Chapter II: Saarbrück and Spicheren (2)

“For my part, I rode into Saarbrück on my bare-backed steed, which I handed over to the ‘stallknecht’ of the Reinischer Hof, in St. Johann, to be claimed by his owner. Upon the railway-station esplanade I found, in the persons of one or two dead soldiers, the evidence that the battle had extended thus far. On the bridges joining St. Johann and Saarbrück lay others, and the townsfolk were attending to the wounded. At the head of the old bridge stood a French gun, a trophy, so far, of conquest. The steep slope up to the Exercise Platz had evidently not been taken without some fighting, although it had been held only by some straggling outposts of Frossard’s rear-guard belonging to the Division Vergé. The French had obviously not been idle during the days in which they had occupied the heights overlooking Saarbrück. A continuous line of entrenchment had been thrown up across the crest, with earthworks of more importance for stronger infantry detachments at intervals. But it was evident that no serious attempt had been made to hold this hither line. Indeed, as I learned in Saarbrück, the brigade or division (whichever it was) that had held the heights and plateau behind it had fallen back everywhere on the previous night but one. On the 5th Rheinbaben’s patrols, pushing forward after their manner, had discovered how feebly the Exercise Platz was held, and early on the morning of the fight their explorations had not only satisfied their leader that it had been almost wholly deserted under cover of the darkness, but had impressed him with the conviction that Frossard was beginning a retrograde movement, which should include the abandonment of the yet more advantageous position on the Spicheren Berg and the elevated ground about Stiring with the entrenched position across the valley, stretching like a curtain between the two strong flank-positions.” Whether Rheinbaben was not too sanguine, or at all events premature in this conclusion, is a question that doubtless would have occasioned more controversy if the issue of the fight that ensued mainly upon it had been different. “He lost no time in dispatching the intelligence to General Kamecke, who, as commanding the division nearest to the scene of action, at once took upon himself the responsibility of ordering an attack on what it appears certain he considered was but the enemy’s rear-guard. He sent back notice of his intention to Zastrow, altering by the tidings the leisurely character of that general’s advance on Dilsburg. Kamecke himself, with characteristic impetuosity, galloped on to overtake his leading brigade (the 28th), which had got close to Saarbrück, when he caught up with it. Without losing a moment, Kamecke pushed Rheinbaben’s horsemen up the slopes to the Exercise Platz, covering the intervals between the roads with skirmishers, thrown out from the heads of his infantry columns, while some of his artillery unlimbered on the St. Johann side of the stream, and plied the plateau of the Exercise Platz with shell-fire until the advance of the cavalry and infantry compelled a cessation. It was while this was going on that Döring’s reconnaissance reached the valley opposite to St. Arnual. I afterwards learnt that he sent the battalions composing it down the river to support Kamecke’s direct attack.

“As I passed through Saarbrück, and took my way up the winding road to the Exercise Platz, it was already past eleven. Woyna’s infantry brigade (the 28th) and Rheinbaben’s cavalry were already over the ridge and striking steadily down into the valley intervening between it and the Spicheren Berg and the French position. Hurried movements, executed by large bodies of men, were visible through the glass all along the latter. Streams of soldiers were pouring over the horizon, and rushing down to line the entrenched edge of the bastion-like Spicheren. On the little quarterdeck-like plateau, just behind, the batteries had already got into position, and the shells were dropping fast among the Woynas and Rheinbabens as they pushed forward into the valley. Other batteries had opened fire also from a little eminence to the French left of Stiring. These did not have it all their own way. Four batteries Kamecke had already got into action—three aligned with the trees on the Forbach margin of the Exercise Platz, one on the other side of the Saarbrück-Forbach road. The fire of these was concentrated on the Spicheren Berg, while already down in the valley one heard the rattle of the musketry fire, and now and then came the sharp ping of a chassepot bullet.

