w> D C 35 "<^B^^'' J ..-.. ,.. rrontispieces. Bismarck. . \ Map, Showing the Seat oe War in France ..„ 85 Von Moltkb... , 8 Napoleon III., Emperor of France..... 33 The Crown Prince, Frederick Williajni 48 Prince Frederick Charles op Prussia 49 Marshal M'Mahon 54 General Uhrich, Commander op the French in Strasbourg 56 General Trochu 79 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. CHAPTER I. THE START. The other evening a group was gathered in a village Wirthsham on the Upper Rhine. The faces loomed benignantly thi'ough heavy wreaths of tobacco-smoke fitfully illuminated by the flash of an occasional lucifer-match. No bad type, by-the-way, of the state of matters by the neighboring Strasbourg, wrapped in dense poAv- der-clouds, lighted at intervals by blazing shells, where the resolute Germans, who manned the batteries and the trenches, cannonaded their victims with the stoical pity one feels for the suf- ferings of one's neighbors. The worthy Baden- ers of the Wirthshaus, each of them behind his beer-glass and china pipe, were voluble of words and sympathy as they listened comfortably to the steady roar of the guns outside. That their sympathy was real there could be no ques- tion ; they told touching little traits of the mis- eries of the miserable refugees, and rehearsed their heart-broken lamentations with a rude eloquence that showed they were genuinely touched. And they puffed their tobacco and gulped down their beer with an air of ineffable satisfaction. There was an exception. A man, in blue blouse and French casquette, much like a well- to-do workman of the Parisian Faubourgs, was seated at a side-table. He, too, had his beer and his pipe, but the pipe had gone out and the beer stood untasted. His haggard face looked as if it had been fresh grooved by wearing anx- iety, and it might be starvation that had given the sharper touches to the lines by his down- drawn mouth and the wrinkles under his blood- shot eyes. He swayed himself uneasily in his seat to the terrible music of the cannonade : as it swelled he clutched desperately at his close- clipped hair with his trembling hands : as it seemed to lull, he would bury his face in them, planting his elbows on the table as if he would see out the siege in that very attitude. The second after he would be on his legs, striding away towards the door, to retui'n the following one to his seat. At last, after pressing his fe- vered forehead on the dingy panes of the little window, he fairly rushed from the room to see what might be seen. The night was as black as the prospects of the beleaguered city : the rain beat in his face as thickly as the German rifle-balls had been pelting its ramparts that afternoon ; but his excitement was not to be de- nied — perhaps not unnaturally. Within the double line of French and German batteries were his home, his family, his property, his old associations, and his heart ; and it was difficult to sit still and listen quietly while they were being bombarded and shattered. Although, thank God, one had no such terri- ble concern in the European war as this unhap- py Alsacian, you could surmise something of his ungovernable and irrational excitement by your own sensations as you read Mr. Renter's sensational telegrams seated in a snug English arm-chair. You heard the bellow of the field- guns, the rattle of the Chassepot and Ziindna- del-Gewehr ; the remorseless grind of the mi- trailleuse. You saw the long trains of wound- ed coming in from the front to the ghastly sym phony of shrieks and groans ; you pictured the profound enthusiasm of an earnest nation arm- ing for a national war. Very likely, you might appreciate more philosophically the rights of the struggle were you to stay contentedly at home. You were certain to be kept much more thoroughly au/ait of its contemporary history, to be favored with far more rapid and compre- hensive bird's-eye views of the successive phases of the campaign. No matter. It seemed dif- ficult to amuse one's self with the dropping fire of breech-loaders among the heather when there was a roar of battle all round the north-eastern frontier of France, or to take an interest in bags of grouse when human beings were dropping by tens of thousands. So curiosity, or perhaps something of a more worthy feeling, had its way, and, spite of misgivings that you might be rushing in search of light into outer darkness. 12 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. one's mind was made up to a start for the Rhine. It was the middle of August; and although the days of Spicheren,Wissemburg, and Woerth had torn rents in the veil that had enveloped the German plans ; although the series of im- promptu surprises Von Moltke had prepared for the Emperor were rapidly developing them- selves, still German officials in London would give little encouragement to English travelling gentlemen. Honestly, they said, the successes of the Germans had hitherto been greatly owing to the secrecy they had observed, and, as they courteously insinuated, observers could do no good, might do harm, and would infallibly be much in the way. The Crown Prince had al- ready been overdone with princes and prince- lets ; his staff was swelled far beyond the pro- portions of an average state army under the old Bund : provisions would become more hard to come by as the lines of communication length- ened out, and the commissariat had more than enough to do without catering for idle mouths. Complimentary to your intelligence, perhaps, but otherwise unsatisfactory. One cause for thankfulness you had, however. When time was valuable, it defined the situation, and told you that you could count on no help in England. You must rely on yourself, or find friends abroad, and, instead of making a dash to the front, decide for pursuing your modest investi- gations on the trail of the war. It was the work of a day to mobilize yourself, your baggage, and a portion of your property. It was clear, when communications were hope- lessly disorganized and traffic worse than pre- carious, the lightest marching order should be the order of the day, and accordingly the trav- elling kit was restricted to the most simple nec- essaries. Even in the solitary knapsack, maps and field-glass, flask and tobacco, elbowed ward- robe and toilet necessaries into nooks and cor- ners. The only luxury indulged ia was a wealth of vises to the passports — sheer extravagance, as it turned out, for on no single occasion, from the leaving Charing Cross to the returning thither, was that passport asked for. There were cir- cumstantial rumors, semi-officially confirmed by one's banker, of English notes, bank and circu- lar, being only negotiable in the war country at some such depreciation as assignats of the first French Republic. Inquiries after a money- belt were responded to by the production of many- pocketed girdles, where you might have secreted the fruits of an average lifetime's labor at the diggings. That difficulty was disposed of, how- ever, by arranging a single pocket, running on a simple strap, and thus, with a modest purse at the girdle, a knapsack not much heavier, some circular notes, and a few introductions in case of need, one's arrangements were complete. Already at Charing Cross Station you stood in the shadow of the war. It had fallen un- mistakably on the faces of the stream of Ger- mans who were still on the flow from England out to the Fatherland. There you first caught the expression you came afterwards to know so well ; a seated melancholy at seeing family ties loosened, and cherished hopes blighted, at hav- ing to leave the hearth for the bivouac, and ex- change the umbrella for the rifle; but at the same time a determined resolution that the tran- quil life should not be broken in upon for noth- ing, and that through triumphs or defeats this unholy war should be fought to the bitter end. The younger men on their way to the ranks brightened up quickly as they were whirled be- yond the unmanning influence of the tearful groups who had dismissed them with the last Lebewohls. By the time they found themselves on the Ostend packet, they were laughing mer- rily at the latest French bulletins and chatter- ing sanguinely over the advance on Paris. It was the elderly gentlemen whose faces kept their settled gloom. These were on their way to knit up the threads of broken commercial en- terprises on the Rhine and the Elbe ; or possi- bly to look for a wounded son missing somewhere among the field-hospitals of Woerth or Spiche- ren. However, old and young alike found some- thing to cheer them on disembarking at Ostend — something more invigorating in the chill small hours than even the steaming cups of cafe an lait. News of a battle by Metz, and of course another German victory ; and the invariable postscript, the inevitable bitter following the sweet — "Our losses are heavy." The Ger- mans first looked happy, and then grave, and then happy again. The expression on the faces of the Belgian gentlemen was more complicated, and their subsequent talk in the train suggest- ive — it was so evident their sympathies enlisted them on the side of France, and their jealous fears on that of Germany. Could they only have material and unimpeachable guaranties against annexation, how profoundly they would feel with this chere France. But the misfortune is, France reciprocates so cordially, and loves them so intensely, that they dare not approacli her. If they only came near enough, she would clasp them in her fond embrace, and never con- sent to let them go again. So with their eyes bent wistfully on the beautiful France, they are constrained to approach themselves politically to rough brusque Germany. It is hard on a people whose social aspirations are so absolutely ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. 13 French, whose organs parody so meritoriously the intonations of Parisian speech : whose capi- tal mimics so successfully Parisian architecture, parks, costumes, cafe's, restaurants, shops, and sign-boards. The more credit to the Belgians for subjugating their hearts to their principles, and submitting themselves to sacrifices so heavy, to insure the independence that lies so near their hearts. CHAPTER II. THE NEUTRAL GROUND. When two parties are preparing for a fight, the first idea of the curious but cautious neutral is to seek out a quiet corner, whence he can see it in comparative safety and comfort. When the French and German armies were massing themselves in mystery behind the lines of the Moselle and the Saar, when no one could proph- esy when the wai--clouds would come in collis- ion, but every one could guess where — then a glance at the map suggested to war correspond- ents that their provisional billets must be in Luxembourg. Circumstances and treaties have obtruded the neutralized and guaranteed Grand Duchy between the hostile territories, and the capital, with its tolerable hotels, stands within easy reach of the most objective angle. Ac- cordingly, on the first outbreak of the war, there was a strong English occupation of the province. The metropolitan and provincial press were strongly represented. Military men, playing hide-and-seek with the Horse Guards, posted themselves there in observa- tion. The Luxembourgois were delighted to see them all. They had been long accustomed to Federal occupation ; and when the Federal gar- rison was withdrawn, would have been only too happy to welcome a French one. Notwith- standing the prevalence of German speech, in sympathies and instincts they were far more French than the Belgians, and, unlike them, most of them would have hailed French annex- ation as the political millennium. But, practi- cal befoi'e all, they showed themselves cordial to every guest who brought a purse with money in it. Moreover, what those inquisitive arrivals craved before all was news and excitement ; and excitement and authentic intelligence the citizens of the Grand Duchy were prepared to purvey to any extent. They were always hear- ing and telling some new thing. Their country is a chosen haunt of the canard, if not their pet breeding-ground; and flushed in crowds, pro- fessedly by Metz and Thionville, those pseudo birds of passage dropped in flights in the Lux- embourg streets and cafes. One stipulation the citizens made, and a not unreasonable one. They were prepared to provide their visitors with rumors to any extent, hot and hot, but they protested against their catering for them- selves. Their bugbear was the being compro- mised. A correspondent had only to leave his hotel, and stroll down to the neighboring cafe, to pick and choose among sensational and dra- matic episodes, guaranteed by the personal hon- or of the informant, if not by his personal ob- servation. But if he went to the country to look out for his own game, that was another matter altogether. A highly-drilled corps of suspicion, morbidly rigid in the discharge of their duties, the police of the Grand Duchy were ever on the alert. Railway oflBcials and cantonniers of the line volunteered their services towards what became a labor of love, and de- voted the ample time left on their hands by the temporary lightening of their duties to amateur inquisition. "Our own correspondents" and their military friends were always being march- ed off and moved on. . If they were pounced on near the capital, they were straightway dragged before the local areopagites, to be dismissed with emphatic warnings not to do it again. If stop- ped near the frontiers, their officious guardians gravitated dangerously in the direction of the French outposts. Sensible men began to find out that the safest thing they could do was to stay quietly in the city, and amuse themselves in winnowing the grains of wheat from the bushels of chaffs. Shrewd men with easy con- sciences saw that Luxembourg was the place to manufacture the most sensational of letters with the slightest of strain on the invention. Long after the French camp at Sierk had been broken up, and the tide of war had rolled back upon the Upper Moselle, Englishmen still mustered strong in the Hotel de Cologne and the Hotel de Luxembourg, and Luxembourg was a natu- ral point of departure for any Englishman start- ing on the track of the war, especially as it stands on the shortest road to Treves. As you leave the Luxembourg railway-sta- tion, again you are conscious of the shadow of the war. The suburban cafes and garden beer- houses, with the shutters up on their sightless windows, stare at you vacantly. A dull ap- proach between blank walls prepares you to be charmed and startled by the view it leads to. As you drive on to the magnificent bridge flung over the chasm that yawns to the north of the town, you see art assisting wild nature in a luxury of colossal fortification : perpendicular scarps and counterscarps, and curtains that, ex- cept for the size of the individual stones that u ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. face them, remind you more of the works of an- cient Egypt than any thing modern ; gigantic bastions, frowning down on the massive demi- lunes, powder-magazines, and store-houses, that shelter in the depths of the valley below, by the banks of the little stream that trickles among the carrot-beds and cabbage-gardens. You see vast casemates given over to solitude, and countless snarling embrasures, from which the teeth have dropped out. You look backward on a wealth of outworks that exhaust every technical term in the glossary of scientific de- fense. Ravines of the kind run round three sides of the rocky table-land crowned by the upper town ; and on the fourth, where it would be easily accessible, ingenuity had exhausted it- self to solve the problem of impregnability. Of course, beyond all is the chain of detached forts, that elaborate modern development of the medieval barbican — each in itself a fortress of the third or fourth rank. And all this pictu- resque mass of unproductive labor is doomed, although very probably not irrevocably. It is true, since the outbreak of the war, the inmates have begun to realize the risks of inhabiting the strongest fortress in North Europe. The work of demolition most deliberately pursued for three or four years past has lately received a stimulus, and the little Duchy is putting its frightened shoulder in earnest to the ponder- ous wheel. With their modest means it is hard for the natives' best exertions to make it re- volve quickly enough to keep pace with events. There were some two hundred men busily at work, and they looked like gangs of industrious fleas hopping about these mountains of earth and stone. "It is hard for us poor people to have to pay to remove the burden they have charged on our shoulders," remarked a respect- able workman, smoking his evening pipe, and watching the cascades of brown earth and ava- lanches of stones tumbling into the abyss be- low. So it is, and the more so, that, if the ces- sion of Luxembourg should chance to be made a condition of the peace, the place will unques- tionably be replaced in its rank as the first for- tress of Germany. As yet the demolitions have done more harm to the pi'omenades than the fortifications, and it would cost but a com- parative bagatelle to take wp the broken loops in their armor of proof. The proprietor is an absentee, and resides in his capital of the Hague, and, to the casual ob- server at least, his vicegerents appear to ad- minister the Duchy in most patriarchal sim- plicity. They ought to understand thoroughly the sentiments of the people, for they give them- selves every opportunity of hearing their can- did expression. Every evening the ministry and the military commandant come to unbend at the cafe' in the bosom of the people. In pip- ing times of peace, the cafe looks as if it might be drowsy enough ; with war on the neighbor- ing frontier, almost within the sound of the guns of Thionville, and with an uneasy suspicion that they and their country were among the stakes of the game that is being played there, the blood of the people bubbles up to fever heat, and as evening goes on, its voice rises to a shriek and a bellow. As telegrams come in via Paris or Berlin — for official intelli- gence travels the few miles from Luxembourg to the seat of war by a considerable detour — the excitement deepens. But it grows to in- sanity as gentlemen pant in, dishevelled and dusty, who have passed the day in amateur re- connaissances. One of them gasps out that he has spent the afternoon on an eminence before Thionville, and seen with his own eyes a regi- ment of Prussian cuirassiers crumpled up like the sheet of newspaper he crushes emphatical- ly in his hand. Another has penetrated into Thionville itself: strange to say, he has seen or heard nothing of this tragic episode, but he brings the news of a general action on the side of Metz imminent for the following morning. So it goes on ; every man who presumes to discuss the situation is bound to contribute his own item of war news, and the more startling it is, the more chance he has of edging in a cou- ple of sentences. There is an honorable under- standing that no one is to be brought to book for the exploded fiction he may have propa- gated yesterday. Sometimes these quidnuncs lie with a diabolical circumstance which pro- duces most unhappy results. The Hotel de Cologne is filled Avith French ladies, refugees from Metz or Thionville, who, in colors or in black, fete or mourn the fluctuations of the war. One fine forenoon the report of a French suc- cess had brought out at the dinner-table a whole bevy of brilliant toilets, and the faces of the wearers for once were comparatively cheer- ful. As the soup is removed, a French station- master in retreat bustles in, evidently bubbling over with the excitement of being the bearer of evil tidings. His face alone was enough to give a shock to the party, and it did. Having preluded artistically, so as to hang them all up on the sharpest tenter-hooks of expectation, he opened his budget, and the contents came with a rush. " Surprise. Overwhelming numbers of the enemy ! Two French regiments sur- rounded by three German divisions — prodigies of valor — heaps of dead — 150th Hussars cut to pieces to a man !" One elderly lady turns pale ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. as death, clutches at the table, stares wildly at the messenger of evil, rises and totters from the room. Her daughter follows, dramatically ap- plying