but not lamed; I was not touched. Once at the sheds, we were safe. Traversing a deep rocky cutting, across which the shells still flew, we emerged into the back country, and followed first the railway and then the high road to a village named Duttweiler, about five English miles behind Saarbrück. On our way we saw numerous straggling soldiers, who did not know what had happened to their regiment. They were all making for the rear. We also passed a squadron of Uhlans drawn up on the road, and commanded by a reserve officer, who gave me his card, from which I learned that he was a Heidelberg professor. After our arrival at Duttweiler most of the Uhlans and a large proportion of the infantry passed through the village on their way to the rear. They reported that Lebach was the rendezvous, a place some fifteen English miles back from Saarbrück in the Trèves direction. Small detachments had been left to watch the French and keep up the communications. The French foreposts had occupied Saarbrück and held the bridges, but no force had crossed into St. Johann.

It has been the fashion on all sides to make very merry over this “military promenade” of the 2nd August. No doubt, in the light shed upon the affair by our after-knowledge, we are entitled to set it down as something between a spectacle and a farce. But, at the time, nobody had either daring or data for suspecting that France had neither armies nor generals; and, given belongings that one is entitled to assume when a reputedly sane nation deliberately declares war, this affair of Saarbrück was undoubtedly the winning of the first trick of the game. German strategists have, naturally enough, made their own uses of a fiasco which was solely due to French unpreparedness and irresolution. It has been the fashion to argue that Saarbrück was designedly left as it was, to delude the French leaders into a belief of German unpreparedness, and to induce them to concentrate their forces, with the design of incursion, at an obviously weak point, upon what seemed an eligible track into the heart of Prussia; while in reality, had they obeyed the lure, and ventured inland from Saarbrück, they would have found the road barred, and the forests swarming with legions in spiked helmets. But this _ex post facto_ special pleading would have been swept to the winds, if the French army had been but reasonably fit, and its commanders reasonably competent and enterprising. The fact is, that neither on the 2nd of August, nor for several days after, were the Germans ready to defend their frontier, much less to invade France, had they been attacked or resisted in the manner the precedents of France gave one the title to count on. Saarbrück was held for days “on the bounce,” with a sublime audacity that could only have succeeded so long, first, because the French were not ready for offensive action, and, secondly, because their means of obtaining information were so contemptible that they did not earlier come at the knowledge of the weakness of the force opposed to them. No doubt the German commanders had means whereby they ascertained the existence of both of these conditions, and possibly presumed on this knowledge to make their concentrations more leisurely and confidently than they would otherwise have done; but that a grave risk was actually encountered was obvious to any one on the spot. It has been stated that the woods in the rear of Saarbrück swarmed with troops, which could have successfully met an attempt of the French to penetrate further into the interior. The truth is that on the night of the action there was no force nearer Saarbrück than Neunkirchen, save scattered detachments of the infantry and cavalry which had evacuated Saarbrück, and a couple of squadrons of cuirassiers holding the roads as éclaireurs. Supports did exist further in the rear, but scattered abroad over the face of the country, as they pursued different lines of march, with Saarbrück as the point of convergence. Had a French army of invasion pushed on through Saarbrück on the 2nd, and marched rapidly into the interior, it would not have been possible to concentrate those scattered regiments at any given point across the hostile line of march; and my firm conviction is that a Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having had to fight a pitched battle.

It is needless to multiply evidence that it was not for strategical purposes that the Germans permitted this occupation of Saarbrück, the barrenness of which must surely have surprised themselves. There was not an officer within ten miles of Saarbrück who, for at least two days after the affair, did not expect to hear from hour to hour that the heads of the French columns were showing on the roads leading into the interior. Inside that radius, during those two days, hardly a reinforcement was pushed forward, simply because reinforcements were not as yet available. On the 3rd, a working party of engineers cut the railway below Duttweiler, that the enemy, in his expected advance, might not be able to avail himself of the iron road. Strange strategy, truly, to allow, if it could be prevented, the shelling of a German town, to expose a couple of battalions to the onslaught of a _corps d’armée_ as the gallant fellows, construing their orders to “retire fighting” after their own hot and angry fashion, contested with reckless fury every inch of the ground! Strange strategy, truly, to involve that town in the all but certainty of a second shelling before it could be retaken, and of set purpose to let the enemy get foothold on a position of such dominance as the Bellevue height, commanding all the area that must be traversed by a force aiming at its recapture! No, the French had a chance, and a great chance, on this 2nd of August; and that they did not take advantage of it is not to be ascribed to any acts of their adversaries, but to their own inconceivable unreadiness, and to the imbecile inaction of their leaders, assignable to ignorance, treachery, divided councils, an organisation that was chaos, and an Intendance that was rotten to its remotest ramification.