“At the mouth of the scooped-out cross-road where it joins the main road opposite the Bellevue beerhouse, sat Kamecke on horseback, not quite so cool, perhaps, as the circumstances demanded. With abrupt gestures and jerky messages he was hurrying up his division to the attack. The long columns strained up the steep hill in extra quick time, the men puffing and blowing as the top was gained, and as the battalions marched down the further slope and took ground right and left of the main road across the valley. Here the young soldiers got their baptism of fire, and the veterans of ’66 had recollections freshened that might have faded into dimness as the years of peace had rolled over their heads. For now, not alone over their heads, but into their ranks, hurtled the angry shells, the jets of white smoke and the temporary disruption of the formation showing ever and anon where one had burst. The leading battalions lay down while the deployment was in progress, but still the shells spared them not. Kamecke’s artillery as it came up in detachments took ground right and left, some of it on the height, some batteries rattling down the road and opening fire on the slope at shorter range. One or two batteries were pushed out to the right hand corner of the Exercise Platz to give reply to the French batteries that were in so energetic action on the knoll flanking Stiring. But artillery, infantry, and cavalry—for all were now within range of vision from the corner of the Exercise Platz overhanging the steep road—made up what seemed full too weak a force to cope with what was before it; nor was there any indications of the speedy advent of supports.

“Presently there was a move down in the valley. The Woynas (28th Brigade) were heading away to the German right front to engage the French left resting on Stiring. The gallant von Francois, one of a race of soldiers, himself that day to meet a soldier’s death, led his stout Westphalians of the 27th brigade direct on that abrupt mountain mass that frowned out upon the plain, its summit already marked by the fringe of white smoke from the chassepots of the Frenchmen lining the entrenchment. There were French skirmishers in the bottom of the valley and on the little foothold places on the precipitous incline. On the level the Westphalians sent these back as if they too had been smoke. But it was no fair stand-up fight man to man. From the top of the Berg chassepot, mitrailleuse, field-gun concentrated on the on-marching battalions their powers of destruction. With a steady, rather slow, step they pressed onward constantly, leaving behind them on the plain a terrible proportion of their number. The slowness of the pace was characteristic.

“The German is a man of method and of stubborn pith. Under this death-hail the dressing seemed as systematic as on the parade at Düsseldorf, the touch of man to man as accurate. Ever as a shell crashed through a company, or the mitrailleuse opened a lane and strewed it with dead and wounded, the men flanking the gap closed in with a grim coolness which impressed one with the conviction that men who could act so could not be beaten. When the foot of the Berg was reached, the pace quickened and the formation broke. It was now like the forlorn hope of a besieging army storming a breach rashly reported practicable. Men scrambled upwards and forwards anyhow. The officers threw themselves from their horses, and took perforce to climbing on foot. Now the leader on a rugged pathway would go down, and, as he rolled backward, he would tumble his followers with him in pell-mell confusion. Officers were seen throwing forward their swords, men their needle-guns, and clambering up after their weapons on their hands and knees. There were little protected liebys here and there, and under these shelters the men packed as you may have seen sheep huddle before a high wind with a snow-drift borne on it. Thither crept, too, the wounded out of the fire that spared them when wounded no more than when they had been hale fighting men. Then when the sound men had caught their wind again, they would dash out, and make another convulsive scramble upward, ever upward. On the brink you might see the Frenchmen bending over the lip of the crest to get more purchase with their downward aim. A mitrailleuse was balanced on the edge by men clinging to the wheels and the trail, while its honeycomb-like muzzle went down, pointing among the stragglers, its butt end high in air. Kamecke had asked men to do an impossibility. There are parts of the Spicheren, notably that part just on the left of the extreme bluff nearest Saarbrück, which are not to be surmounted without scaling ladders. Von Francois’s men were brought to a standstill. There was no alternative but to fall back. Fortunately there was no necessity for a retreat right athwart the valley. Out of its centre there rise several low detached mamelons not of sufficient elevation to give any dominance as against artillery on the Spicheren Berg, but affording better positions for batteries than the plain itself, and furnishing cover behind which troops might enjoy at least a partial protection. Two of these bear the names respectively of the Galgenberg (Gallows-hill) and the Folster Höhe, while behind the latter is some broken ground, with a house or two and some water, the spot bearing the name of the Drathzug. On to these two little eminences the artillery of Kamecke’s division had been hurried forward to attempt some support and distraction for Francois’s brigade, and when the latter had to cease its bootless efforts to carry the Spicheren, it fell back to reorganise itself behind the knolls on which the gunners, themselves suffering severely, were plying the enemy with shrapnel-shells. Kamecke’s cavalry had drawn forward in the valley, behind the shelter afforded by the Gallows-hill and the Drathzug, strengthened by two regiments of hussars from Rheinbaben’s cavalry division. As the 27th Brigade drew back sulkily, the French skirmishers dashed down from the plateau, eager to hang on the skirts of the retreating Westphalians. There are two steep country roads that get down from the summit into the valley by a series of slants and zigzags, and these were extensively utilised by the French skirmishers, who pushed down even into the valley taking advantage of what cover was available, as ever and anon Francois’s men turned savagely at bay. But the skirmishers’ _bon quatre d’heure_ was very short. From behind the Gallows-hill dashed out right and left the keen-sabred troopers of the 11th and 13th Hussars. Galloping through and round their friends, they were on the Frenchmen like a thunderbolt, and the tirailleur-nimbleness of the plucky little Frenchmen availed but little not a few of them. So hot was the fury of the Hussars that they recklessly charged the Berg that had broken the hearts of the infantrymen. They were not long in discovering that their riding-school lessons did not include practice in crag-climbing, and they went back wiser men than before; while to some it was not vouchsafed to apply the experience in after-life. But the sections which formed themselves on the more westerly road up the heights saw before them a track which looked practicable. With mad valour the blue troopers dashed on and up, strewing the road with living débris as they advanced. How near the summit one at least of them must have got I never knew till next day, when I saw a dead hussar and a dead horse tumbled over into a ravine three-fourths of the way up. I saw them ride up. I never saw any of them ride back.