her handkerchief to her eyes, heaving up an admirable imitation of a sob, stealing a glance at the mirror as she passes. The un- happy lady has her only son in the ill-fated regiment, and hurries off towards Thionville to pay the last sad tribute to his loved remains. She returns late next day, having learned that the regiment in question is at that moment in Alsace, and that her son, for all any one knows to the contrary, carries himself to a marvel. And the following day, at dinner, she sees the veracious station - master in his accustomed place, opening his diurnal budget without the slightest shade of embarrassment. In these days, as the Germans had put a gir- dle between the French armies and their sym- pathizers in the Duchy, the vigilance exercised on the movements of neutrals had slackened. Accordingly, we could plan a little demonstra- tion on our own account, and improvised an ex- cursion to a Pisgah christened the Johannis- berg. We were assured it stood out bastion- like on the frontier, and commanded an unin- terrupted view to the gates of Thionville, and far beyond. My companions were a distin- guished novelist and journalist, and a gallant officer in the Indian service. Arrived at the frontier station, Esch, we found ourselves on the right flank of the emi- nence in question, and something like a mile from its base. Very promising it looked, and^ our hopes rose the higher that, having dispatch- ed the train and their work for some hours to come, all the personnel of the station joined our party. The muscular station-master strode oif gallantly at our head, assisting his steps with the stem of a youthful tree, like a modern Her- cules on his way to draw the wood on the hill for lions and hydras. Thanks to the weight of his club, Hercules soon fell into the rear, and a passing shower drove the rest of the native con- tingent to refuge in some neighboring farm- buildings. Meantime, the three impetuous Englishmen had breasted the hill-side through thick-wove hedges and dripping copse-wood up to the chapel that stood on the summit. So far so good : but the little chapel was imbo- somed in wood, and so were we ; and when our perseverance was finally rewarded by finding a peep-hole through the foliage, our curiosity had to limit itself to the sight of a quiet Luxem- bourg village in the valley below, and some poplars, a mile and a half off, on the top of an opposite hill. What the Luxembourgois, who knew the place well, had hoped to see when they got up there, it would have been hard to say. Perhaps they stimulated their imagina- tions, or salved their consciences by concocting bulletins of the war in a place where they might possibly have seen something of it, had the to- pography of the country been totally different. Even when we had operated our advance on the second ridge, all we had before us was a notch in a third one, through which we could distinguish something like a road and a double line of poplars. A distant cloud of dust sug- gested, of course, a cavalry engagement, and a cloud of smoke a cannon-fire, which ought to have been audible if it had not been blowing something very like a gale. Of course we ought to have laid our joint fancy under con- tribution for the details of the campaign, and carried the story of the action back to the cafe' in Luxembourg, and then transmitted it in sen- sational letters to the English journals. Un- fortunately, our friend the Captain carried a field-glass, popularly known in English circles at Luxembourg as "la Mitrailleuse," and re- garded with extreme suspicion by the author- ities as some new and truculent weapon of of- fense. "La Mitrailleuse" disengaged a flock of sheep and their attendant shepherds from the haze of dust — strong presumptive evidence that there was no hungry army in the immediate vicinity of the mutton, while the smoke de- tached itself from smouldering brush - wood. Candor compels the confession that our expedi- tion, in point of military interest, was a com- parative failure ; although, I have every reason to believe, it contrasted favorably in incident with many on which able correspondents have founded the entertaining and instructive letters which have given us so vivid an idea of the progress of the campaign. CHAPTEE III. Leaving Luxembourg, with its safe excite- ment, its ample supplies of daily rumor, its war correspondents sitting in the snug seclusion of their chambers cooking up rechauffes of canards, and spicing them to suit the palates of the pub- lic, was like taking a plunge in the dark un- known. Beyond the Prussian frontier all was myth and mystery; the only thing absolutely certain was that there our sorrows would begin. We braced ourselves to stern inquisition by fron- tier officials, and perpetual arrests by the sub- ordinate minions of power. No conveyances, public or private ; hotels turned to barracks, and 16 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. railway-stations to hospitals ; roads blocked with supplies, and reserves pressing forward to the front. In short, as every one agreed, what we had to look forward to was sustained suffering without the dignity of danger. Unless we could bribe one of the rare peasants left to till the de- serted fields — my Indian friend was to accom- pany me as far as Saarbruck — we should have to make our way to Treves as we best could, car- rying our own baggage. Light as it was, plod- ding along the level highway, knapsack-laden, by no means entered into our arrangements, if substitutes were by any means to be provided. Accordingly, the revulsion of our wrought-up feelings was ineffable when we descended from the railway-carriage at Wasserbillig into the arms of a jolly Luxembourgois, the proprietor of a comfortable little public omnibus, who re- ceived us as if it were us in particular he had been waiting for. A few minutes more and we were rattling over the bridge on the Sauer, and past the black and white barrier posts of Prus- sia. The only signs of an exceptional state of things were the girders of the small iron rail- way-bridge lifted off and laid by the side of the line : not even a picket of observation, in the shape of a pair of policemen ; not a solitary myrmidon of the Zollverein. The only result of the war had been the suspension of such friv- olous checks on free circulation. It was humil- iating ; but the German Confederation actually seemed to ignore our advent, or regard it with supreme indifference. And this is, perhaps, the place to say that, in the course of the tour, that first impression deepened gradually to convic- tion. You might have forgotten your passport at the passport-agent's for any service it was. Whenever you were asked for papers, it was a military pass, and not the autographs of con- suls in London, that satisfied the scruples that arrested you. It was a pleasant drive down the Moselle val- ley, between the half-reaped crops and under the rich fruit-trees. Our only fellow - passen- gers were a respectable woman in the deepest of mourning, and her little girl, decked o-ut like a stage peasant, in the gayest of white and crim- son and silver. It was for national, and not domestic bereavements, the mother dressed in black. Our complacent coachman pulled up at Dorf Igel, to let us renew our acquaintance with the venerable Roman monument. The eagle that had perched placidly on the top for the last seventeen hundred years, until he was winged by a French shot in the beginning of the century, had perhaps a narrow escape the other day. It was easy to conceive a sanguinary battle of Igel fought on the line of the Moselle, with French and German guns in position on the lofty natu- ral earth-works on either bank, while shot and shell made ducks and drakes on the blood-stain- ed bosom of the river. Past the handsome railway-station at Treves, where, for the first time, we saw the flag of the hospitals and ambulances, the red cross on the white ground, flying from a side-building ; a crush of sheep and a cloud of dust choking the bridge and us, and out of the cloud a husky voice demanding what we had to declare. The zealous ofiicial ought to have learned to recog- nize them by this time, but he had assumed the two enormous cases of lint and bandages on the roof to be our private luggage. Perhaps the palpable darkness that shrouded them made his error excusable. In the streets of Treves, among the decently- to-do women, at any rate, black was the only wear. In strange contrast were the gay flags, the North and South German colors, that waved from the housetops or the windows. At its time of life, the second oldest city in Europe may be excused for being drowsy, and lagging a little in arrear of modern progress ; and Treves is never lively. But now all trade seemed well-nigh at a standstill, and men seemed as scarce on the pavements as in the fields through which we had driven. The fact is, these first impressions at Treves were corrected by subsequent ones, and gave a very unfair impression of the drain upon the manhood of Germany. Lying imme- diately behind the line of advance and the scenes of butchery, it had become a depot on which the armies and the hospitals drew for all manner of labor. The war had placed the staff of the Trieri- scher Hof, on something more than a peace es- tablishment. There was but a head-waiter and an aid-de-camp, and these not overworked. Yet every thing was as comfortable as it used to be, with the difference that you were made at once the spoiled children of the establishment and embarrassed with attentions. When the hotel had a stranger to welcome within its gates, it clearly made the most of him. Yet not so long ago, as the waiter assured us, there had been bustle enough, and too much. His Roy- al Highness, Prince Friedrich Karl, in this room ; his Excellency General So-and-So in that ; three or four officers in each of the oth- ers, and 140,000 men of all arms billeted in the town. That was when the Paris press was play- ing hide-and-seek with the German army, when Von Goebel had stuck up a scarecrow in the woods by Saarbruck, and through the district perdit of the Eifel 50,000 German horse were silently picking their way to the front. ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. 17 When the path of our adventurous advance bristled — to plagiarize on the Emperor's procla- mation — with obstacles, a military safe-conduct was our earliest care. At the commandant's head-quarters in the market-place, every thing wore the quasi-military air of a country in de- liberate course of mobilization. It was hard to tell who was a soldier or civilian, to guess at grades or ranks. In a little room on the groiind- floor opening directly from the Place, a middle- aged man, surrounded by bloused peasants, sat at a table. With his worn look and awkward- ly sitting uniform, he reminded one of a mid- night masquerader caught and mobbed in mid- day's sunshine. Beyond him, at another, was a young major, looking the soldier all over, busy- ing himself with a knot of regulars. He at last found a moment to listen to our wishes. He was courteous, but profoundly easy as to our safety, and supremely indiiFerent as to our dan- ger. Certainly we might go to Saai'bruck : un- pleasant journey as times went, and frightfully tedious. If we wanted a military pass, doubt- less the commandant there would supply it ; and again he was busied with his books and notes. The result of the interview, unsatisfac- tory as it was in one sense, was instantaneous relief in another. The imaginary bonds which, as we had been persuaded, fettered us in our movements, snapped and dropped from our limbs. We were free agents, and for the fu- ture might rely upon ourselves as we had been wont to do, without counting with authorities. So we dismissed from our mind all idea of in- terviews with the commandant of Saarbruck or any one else, and fell back, until further notice, upon the customary role of British tourists. However, as neither Bradshaio nor the Tele- ,graph were of much use in these times, we sought a personal interview with the railway- clerk. There would be a train to Saarbruck next morning at 5 30, and tickets would be is- sued as usual. The only shadow that lingered over our brightening prospects was a vague apprehension of short commons and irregu- lar rations, on the way we were going — an ur- gent reason for making the most of the flesh- pots of Treves and the excellent German din- ner provided at the one o'clock table d'hote. The party, consisting of citizens, was select in number and earnestly patriotic in feeling. The gentleman next me apologized very unnec- essarily for the strength of the sentiments he expressed, by explaining he had a couple of sons and three nephews in the field, to say nothing of a favorite pair of carriage -hoi'ses. Next the waiter struck in to inform us that the hotel omnibus hoi-ses had gone the same way, 2 and had exchanged the familiar streets of Treves for the interminable chaussees of France. Where they were then he knew nothing, he added, and a tear dimmed his eye. Doubtless he pictured his sleek old friends, tethered to tlie wheel of a baggage-wagon, picking mouldy rushes under the dripping poplars of a strange land. The young waiter, his assistant, an ex- ceedingly nice-looking lad, wore deep black, which was evidently no costume of ceremonj', and went through his duties with a courage as creditable in its way as that which carried the heights of Spicheren. It was obviously terri- bly repugnant to him for the moment ; and he was so gi'eedy to pick up any rumors from the seat of war, or any speculation on tlie progress of the armies, that it was torture to drag himself out of earshot of the conversation. Then, as the others went out, our friend, the major of brigade, dropped in, and we improved our acquaintance. As we sipped our coffee and he swallowed down his dinner, he found time to deplore, with a comic resignation, the multifarious engagements of that eternal round of duties of his, and to theorize on the chances of the campaign. There were many wounded lying in Treves, he said, but few of them dan- gerously hurt. They did not send back the graver injuries to a town that, so far as rail- ways went, was in a cid de sac. Then, almost in the middle of a sentence, and with the last mouthful of his meal, he rose, saluted, and with a curt and courteous apology disappeared, car- rying away the latest Graphic, with its views of Saarbruck and the bridge. No English tourist by the Black Gate, iiot a soul in the ample enceinte of the amphitheatre ; and as for the Roman Baths, the guardian had left his little house and taken the keys with him. It was all as unnatural as if you had found an empty Park on a fine June afternoon, or no ve- hicles in Sutton on a Derby-day. But, on the other hand, there were signs of the times that had an interest of their own to us, who had not yet supped deep of sensations and horrors. In the first place were the frequent Lazzarette — Lazzarette is the rather repulsive name by which the Germans choose to christen their military hospitals. The red cross floated from all manner of buildings — from coquettish sub- urban houses, standing in green lawns in a blaze of flower-beds, to massive convents grim- ly turning their backs on the narrow streets, and shutting out life and liveliness with grated windows, blank walls, and ponderous swing- gates. Round the doors of the former lightly wounded men stood sunning themselves, with bandaged arms in slings, or hopping about on 18 ON THE TKAIL OF THE WAR. crutches among the sparrows. There were Krankenpjleger by plenty, in ones, twos, and threes ; those brethren of the rosy cross carry- ing the badge conspicuously on their arms. Here a sister of charity, with her book of devo- tion and her chaplet of beads, went gliding in round the scarcely - opened hospital doors ; there, the door was flung wide back to admit a portly matron, who bustled in, followed by her daughters, bearing a basketful of comforts for the body. There had been few deaths, where serious wounds were the exception ; yet in a corner of a church-yard we came upon a fresh cluster of new-made graves, and friendly hands had strewed flowers and laurels on the martyrs to the national cause. Across the river, and you forget the cares lav- ished on invalids sent to the rear, in interesting yourself in the arrangements for provisioning the soldiers to the front. From the railway- station, for a long mile down the walnut ave- nue by the river bank, the road is cumbered with carts charged alternately with the means of sustaining life and inflicting death. With Luxembourg neutral, there is no railway com- munication between Treves and Germany east of Bingen. Had the railway from Cologne through the Eifel been completed instead of merely in course of construction, it might have accelerated by days the rapid advance of the Germans. Here are long lines of country wag- ons, driven for the most part by elderly peas- ants or hobbledehoys, all crowding up to the term of' their tedious journey at the adjacent station. Some of them are piled full of long loaves, but slightly protected from the flying showers ; but the loaves look as if they were as lit- tle likely to be damaged by the weather as the sandstone blocks from the neighboring quarries. There are bags of wheat, and sacks of potatoes, and casks of cartridges ; but these last are pro- tected with a care not wasted on the bread. Passing on and mounting the steep hill behind, to where the colossal red statue of the Virgin blushes to the evening sun like the rosy monu- ments of Petra, you can look tranquilly back on all the bustle you have extricated yourself from. Treves is as quiet as its suburb is noisi- ly animated ; the boat-building is suspended on the banks of the Moselle ; few sailing-craft, and not one solitary raft, are floating on the river's bosom : no steamer blows oflf her steam by the bridge. Down the valley from Conz, a train of railway-wagons of interminable length drags itself along in the wake of the solitary engine, like a broken - back snake ; here and there alone the parallel road, slowly moving pillars of dust indicate the herds of cattle that are trudging footsore towards the field-shambles. Taking the descent very easily, you reach the railway station full half an hour before the train, and, pending its tardy arrival, refresh yourself with beer in the restauration. In one corner of the hall is a pile of litters — mattresses in wicker-work frames with oil-skin hoods, car- ried on a couple of poles passed through hasps in the sides ; in another a heap of canvas stretchers, some of them crimsoned with un- pleasantly suggestive stains. The train comes in at last, empty, except for a dozen or so of lightly wounded men, who walk off with slight assistance. It was the first arrival of wounded we had seen ; and, had you seen nothing more of the war, it must have sent you back to England with some faint conception of its hon'ors. As it was, looking back upon it afterwards was like recalling the cut finger of yesterday among the mortal scenes of a grand railway smash. CHAPTER IV. SAAKBKUCK. At 5 30 A.M. there was considerable confu- sion, but no great crowd, at the station. Tickets were duly issued ; but for the moment there was no appearance of a train, although an engine was fussing about among the crowds of carriages shunted on the numberless lines of rails, most of them third-class, goods-vans, horse-boxes fitted up roughly with benches, or littered down with straw : these last were for transport of the wounded. It was an agglomeration of rolling- stock from every German line — Cologne, Min- den, Munich, Stettin, Stuttgart ; how the names on the carriages would have taxed the geograph- ical attainments of a French field-marshal! And how he would have been scandalized by the numeroiis vehicles, German by right of conquest, bearing the familiar legend " Est de France," and Avith their capacity of transport indicated in kilogrammes on the corner ! On every one of them was painted conspicuously the amount of animated war material they were warranted to carry — " forty men, or six horses ;" "sixty men, or eight horses," etc. It was all of a piece with the carefully detailed Prussian organization. A train of carriages moves up : a rapid sum in simple addition, and the officer superintending tells off" the precise number of men to fill it. While thus exercising our powers