Criticism of the actual defence made would be absurd. The men fought with desperate valour, and were as cool under fire as if they had been at their dinner. One company of the Hohenzollerns bore the full fire of two French regiments for twenty minutes, and then only retired on receiving an order to do so. They were severely cut up, as a matter of course. Their captain was killed and a lieutenant wounded. It is hardly to the discredit of the little force that they allowed themselves to be surprised, as they unquestionably were. There were hardly men enough for sentries all along the line, to say nothing of actual defence. A field telegraph wire along the height from Ottenhausen to St. Arnual, and extending down into the town and the railway station, would have been an important aid.

Consequent upon the German evacuation of Saarbrück, Duttweiler became a curious menagerie. The Hôtel Till, the only hostelrie in the little place, is a curious, rambling erection, rather unpromising looked at from the street, but improving on more intimate acquaintance, and of the most indiarubber-like capacity. There is wing after wing of bedrooms, great bare rooms with benches, tables, and old pictures, devoted to what use it is impossible to guess, long cavernous passages, and a staircase you might drive a coach and six up and down. How a place of the size comes to be located in such a village I cannot tell, but it was found a very ark of refuge for the foreign waifs and strays that had been driven out of Saarbrück. My friend and myself were the first arrivals. Then came a professor in a German university, an Englishman, whom I had last seen coolly sauntering through the fire in rear of a company of German infantry, and who, when he had tired of this amusement, had struck out for himself in search of a bed, and instinctively made tracks hither. He was followed by a waggon containing a miscellaneous load. It contained the four Englishmen whom we had left over their game of whist, a German correspondent, and two ladies, one of whom had been a Sister of Mercy in the campaign of 1866, and the other had come to Saarbrück from Bohemia, on purpose to be married to a Prussian feldwebel. He was on active duty, but a special dispensation had been obtained, and the fräulein was to have been wedded on the Tuesday forenoon. The ceremony was to have taken place in the Hôtel Hagen, but the French shells postponed its performance. The officer went one way with his regiment, the lady came the other to be out of reach of the French. They were hardly seated when there came in an officer of the American army, who had seen the fun out and had then strolled out here. Presently arrived a couple of British officers in mufti, an English student from Bonn, an undergraduate of Oxford who had broken off a reading tour to come and see a bit of fighting, and a real live swell, with a fearful and wonderful coat, adorned with a girdle and several dozen pockets, with an eye-glass and long whiskers, a dog that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that had not been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He—aw—had been going eastward somewhere to—aw—Constantinople or St. Petersburg, or—aw—somewhere, when he heard of something likely to be stirring at Saarbrück—and had come down to view its aspect through his eye-glass. The big hotel swallowed us all up somehow, and we assimilated into quite a happy family, feeding together, and looked upon with eyes of good-humoured wonderment by the honest villagers of Duttweiler.

With the only information at our command, to the effect that Lebach—far in the rear—was head-quarters for an army of advance as well as the little army of retreat, the position in Duttweiler seemed as good as any, and we accordingly did not quit it. Little worthy of chronicling occurred. In the forenoon of the 3rd a French soldier, who had been brought in a prisoner, took it into his head to make a frantic effort to escape. He got his hand cut off to begin with, and still this did not conquer his repugnance to being a prisoner of war; but a couple of pistol-shots did this very effectually. A little later there was a grand chevy after spies. One was shot down in the rear of the Hôtel Till, and two more were captured in a wood above the town. A villager was torn from his home and his weeping wife. He was a Frenchman born, but a naturalised Prussian; he had, however, been playing the traitor to his adopted country by sending the French information.

In the evening of the 3rd a few of us bombarded-out vagrants walked down till we gained a prominent eminence almost overhanging the valley of the Saar, and from this we had an excellent view of the French dispositions. The sight which we saw surprised us. Away on our right front, on the shoulder of the slope by Stiring, was a large camp with artillery parked close to it. There were tents on the Exercise Platz on the Bellevue heights, with a battery of guns looking out to the right. Far away over the Bellevue, on the crown of the height from which I have described the French as streaming down into the valley lying between it and the Bellevue height, was a great camp of infantry, occupied obviously by several brigades. What lay in the valley we could not tell, but it was hardly likely that it did not serve to conceal a large force. On the slope above St. Arnual was another camp, but comparatively a small one. For all this we were not unprepared, but we were certainly not prepared for what we saw far away to the left in the direction of Saarguemines. A good field-glass clearly made out that on a broad plateau that must have been beyond Saarguemines, for it was certainly distant fifteen miles, there lay extended a vast camp that could not have been occupied by less than a division. Setting this aside, it may be taken as a fair estimate that not less than 15,000 French troops were within the range of our vision. As I have said, what the valley concealed we had no means of knowing. It might have been empty; it might have held other 15,000 men.