“While the 27th Brigade was re-forming under cover of the guns, Woyna, with the 28th Brigade, having struck away to the left by the Folster Höhe, was steadily fighting his way up toward Stiring, on which the French left flank leant apparently in considerable strength. His troops had fair cover in the broken woodland on either side of the railway and the mill-dams, while the railway cutting, deep as it is in places, and not straight for a long enough distance to be raked, also afforded opportune protection. He had, however, to fight every step of the ground, amid a terrific shell-fire that set alight to a terrace of workmen’s houses on the western side of the railway, that seemed to have been temporarily occupied by the German troops. But Woyna’s progress was terribly slow, and the French fire never slackened.” What his losses were, the journeyer on the railway may yet form a vague conception as he looks out upon the numerous green hillocks in the forest glades or the little clearings. There is a little signal-house on the railway that must have been the focus of a fearful fire. No shells had struck it, but when I saw it the day but one after the battle I could not find a space the size of this page which did not show the easily-read print of the impact of a bullet.

“Von Francois’s men were not convinced by the lesson they had received as to the inaccessibility of the Spicheren Berg. They must have one more useless essay at the impossible. I do not know whether Kamecke gave the order or not, but the diminished companies came out yet again to the open, and once more breasted the lower slopes of the hill. By this time the fire of the division’s artillery, plied as it was unremittingly, had made the edge of the Berg a very hot place, and the Westphalians were hardly so much torn as they had been on their first attempt. But the French general must have recognised how fatal to him would be their success. They must be repulsed _coûte qui coûte_. So the Frenchmen, standing in the shell-fire, again lined their intrenchment, and leaning over, rained death upon the struggling bearers of the needle-guns. Some of von Francois’s men staggered up through the storm, till they reached the shelter of a rock which, overhanging, supports a section of the verge of the sloping plateau above; and there, powerless to go further, and objecting to go back, they cowered in comparative safety, so close under their enemies that they might almost have grasped the muzzles of the chassepots. Von Francois himself was down, a fearful proportion of his officers had fallen, and the brigade had to own itself foiled, and give up what it seemed to have set its heart upon to achieve. But it went no more back behind the guns. These forced the French to hold their hands greatly, and the German infantry men, with a bulldog-like stubbornness, lay down among the furrows and by the hedgerows along the foot of the Berg. If they could not carry it, at least they would not leave it.