of obser- vation, our train had been formed ; its numer- ous passenger-carriages absolutely insignificant in their proportion to the interminable goods- ON THE TEAIL OP THE WAR. 19 trucks. A la guerre coimne a la guerre. The conductor grinned at our putting out a feeler to- wards somewhat less Spartan accommodation by exhibiting the high-class tickets we had ex- travagantly purchased, and assured us we had but a Hobson's choice — a third-class carriage, or none at all. We felt ashamed of having at- tempted even that tacit remonstrance. It show- ed how human nature demoralizes under un- looked-for prosperity, and how easily the hum- ble camp-follower resumed the airs of the full- blown tourist. Only the day before, and we should have gladly compotmded for jolting to Saarbruck on the knife-board of an ammuni- tion-cart. It was a strange mixture in the train. Sol- diers and peasants ; Krankenpfleger of all ranks and many races, most of them Germans, a good many Belgians, and some Dutch. The occu- pants of our compartment were, for the most part, small peasant proprietors bound to stations on the line, but there were one or two superior employes in the great industrial establishments of the Saar valley. Then, for the first time, I fairly experienced that extreme courtesy and thoughtful good-nature which made the whole tour as pleasant as a war-tour could be made. Proud of their successes, and the patriotism and organization that had won them, exulting in the fair horizon opening to them beyond the sea of blood and the smoke of battle, the Ger- mans seemed to take your visiting them, in the circumstances, as a personal compliment, if not something more. Turning out of the valley of the Moselle by the banks of the Saar, the rail- way carries you through scenery of extraordi- nary beauty. We chanced to have taken our seats on the side of the carriage where we saw more of the profitable than the ornamental. We looked out on vineyard terraces, instead of hills wooded to their crests ; up at trim stone walls, instead of down over precipices upon the river. Moreover, the sun was beating into one's eyes, and there were no curtains. The natives at the opposite window absolutely insisted upon our taking their seats ; while the peasants on either side emulously moved along to make way for us. We thanked them as best we could with what they seemed most to appreciate — our honest admiration of their country. Any one who knows much of the Ehineland must have found out that its softest beauties modestly nestle away by the banks of its tribu- tary streams. After the " bit " by Nonnenwerth and the Siebengebirge, the reach by St. Goar and the Lurlei, there is nothing on the great river to compare with scenes on the Moselle, the Aar, and the Nahe. But perhaps the valley of the Saar surpasses them all ; and had not the coal-fields of the basin put a practical stamp on their aspirations, their ambition to annex it might have upset our preconceptions as to the love of the Prench for the beautiful. Not that a corps darmee advancing by that road on the Rhine would have made a pleasant summer tour of it, although they might have counted upon excitement in abundance. The fortress of Saarlouis is the key of the lock ; but, even had that been taken or masked, it would have been hard work forcing or turning the successive wards. The river fiows by a series of natural positions, and German tenacity would have made the ground the march lay over horribly holding. Prom picturesque Saarburg, with its mediaeval fortress of the prince-bishop of Tours, up to Saarlouis, the modern fortress of the kings of Prussia, the river runs out and in by the feet of hills wooded to their summits with beech and oak, scarred here and there with red precipices. A veritable red land, although not in the Sua- bian circle : red rocks and red soil, and a red river in flood after a heavy rainfall ; red brick manufactories, where the red clay is wrought to porcelain, and workmen — for the establishments were at work, although on half strength — smear- ed with red from the caps to the boots. Between these industrial centres the river was lovely and peaceful enough, with kingfishers and water- weeds fiitting about red stones patched with orange lichens. " Sehr Jiscfireich," remarked one of our local acquaintances ; and so it seem- ed to be ; for wherever it narrowed to a pond, a fisher was pretty sure to be at work with his primitive tub and sink-net, and every now and then, where it spread to a shallow, there was a solemn heron, with his eye riveted eagerly on the muddy waters. The valley widens to a plain where Saarlouis shelters among its earth-works and ditches. In the swampy fields great herds of cattle plash- ed disconsolately about. In scenery, climate, accessories, and every thing else, the place was a study for a Dutch landscape-painter. The prominent points, staring coats, and fevered eyes of the animals penned by the side of the line, showed that broken weather and long marches were telling on their constitutions as on those of the troops. The best you could wish for them and those destined to eat them was that they might have a prompt dispatch, and be speedily converted into rations. The platform swarmed with soldiers, wear- ing all manner of regimental numbers on their shoulder-straps. Many of them seemed there as simple amateurs, although it may be assumed they were only suifered to cumber the place on 20 ON THE TKAIL OF THE WAE. some legitimate pretext. Many others were destined to be fellow-passengers of ours, for they had their full field equipment with them — the cowskin knapsack, with the bright tin dishes strapped outside, and a pair of spare boots se- cured on the top ; the overcoat, compressed into the tightest of rolls, secured together at the ends, and worn across the body as a belt ; the ample gourd, and the inevitable tobacco- pouch ; and last, not least, the needle - gun, with its sword-bayonet and the roomy cartridge- box. One or two of them — men of the locali- ty, doubtless — were the centre of little groups of weeping women and sobbing children. A good many more clasped in theii's the hand of a chere amie. These were the ruptures of a garrison flirtation more or less serious ; and the heroes seemed much more animated at the prospect of glory to the front than depressed by thoughts of the girls they left behind them. In process of time, these martial travellers were ushered to their seats by martial masters of the ceremonies. " Eoom for the military !" exclaimed a commanding voice at the door of our compartment ; and while we civilians heap- ed ourselves and our packages away at one side, three soldiers were added to our party. Not- withstanding the relentless rains, there had, as yet, been little sickness in the fields ; but some there had been. These three men had been invalided and sent back to Saai'louis, and now they were under orders for Bingen. Very good types of three classes of the ordinary German rank and file they were. One looked the born soldier all over, with " a lurking devil in his eye," as if he would just as soon as not walk up to a battery ; and an occasional good-humored twinkle in the corner of it, as if he could take things tolerably contentedly in the roughest bivouac, although, en revanche, tmless sharply looked after, he would attend to his little com- forts and luxuries in the first occupied town. Another, a good-looking, broad-shouldered man, of some five-and~thirty, had a profoundly pensive expression, and yoxx could see plainly his mind was far away in some distant home- stead, and just as plainly that the thought of all he was fighting for would make him, perhaps, the more formidable enemy of the two in the hour of battle, "More dreadful far his ire, Than theirs who, scorning danger's name, In eager mood to battle came, Their valor like light straw on flame, A fierce but fading fire." The third was what many German soldiers look when I'egarded as individual specimens — a lout. Mass these men, and leaven them through oth- ers, and you can trace no flaw — if flaws there be — in the formidable machine they are welded into. You may smile at him as he slouches about the platform, but see him with his fellows, and, as Figaro said of the corps of sapeurs-pom- piers, whose units all Paris welcomed and made fun of, ' ' Je vovsjure que personne ne songe en rh-e." The professional soldier gave us an animated account of the storming of the Spicherenberg, and not the worst one of the very many I have heard since. A tender of the cognac - flask, thankfully accepted, bound them heart and soul to us for the rest of the journey ; and it was curious to remark the native politeness with which even the lout sought to repay the slight attention by insisting on relieving us of our knapsacks and umbrellas, and handing them out after us at Saarbruck station. "Saarbruck's reputation has been made by the war, like that of far more insignificant places. Yet it was not only a thriving but a handsome little town, and deserved much more than a mere local reputation. With its suburb of St. Johann, it sweeps round the Saar in a couple of crescents, and town and suburbs are linked by a couple of handsome bridges. So far as the historical "bombardment" went, Saarbruck has I'eceived a good deal of unde- served compassion, and tlie French a great deal of unmerited obloquy. The free use of the rail- way-station, set as it is at the junction of three lines of railway, was a point of great strategical consequence to the Germans, whose trains could be seen from the opposite heights plying with soldiers and stores. Accordingly, the French got their guns in position, and very naturally shelled it. But their practice was good, though the range was long; and only one or two houses' facing the heights, in the street leading up from the suburb to the station, seemed to have suf- fered materially from their fire ; only the Gast- hof zum Pflug was abandoned ; a shot or two had gone clean through the upper stories, and some others had knocked the cornice about and damaged the roof. The fa9ade of the handsome railway-station and one of the twin towers bore marks of the shells ; tumbling debris had broken a good many of the panes in the glass roof; but as for the heaps of smouldering ruins that ap- peared in the graphic pictures of some of " our correspondents," these must have been photo- graphed by an angry fancy or under the influ- ence of a nightmare. There was some little firing on the town afterwards, while the Prus- sians still hung upon that bank of the river and made a defensible post of it ; but certain it is there were little or no traces visible of any dam- age done. On the whole, Saarbruck has got ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 21 off exceedingly well, considering by what a marvellous chance it escaped hostile occupa- tion. Frossard was in overwhelming force just in front, kept at bay by the mirage of an imag- inary German army. A single battalion of the 40th, one or at most two squadrons of caval- ry, multiplied themselves so adroitly, that the French general had no conception of the real state of things. When it was decided to smear the unfortunate young Prince with that baptism of blood which it is almost ungenerous to refer to now, the Germans had nothing for it but to make a demonstration on the strength of the force attributed to them, and then withdraw. But reverse the situation, and conceive a Ger- man commander hoodwinked so successfully for days as to the real numbers of his enemy, and that with light-cavalry in plenty, and in a dis- trict where the natives on either side of the border-line talk a common language ! The jfighting in the town was not very serious, and those of the inhabitants who were in the streets managed to shelter themselves in doorways while it was going forward. After it was over, men from either army came in under ilags of truce to reclaim the dead and wounded. It must have been a strange scene, as eye-witness- es described it, that of the enemies meeting in the streets fresh from the affair. It was then the Prussians picked up the correspondent of the "Temps." It may be questioned whether that gentleman was not entitled to the privilege of the white flag, and so it seems to have struck his captoi's on second thoughts, for they speed- ily dismissed him, although his information might have been of no small importance to his friends. They had little reason for anxiety on that score. The French general would learn nothing of the German strength, even on such excellent authority. By-the-way, the dignity of the grand nation and of the Parisian press did not suffer in the person of their captive rep- resentative. Brought before the general, the prisoner drew himself up, twisted his mustache, presented himself as a military man en 7-et9-aite, reminded the enemy that the prisoners taken at Niederbronn had been received with distin- guished hospitality at the table of the French marshal, and intimated that he must insist upon identically similar treatment. The real ground for compassionating the people of Saarbruck is not the wanton destruc- tion of their pretty town, but its sudden conver- sion into a hospital. It is worse than sad to be swamped in a flood of wounded men, with little hope of its slacking while the war shall last. There seemed a chance of famine, and almost a certainty of pestilence following in the train of the ambulances. It is horrible to be crowded out of your homes by the dying ; to have to listen, in the quiet of evening, to a horrible con- cert of moans and groans ; to have your streets in the daj'-time filled with constant funeral trains, passing the overcrowded church-yards on their way to the dead-pits in the neighbor- ing country. Yet what is to the reflecting, per- haps, more melancholy still, is the inevitable demoralization of the lower classes by the vicin- ity of battle-fields, and the familiarizing them with appalling scenes of blood, and death, and pillage. For ourselves, if we had apprehended famine, we experienced nothing of it. If scarcity had threatened once, now supplies had come pour- ing in, and there was no lack of food, or, so far as we could see, of luxuries. There was no getting accommodation in the snug-looking ho- tels, of which there are several ; they were fill- ed from cellar to attic with military men, and friends and attendants of the wounded. But Herr Guepratte — civility itself amidst all his bustle — spared a man to hunt us up billets, and over the Cafe Venn we actually found a spa- cious double suite of rooms. The civil family there apologized for the bill of fare, very un- necessarily, on the ground that the house was nothing more than what it professed to be, and merely provisionally a hotel, and we made our pleasant early dinner with a party of military surgeons, who, strange to say in the circum- stances, confined themselves during the meal entirely to general subjects. CHAPTER V. SPICHEREN AND FORBACH. Our medical acquaintances had assured us that driving about the battle-field would be no economy of time, considering the state of the cross-roads, and our medical acquaintances proved to be quite right. So, as light was pi-ecious, we cut dinner short, and started in company of a German with whom we had ce- mented fast friendship in the course of the morning's travel. Saarbruck lies surrounded by heights on all sides, those to the south and west immediately dominating the town. The houses of the steep street thin gradually out into detached villas and straggling cottages, un- til finally it becomes a country road rising rap- idly to the col, over which it is carried to For- bach. On the heights immediately to the right of this col stands the Bellevne, the little public- house made historical by frequent allusions in ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. the earliest letters from the seat of war. To the right of it, again, lies the square, " Exer- cirplatz," hedged in by trim lines of poplars. The Bellevue commands, indeed, a superb view of the battle-field. The road you came by dips sharp down from the ridge you stand on, and then, trending away to the right, runs for some six miles straight as an arrow-shot into For- bach. Looking diagonally across it towards the left, and over a bare plain of unfenced corn- fields, the eye is brought up by the sheer face of a broad square bluff, running boldly out from the range of wooded hills that follows the line of the Forbach road, till they blend with the high conical one that backs up the town. That spur you are looking across to is the Spicheren heights, the key of the French position on the day of Forbach. To the right of it, as I have said, the steep range of hills runs back to For- bach ; to its left the ground dips gradually, un- til about half a mile off" the hills lose themselves in the meadows. To right and left, from plain to sky-line, the hills in general are densely wooded : the Spicherenberg alone is bare of cover, except for a solitary orchard to its left ; while over its brow you look across to a naked table-land, dotted only with a few fruit-trees and a group of poplars. So steep is it in places, that no soil will hold on the gravel-banks ; wherever industry had a chance, it has contrived to cultivate patches of green. It was against this tremendous natural wall, over this exposed plain, through a storm of shot, shell, and rifle- balls, that the Germans launched their columns ; and we followed as nearly as we could in the line of their advance. An experienced Eng- lish officer, who had witnessed the whole fight from first to last, assured me later that, in his opinion, had the Germans made their approach on the right flank of the French position, at- tacking from the foot of the hill to the left of the Spicheren, the heights might have been carried at a great economy of life. Knowing little of tactics, I felt fully inclined to agree with him when I saw the ground. His idea is the more plausible, that it seems certain that the Germans were drawn into making a battle of it. It was only towards three o'clock that General Von Goebel came on the ground and assumed the direction of the attack. Be that as it may, it can be scarcely a question now that all the lives lost on the Spicheren were well expended. Taken in conjunction with the twin engagement of the Geisberg, the shock it gave the morale of the French had an incalculable influence on the result of the war. Intrenched on the Spich- eren, they laughed at the insanity, the '■'■outre- cuidance " of those Prussians who came to de- liver themselves into their hands. Afterwards, in their headlong flight through the woods of St. Avoid, they would have called it insanity to re-form among the rifle-pits with which these tremendous positions were everywhere honey- combed. Crossing the plain in question, perhaps the most sensational souvenir we came upon was the last of the horses which were still in course of bu- rial. But there was an abundance of other rel- ics of one sort or another : knapsacks torn open, beaten into the mud by rain and footsteps ; German helmets and French shakoes, the eagles on the latter generally torn away, and not a few of the one and the other drilled with the fa- tal round hole ; cooking-utensils and soup-tins trodden under foot; gourds by the score, car- tridge-boxes by the hundred, shreds of uniform, broken straps, and, above all, scraps of weather- beaten paper by the ream. At the foot of the heights, we picked up a convalescent soldier of the 40th who had been through all the earlier part of the engagement, and been wounded on the plateau, and whose evidence, tested by cross- examination, bore all the stamp of veracity ; still weak, he found it hard work dragging himself up the heights, for the rain was falling thick, and the ground was heavy. Fresh as we were, we did not find it particularly easy ourselves, and yet we could take our time and stop to breathe ourselves among the graves of the men whose comrades had carried it. It was only rain-drops, not French bullets, that were beating down upon us. On the first mound we came to, the wooden cross bore the legend : " Hier i-ulien in Friede Hauptman Olaff,'' etc. Another pull, and we were in the orchard of cherr3'-trees, their twigs cut across, and their limbs maimed and mangled, while the balls had stripped the bark from the trunks in rings, until, with the yellow stripes on the brown background, they