From this coign of vantage it was more apparent than ever what defensive advantages the vicinity of Saarbrück might have afforded had they been utilised. The semicircular piece of table-land at our feet almost suggested itself as a platform for heavy guns, the fire of which might have altered the issue by playing on the heights by gaining which the French gained the town. All that was wanted as the complement was the cutting down of the belts of trees which encircle the Exercise Platz. Had the fire from guns placed here not succeeded in its object, and had the French, having occupied Saarbrück and St. Johann, made longer maintenance of the table-land position untenable, both by the road and by the railway were admirable facilities for withdrawal, while the wooded slopes in rear of the table-land might have been held for ever by a few regiments of riflemen well supplied with ammunition. Of course the absence alike of artillery and of riflemen rendered any such disposition an impossibility, and the observation forced from us was that if the Prussians should have to exert themselves vigorously to retake Saarbrück, they might easily have saved themselves the trouble and the cost by never having allowed the French to take the place at all.

One important effect the capture, even if temporary, should have had. The railway from Trèves to Neunkirchen, and thence either to Bingerbrück or through the Pfalz by Homburg and Kaiserslautern, forming a connection with the Baden system, passes through Saarbrück, or rather through St. Johann. As a line skirting the frontier, it was of much the same value to Germany as was to France the Saarguemines-Hagenau line, which Lieutenant von Voight had cut a few days previously. It seemed incomprehensible that if the French were to be driven out of Saarbrück, they should go without cutting this communication. Yet not only did they do so, but they left intact the great viaduct by which the line leading from Saarbrück to Metz crosses the Saar, and so did the Germans a better turn than if they had evacuated the Spicheren without a fight.

On the 4th there was a strange pause in the military operations, and some of us dwellers in the Hôtel Till took advantage of the lull to pay a visit to Saarbrück. The wise man who said in his heart that all men are liars might have lived in our neighbourhood. One hour the story was that the French had evacuated Saarbrück and were in retreat, the next that they were in full march inland, and that we should do well to pack up our kits and be off. Great formalities were reported as requisite to enable us so much as to essay the task of reaching Saarbrück. We had to leave behind our cards, our authorisations and our money, in case of falling into the hands of the French, and being both made prisoners of war and robbed. All that we were to take were our passports. Then we had to visit the burgomaster and obtain from him his written sanction—with the official seal, of course—vouching for us as being harmless and “unsuspicious” individuals. The worthy burgomaster granted this readily, and we left him with thanks, fighting our way out from his door through a bevy of women whose husbands had been drawn for the Landwehr, and who were clamouring for some means of earning their bread. We had not gone a quarter of a mile when we came on a halted detachment of cuirassiers, whose commanding officer gave us a voucher to carry me through his outposts, and told us he supposed we should have to enter St. Johann under a flag of truce. To our surprise we found not a Frenchman in all St. Johann. I went to my old hotel, where I found interim repairs already executed, and everything in its usual condition. Occasionally there were little squalls of firing between the French from above Saarbrück and the Germans, who, in scattered parties, were in St. Johann; but the townsfolk had become familiarised to the sound of the shots, and never so much as troubled to turn their heads. Nevertheless, in these occasional trivial affairs lives were being lost and plucky things were being done. Just as we came in two of the Black Hussars made a dash to cross the old bridge into Saarbrück, not knowing whether there were Frenchmen over the way or not. A French piquet was in the Schloss Platz, and a few of the men under a sous-officier, ran down the slope to the bridge head to have a crack at the hussars. When these saw the red legs coming, they went about and rode back, chased on to the bridge by the latter. One of the hussars’ horses fell and threw its rider. As he lay prostrate the French sous-officier sprang forward, his sword upraised to strike the hussar as he rose. The gallant horseman, however, was on his legs with one bound, with another quick movement he levelled his slung carbine, drew the trigger, and the sous-officier was a dead man. A couple of Frenchmen sprang forward to avenge the fate of their officer; but meanwhile from the St. Johann side a couple of German infantrymen had covered them, and as these two fired one Frenchman fell. This affair angered the French, who maintained for some twenty minutes a spattering fire at everything living that showed, but without effect.