“It was now close on three o’clock, and Kamecke must surely, after the example of one greater than he, have been looking often and often at his watch, and muttering that would to God night or Zastrow would come. But there were succours nigher at hand than any Zastrow could bring. As it came toward its halting ground at Fischbach, the cannon-thunder came wafted on the wind to Barneckow’s division. Von Göben was on in advance of his corps; von Göben, to whom the _Kanonendonner_ was ever sweet music. There was no halt for the 16th Division this long summer day. By two the mazed people of Saarbrück saw with joy their old friends of the 40th, as the staunch Hohenzollerns hurried over the bridge to get on to the heights where they had already tasted blood. Von Göben rode on to the Exercise Platz, and took in the situation at a glance. It was truly a critical one. The 40th he sent straight out into the plain, to support the broken left flank of the 27th Brigade, and rode on himself to the Gallows-hill to take the command out of Kamecke’s hands in virtue of his superior rank. The 40th Regiment was as yet all that the 8th Army Corps had to say for itself, if we except von Göben: but other troops than Barneckow’s division had heard the cannon-thunder. By half-past two there was streaming round the shoulder the mass of Döring’s brigade, the 9th, of the 5th Division (Stülpnagel), summoned from its bivouac by Duttweiler when its general had found that his reconnaissance was the road to a battle. It had already done some fighting about St. Arnual, and had established the fact that the right flank of the French was now in the forest of Spicheren, which clothes the somewhat less abrupt slopes from the precipitous part of the Berg eastward in the direction of Berbach. As Döring advanced, he fell into position on the left of the 40th Regiment, with his front looking into the dark forest that rose before him. Other advance regiments of the 5th Division presently reached him, and the aid, no great thing as it was, looking at the work to be done, gave relief to the 14th Division, engaged as it had been right up to the hilt. The attack on the Berg was renewed but in part, the 40th undertaking the less precipitous section lying next the wood of Spicheren, while Döring’s regiments, under cover of a fire from part of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, which had just come up, went straight at the forest itself. The 40th had traditions of storming prowess. It had shown the way over the fortifications of Düppel; but the Spicheren Berg was harder than had been Düppel. What fighting it was to be sure, all along from the nose of the bluff eastward to the right verge of the wood! Three times did the Germans charge the hill and the wood—scarcely less a hill; three times did the French, fighting with a stubborn fury that was of the undegenerate days, hurl them back with a withering fire right in their teeth almost at arm’s length. For two stricken hours was the result dubious. But at five Alvensleben came on the ground with fresh supports belonging to the 3rd Corps, and one more attack was joined. Steadily climbed on the 40th up the steep green slopes. Döring’s men were over the trench on the edge of the wood and in among the trees. There is something horrible in the suspense of a fight in a wood. You see little or nothing; there is an occasional flash, and in the casual openings glimpses of troops swaying and heaving, like sea-waves in the chasm of a cavern; then there is an interval with nothing visible but the calm green tree-tops, which mock you when you know that hell is raging below them; and the hell is continually dropping its red-hot coals through the bars of the furnace, in the shape of wounded men who come staggering out from behind the trunks, halting often as they come. How is it to go? Are the blue-coated men you saw go in to be vomited forth again the way they went, with the red-breeched men hot and triumphant on their flanks, plying the devil’s pitchfork to hoise them wherewithal outside? or has this Spicheren hell a thoroughfare through it, and are the blue-coated men, having battled through the furnace, to reach the grill on the further side, and draw breaths of cooler air there? The white smoke surges up fitfully through the dark-green boughs of the fir-trees; still the wounded men stagger out, and still the issue is uncertain.