lookedlike so many frontier barrier-posts. Then, in a lap of the ground on the face of the hill, we c^me on a light earth-work. Then upon more graves — twenty-eight, sixty-nine, eighty men lying in them. Earth breast-works ran all round the crest of the hill, now and again in double lines. In fact, the French had brought art and science to the aid of nature, and done nearly all that men could do to make a most foi'midable posi- tion impregnable. No wonder that so many of the assailants were shot in the head, feet, and hands. Firing down over these intrench- ments, bullets could hardly fail of finding bloody billets; the head "protected" the body, while the climbing feet and hands were out of the line of cover. If the French fired a little wild, their shots only missed the stormers to tell on the ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 23 supports. Doubtless the German shells had done something towards clearing out the in- trenchments and sweeping the plateau, or no mortal man could have lived to reach them. But one can only offer this dilemma to the French : either their fire was fairly dominated by that of the Germans in the artillery duel — which they deny — or the Germans drove their enemy from an intrenched position, nearly per- pendicular, strongly protected by batteries in full activity. Not the least wonderful feat of that marvellous day was the dragging up a couple of German field-pieces, and getting them into po- sition on the plateau. When the French guns withdrew through Spicheren village, on the line of Forbach, their shot, sweeping over the heights, went pitching on the plain below. The result was that the Prussian wounded suffered heavily. The best that could be done for them was to drag them forward under the shelter of the heights, for there was only greater danger to- wards the rear. A friend had a wounded sol- dier killed in his arms as he was raising him from the ground, and volunteers assisted at the work of mercy at no little personal peril. Yet there were women there as active as the men ; and one in especial made herself conspicuous as she moved about with her water-bottle through shell and rifle-balls, as if she were really a minister- ing spirit invulnerable to mortal missiles. On the table-land above were the traces of the deserted camp — the withered boughs stuck into the ground, the cooking trenches, the char- red ashes of the fires. The battle had raged fiercely in the skirts of the wood to the left, as you could tell from the bullet-marks on the trees and the cartridge-cases that strewed the ground so thickly. Here lay a pile of French shakos ; then you came on a ditch choked with heaps of debris of the battle-field, knap- sacks and clothes, with boots and brushes. Farther on towards the village was another huge square grave-mound ; and a little apart a smaller one. A French colonel and his son slept together on the spot where they had fall- en. The retreating troops had been followed up through Spicheren village. Judging by ap- pearances, slight stand had been made there, al- though the chuixh-walls and windows had suf- fered. In the gardens that came up to the houses, French beans some weeks old clung to their poles in wild luxuriance ; and the potato- patches had neither been trampled nor, strange to say, robbed. The rapid chase had probably followed close on the retreat, one and the other keeping to the road. The church stands close to the corner of the village you enter by. Become successively, by the chances of war, a surgery and a dead-house, it had again recovered its sacred character. It was Sunday afternoon, and the melancholy jin- gle of the bells was not out of keeping with the ghastly trench half-filled in over one hundred and nine of the fallen, which yawned by the east end, waiting for the doomed men in the village. One of them, a Frenchman, had al- ready come for his turn, and lay under a blanket in the adjoining shed, sharing it with a pile of blood-stained stretchers. Within the building seats and benches had been replaced, and all signs of its recent use cleared away, as far as possible, although on some of the boards there were stains there was no washing out. Men, for the most part in black blouses, and women each wearing a black ribbon or some such sign of mourning, were flocking in and ranging themselves on opposite sides. The of- ficiating priests seemed oppressed by the solem- nity of the scenes they ministered among : the women were grave and devout ; as for the men, use and coarser organization had naturally bred indifference ; like their vegetables, they raised their heads after the passage of the storm as if nothing had happened ; they whispered and laughed and nudged each other as they pointed to the strangers and their Prussian guide. With all these grotesque incongruities, you felt you were never likely to assist again at a more im- pressive service. The tone of the organ must have been really as wretched as the execution of the performer ; yet the notes seemed to chime in with the solemn memories attaching to the building, until they rolled round the white- washed walls in a wail of intense melancholy. The village streets are broad and steep; a narrow paved causeway in the middle^ sloping to a deep gutter at the sides, and flanked by a wide space, strewed with primitive ploughs and harrows, broken cart-wheels and piles of fire- wood, and patrolled by gaunt grunting swine. The houses were more German than French, with their steep red roofs and broad eaves, and whitewashed gables checkered with inlaid beams. Barns, their end formed of a pair of huge swing- ing doors opening upon the road, alternated with the dwelling-houses. Over each of these was displayed the flag of the lazzarette ; the doors stood wide open, to give free admission to the air ; while before each a Prussian sentinel leaned his chin wearily on the muzzle of his needle-gun, or sauntered carelessly along, kicking pebbles into the swollen drains. We crossed to the nearest one, directly opposite the church-yard door, and looked in upon a double row of beds, about a dozen of them on either hand, and each with its occupant. Naturally all these men, 24 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. left in the very heart of the battle-field, were among the desperately wounded. Had you not known you were in Spicheren you could have told as much as that at a glance. With a soli- tary exception — a man with his head swathed in bandages, straining his eyes over a book in the dim light at the back of the barn — not a face among them showed consciousness of our pres- ence as our figures darkened the doorway. If their glance met yours, it never rested there ; it went wandering vacantly about on an objectless errand, or gazed wildly beyond you, far away into some other world. Surest test of their hopeless state, there was not a cigar among the whole of them ; and tobacco is the sovei-eign anodyne that all these mangled men are con- stantly craving. But how can you smoke with a shot through the lungs, or when the volition is so enfeebled that you have neither thought nor energy to keep the cigar alight ? On the bed to the left, and full in the door- way, a single ray of light struggling to his face through the branches of the elm by the church- yard gate, lay a young Frenchman, Jules Eaubin — so said the card by the bed-head. He was far past annoyance from the sun, had the light been stronger ; for his eyes were closed, probably for the last time, and in his face was no sign what- ever of pain. His features, sharpened by pain and wasting, were classic in almost faultless regularity ; and if there was any symptom of consciousness, it was in the reflection of the faint sweet smile that flickered about his lips as if he were dreaming pleasantly. All the while he waved mechanically the green branch they had placed in his hand ; but even as you looked the movement slackened, and you could see a ghastly change slowly draw itself, like a veil, over the pallor of his complexion — Poor Jules Eaubin! It was a melancholy death-bed for one who looked as if he had been born for a happy life ; and yet, as far as material comforts went, he was probably infinitely better off than thousands of his fellow-sufferers. Picked up and sheltered on the field he fell on, his sufter- ings had been comparatively softened to him, and in no hospital ward could he have hoped for a much more comfortable bed, although his mattress was stretched on an earthen floor. The stolid peasant nurse bent with some tenderness over his pillow, and passed her coarse hand gen- tly enough across his forehead. As for Jules Eaubin, had it been his mother or his betrothed who tended him, it would have been all the same to him. In the next barn we came to, the cases were more mortal still. The shadow of death was heavy on every face that lay on the double row of pillows, broken in two places by ominous blanks. Selfishly speaking, the wretchedness of scenes like those of Spicheren was that you could offer no help — no more than empty sym- pathy. It was impossible to outrage a dying man with a commoniDlace remark. The Sister of Charity busying herself with one of the strong- est of them found in him a distracted auditor. Pain was too strong for him : the cold sweat trickled profusely from his forehead, and I ques- tion much if he were conscious any one was read- ing to him or trying to clasp him by the hand. It was eloquent of the gravity of the cases here, that thi-ee watchers were detached for at- tendance on about a score of wounded. It was a strange picture — it might have been a bit from Boccaccio — these three men busy with their cards at a table by the door, while the Angel of Death was fluttering his wings among the beds they were set to watch. They played on, duly calling the cards, as they slapped them softly down on the table, in a voice of suppressed ex- citement ; and, meantime, one of the wounded had raised himself on hands and knees, and was shrieking horribly. It was clear he was delir- ious, and so the attendants said when we inter- rupted their game to call their attention to him, and his neighbors were very far past being dis- turbed by his cries. Yet the scene was horrible to nerves that were not case-hardened ; and these piercing crieS rang in one's ears long after we had left the village. After all, the callousness of the attendants, although revolting to new- comers, was only one of the subsidiary horrors inseparable from war. If a nurse were cursed with a stock of sensibility sufficient to survive all that these men must have witnessed since the evening of the battle, he would be uttei-ly un- fitted for his task. The beds were beautifully clean, and the bedding carefully smoothed. The men evidently discharged their duties conscien- tiously, although they sacrificed nothing to sen- timent, and little to sensibility. Boors and peasants must learn to think lightly of human lives, when they see with what indifference their rulers sacrifice them by thousands. We dropped our German friend at the out- skirts of the village ; and as our wounded Prus- sian had had more than enough of exercise, he took leave of us too, vaguely indicating to us the direction of Forbach. For some time we followed in the ruts of the French artil- lery wheels : some had kept to the lanes ; oth- ers had held parallel lines across country. Here an earth-bank was tumbled down to bridge the ditch; there a low stone wall was breached. It was war-time, a conquered dis- trict, and a Sunday afternoon, and the country ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 25 was deserted : even with a flock of sheep we came on there was nothing but a dog on duty. From each ridge before us we expected to com- mand a view of Forbach ; from each we saw nothing but another one, limiting our prospect to a few hundred yards. At last a sharp dip landed us in a French village, nestled in wal- nut-trees and girdled with orchards. The wom- en were standing in groups about their doors, chattering like jackdaws ; the men — not very many of these — seated croaking like rooks in a row on the church-yard wall. The men were distant in their looks and manners, but not more so than the natives of a back-of-the-world vil- lage often are. The ladies volunteered a hearty guten Abend, and clamored against each other in directing us on our road. There was not a German uniform within many a kilometre. They probably took us for Germans walking in the rear of the invading host, and there seemed no reason why they should not have been elo- quent of their patriotic animosity, if nothing worse ; yet there and elsewhere in our walk we met nothing but civility, and we had repeatedly occasion to ask our way. We traversed more than one village ; we took picturesque short cuts through the beech-woods. At length we struck the Saarguemines road, full eight kilometres on the wrong side of Forbach, and set ourselves, somewhat sulkily, to plod them out between the inevitable poplars. Nearly every second tree had the trunk grazed by the wheels of German wagons. French and Germans always, where practicable, drive them two abreast, and conse- quently the carriages are habitually jolting up against the trees. No wonder they carry a spare wheel in case of accident. That they hold together at all through a long campaign says every thing for the excellence of the work- manship. Forbach, like Saarbruck, lies below wooded hills, that almost close upon it to the south. There is the long street, with some short side ones that are brought sharp up by the high ground before they have well started on their own account ; a conspicuous church-tower or so, and some rather imposing houses in the out- skirts. We came down from the table-land we had been wandering round, descending a steep pitch tliat turned the flanks of the woods cloth- ing the western slopes and stretching back to Spicheren. We crossed at its southern end the valley traversed by the Saarbruck road, passed a couple of wooden field hospitals that had been hastily run up, met a couple of funerals on their way to the subui-ban cemetery, and found our- selves in the town. The street was sadly deck- ed with flags, for each flag marked a lazaret. It swarmed with German soldiers, who blocked the pavements, and lolled out of the first-floor windows, and crowded the steps before the mai- rie, where the proclamations of King Frederick William were afiixed in French and German. The number of eccentric offenses made capital under the new military code must have been ex- citing reading for the inhabitants. It must be confessed, however, they were ei- ther accomplished hypocrites to a child, or else Lotharingia has no profound objection to Ger- man reannexation. The men circulated through their own streets with perfect freedom of action and manner, exchanging friendly words and nods with their new masters. The women, gathered in the open air, stood gossiping with their hands under their aprons and their heads in the air, watching their children crawling about with impunity among the German boots. There was little flirtation. Flirtation is rather at a discount among an army something smack- ing of the Puritan, profoundly impressed with the gravity of the struggle it has undertaken, and largely leavened, moreover, with family men. But, on the other hand, pretty young girls co- quettishly attired, sauntered arm-in-arm along the pavements. If things had turned out the other way, and had the French been masters of Saarbruck, I question much if the Prussian maid- ens could have safely sunned their innocence and attractions in the eyes of Zouaves and Turcos. Perhaps the trait of flie occupation that was most borne home to a pair of muddy and thirsty pedestrians was that every cafe and beer-shop in the place was closed, or, at least, diverted to alien purposes. There were one or two inns, to be sure, but the passages were blockedjsvith such dense masses of military that it seemed hopeless to try to force them. We stopped to recruit at a garden beer-house without the town, upon the Saarbruck road, and found it crowded to the door with civilians like ourselves. Of course the war was the theme of their talk ; but had the French been across the Main, instead of the Germans over the frontier and in the middle of them, they could not, apparently, have discuss- ed it in more entire enjoyment. Eemarking our muddy boots, the host asked casually if we had come from Metz, just as if the I'oad was open still, and no hostile division interposed be- tween us and the maiden fortress. The man next us knew something more of the situation, for he remarked that he only wished the gen- tlemen had : he had a couple of brothers in the garrison, and would willingly give a hundred francs to have the last news from the town. The battle had raged all along the seven kil- ometres of valley along which we walked back 26 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. to the "Bellevue." To right and left the fields were dotted with graves and crosses ; here and there the dead had been buried actu- ally on the border of the Route Imperiale — a better guaranty, perhaps, for the inviolability of their resting-places. Then we came on farm-buildings that had been held and stormed, the doors and window-frames shivered into splinters, the tiles shattered, the walls set with bullet-marks as thick as the spots in a lady's muslin. Then a little inn, gutted and half- roofless ; one or two seltzer-water bottles in a doorless cupboard, the only relics of its furni- ture. The French barrier-posts lay broken down, and the octroi station was the abomination of desolation. To the left, the vast furnaces in the works of Steyring had long gone out, and the streets of workmen's cottages stood well-nigh tenantless. Every here and there you crossed the track of the German guns, where they had emerged from the fields on to the high-road ; and where the woods approached, you could see their edges fringed everywhere with the white cartridge-papers, marking the line where the French tide of war stood so long on the turn before it ebbed back upon Forbach and St. Avoid. Last, and most repulsive of the sights of the day, was the great dead-pit below the Ex- ercirplatz. Some head-stones and crosses guess- ed at the spot where individual bodies might re- pose among the nameless crowd. Twilight was settling down, and two or three belated laborers were throwing back the soil on the latest arriv- als for that day, while a half-dozen of tearful mourners stood wistfully following the move- ment of the shovels. One of the grave-diggers struck u% He was revoltingly hideous, with bloodshot ej'cs, and swollen, discolored features — just such a figure as Mr. Harrison Ainsworth would delight to elaborate, and the very man for the work and the hour. Who could help feeling for the sorrow reduced to mourn over such a grave in such company? We felt the curiosity and comparative indifference of the traveller were out of place ; and it was a relief to ourselves when we could mix ourselves up in the long line of empty munition-wagons and captured guns that chanced to be passing just then on their way to Saarbruck. CHAPTER VI. TRAVELLING WITH THE WOUNDED. At Saarbruck junction the three lines con- verge which connected Germany with the corps of Prince Frederick Charles and Genei'al Stein- metz. It is in direct railway communication with Treves, Bingen, and Ludwigshafen on the one side ; with Metz and the department of the Upper Moselle on the other. In the way of war bustle, accordingly, we may take it as a representative station. Sentries were stationed outside, to warn the curious that there was no admission except on business. The spacious refreshment-rooms were converted into a sur- gery and dispensary; the luggage department was choked with dust, and dressings for the wounded. Wherever there was a spare corner, there slumbered a wearied soldier snatching a few minutes' rest in transit. All day long there were snoring bundles of uniform crowded on the tables and under them. The space to the left of the station was a fair, cumbered with benches, casks, and baskets, where old women and girls vended bread and sausages and hard- boiled eggs, wine and Schnapps, and Kirschwas- ser. The platform was a moving mass of sol- diers, who had spent days in their clothes, in pa- tient expectation of trains that might ultimately carry them to join their regiments ; of