We were again led to believe in St. Johann that if we wished to get across into Saarbrück it would be necessary to appear with a flag of truce, and forward to the French officer in command there a written request for permission. As we walked on one of us had a walking-stick and pockethandkerchief all ready. But we got on the new bridge, and no French sentry was visible; we crossed it, and never a Frenchman was to be seen. We reached the Platz and the post-office, and there was no more appearance of French troops than there is in the neighbourhood of the Horse Guards at guard mounting. I had been told that General Frossard was living at the Post Hotel. The people there laughed in my face when I asked the question. We traversed several streets before encountering any Frenchmen, but at length in a back street, we came upon a batch of the red-legged, blue-coated gentry. Harmless enough they looked, as they came out of a baker’s shop with the long loaves under their arms, grinning from ear to ear. A _gasthaus_ was full of them, sitting drinking Rhine-wine and water. I went in and sat down as a listener. The men by their dialect were chiefly from Alsace and Lorraine, districts in which there is a very large German admixture. Their conversation was _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, save and except politics, national or international. The townspeople confidently alleged that these Alsace and Lorraine men were with Germany at heart, but they were not so sanguine as to this after Spicheren.

After keeping the Frenchmen company for a while we paid a visit to the Saarbrück hospitals. There were very few men desperately wounded. The horsemen had been chiefly hurt about the legs, the infantry soldiers about the arms or through the shoulder-parts which would be likely to be exposed by a man taking a tree as his cover. The hospital arrangements were on the whole very good, with one exception. The windows were all shut, and the rooms in consequence smelt close and stuffy, and the atmosphere was impregnated with sour tobacco smoke. Why a free circulation of air should not have been insisted on was the more remarkable, since the treatment in almost every case was the use of ice. With few men in a ward and clean recent wounds, ventilation is not so great an essential; but it struck me, were the wards crowded in hot weather by men with sloughing wounds hospital gangrene would inevitably arise. The long corridor in Scutari hospital would have been a pestilential place, but for Miss Nightingale’s insistance on the freest ventilation. I did not observe that any disinfecting fluid was used in the Saarbrück hospitals. It was here that I first saw men wounded by the chassepot, and one could not fail to remark what a beautiful wound that firearm makes. It was reported after Mentana that a chassepot bullet made but a small orifice on entering, but that from its gyration it scooped at its exit a trumpet-like mouth. But here I saw stripped the wound of a man who had been shot through the shoulder, and it was impossible for a non-scientific man to tell whether the bullet had struck in front or rear. The people of Saarbrück were behaving to the wounded with great devotion. Several of the citizens had wounded soldiers in their houses, whom they preferred keeping there to sending them to the hospitals.

“Rümschöttel,” mayor of St. Johann, was a good German, and a wise and sagacious man. We found placarded at every street-corner the following intimation from him:—

“Looking to the interests of our town, I feel called upon to request my fellow-citizens to avoid laying violent hands upon any French soldiers, but to leave such duty to our troops. It is also the duty of every well-behaved citizen to endeavour by all means in his power to prevent any such occurrence.” Placards of a similar tenor, but uniformly couched in less simple and plain language, one got familiar enough afterwards in the course of this war; but never more was there occasion for the mayor of a German town to sign such a document. The unpleasant but necessary duty ever fell by the force of events to the lot of a French functionary. I am not without suspicions that Rümschöttel’s sage counsels were not taken in all cases, for the townspeople had their backs considerably up, especially the women, who fiercely resented the somewhat free manners of the French soldiers. But if the civilians were commanded to hold their hands, the troops to whom the mayor grimly alluded were displaying remarkable sagacity and alertness in “cutting out” any straggling Frenchmen. As we came into the town, we had met several prisoners being escorted into the country. General Frossard, on the evening of the attack, had sent for the mayor, and told him that his orders were very strict against straggling and marauding, and that if any cases occurred the citizens were to take the numbers displayed on the caps of the men so committing themselves, and report the same, when the fellows would be severely punished. On the whole, the Frenchmen were reported as behaving themselves pretty well, and paying honestly enough in most cases. A brewery had, however, been laid violent hands on, and between what was drunk and what was let run, the brewer had lost beer to the value of some 3,000 thalers. It must not be imagined that although the French were not in occupation of St. Johann, it was not quite as much at their disposal as if they had.