“But if we could not penetrate the secrets of the wood, we might, at all events, watch the course of the Hohenzollerns on its flank. Slowly, and evidently with arduous effort and terrible loss, they pushed on their dogged way. At length they were over the worst in the point of climbing, and into the worst in point of musketry fire, as they reached a kind of natural glacis before the French entrenchment. Watching them through the glass, one seemed to see the men straightening themselves up and pulling themselves together; then, as it seemed, with one great effort of their muscular loins and hips, they shot forward on to the top of the earth-bank. For one moment it was as if they hung here, and then fell forward, lurching down as it were on the Frenchmen who lined the trench. They say there was no actual bayonet fighting; from behind, it certainly looked as if for a couple of minutes there was a hand-to-hand fight; on the near side the dogged, weighty mass of the men in spiked helmets, leaning forward with a terrible _vis inertiæ_; on the further, a seething, bobbing, gyrating, frantic throng of marionnette-like men in red breeches. The spiked helmets seemed with their sheer weight and irresistible pressure to drive back the red breeches as a masterful wave sweeps the foam before it; and when the berg was won, the wood was won also. Döring’s Brandenburgers were not to be flouted by the Hohenzollerns. The wood was theirs, and cleared of French as the latter became aligned with its edge on its western flank. We saw little more for the time of the fight here, but the din that came back to us proved that all was not over on the upland when the Spicheren wood had been taken.

“As we learned afterwards, the French again and again charged the wood with fury, and even once or twice penetrated into it. The Hohenzollerns, dreading lest with the impetuosity of the rush they should be swept bodily back off the plateau, had to seek something at once of ground-anchorage and of cover among the trees. It was impossible for infantry alone to make its way upward and onward on the plateau. The call was for artillery, and artillery came. Two batteries of Stülpnagel’s division, that had been firing from before the Winterberg before the duel in the dark began in the wood, limbered up, and made for the rough winding track by the edge of the wood. The drivers were resolute, and the horses were strong. In ten minutes the gunners were at “action front” in the very faces of the French infantry, who had no alternative but to give way, for they had been deserted by their artillery; so, fighting desperately as they went, they fell slowly back, and the Germans pressed on, gradually making the plateau their own. So the French right wing was turned, and the battle of Spicheren virtually won.

“Certainly on the German right there seemed little indication that such a result had been achieved. Zastrow, with part of the reserve artillery of his corps, had come over by the railway bridge on to the battle-field at half-past four, superseding in his turn Von Göben in right of seniority. Zastrow had been trying strategical experiments with his 13th division (Glümer), which was out of the hunt, away by Völklingen, marching along, as we afterwards learnt, in blessed unconsciousness of what was going on so near it, the wind setting the other way, till an aide-de-camp from Zastrow, who reached Glümer about five o’clock, gave him a new direction and a stimulus to speed. But Zastrow had not at hand available troops of his own corps. The quiet and prompt Alvensleben (who was also already in the field) had got up nearly the whole of Stülpnagel’s division, and there were regiments available to participate in offensive action on the right, as well as to carry the Spicheren wood on the left. All the afternoon Woyna had been fighting doggedly forward till he had edged the French out of Stiring, and well across the valley from their entrenchments behind the iron-works of Stiring Wendel, on to the Kreuzbach, which may be called roughly a prolongation of the Spicheren-berg toward Forbach. Zastrow sent on a brigade of infantry and some artillery to attack this strong position; but the French, whose left had been strengthened by a division of Bazaine’s corps, anticipated the offensive, coming down in great force into the valley, no doubt with a design to cover Forbach at least for a time. The German artillery, which was now in strong force about the railway, played terrible havoc with this effort on the part of the French, who, however, persevered with a tenacity that seemed to partake of despair. At length Stülpnagel’s infantry were sent forward to precipitate the action, and this they did, by driving the French up the Kreuzbach, and storming it on their heels. This movement turned the French left on its part, so that while they were being hustled backward over the plateau on the right, they were being all the more shoved on to it from the Kreuzbach toward Spicheren and Alsting from the left. The confusion of the cross streams must have been immense, especially as the roads along which retreat alone was possible were by no means either good or plentiful. While Frossard held Forbach he had the key to the main _chaussée_ to Metz; but Zastrow’s strategetical experiment turned up a trump in the twilight. Glümer’s division (the 13th), bearing round from Völklingen by Ludweiler and Rosseln, came down upon Forbach from a due westerly direction, and frightened the French out of it with hardly any fighting.” The other divisions had got all the mauling; Glümer’s had had the furthest marching, and now came in for the heaviest loot; for the French evacuated Forbach in hot haste, and, after an absurd attempt to wreck the station and its multifarious contents by sending an engine to run amuck down a siding and on to the station, left everything as it stood, from scents and _bonbons_ to flour and munitions of war.