Kranken- pfleger of all ages and castes, either on duty at Saarbruck or pressing forward to the front ; of Knights of St. John in shooting-coats, with the badge of the Order of Mercy pendent conspicu- ously on their shirt-fronts ; of Sisters of Chari- ty, professional and amateur, in costume and out of it ; of laborers, with pick and spade, bound to the new military railway-works by Metz ; of organized corps of grave-diggers, with shovel and pick ; a pushing, consequential, cor- pulent English parson, in black wide-awake and shooting-coat, of the church militant, seeming- ly just the man to carry the confidence of a charitable association on his own earnest recom- mendation, and then ruffle every susceptibility and nerve of the people and wounded he was sent to care for ; a mendicant monk or two of the order of St. Francis, taking things easily, from force of habit, and looking as if they ought to be able to rough it for a good many lean days on the ample store of flesh their provi- dence had accumulated through years of peace and plenty ; a band of captive French officers, victualled for a journey towards the unknown with long bran-loaves and strings of sausages. Finally, a number of peasants with blouses and bundles, travelling on private affairs, and a strong force of overworked railway officials. "Place for the wounded!" The crowd opens, and somehow finds room to fall back : the Bingen train has moved up to the platform ; its approaching departure has been announced at the hospitals, and the procession of crippled and mangled passengers it is to carry with it ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 27 is setting across the platform. Men borne on stretchers striving successfully to command their groans, but utterly unable to control their writh- ing features, and clutching with cramped fingers at the stretcher-poles. Others, with heads bound up, and, except for the whites of their eyes, with every drop of blood drained out of their faces. Others limping past leaning on crutches of wood or kindly props of flesh and blood ; here and there a form pitifully wasted carried past in the arms of a stalwart compatriot. It was pleasant to witness the gentleness with which the soldiers, detailed for the duty, applied their strength to the supporting their suffering comrades ; but it made one shudder to see shattered forms con- signed to the dark purgatory of the horse-box- es, and packed away thick as they could lie on thin trusses of straw. Sometimes it almost seemed gratuitous cruelty this moving the men from the stretchers ; but the supply of stretchers was limited, and hands educated, unfortunately, by ample recent experience, managed it some- how. The victim M'as raised shoulder-high to a level with the floor of the horse-box, and dis- appeared in its recesses. One I could see shot clean through the middle of the body : as he had managed to live, he might possibly travel ; but fancy being jolted for twelve or twenty hours in that condition to his next halting- place. Meantime, lady-nurses were hurrying about, lifting basins of bouillon to the lips of the patients, handing in rolls and ham for their re- freshment on the journey — wholesome as the food was, scarcely the thing, we would have said, to tempt a fevered patient. As the train made ready to move oft', a Krankenpjieger, told off for the duty, took his place in each of the vans that carried the gravest cases. Thanks to the courtesy of two wounded offi- cers, who turned out their servant to make room for me, I found a seat in the only first-class car- riage on the train. One of my companions had been shot through the leg at Spicheren ; the other had been wounded in the arm at Grave- lotte. Both were able and willing to converse. I heard the story of the battles and the thou- sand little incidents of the war from active eye- witnesses. With no idea of being reported, or having their confidence abused for the enter- tainment of the British public, they gave ani- mated rehearsals of the glorious ti-agedy of the Spicheren — vivid sketches of the formidable positions that were forced at Metz. They both appreciated the formidable qualities of the mi- trailleuse, and gave what I should fancy were fairly creditable imitations of the mortal rattle that never seems to have done. It is fortunate, perhaps, for the morale of the German rank and file, that the French tacticians handled these new-fangled murder-mills so awkwardly in the early battles. Not that we have a right to say that any certainty of death would have daunted the men who carried the French positions. An English acquaintance, who saw the Spicheren affair and the fight by Metz, assured me that anything lil^e the German "obstinacy" he had never witnessed ; and he has seen some hard fighting in his time. You might destroy them on the ground they gained, but nothing short of their own bugles sounding the recall could persuade them to relinquish it. Slightly un- steady the young troops might sometimes be, but they generally kept their heads in the wild- est of the battle, and their officers had them ad- mirably in hand. As for the French, their nervous excitement seemed too much for them and for discipline. One of my acquaintances had once come very near being cut off' with a party of the 40th. They heard a shout in the rear, and, looking over their shoulders, saw a party of Zouaves advancing at the double. " Could the Zouaves," he said, "have resisted the temptation to that shout, they must have infallibly had us to a man." At every one of the numerous stations on the road to Bingen, the long train was beset by crowds of the citizens and country people. They came laden with every sort of refresh- ment. The wine from the vineyards on the slopes above streamed down in floods on the rail. There were caldrons of steaming soup and pailfuls of coffee ; basketfuls of ham, bread, sausages, and fruit ; trays of cigars. It was a country through which, for a month past, mass- es of men had been steadily on the move ; yet the poorest villagers found some wine still in their little cellars, and were too eager to proffer it. Surely, if ever people believed in a holy war, for which no sacrifice could be too heavy, this is the one. In other circumstances, the eagerness with which they clustered on the car- riage-steps and pressed their faces against the carriage-panes, would have been an insupport- able nuisance. In circumstances like these no one could help feeling they had paid many times over for a good long stare at their wound- ed heroes. More than once behind the strug- gling ci'owd I saw a woman in deep black, keeping herself apart, weeping silently. She could not resist the attraction of the melancholy pageant, and yet the sight only reminded her of some recent bereavement which had robbed her of all personal interest in the sadly - freighted trains. But there was scarcely a station where some one did not come to pray the officers for news of some missing relative, who, as they 28 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. fondly hoped, was only desperately wounded. Naturally, in no case could they be sent away with better-defined comfort than the assurance that such-and-such a regiment had not been en- gaged in such-and-such an affair, or fortunately had been but little cut up in it. One venerable enthusiast who had been out in the '13 forced his way to the front to volunteer his hazy rem- iniscences of that campaign, and to express his readiness to assist in person at another Leipsic. • — Now that the Wacht am Rhein had been changed to an advance on Paris, the population of this border country had begun to breathe again. Relieved from the apprehension of be- ing desolated, beggared, and outraged by hos- tile occupation, they were too glad to impover- ish themselves for the relief of their saviours. They had a very narrow escape of it. Had the French Emperor been a shade more ready, the administrative system of the Second Empire a shade less rotten, the French eagles would have infallibly had their claws on that fair country, preying on its vitals till they should wing their crippled flight back to their frontiers. At first Von Moltke sent no troops by rail farther than Bingen. Leaving it to be imagined that they had marched forward abandoning the single line of rail to the transport of stores, he veiled his operations in absolute mystery. In reality, he was fully prepared to accept a French ad- vance ; quite determined to sacrifice no men in detail, but to mass his troops behind the Rhine, and leave the invaders to break their teeth on the Rhine fortresses. When the Emperor left him the nine days necessary for mobilizing, the situation changed, and, bar accident, Germany was safe. Von Moltke knew himself and the strength of his forces, and it became clear the French must be wanting either in resources or generalship. Now the vines of the Rhineland, revived by rains following on the long droughts, were ripening peacefully, and promising a splen- did year. It was on the vineyards and cellars of Champagne the effects of the wanton chal- lenge were to recoil. CHAPTER VII. THE HOSPITALS™ The French say Germany is absolutely dis- organized by the war ; and the French are right. Reason the more, retort the Germans, that we exact material guaranties against the recur- rence of such a drain on our dearest life-blood, of so fatal a check to our progress. How the national pulse may beat in the zones between the sea-ports blockaded by the enemy's fleet and the provinces hourly travelled by troops, pris- oners, and wounded, I have had no personal op- portunity of judging. But in towns like May- ence the men who are left at home have nei- ther heart nor time for their every-day avoca- tions. If trade stagnates, they care compara- tively little, so long only as they can exist them- selves and help their wounded brethren. How sit down calmly to your business, if you chance to have business to do, when the corps your sons are serving in is dwindling in a series of des- perate engagements, and when you are expect- ing every moment dispatches steeped in blood ? Your natural impulse is to consecrate your time to the cause ; to give your sympathies practical shape, and vent your excitement by superin- tending in person the expenditure of the money you are so free with. Citizens of every class seem to constitute themselves a committee of public safety in the best sense ; busying them- selves with preserving valuable lives to the Fa- therland, and alleviating the inevitable suffer- ings of its champions. Mayence is a central point of the German railway system ; and the strain on the local resources, first by division on division of the advancing troops, later by the crowds of retiring wounded and prisoners, has been excessive. Yet there have been no signs of breaking down, no stint of municipal liberal- ity. At all hours of the day and night the arrivals of trains of wounded are telegraphed on short notice to the authorities. The train is brought up alongside of a special platform, itself the hos- pital. A goods-shed of interminable length, left open on the side of the rail, has been closed in at the back by tarpaulin curtains that may be lifted or drawn aside. Side by side, and with ample intervals between for the surgeons, dressers, and attendants, are ranged a thousand beds. Is the weather sultry, you raise the tar- paulin and admit the air. Is it cold and windy, you can ventilate the place between the arrival of the trains. In the middle is a kitchen and a dispensary, in charge of leading ladies of the town : in the kitchen they keep in eternal fires, ready to heat perpetual soup and bouillon for all comers. There is a regular service of re- sponsible individuals, who keep watch and watch about, and superintend the issuing the supplies. Every thing, down to the smallest detail, goes by clock-work in an organized routine, and both sexes and all ranks are enrolled in the hospital corps. The leading citizens take it by turns to supervise, and have their allotted hours of duty on alternate days. The sick-nurses, male and female ; the fatigue-parties of robust Kranlcen- ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. 29 triiger have their fixed times of sei-vice. The surgeons alone seem to have no settled season, but hold themselves night and day at the dispo- sition of the arrivals. All the local medical men who have not left for the front have vol- unteered, and they find assistants among stran- gers of every nation. Every one about the im- mense platform knows his place and his work, and keeps himself to the one and the other. The orders of the sentries at the doors are to deny admittance to all who are not passed by the badge of the help-societies. It is past midnight, and a train that had been telegraphed to arrive two hours before is mov- ing slowly in. The assistants have been kick- ing their heels for these two unnecessary hours, but they have got used to waiting on others, and lost the habit of thinking about themselves. The thousand beds are turned down in readi- ness ; a light is burning on a table by each ; the gas is flaming along the rafters overhead. The cooks are busy baling bouillon out into basins : the inevitable rolls and ham, and the eternal ci- gars, stand waiting in piles. The horse-boxes begin slowly to disgorge themselves. Men blink- ing like bats step out of the dark on to the blaz- ing platform. The first-comers are the sound- est, suffering from nothing more than such bag- atelles as a ball through the foot or a shivered arm-bone. They limp up to the nearest bed, take a seat on it, and in a second are deep in Schinken or Bouillon, pending medical inspec- tion. The hospitable citizens exchange a friend- ly nod or jest with the convalescents as they busy themselves with those who can do nothing to help themselves. Then unfolds itself the long chap- ter of horrors, written in shockingly sensational characters. Men with desperate body-wounds visibly sinking under agony, fever, or exhaus- tion, are transferred from the straw to the bed ; some of them are literally riddled ; others with missing limbs or jaws shot clear away, or swathed in hideous bandages that fortunately leave much to the imagination. It is no use dwelling on ghastly details ; it is enough to say that men seem to share the intense tenacity of life which is popularly supposed to limit itself to inferior organizations, and that, after a turn through the hospitals, you are inclined to be- lieve no wound need necessarily be fatal. The Chassepot balls, in particular, have a fiendish habit of skipping round the bone they strike, tearing and shattering as they go : finally, per- haps, glancing off to the body, burying them- selves and travelling at large through the per- son. One man we remarked being operated upon for a shot right through the stomach. He had his right hand smashed into the bargain. We met him swaggering along the platform, later, with a true nautical roll, and we saw he had a genuine English face. He hailed us cheerfully in perfect English. A French subject, he ex- plained, born of a French father and English mother ; went into the army because he couldn't help it, and a rough time he had had of it late- ly. The shot in his stomach hadn't gone very deep, luckily, or he shouldn't have been here, and he thought and hoped his hand would mend. He was a thorough Mark Tapley, who would have been jolly under any circumstances. We English — there were one or two English sur- geons interviewing him — bestowed our mites upon our philosophical friend, and sent him on his way even more cheerful than before. It was a strange sight — more picturesque than ghastly, for in the uncertain light the details merged themselves in the general effect — to look down that long gallery. Although there was a blaze of gas above and a multitude of candles stationary or flitting about below, much of the light escaped into the darkness, and yet the nearer groups of patients and dressers were thrown into Eembrandt-like brightness against the surrounding gloom. Prostrate forms writh- ing under the friendly hands ; naked torsos crimson-patched, fragments chipped out, and holes drilled through the shoulders ; riddled hands and feet ; careful doctors, wrapped up to the throat against the night air; Protestant pastors and Catholic priests ; mature matrons and pretty young girls — rather out of place these last, you could not help feeling. Delicacy has its claims even in presence of suffering, and oc- casionally, if pity is akin to love, their ej'es were eloquent of danger to their hearts. There were knots oi sIuvAy Kranhentrager in their blue woollen blouses, ready to carry ofl" the wounded as they were got ready for their further journey. There was marvellously little groaning, and no shrieking. The men seemed to make it a point of manhood to suppress the audible signs of pain, although their bodies and the muscles of the face were often shockingly outspoken. Where all bore themselves so manfully, it would have been impossible for a visitor to award the palm of endurance. But I have heard the Germans themselves repeatedly avow that the French patients supported their sufferings with greater resolution ; and if it be so, it must be remembered, to their credit, they had defeat and the prospect of an indefinite captivity to mix in the bitters of their cup. It was suggest- ive of the comparative enlightenment of the two armies, that many of the French carried holy amulets on their persons. When they 30 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. stripped, you saw little ci'osses carefully hung round their necks, and those images of saints that are retailed at the French shrines of local sanctity. Unquestionably the treatment of the French wounded has been beyond praise. No distinc- tion made between friend and enemy, unless, in- deed, it were something more of empressement in interpreting the wishes of the poor latter ; and charity had its reward in the gratitude with which the poor fellows received the attentions lavished on them, and the pleasant smiles with which they acknowledged them. The coals of fire didn't seem to burn, for it was in deference to the virtue of military obedience that these units of the grand army had fanned the flames of the war. If the troops shared the illusions of the classes they were largely recruited from, and really dreamed the Germans to be savages of the same type as the Turcos, how strangely pleasant must have been their wakening, when they found themselves in the demons' clutches ! One felt inclined to hope that these men must go home, after the war, to preach peace and good-will between the races through the length and breadth of France. The Rhine flows at the back of the railway- station, and Government had chartered sixteen of the river steamers, at one hundred and fifty thalers a day, for the transport of the wounded. One or two of them lay with steam up, awaiting the arrival of each of the trains. There was an officer on duty to superintend the embarka- tion, and a delegate from the Hillfsverein ac- companied each vessel on its voyage. Along the decks, below the awnings, on the floors of the cabins, were laid a double row of comforta- ble beds, in which the sufferers were carefully deposited. I went on board of one boat entire- ly filled with French, some of them scarcely touched, and a few unwounded. These last were requested to step down the ladder into the hold, which they did with many jokes and gri- maces. The first-comers monopolized all the straw they found, coiling themselves in it like field-mice in their nests. Those who came after made a razzia in search of supplies, and a free fight followed in perfect good-humor, to the high delight of the German lookers-on grinning over the hatchway. It must be owned the tone of the French merriment did more credit to their good-humor than their military pride. It was odd enough to see the soldiers of France visit- ing the coveted Rhine as captives in the hold of a peaceful steamer; but it sounded stranger still to hear them "chaffing" each other on the circumstance. There was one grizzled ser- geant of the Imperial Guard, his breast chamarre with medals and ribbons, a blazing chronicle of all the campaigns of the Second Empire, who felt this as strongly as I did. He had been taken before Metz, he briefly said ; but he evi- dently felt so strongly that we were glad to change the subject. " Attendez," he