In the early morning of the 5th, there was a considerable cannonading from the heights held by the French above Grosbliffersdorff, and simultaneously came a sudden alarm at Duttweiler, that the French cavalry were advancing in force from St. Johann, driving in the German cuirassier piquets as they came. A dropping fire of small arms in the distance was audible, and the road became alive with additional patrols, but in an hour all was silent again, and we never got to know whether there really was anything in the demonstration.

On Friday morning, anxious to obtain a general authorisation from General von Stülpnagel, of the 5th Division, who was reported to be in command at Neunkirchen and the vicinity, I went by waggon to Neunkirchen for this purpose. Along the route there was no great number of troops visible; indeed, with the exception of stray patrols, we might have been miles distant from the war. But Neunkirchen

“Showed another sight.”

All around were battalions of foot regiments and regiments of cavalry, batteries of foot and of horse artillery, fields full of cattle waiting for the military butcher, parks of forage waggons, lanes of bread carts, masses of ambulance waggons, and all the _impedimenta_ of a great army contemplating a sustained and prolonged advance. Troops were streaming into the place from all directions, notably horse artillery. I watched the entrance of three batteries of this arm of the service, and I confess I was disappointed by their appearance, remembering the dash and carriage of our English horse artillery. The men seemed to want vivacity, their uniforms were plain, the horses were inclined to be soporific, and altogether there appeared to be a want of smartness about them compared with our own Royal Horse Artillery. It remained to be proved, as it was the next day, how truly serviceable were the plain-looking men and horses.

Having obtained my authorisation with a courtesy on the part of the Prussian staff such as I have almost invariably met with from that body, I retired quietly to my quarters, with the intention of enjoying a good night’s rest, from which, for two or three nights before, I had been debarred. A staff officer occupying the same quarters was good enough to furnish me with some details of the positions occupied by the first and second Armies, which sufficed to indicate very clearly that an invasion of France was imminent. The 1st Army, consisting of the 7th and 8th Corps, was advancing on the Saar, through the southern extremity of the Lower Rhine Province, mainly in a section of country having for its western boundary a line drawn northward from Saarlouis, for its eastern the frontier of the Pfalz. The 7th Corps (Zastrow) had the right wing, the left consisted of von Göben’s 8th Corps. The 1st Corps (Manteuffel), which was also to form part of the 1st Army, had not yet caught up with the advance. He had not particulars as to the dispositions of the 1st Army during the night between the 5th and 6th of August, but those I afterwards obtained as follows:—Zastrow had his head-quarters in Lebach, and was to march next morning (the 7th) to Dilsburg. The right division of the 7th Corps, the 13th (Glümer) bivouacked in and around Puttlingen, feeling away further right toward Derlen and Knausholz. This was the right flank of the 1st Army. Glümer’s orders were to advance on the 6th to the Saar at Völklingen and Rockerkausen. Kamecke, with his division (the 14th), spent the night in the vicinity of Guchenbach, with his advanced troops close up on Saarbrück. The bulk of the division was not timed to reach the frontier before the 7th. The 8th Corps stood still further back. The halting place on the 6th for its leading division, the 16th (Barneckow), had been fixed at Fischbach, and the 15th (Weltzien), still further in the rear, had its billet for Holz. Thus far as regards the 1st Army. The 2nd Army, starting from its rendezvous at Mayence, was swarming down all over the Pfalz. Lieutenant-General Alvensleben had the right flank of it with the 3rd Corps,[1] and it with the 5th Cavalry Division (Rheinbaben), which was employed in covering the right flank and the front, was the only part of Prince Frederick Charles’ command engaged in the fight of Spicheren. As regards its dispositions, my staff officer, since he belonged to one of its divisions, could naturally speak with greater exactitude. He believed Rheinbaben’s horsemen were already in Saarbrück, and they were permeating all the country intervening between that town and Alvensleben’s infantry, while they were also covering the left front of the 1st Army. This disposition brought Rheinbaben _en rapport_ with Kamecke, and it will presently appear to what effect the dashing cavalry officer availed himself of his knowledge of that general’s relative proximity. For the rest, the 5th Division, now lying in Neunkirchen, had for its morrow’s itinerary a route that would bring it to Duttweiler and Rentrisch, both villages, about five miles to the north of Saarbrück, and it was to be temporarily succeeded in its occupation of Neunkirchen by the 6th Division (Buddenbrock)—the next link in the great chain cable that was to be warped out of the Pfalz over the frontier into Frankreich. But Stülpnagel, although himself spending the night in Neunkirchen, had already projected his antennæ on the road he was to travel on the morrow—not alone such feelers as the stout squadrons of Rheinbaben, but also the 9th Infantry Brigade, commanded by the gallant Döring. That brigade had its bivouac for the night on the slopes to the south of Duttweiler, while at least one regiment of the 10th Brigade (the 52nd) was forward also on the southern road, with its night halt in St. Ingbert. Every disposition indicated the proximity of a grand and methodical concentration in the Saar valley, with Saarbrück for its centre; but there was an absence of urgency in the arrangements that certainly gave no earnest of belief in the imminence of a battle.