“There was in the dusk a kind of miscellaneous fighting all across the plateau, about the villages of Spicheren, Alsting, and Etzling. The French seemed never to know when they were beaten. Although regimental formation had become for the most part shattered in the mass which acted as the rear guard, detachments and groups fought passionately. It seemed as if the fight was to last all night. It became impossible in the dusk to distinguish between friend and foe. The French were reported to have sustained serious injury through a blunder of this kind, in which countrymen slew countrymen. The Prussians adopted the expedient of shouting “Hurrah Preussen!” and the hoarse, deep-throated cry ever and anon came backward from out the din, the smoke, and the fire-flashes with a strange weird effect. At length these detachments and groups either fell back or went down till the front was tolerably clear of Frenchmen. Then their artillery struck in for the last word. It had been got into position about Kerbach to cover the retreat on Puttelange, and was well and staunchly served to the last. The Germans with some little over-confidence, pressed it rather too closely, and then the French infantry yet once more showed how it carried a sting in its tail.” It must have been a ragged array that resumed the offensive thus in the darkness, but there is no doubt of the fact that a determined front after a fashion was shown. Yet there might have been some attempt at a pursuit, but that all the German army, with perhaps the exception of Rheinbaben’s cavalry division, was jaded with long marching and fighting. So beyond Kerbach, Frossard was let pursue in peace his disorganised and disorderly retreat. They had left of their goods and chattels in Spicheren, as well as in Forbach. “The firing had not wholly died away till after nine o’clock. As I walked back over the plateau, down the steep, across the valley, and on to the Exercise Platz, I had constantly to pick my way very carefully. It is a dismal sensation to stumble over a dead man. It is even a greater shock to force unwittingly a groan of pain from a poor wounded wretch lying helpless in his blood, waiting for the succour that, come how soon it may, is ever over-tardy. How many, both of dead and of wounded, flecked the brown surface of the heights I could then form no estimate; I only knew this, that the number of both was very great. Spiked helmets and red breeches blended together as closely as if they had been bosom friends all their lives. The hospital corps with their ambulances were swiftly picking up the wounded and carrying them off to be tended. Their organisation seemed excellent. More than once I saw in the pale ray of a moonbeam a female form swathed in black, with the white patch and the cross on the breast, bending over a prostrate form, or flitting ghostlike in the van of an ambulance party.” God bless the Sisters of Mercy in a night like this, say I, whether they are Roman Catholic or whether they be Protestant. Christianity on a battle-field can well afford to sink sectarianism. There were days and nights of bloodshed to come, when no Saarbrück convent should be close by to send out its courageous sisterhood on to the brink of the _Schlachtfeld_.

The Germans had, in all, engaged about 40,000 men, including the division Glümer, and probably Frossard, even with the reinforcement from Bazaine, was not so strong by some 12,000. Deducting Glümer’s division, which, although it came under fire, and therefore, strictly speaking, must reckon as being in the field, took no real part in the action, the hostile forces were about equally matched in point of numbers. It is no exaggeration to say that its position represented to the French army a value equivalent to another army of equal strength. The German loss was terrible—over 4,300 men killed and wounded. Nearly all the loss fell on the 14th division, only a portion of the 5th division, and the 40th Regiment. Probably the whole loss falls to be apportioned on a force under 20,000 men, and this would bring out the loss as one in five—an exceptionally heavy per-centage. The loss in officers was by far too heavy on the German side. The French left 2,000 unwounded prisoners in German hands.