burst out, looking fiercely round him ; " Bazaine prendra sa revanche, je vous I'assure. Mais moi, je n'y serai pas," he added mournfully. Before the steamer started. Good Samaritans made the tour of the beds as volunteer amanu- enses ; and there seemed a very general run on their services. Many of the men could not write at all; many, naturally, did not cai'e to exert themselves in the circumstances. The tenor of the notes was generally the same — sad enough in their severe simplicity. The mas- tering the names and addresses was generally the great difficulty. The warnings against smoking still hung on the cabin doors, and — irony of destiny — every cabin passenger had a huge cigar, drawing away cheerily like a small blast-furnace. I suspect the benevolent promoters of the anti - tobacco league must accept their share of the calami- toixs results of the war. The progress of the good cause is arrested for a generation at least. Poison in theory, a cloud of impartial witnesses will proclaim that in practice the coarsest prep- arations of the weed have been an inestimable blessing. After water, the first cry of the man- gled has always been for the blessed anodyne that soothes their pangs. A necessary sequel to a visit to the railway hospital is one to the theatre. More strictly speaking, indeed, it ought to have claimed prec- edence. So far as ordinary performances are concerned, there is reldche on the Mayence boards pending the conclusion of the bloody drama in which all Germkny plays her part. Yet I venture to say the Mayence theatre was never better worth a visit. It is a large and handsome pile of red sandstone, with a semicir- cular front, where corridors lighted with deep bay-windows run round the amphitheatre, and with ample accommodation to the back of the stage. Round the sides and in the centre of the spacious rooms are piled every manner of necessary for the cure of the wounds or the sol- ace of the wounded. Blankets, cushions, sheets, pillows, shirts, stockings, bundles of bandages, air-cushions and water-pillows, splints, sticking- plaster, sand-bags for absorbing blood, wooden cases for shattered limbs, slings and crutches. More bulky matters, such as mattresses or chests of lint and medicines, are stored away elsewhere. These supplies were partly passed in from the country, chiefly manufactured on the spot. In ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 31 each of the deep -windows round the long corri- dors was a table ; round each of the tables sat a trio or quartette of young ladies, their fingers and tongues and sewing-machines all busily at work. Some of them were excessively pretty girls ; and even the plain ones were animated into an expression something like beauty by earnestness and emulation. Of all the towns at a distance from the wai-, Mayence has seen the most of its miseries, and done the most to alleviate them. Already, in the third week of August, 18,000 wounded had passed through, and yet the tide from the fields by Metz had barely set in. Had the balance of the war de- clined by a trifle to the other side, the fate of Metz might have been that of Mayence ; and in their gratitude for the education they had been spared at the hands of the civilizing army, the citizens seemed to count all their trouble and their sacrifices as nothing. But, generous as it is, Mayence enjoys no monopoly of charity. To see hospital arrange- ments as nearly perfect as may be, you may go on to Darmstadt. Darmstadt alone can boast of six or eight establishments, one or two of them specially superintended by members of the Grand Ducal family, others by private com- mittees, and one by the Catholic Sisters of Char- ity. There are 2000 Catholics among the 35,000 inhabitants. The principal hospital her Royal Highness, the Princess Louisa, takes under her especial wing. An orangery has been convert- ed into the main ward, and stands charmingly situated in gardens laid out with flowers and shrubberies and fountains. Around it are scat- tered a number of succursales, wooden pavilions, where the rows of beds stand at ample intervals, with canvas doors at the ends, to be looped back at will, with openings in the roof, protected from the wet, but open to the wind. The French, I was given to understand, regard this ventilation as a decided disadvantage, and in- trench themselves carefully behind their blank- ets against every breath of air. The Germans, on the contrary, have learned to welcome it as the most invaluable of specifics. Darmstadt suffered heavily in the war, and the Darmstadt division, 10,000 strong, had lost 1200 in dead and wounded. Naturally, wound- ed Hessians are sent to Hesse for choice, and it was pleasant to see many old peasant-women sitting by the sick-pillows of their own children who had been returned on their hands. But the greater part of the patients were Prussians and North Germans ; and if you doubted as to the nationality, you had but to look at the head- dress hung by the pillow. Many caps showed the tarnished silver of the Prussian Guard, so terribly cut up at Gravelotte and Rezonville. There were many French shakos, and a sprink- ling of turbans. Although regarded en masse with the bitterest hatred and loathing, the Tur- cos in hospital were treated with the utmost gentleness. Their swarthy faces and wiry forms would have kept the secrets of their suf- fering, had not their eyes betrayed them : you saw either the unnatural glare of fever or the vacant look of profound prostration. Men said at Berlin that these wild beasts snapped at the very fingers that tended them. Here they lay tame enough ; perhaps their terrible wounds had chastened their savage nature. Fresh from the scenes at Spicheren and Saarbruck, a walk through the Darmstadt hos- pital was almost exhilarating. There seemed good hope for the worst of the suff'erers, and many of them had clearly turned the corner, and were steadily on their way up-hill. They smoked with placid satisfaction, they read with absorbed attention, and journals and novels were especially in demand. It is to be regret- ted we in England can do so little to supply that particular want, for it would be hard to overestimate the pleasure that might be convey- ed in a box of light literature. But the pleas- antest sight of all was the way the saddest faces would brighten up as the Prihcess Alice stop- ped to say a few kind words and ask a question or two — not mere questions of course. Inde- fatigable in her attendance, she keeps herself personally informed of each serious case, and from day to day anxiously watches the progress of her patients. Indeed, they owe her far more than the kindness and generosity which is nearly universal in Germany. Long before this war broke out, her care had organized a corps of ed- ucated nurses ; and when the sanguinary battles created an exceptional demand for their serv- ices, she had a cadre of skilled attendants, which expanded immediately into an efiicient force. The Alice-Frauenverein has been ren- dering invaluable services ; and it is no won- der that, in spite of great local liberality, its funds should be well-nigh drained. The char- itable who desire to make sure that their con- tributions will be promptly expended to the best advantage, and impartially distributed between the wounded of the two nations, can scarcely do better than intrust them to the committee of the Alice-Frauenverein. They will have the satisfaction of knowing every thing is done un- der the personal superintendence of an Eng- lishwoman, for her Royal Highness has given up to the work a suite of her own apartments in the Palace, and lets no day pass without a long visit to the hospital. 32 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. CHAPTEE VIII. GERMANY AND THE WAR. Had you gone home after interviewing the first intelligent German you met on crossing the frontier, the chances are you would have carried back as fair an idea of the national sen- timent as could have been gained by any amount of travel. The feeling of the country seemed to be organized like its military force ; to move as harmoniously in obedience to fixed general laws, modified by passing events. The outburst of patriotism evoked by wanton ag- gression had levelled internal barriers, swallow- ed difference of political opinion. North Ger- mans and South Germans, Liberals and Reac- tionists, spoke in the same sense and on the one all-engrossing subject. If they wasted a word on state or party politics, it was only to say their day had gone by; and for the moment every one appeared honestly to believe it. It would have been something like treason to talk of party in the presence of passing events ; fac- tion collapsed before the majesty of German unity. Prussia had been conquered with France, and absorbed in new-born Germany ; and the only trace of lingering jealousy among the Con- federates was a national susceptibility as to the use of the word " German "%nd the abuse of the word "Prussian." It was a German quar- rel, and German victories won by German troops under German leaders. The nation had awakened to the full consciousness of its strength, to a profound conviction of where its strength lay. The Germans knew that it was their union made that strength — that it was the organization they owed to Prussia that assured their triumph. Brought face to face with the horrid realities of war, Prussian Liberals were sincerely, if silently, grateful for those high- handed war measures of the King and his min- ister they had opposed so long and denounced so bitterly. Hanover and Hesse more than for- gave the violence done their independence, when they recognized they had become powers, in- stead of phantoms and anachronisms. Ham- burg, in her new character of a Prussian town, had the best guaranty for a speedy termination of her blockade ; and Frankfort, in her grati- tude for being saved a French occupation, be- came more demonstratively national than Berlin itself. The most marked feelings of people to the south of the Main were an almost morbid anxiety to bear their full share in this German struggle, and a strong impression that more in- timate union with their Northern brethren would be the best reward they could ask for their serv- ices. Possibly, that latter feeling may some day create embarrassments between the Em- peror of Gei'many and his loyal allies of the Southern Courts. You met men from all these states and towns, and you had opportunities of hearing the opinions of every rank. One day you were seated in third-class carriages with peasants, or in open horse-boxes with privates ; another, you were travelling first and second class with officers and men of cultivation. You listened to the talk of vociferous groups in the village inns where you occasionally slept ; in the hotels of the town ; in the cafe's and beer- houses. Your introductions helped you to the acquaintance of influential civilians and offi- cers in high command, who were all ready to speak out. And from all of them you heard practically the same thing — expressed with va- rious degrees of force and intelligence — that Germany had become a nation at last, and you grew more persuaded of it at every turn. When you went into the hospitals, and witnessed the home-like cares lavished on her maimed and crippled children, you confessed there was a family as well. After the events of 1866, im- partial lookers-on were persuaded that the con- summation was merely a question of time, only to be retarded by French inaction and acquies- cence. It is a mystery we may never solve, how the Emperor of the French should have been so fatally misinformed as to the feelings of the people who were to decide his destiny. Yet we may be sure that the Germans them- selves had hardly fathomed the profound na- tional enthusiasm his declaration of war would evoke. If few Germans doubted of the final issue of the war, fewer still had any conception of the course it would run. The French had a pro- fessional army, presumably in the highest state of efficiency, and practically on a perpetual war footing. The Germans had only the cadres of an army of resistance, to be swelled by the em- bodiment of citizens into a force capable of as- suming the offensive. The French admittedly had long been mapping out the campaign they were resolved upon, and, with the advantage of the initiative, could follow the plans they must have traced in every detail. The German mili- tary chiefs were, no doubt, equally persuaded the struggle was inevitable ; but the French having that superiority of the initiative, they were necessarily constrained to follow suite in- stead of leading off the game. No sensible German — Moltke and Von Roon least of all, as I have said before — expected any thing bet- ter than a French advance on the Rhine. The immense success of Die Wacht am Rhein ex- plained the national idea on the outbreak of ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 33 hostilities. They had to deal with a terribly formidable power, which had been husbanding its resources while they had been expending theirs in intestine war, which had exhausted the resources of science in the perfecting of its arms and the invention of strangely destructive engines. No man — no ordinary man at least — the movements of the French, and less of those of the Germans. Men heard of French march- ings and counter-marchings — all that was cer- tain was that of their mysterious movements none took the shape of the expected advance. Meanwhile, Germany was mobilizing with a ce- lerity absolutely astounding to any but the ini- NAPOLEON III., EMPEKOE OP FEANOE. ventured to dream of any more happy result than that Germany should come out of the war with territory intact. When war was declared, the war-clouds still hung lowering on the frontier, and the Emperor lingered on at St. Cloud. Little was known of 3 tiated; that ought to have been appalling to her enemies. Von Moltke lay smoking a cigar on the sofa in his cabinet when his aid-de-camp brought him the news of the declaration of war. " So soon," the general remarked, quietly. ' ' I had hardly looked for it for a day or two. 34 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. Just have the goodness to open that drawer." Within an hour the necessary orders were fly- ing to the military authorities in all parts of Germany. Had the Emperor only known, and how could he have helped knowing, how each day that slipped through his fingers was lessen- ing his chances, he must surely have waived every consideration, and struck while Germany was still getting into her harness. One is driven to the dilemma that either his faculties or his military arrangements were hopelessly paralyzed for the time. He either lost head and heart after the terrible leap he made up his mind to, or he took that leap in sheer des- peration, and staked the fortunes of the dynas- ty and of France on a game practically decided in advance. When he did determine to strike, Germany was on guard and anticipated him, and the Germans were agreeably startled by the victories of Forbach and Weissenburg, and the simultaneous advance of their armies. As the real state of matters dawned on them, a marked change came over their minds. They began to entertain a hope of not only tid- ing over the peril, but of securing themselves eifectually against its recurrence. United Ger- many would not only treat with France over drawn battle-fields as equal to equal, but might impose her own terms, and exact material guaran- ties against future outrage. It was after Weissen- burg and Forbach that the German mind first evolved the idea of the appropriation of French territory for the better security of the Father- land. That rectification of frontier which had been so much in favor at the Tuilleries gradual- ly grew into a rooted German idea. There was no expression of the vce victis in it. There was no wish to humiliate France, much as they resented an attack they had only provoked by ari-anging their domestic affairs after their own fashion. The nation was not intoxicated by the flush of its startling successes, gi'eatly as it gloried in them. But it talked of the suggest- ed rectification of frontier as simple matter of duty — duty to itself and to its children. " We have been forced into a most unholy duel, and, though we are likely to come off the victors, we must twine the cypress with the laurel. We are bleeding at every pore, for our blood has flowed as freely as our treasure, and our com- mercial life is at a standstill. Not a household but mourns a member, a relation, or a friend. From quiet streets, from busy workshops, from peaceful homesteads, they have drawn our best bone and sinew to make targets for their Chasse- pots and mitrailleuses. Contrary to all expec- tation, the battle has not been to the swift, and, to our surprise, we learn that we are the strong. Would it not he wanton folly, would it not be positive crime, to content ourselves with the barren glory of our triumph — to accept a mere payment in gold for our blood and material loss- es ; to trust the future of our country, and the lives and property of coming generations, to the grati- tude of the sensitive people we have humbled ? Doing so, we should make ourselves accomplices in the future excesses of French military mad- ness. It is very well that neutrals should inter- pose with high-sounding phrases, and talk of gen- erosity to the vanquished. What did neutrals to prevent the war, and how can neutrals sound the depths of our suffering ? In the interests of France, as in those of Germany, we are bound to put pressure on the French to keep the peace, and assure the inviolability of our frontiers by demonstrating the insanity of attempting them. For years to come, France will never forgive us her defeat, nor resign herself to abdicating the position she believes her own by right of pre- scription. We greatly prefer to make the per- manence of peace not a question of sentiment but matter of necessity." It was the language of a practical nation be- come unexpectedly the masters of a critical sit- uation, thanks to their own energy and sacri- fices ; and it was all so logical, there was little to urge in answer. They had just welded them- selves into a great people in blood and fire, and who could blame them if they were resolved the work should be lasting ? After all, if you meas- ured it by the avowed designs of their enemy, theirs was the language of moderation. France had gone to war for the Rhine, and assuredly, had her successes been as crushing as those of Germany, she would not have contented herself with making it the boundary. All Germany asked for was a defensive frontier. She did not care to annex Alsace and Lorraine as prov- inces. On the contrary, she wanted no more subjects than she could help of French speech or with French sympathies. What she in- clined to have was the Vosges, and that other formidable line of positions in the department of the Moselle her armies had just forced, the wooded heights that command, like so many bastions, the plains that stretch to Chalons and Paris. Metz she would include, of course, and Thionville ; and Strasbourg would be carried miles back into Germany. As for the appro- priation being a standing provocation to France, the universal feeling seemed to be that French animosity could not possibly be imbittered. Moreover, they talked of taking a hint from the proceedings of the great Napoleon, and setting a limit to French standing armies. In fact, if the popular feeling continues to set as strong ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 35 and unanimously as it did then, concurring as it did so strongly with arguments of policy, it is hard to believe the most powerful minister could stem it. Bismarck is strong as embody- ing the sentiment of the country ; but the Ger- mans do not skip to their conclusions; they reason them out. That a position has once been deliberately taken up, is in itself a strong reason for continuing to occupy it, even should circumstances alter slightly ; and it is possible that the tenacity of purpose which has done such good service in war may become a serious embarrassment in arranging a peace. The de- termination of Paris, or the approach of winter, may weigh with the German leaders in abating something of their demands, even at the cost of the increased probability of a future war. If they can carry the Germans with them, and