I make no apology for interpolating here the following description of the battle of Spicheren furnished to me by a Prussian gentleman who enjoyed exceptional advantages both for seeing the incidents of the fight and for obtaining accurate information as to its details. He had been educated as a staff officer, and had served in that capacity in the war of ’66; and having temporarily quitted the military profession, had hurried down to Saarbrück with intent to join, at his own charges, some cavalry regiment in which there might be a vacancy for an officer. When Spicheren was fought he had not yet been posted to any appointment, and was therefore free to devote himself wholly to observation, while he could ask questions and go unchallenged to positions not to be thought of by persons without his advantages. I have taken pains to test his facts, and being fully impressed with their accuracy, have used no freedom with them, although I have ventured to take some little liberty in rendering his language.

“In the early morning of the 6th, about four o’clock, I was aroused by the bugle blast, and an hour after came the quick march of soldiers on their way to the front. A couple of regiments passed towards the railway station; another regiment started along the high road. Among the troops there was no confusion, but certainly no want of alacrity. A visit to the railway station showed me that, with a couple of battalions in waiting, and no train expected other than indefinitely, the railway afforded a very precarious means of transit, so I returned and got a place in a waggon, in which, after breakfast, I started for Saarbrück by the southern road. Presently we passed the infantry, striding along manfully, and I had not gone six miles when I heard in the distance the rattling sound in the still morning air, which no man who has ever heard it can mistake for anything else than the noise of moving artillery. By this time I was through St. Ingbert, where the 52nd were halting with stacked arms, and soon after, at a turn of the road, our waggon was overtaken by two batteries of artillery, coming along at a swinging canter. The driving boy entered into the spirit of the thing, and I offered him double fare if he would only keep up with the horse artillery. He tried it right manfully, but the waggon was clumsy, and so was the harness; and in the ascent, at the slope leading to Scheidt, he brought his team to a standstill and struck. Spite of his remonstrances, I got the off horse out of his harness, and, mounting the animal bare-backed, set off in pursuit of the artillery. I overtook them a little beyond Scheidt, where they had halted for a few minutes to give the horses their wind, and found that they belonged to Stülpnagel’s division, and that they had been making haste to overtake infantry that was in their front. Hurrying on (for by this time it was nearly eleven o’clock) I overtook, just as the Saar valley at St. Arnual opened up, the tail of a part of Döring’s brigade, which that officer had brought forward on a reconnaissance. The head of the column was already engaged. Looking over the meadow toward St. Arnual, I could see how the ditches and hedges athwart it were lined sparsely with very energetic skirmishers. The French had a battery outside the village, sweeping the crossing of the stream, and the guns were playing on the road by which Döring’s men were debouching into the open. His skirmishers, by the heady way they pressed forward, seemed eager by themselves to carry St. Arnual, and turn by the manœuvre what was evidently the point on which rested the left flank of the French. Away on the right, Saarbrück seemed the centre of a pandemonium. On the Exercise Platz shells were bursting, and it seemed as if batteries were in action on the height; but this, as it turned out, was not the case. All up the slope leading from the town towards the Exercise Platz were heard the crack and seen the smoke-puff of the needle-gun, as the German infantrymen pressed on to the summit. But in our own immediate front we had quite enough to engage our attention. Stülpnagel’s artillerymen had unlimbered, and were blazing into St. Arnual and the French. Suddenly the latter gave ground. Their guns limbered up, and their infantry melted away backward into the wood. Certainly it was not wholly the German fire that caused this sudden retreat; some order must have come from head-quarters. No matter what was the cause of it, the German horse artillery were in motion again like a flash of lightning. Through the river dashed the guns, sending up the spray in jets, on to the turf with a strain and a bound, and then with a loosened rein into St. Arnual! Here there was another brief stand, then another limber up, and the horse artillery at a sweeping gallop passed round the St. Arnual bluff out of my sight, whether into the valley beyond or to climb the ‘Winterberg’ I could not tell.