The battle of Spicheren was won solely by the stubborn valour of the German soldiers, and by the cannon-thunder. The record of it contains no evidence of the influence of a master-mind over its dispositions and results. General Kamecke was probably justified in his effort to make a snap-shot for a victory, but certainly he had no right to engage himself so closely and generally as he did, until he had far better assurance than he had that he might reckon on supports when the time should come for him to want them. He might have secured his end, at far less expenditure of human life, by using his division discreetly to keep the French in play on both flanks, instead of abusing it as he did by an effort for the direct storm of such a position as the Spicheren-berg. It does not appear that he had any cognizance of Stülpnagel’s ability to come to his support in the opportune moment, or, indeed, that he communicated at all with Alvensleben’s corps. What succour he derived from this source—and how invaluable was that succour, the preceding details have demonstrated—came to him from the fortunate circumstance that Döring’s reconnaissance in the morning put that officer on the _qui vive_, and from the accident that the wind set in such a direction as to carry the sound of the cannonade into the back country. The responsibility of the day’s work, in so far as it was disastrous, rests with Kamecke; and there seems every probability that had the first army—the support which was all that he appears or, indeed, was entitled to have calculated on—constituted the whole available force, the marker in the war-game would have had to score a victory for the German arms between Saarbrück and Forbach on the 6th of August. That Kamecke was not defeated before supports came up, was owing solely to the stoutness of his Westphalians; and that victory was ultimately achieved was owing to the fact that Stülpnagel and Alvensleben were prompter than was Grouchy in marching on the sound of the cannon. All’s well that ends well. The victory had an immense moral effect. It must have been in the light of the experience furnished them at Spicheren that the French huddled backward under the shells of the forts of Metz, without attempting to utilise the many tempting positions for a stand which the configuration of the ground afforded them by the way. General Steinmetz has been erroneously blamed for the waste of life at Spicheren. The fact is that the gallant old soldier was responsible for nothing on the 6th of August, unless it might be for the circumstance that he did not happen to be nearer the front. He did not get into Saarbrück until the evening.

I walked out on the battle-field on Sunday afternoon. All up the steep which rose out of the valley all the way from over against the Exercise Platz to near Forbach, a distance of some four miles, the dead of the German army lay thickly. At the bottom of the steepest place there was quite a fringe of butchery that had rolled downward in obedience to the law of gravitation, a grim alluvial deposit made by the torrent of shot. On the little level shoulders of the steep graves were being made, into which the burial-parties were huddling

“Friend and foe,
In one red burial blent.”

Some of the ravines leading on to the height, where it is indented by the bay between the Spicheren-berg and the Kreuzberg, had been the scenes of desperate fighting. In a little gully just at the top of one of these I found a dozen Prussians lying dead, piled one above another in inextricable confusion. Elsewhere they lay as thick. Inside the intrenchments it was the turn of the Frenchmen to be found dead in the greatest numbers. The ditch itself was full of them. For several yards inside the intrenchments it was impossible to step without treading on dead humanity. The fight had been equally deadly all over the plateau, where the corn and grass were trodden into the brick-like ground that was yet in places soft and soppy with blood.

Saarbrück, which had chafed mightily under the presence of the Frenchmen on the heights above them and occasionally in their midst, no sooner saw victorious Germans on the Exercise Platz than it broke out into a spasmodic eruption of flags symbolical of victory, and generally went half crazy with joy. But there was real work for Saarbrück to do in manifestation of its national and indeed human sympathies, and the flags and phlegmatic caperings were only a preliminary outburst. The wounded were to be removed from off the battle-field, as the tide of war surged forward and left its _débris_ behind. Right energetically did Saarbrück rise to the occasion. I do not believe there was a man or a woman or a boy or a girl in all the town who did not help to carry wounded soldiers off the field. The medical arrangements were decidedly defective. No such sudden call on the services of the department had been anticipated, and the staff both of bearers and of surgeons was far from strong enough, nor was there enough of hospital accommodation. The first and the last wants Saarbrück did its best to supply. Into every room of every house, into every shed and outbuilding, were carried wounded men. My hotel was full of them, from the _salle à manger_ to the fortress in which Boots cleaned his knives and brushed the clothes. Fifteen poor fellows lay all night on straw in an outhouse without medical aid. In the morning three of them were dead. On Sunday began the transport by railway into the interior of such as could be moved, this being a wise provision for keeping the frontier hospitals available for the wounded in future actions; 2,000 were so sent away on the Sunday and Monday, both Prussian and French, their destinations being the large towns all along the Rhine. As I left Saarbrück the procession to the station was unbroken of litters and hand-ambulances, of pale men with arms in slings, or limping, supported by a couple of sympathisers. One I saw pass in a wheelbarrow.