in- duce them to reconsider their unanimous deter- mination, it will be the most marvellous instance on record of national sagacity and self-control, and France and every other power in Europe may resign themselves with a good grace to sub- ordinate places for the future. One thing I believe to be certain enough. If the nation does hold to its resolution to annex, it will be Von Moltke, and not Von Bismarck, who will decide. The line of the new frontier will be governed by purely strategical consider- ations, tempered in places, perhaps, by the ori- gin and speech of the inhabitants. Nothing has done more to contribute to the success of the war than the excellent understanding be- tween the premier, the strategist, and the min- ister-at-war. Bismarck is continually in the habit of throwing down half-read semi-political dispatches he opens: "That is the business of General Moltke — not mine." Should the day come when it will be a question of boundaries, Bismarck will hand the map over to Moltke, and tell him to trace them. With regard to the feelings of the inhabitants of this "debatable land," there is room for some divergence of opinion. From what I saw myself in the department of the Upper Moselle, I can not believe there would be any great dif- ficulty there, at least in the country and small- er towns. At Thionville and Metz, undoubted- ly, the inhabitants are thoroughly French. So they are in Strasbourg; but, after all, of what political consequence are the sentiments of the handful of people who live among the guns of a first-class fortress ? With regard to Alsace generally there can be as little question, I sup- pose. At least, the Germans themselves admit that at present it is thoroughly French at heart. But then, they say, the lower and middle class- es ai'e as German in their habits and ways of thought as they are in speech. German aflSni- ties would prove irresistible with a new genera- tion. At present it is the Catholic clergy, the Jesuits especially, who control the situation there. They excite the fanaticism of a pious, or, rather, a superstitious, population against Protestant Germany ; they nourish the popular prejudice by a system of the most unscrupulous deceit, when ignorance interests itself so far as to ask questions. Educate and enlighten these people, say the Germans, and they will be as good Germans as any of us. Moreover, in Al- sace, as elsewhere, French fiilsehoods have played the German game. Everywhere the French represented the invaders as savages, compared to whom the Zouaves were philanthropists and the Turcos saints. Everywhere the occupation undeceived the people, and the reaction follow- ing the dissipation of the delusion disposed them, to a certain extent, in favor of the enemy. Occupied territory must help to support the war, and doubtless the contributions have fall- en heavily on the impoverished inhabitants. But any thing like license is sternly repressed, not only by order of the authorities, but by the sentiment in the ranks. The stories of houses pillaged by the Germans of any thing but food or wine, of outraged women, and of kindred atrocities, read simply incredible to any one who has lived with the German troops. Even the average French peasant, it may be assumed, will be much inclined to visit on the late Gov- ernment any thing he suifers at the hands of his present guests. The more one heard and saw, the more, I repeat, one marvelled at the infatuation which drove the Emperor to stake the questionable tri- umph of the plebiscitum on a game so desperate as a German war. His envoys seem to have been chosen as men likely to speak smooth things and prophesy deceit. They discussed German mat- ters with Franco-Germans, who boasted a smat- tering of French, who did their very best to make things pleasant, and stretch their scanty language to express their interested ideas ; or they listened to feather-brained adventurers who had a personal purpose to serve. One is as- tonished, I I'epeat, at the infatuation of the Em- pire — the Empire that professed itself the cham- pion of nationalities everywhere — in allying it- self to effete courts, and staking success on ex- ploded hereditai'y traditions. Even in South Germany, its court allies were much more than doubtful. The King of Bavaria is German, as it proved; so is the Grand Duke of Baden. The King of Wiirtemberg had French leanings he was at little pains to hide. But in Wiirtem- berg the popular feeling was so unmistakable, 36 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. that it was clear to any one who could read the signs of the times, it must carry all before it. The same might be said of Hesse Darmstadt ; although there the Protestant premier, Dalvick, was French enough. Then there were some Southern journals of very limited circulation to which the Emperor's wishes may possibly have attributed an influence they never exercised. But the only allies whose sympathy the French could count upon confidently were a small mi- nority of the nobility, and the bulk of the Cath- olic clergy ; and these found themselves muzzled and fettered as soon as the war broke out, and Germany was roused in earnest. The bishop of Mayence is credited with still laboring hard against the national cause : men say he bribes high, and in high places. But what can a sin- gle man do, however able ? It is a national war ; and, in time of war and danger, aristocratic Germany is a pure democracy, without democratic weaknesses and vices. Princes and long-descended nobles, heirs of great merchants, and wealthy bankers, shop- keepers, mechanics, peasants, are side by side in the ranks. The ministers have sent eleven sons to the field : Bismarck two. Von Moltke two, Von Roon four; several have been wound- ed, and already more than one of them have fallen. The recollection of common sacrifices will survive the commoii success, and local poli- ticians have already forgotten their paltry squab- bles in anticipating a political millennium. It is to be hoped that doubtful blessing may be spared them ; but in any case Germany has . attained constitutional development, while her French enemies have been playing at it. Ger- many knows her mind at last, and the day of Bunds and Diets, petty Princelets, and state jealousies is gone forever. Whatever his place in Fi-ench history, Napoleon III. has won him- self an immortal title to her gratitude. CHAPTER IX. WITH TROOPS TOWARDS THE FRONT. Even in the way of novelty, it is no pleasant sensation for the ordinary tourist to find himself waiting marching orders — to surrender his in- dividuality, and resign himself to be the unit of a mass whose movements he is helpless to in- fluence. The present moment may be your own, but you don't dare to dispose of the next one. The route may come at any moment ; and if you have given yourself the briefest leave of absence, you may find the chance you count- ed on has slipped through your fingers. At last an orderly turned up late one evening at the hotel to intimate an early start, and next morning I awakened with the dawn to the tread of martial feet and the crash of military music. In vain I strove to ignore the one and the other as I turned with the affectation of resolu- tion on my pillow. But it was no use ; and one had only to make a merit of necessity, and get up to witness an enthusiasm you felt to be most unseasonable. A column of Hessians, the dark gray background of military great-coats picked out by the flash of bayonets and the re- flection of tin pans, was crossing the grand place ; discipline had relaxed for the time being, and the ranks had opened to receive relatives — fathers and mothers, brothers, and even sweet- hearts. It was the Darmstadt reserves on their way to the front. Who could say how many or how few might return ? Four hours later the railway-station was a busy scene. Two thousand warriors had pack- ed themselves away in the wagons, and a mixed multitude of at least twice as many men, wom- en, and children had gathered to see them oflt^. Those who could not find access to the plat- form were crowding round the rails outside, venting their excitement by cheering vehemently at intervals. Of course the sublime and pathetic rubbed shoulders with the trivial and ludicrous at every turn. There were many bitter leave- takings, and doubtless a good deal of silent heart-breaking ; every now and then you caught a passing cloud of ineffable wretchedness on a face that the moment before and after pretended to be wreathed in smiles. On the side of the civilians at least, much of the hilarity was as forced as with most of the soldiers it was genu- ine. These last were young men for the most part, many of them volunteers. Even with those who reflected that their merry start might land them on a Gravelotte or a Rezon- ville, in a graveyard or a hospital, the enthusi- asm of the moment was contagious. The Wackt am Mkein and kindred patriotic chants alternated with wild bursts of cheering; the doors of the horse-boxes were blocked with wav- ing arms and laughing faces. Amidst the mar- tial excitement and the fond farewells, individu- als, like well-trained soldiers as they were, looked carefully after the commissariat arrangements when they got a chance. Next to hugs and kisses, among the most popular souvenirs were sausages and cigars. Some lucky campaigners, whose circle of acquaintance was extensive, stuffed not only their own pockets but those of their comrades. At last the train glided slowly out of the sta- tion, not very much after time— some sixty car- ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 37 riages. Our quarters were luxurious — a double second-class compartment ; and our party a very pleasant one. It consisted of the officers in charge of the troops, and two or three noblemen and gentlemen going forward to attach them- selves to the Darmstadt Sanitdtscorps. Slowly we descended the course of the Rhine to May- ence, where we halted just long enough for a hurried chat with some Mayence friends on the platform, and to lay in French and English journals. It was always a godsend happening upon a " Figaro," and that pleasant journal had an immense circulation and an astounding suc- cess in Germany. What a libel it is to say the Gei'mans have no sense of humor, or are in- capable of entering into the spirit of a joke ! How they used to welcome the latest bulletins from Pai'is ; how they used to chuckle over the French articles on the military situation. The letters of " Our own Correspondent" from be- fore Metz read inimitably to men who had assist- ed in person at the battles and witnessed the re- sults ! Perhaps M. Villemessant occasionally went a shade too far, and in his appreciation of the attitude and probable action of the neutral powers comedy not unfrequently degenerated into farce. To be sure, in those days his paper was scarcely all that events have made it since : then he was still the obsequious trumpeter of the Empire to which he owed his existence ; since that he has been dancing over its ruins, and branding its excesses and vices, most queer- ly travestied en Cato. We- saw the very last of the day as we wait- ed at Neustadt, the picturesque capital of the Haardt. The station was crowded, and the previous arrivals had made a clear sweep of the refreshment counters. Fancy prices, however, tempted to the light some flasks of capital Nier- steiner, which helped to lend wings to the heavy hours. Military law kept the soldiers penned in their hutches, and our sympathies found pleasant vent in paying trays of beer and packets of cigars for the lucky ones in the carriages nearest our own. You had to exer- cise a certain discretion in distributing your largesse, for you were just as likely as not to find a gentleman volunteer under the coarse uni- form of the private — a man whose social posi- tion and means might very likely be superior to those of his commanding officer. One individ- ual I was presented to had just given up a lu- crative situation in Liverpool, to hasten over to beg for a place in the ranks. Of course he dis- cussed the probable current of events, Moltke's strategy and Bismarck's schemes, with extreme intelligence, and a thorough appreciation of contemporary politics. Next morning I greet- ed him as he sat in his horse-box by the horse he had just groomed, disposing of a more than fru- gal breakfast, in company of a couple of comrades of the most ordinary type. An hour or two afterwards his captain brought me a "Times" I had lent him, with a courteous message. Oif duty, such men tacitly claim absolute equality with their officers, and the claim is admitted. Falling back into the ranks, they relapse at the word of command into the submissive soldier. It was well-nigh midnight when we dragged up to the station of Kaiserslautern. The sol- diers by that time must have been rather cramped and exceedingly sharp-set, for all day long they had scarcely got out of the carriages, and had very much depended for their meals on their pei-sonal supplies. At Kaiserslautern there was a general sortie, and, thanks to the hour, we had the platform pretty much to our- selves. Those of us who were free agents hap- pened upon a tolerable supper in the Railway Inn hard by : capital soup, r&lihraten — the for- ests of the Haardt swarm with roe — and beer. When we had disposed of our meal, we found the soldiers getting through theirs by squads and companies. The platform was blazing with torches, a goods-shed had been fitted up as a refreshment-room, and vast caldrons were bub- bling over fires in a field-kitchen behind. The shed was fitted with benches and tables, that might accommodate a party of a hundred and fifty at a time. The men, of course, brought their own dishes ; the soup and beef were la- dled out to them, and, with bread and beer, they were far from badly off. We woke up in the early morning to find our- selves in the station of Neunkirchen. So far, for a military train, our progress had been satis- factory ; we had only spent some twenty hours on the road. But at Neunkirchen we began to be fairly broken to the military virtue of pa- tience. There the lines converge, and we had got well into the ruck of the advance. There was one trainful of Landwehr from Minden ; there was another of a regiment of cuirassiers from Stettin, and some squadrons of lancers ; there was a promiscuous mob of military travellers unattached. The refreshment-rooms, where, a week before, I had made a comfortable meal, were subjected to all the horrors of military oc- cupation. Sausages were at famine prices ; the negotiating a slice of bread was matter of di- plomacy and favor ; and when you fought your way to a cup of coffee you found the sugar had been left out, while the supply had evident- ly been watered to meet the demand. The cognac had been drained dry, and so had the Kirschwasser. The only stimulant available 38 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. was arrack ; and if the virtues of a tonic are in the inverse ratio to its flavor, the merit of that arrack as a stimulant ought to have been unde- niable. There were inns in the town, but you dare not stray to them ; for, although we actu- ally lingered in Neunkirchen for hours, no man could tell when the bugles might sound the de- parture. The commanding ofiicer was no more in the secret than the rest of us : he was at the orders of the railway oiBcials. To be sure, objects of interest were not want- ing to kill the time. We could pass the cui- rassiers under inspection, with their white pad- ded jackets, their jack-boots, carbines, and sa- bres ; and the lancers — those terrible Uhlans — their long lances resting in the stirrups, and fitted with a pleasantly-devised nail, apparently intended to give a good hold in the flesh of the victim skewered. We could criticise their horses, which, serviceable as they looked, with plenty of bone and some blood, were decidedly unembarrassed by any superfluity of flesh. In a meadow between the woods and the rail was a drove of cattle trained even finer. Apparent- ly they had been there for some time, for the herdsmen had made themselves at home in tem- porary huts. The morale of the herd was utter- ly gone : recumbent in the sloppy pasture, or plashing listlessly about, they seemed scarcely to care to chew the washy cud ; they had lost all spirit, and were fast losing flesh. Yet, al- though they had thinned pitiably, some of them, by sheer weight of bone, were settling down into the damp ground ; and if the toughest of them did survive to reach the front, it looked as if any beef they might deliver there would hardly repay the cost of its carriage. At length, after more than one false alarm, the exhilarating einsteigen resounded along the line, the bugles confirmed the word of order, and again we were off. This wearisome waiting at Neunkirchen was but a faint foretaste of what awaited us farther on. At Duttweller, a station short of Saarbruck, we stop again ; this time in a drenching rain that forbids our leaving the carriages, otherwise we might have gone on to Saarbruck afoot, trust- ing to an indefinitely prolonged delay at that crowded junction. Had we done so, our calcu- lations would have been deceived. At Saar- bruck we had barely time to dive under the wheels of the successive rows of carriages that cut our train off from the platform, force the habitual crowd of soldiers and civilian loungers to "accept our files," and bore our way in to the refreshment-counter. Thence we carried off what bread, wine, and cigars we could se- cure, for present refreshment and future use. There was great excitement among the Darm- stadt officers to see the Spicherenberg. Al- though the house-roof the 40th Prussians had scrambled up was hid by intervening woods and ridges, I could point them out the little clump of poplars on the plateau where the battle had raged so hot. We wound our way round the wooded hills along which the Germans had push- ed their columns of attack, and found ourselves at last moving parallel to the Forbach road in the valley by which I had walked .back from the battle-field on my previous visit. The train passed close by the works of Steyring, among houses pelted with rifle-balls. ' ' Frankreich ? nicht wahr?" queried one of the party, as we moved quietly up the valley towards Forbach. "Friiher Frankreich," was the reply, greeted with a burst of approbation ; and naturally the appearance of the Douane Fran^aise in the sta- tion was the signal for a perfect shower of sparkling humor and epigram. One might have fancied the sight of the ominous fresh- heaped mounds of clay that dotted the fields would have been unpleasantly suggestive to sol- diers moving steadily, if slowly, towards Metz. There are crosses and crosses to be won in war, and more men come by those rude wayside memorials than by the miniature decorations of honor. Our military companions remarked the fresh graves with an interest that very quickly began to pall. As they passed the last of them, they kept their seats and smoked with their backs to the windows in placid indifference. After all, we are all of us travelling the same way as they, although possibly by longer roads, and yet we do not sadden ourselves with the appropriate " meditations among the tombs " each time we pass a church-yard. We spent but a few hours at Forbach, and then moved on to Cocheren, where we passed a very great many. The word '■^Niemand aus- steigen^' was passed at flrst. Perhaps the com- manding ofBcer was really sanguine enough to fancy we might be promptly en route again. Gradually, however, as dullness brooded heavier, discipline relaxed. The sentries stationed to keep their eyes on the carriage-doors turned their eyes in the opposite direction. The men began slipping out, unreproved, and when they once assured themselves that the officers were winking at the proceeding, there was a general stampede into the fields. These were studded with willows and fringed with poplars. The waving branches suggested to the idlers that it would be the correct thing elaborately to deco- rate the train. The few boughs we had brought from Darmstadt showed more signs of the jour- ney than any of the men did. In a couple of ON THE TKAIL OF THE WAR. 39 minutes, willow and poplar-trees were esca- laded, knives and sword-bayonets at work, branches reading and cracking, and tumbling all over the meadows. A few minutes more, and the horse-boxes had well-nigh disappeared in the masses of cool foliage — a modern version of Birnam forest coming to Dunsinane. Amidst all the shouts and vociferous merriment, there was a pathetic little side-scene. Two peasant girls were standing by the line looking on — one of them thoroughly enjoying the distraction, laughing and exchanging jests with the men. So was the other, to all appearance : she felt bound to laugh when her companion turned to her, and to force a grin when the conquering heroes deigned her some good-humored " chaif." And yet if you looked closer you could see the tears starting to her eyes as she gazed wistfully after the familiar boughs torn off to deck the enemies' triumph. It is to be hoped the unwonted excitement allayed the appetites the exercise must have raised, for there seemed little food of any sort going among the men that day, and no regular rations. At head-quarters, in our carriage, we made a light lunch and a frugal supper of bread and sausage, but the staple of our meals was tobacco. Towards night there were rows of camp-fires blazing merrily along the line ; and a great comfort they must have been for those who slept in the open air. Being rela- tively in as light marching order as the Ger- mans, with a thin mackintosh for my sole wrap- per, it was only a strong natural tui-n for sleep- ing under difficulties that saved me a wakeful night. From time to time one did rouse up to consciousness in the intense darkness, for there were no lights in the carriage, and the night was black as pitch. No lights, at least, except a fiery point or two, intimating that some of my less fortunate friends, notwithstanding all the seductions of their warm military cloaks, had failed to woo Nature's soft restorer to their em- braces, and were soothing their disappointment with the popular narcotic. But every one seem- ed to make it a point of honor to preserve ab- solute stillness, and respect the slumbers ot his luckier neighbors ; although the chorus of snores in a variety of keys might well have absolved him from overstrained scruples. The consideration of the authorities moved us at earliest dawn round a turn of the line into a change of scene, and we found ourselves be- fore Bening-Merlebach station. The air was chill and damp, but the clouds were breaking with the promise of a glorious day — a promise which was not belied. We were all rather dull and drowsy towards morning ; and when we did shake ourselves and turn out of our sleeping- chamber, the men were already up and afoot. They had certainly little temptation to linger in theirs. Already they had kindled the morn- ing fires, for which most providently they had brought the supplies of fuel ; for although there was wood in abundance in the neighborhood, all was dripping wet. Small as the fires were, with the knots that clustered round them sol- emnly making believe at warming themselves, they conveyed an infinitely greater idea of the picturesque than the comfortable. Side by side, and half a stone's throw from the station-buildings, were a couple of little auber- ges. Both were fairly swamped in the influx of wolf-eyed campaigners, who had scented hot coffee boiling on the kitchen fires. There was no respect of persons, and the only title to precedence was the possession of the necessa- ry amount of coin. Every thing was paid for honorably; and there, as always, the exchange of Prussian base metal for French food seemed to turn out very much to the disadvantage of the invaders. Worse coffee I should imagine I had never drunk: even at the rare cafes on the Boulevards where it is still to be had in perfection, I question if I had ever ■enjoyed coffee more. Ambition grew with what it fed on. Half an hour before we had never dream- ed of a hot beverage ; now we turned our thoughts towards cold water and ablutions. It was two long days since we had seen the one or indulged in the other. It turned out, on in- quiry, there was a pump in the back kitchen, and no particular run upon it. So we convert- ed the front parlor into a dressing-room, and be- fore a not very silent assistance, made a toilet which only broke down in the matter of towels. However, the soldiers took the hint, and speed- ily the back-kitchen, where the pump was lo- cated, showed like a retiring-room in "Baths for the working-classes." The water proved salubrious enough both for external and inter- nal application. But the landlady assured an old German gentleman, one of our party who was travelling to the front in search of a dan- gerously wounded son, that the French troops had poisoned it, with the other wells in the place, before abandoning the country. It may have been the case, although I should have im- agined myself they were in too great haste to leave Bening-Merlebach to leave such deadly souvenirs. Neatly dressed herself, Avith her nice-looking children neatly dressed too, and with an exceedingly prepossessing appearance, the little landlady moved an animated oasis in the midst of all the dirty bustle and confusion, and seemed much more likely to speak the truth 40 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. than to go out of her way to tell a hideous false- hood. She told me, whatever their neighbors had suffered, personally they had no great rea- son to complain. They had submitted to heavy requisitions, indeed ; but, on the other hand, as I had opportunity of judging, they did a fair business with what was spared them, and it was a ready-money trade over the counter. Her husband had been continued in his post of station-master. He might not be an exalted patriot of the Brutus type, but when I saw him again later, on my return alone, I was only con- firmed in my first impression, that he was an exceedingly attentive, intelligent host. CHAPTER X. WAR SUPPOETING ITSELF. Even when the sun had shown himself over :the woods on the sky-line, every thing, air in- cluded, continued damp and chilly in the hol- low. ■ As his rays began to fall bright, if not warm, the men began to brighten up too ; to move their limbs as if they were aids to loco- motion instead of dead-weights, and to wriggle out of their overcoats like insects casting their slough. The rolling these coats v/as character- istic. In each instance three men told them- selves off for the task, folding them lengthways, and compressing them into the tightest possible bulk ; then the ends were strapped together, and they were slung over the shoulders, as I have described before. That was, in fact, the simple toilet of all who were not lucky or luxurious enough to make their way to the auberge pump. But what was worse, so far as appearances or preparations went, breakfast was likely to be quite as much a matter of form. I came upon a single pot, indeed, simmering on one of the numerous little fires, and the propi'ietor proudly raised the lid, to exhibit a highly appetizing soup of beef and carrots. But the solitary exception only proved the rule; and, although it was the centre of universal attraction, it was clearly im- possible some two thousand troops of all arms could sustain their stamina on the savor of that solitsLYj plat. Our own larder — the nettings of the railway-carriage — was still tolerably fur- nished out with bread and sausage and wine ; and although we husbanded our stores, and were rigidly temperate in satisfying our appetites, when we ate we felt something like Sybarites banqueting ostentatiously in a famine-stricken town, or Louis XIV. dining on the terrace of Versailles before his starving subjects. Later, we more than reconciled ourselves with our con- sciences, and shame gave place to envy when we chanced to light upon a wagon appropriated to some gentlemen of a Sanitatscorps. It was a full quarter of a mile ahead, and immediately behind the engine. Sleeping, sitting, and din- ing-room, it was arranged admirably for its treble purpose. A passage in the shape of .t> Greek cross was opened among the furniture, which consisted of chests and cases filled with stores for the sound and the wounded — medi- cines, dressings, delicacies, and wines. The corners were mattressed and blanketed as beds ; some of the boxes were cushioned with wrappers as chairs ; others were cupboards, where a varied and luxurious commissariat was compressed with due regard to economy of space ; others cellarets, filled with the choice growths of the Main and the Rheingau. A cold turkey and pair of par- tridges were in course of dissection, and a deli- cate pink ham was blushing modestly in the back-ground, as if it felt itself slightly out of place. There was the whitest of bread, and, absolutely, butter and preserve. Fragrant cof- fee was boiling over a spirit-lamp, and some- thing savory cooking itself in the mysterious re- cesses of a portable kitchen. It must be con- fessed these Rhenish gentlemen, like Dickens's nurse in the Marshalsea, understood the value of supporting themselves for the sake of their patients ; and if they could rely on their com- missariat arrangements to the end of their sani- tary campaign, it was a proof the more of the German capacity for organization. It said much, too, for the discipline of the hungry sol.- diers who went lounging by, that they confined themselves to longing and looking. Although we had been guilty ourselves of similar injuries to humanity in a lesser degree, we felt it would have been more truly in accordance with the charity they professed had these excellent Samar- itans closed the doors of their kitchen and break- fast-room before setting about their culinary preparations. Doubtless, they had abundance of wax-lights in their stores — very likely portable gas. We felt and spoke bitterly, because we had ample time to inspect their ari'angements and appreciate the bouquet of the seductive odors from their table. I was presented to the chiefs of the party by name, and while inquiring, with extreme interest, after their views and destina- tion, kept rapidly revolving in my mind with what decent amount of hesitation I might make myself sure of the inevitable invitation when it came. Alas ! my newly-made acquaintances, while only too happy to satisfy curiosity as to the working of their HuJfsverein in the minutest details, absolutely ignored all my more sensual cravings — a proof the more of the savoir vivre ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. 41 which impressed so offensively your eyes and nose. For my life, I could not help expressing a hope to my military companion, as we con- tinued our walk, feeling much like hungry wolves scared from the mutton in a sheep-fold, that, if the French should so far forget them- selves as to fire on the German ambulances, a retributive Providence might land a shell among the excellent arrangements we had admired. The station of Bening-Merlebach is very prettily situated. North and south from it you look on amphitheatres of green meadows, rising rapidly to steep semicircular heights, densely crowded with feathering woods. Here, as ev- erywhere else, it was of course impossible to say when the train might start, but experience told us that its next halting-place could not be very far off; and, moreover, the pretty forest scenery was irresistible. So, having failed to persuade any of the civilians of our party to run the risk, I determined to chance myself, and started for a solitary stroll. The character of the country was the same as that we had walk- ed through beyond Forbach, only with more wood-land and less cultivation ; high rolling beech-covers, with here and there a little clear- ing, with its solitary farm-house or cottage. From the ridges the views were fine, although not extensive ; and the rare peasants we met were as civil as I always found them. But it was the same weary story when you stopped to talk — every thing stripped away to feed the war. Doubtless a story but too true in the spirit, although you could scarcely accept it as literal fact ; for most of them had their faces set towards the invading column, and carried bread, fruit, and potatoes in the basket on their heads. It was quite evident they had no sort of doubt as to receiving fair value for their produce. When, after something more than an hour, I looked down again upon that invading host, it was in the same very open order as I had left it. The blue uniforms were dotted all about the fields, although the woods were forbidden them ; and the spots where they clustered thickest, the field-glass showed to be potato-patches. When I got down among them, I found breakfast was still a dream of the future, although foraging- parties of cavalry were out catering for it. At that moment, two or three lancers of Ziethen's, on their gray horses, in their crimson jackets, were emerging from a neighboring glade into the full sunshine — a genuine bit from Cuyp. Moreover, a detachment of the infantry had been told off on a visit to the neighboring village — it bears the same name as the station — and were already at the work. The chance of see- ing how the Germans levied contributions on the occupied country was not to be missed, so, picking up a friend, we hastened off. The only question was whether they would care to have strangers as eye-witnesses of what at best must be a somewhat revolting process. Inquisitors and sworn tormentors, even when they applied the question in due form of law, did not court the presence of public opinion at the inquiry; and, moreover, we saw a couple of sentries os- tentatiously posted on the Bening-Merlebach road. However, the sentries, made no observa- tion whatever beyond an amicable "Morgen;" so we had neither to tamper with their military virtue nor attempt to turn their flank. Be- ning-Merlebach is as pleasant a village as any of its neiglibors, and looks as if it ought to be prosperous. One long steep street runs from the little brook in the valley to the church on the hill. At the lower end, the street starts from a demi-p^ace, with an auberge to its right, and another to its left. Herr Braun is host at the one, Herr Gans at the other. Thi-ee Uh- lans, cocked carbine in hand, canter up to Braun's door, and shout a request for beer in at his open windows. As there is no immediate response, and, except for those open windows, the house gives no sign whatever of life, one of the troopers swings himself out of the saddle on to the stones with a clash and a rattle. He has barely time to toss his bridle to a comrade before Braun appears at his window, as by en- chantment, in a blue blouse, and a pale harass- ed face that engages our sympathy at once. It must be owned that warm feeling rather chill- ed, when Braun, accompanying his speech with much pantomimic energy of negation, assured his visitors that he had not a drop of beer him- self, but they would doubtless find it in plenty with neighbor Gans over the way. Gans, who clearly knew by experience which direction the dialogue would take, was at his window by this time, shouting out vehement contradiction ; taking the Blessed Virgin to witness that the — something — Prussians — he caught himself up rather awkwardly there — had drunk the very last drop of his two days before, which was of the less consequence, that the gentlemen would find all they could possibly want with Braun. The Uhlans did not condescend to discuss the matter, but proceeded deliberately to business, and entered Braun's, whence they emerged, a minute or two later, wiping their mustaches and carrying an earthenware jar. The subse- quent perquisition at Gans's was less satisfac- tory, and they drew his premises blank. If he had hid his cellar-key successfully, assuredly his neighbor Braun could not have been in the se- 42 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. cret. Braun's unneighborly conduct, when his heart should have been softened and sanctified by a community of suffering, came at first with a painful shock on the susceptibilities. Second thoughts brought more lenient judgment. Till you come to experience it yourself, perhaps you can hardly realize the demoralizing effect of be- ing flayed by shreds and ruined by inches. Having assisted at this first act of the tragedy, which was being repeated here and hundreds of places elsewhere, until further notice, we walk- ed up the hill to look out for the next one. While three or four of us had been listening to Braun's expostulation with the Uhlans, I had been rather taken aback by a voice at my el- bow, chiming off a rude couplet with more fe- licity of application than delicacy of feeling, "Herr Braun won't dubb down." I had no conception there was an Englishman nearer tlian Saarbruck, and the improvisatore looked as un-English as he well could. His was the fre- quent story. He had been settled for years past in Berlin ; had come thence with his father-in- law in search of a wounded brother-in-law, sup- posed to be lying somewhere near Metz. They had got permission at Saarbruck to accompany the military train. He seemed by no means hopeful of success, and far from sanguine of finding the wounded man in life, if they suc- ceeded in tracing him out. But the Anglo- German's wife desired him to accompany her father to look for her brother, and — shrugging his shoulders — balancing disagreeables, he pre- ferred to risk the journey with all the roughing it involved. The worst of these vague expedi- tions to the field-hospitals in quest of friends was the utter uncertainty of the result. If the wound were grave, there was too much chance the sufferer might have succumbed before you reached him. If less serious than had been tel- egraphed, he would probably have been sent off to the rear, and if you cared to follow you might go off upon a wild-goose-chase, playing hide-and-seek with him all over Germany. As we got well into the village, we found the whole population had turned out to stand at their doors, or were thronging towards some cen- tre of excitement higher up. Women and chil- dren there were in abundance, but of men in the vigor of life few or none. Here and there, groups of boys and children went dashing after small parties of the Darmstadt men, like small birds mobbing a hawk. Of course these little demonstrations took nothing of an offensive form ; and, in fact, with the insouciance of youth, the juveniles seemed to eke out the discomfort of reduced rations with the pleasant excitement of these domiciliary visitations. The people looked sour, when they were not stolid, natural- ly enough, but there were no hostile demonstra- tions even of gesture or speech ; any thing else, of course, would have been absurd. The only creatures that threatened fight, or vented their indignation at the intrusion audibly, were the village curs, and these, cowed by the mien and weapons of the military, harassed the heels of us, the civilian followers of the column. Then we met the crier, who seems an institution in all these Lotharingian villages, hobbling down the middle of the road, swinging his bell and calling on his fellow-villagers to bring out their bread. The main body of the foragers were drawn up in front of the church, and a little pile of loaves was gradually growing on the pavement before them. " You have seen, I hope, that my men go to work as considerately as is consistent with their duty," whispered my acquaintance, the captain in charge, as I passed him. I could say honestly that I had, and yet the sight was so sad, that you were forced, in self-defense, to treat it jestingly. Poor women coming along with their ragged aprons to their eyes, under their arm the half-yard of bread that ought to have been for the children who clung, crying with fright, and perhaps hunger, to their skirts ; old men bringing apologies for their share — apologies which were doubtless false so far as the special ground they were rested on went, and which must be sternly rejected. It required something like an insane faith in mir- acles to look forward to the future without de- spair, and the evil for the day was so bitterly sufficient, that it was beyond the strength of man not to take dismal thought for the morrow. The only marvel was, how the constant exac- tions — as we were assured they I'ecurred on an average every second day — could possibly be re- sponded to in any shape. Amidst sighs and many tears, the bread-heap on the paving-stones kept swelling, until it was clear enough, at least, that if famine was prowling in the outskirts, it could not yet have actually stalked into the vil- lage. I strolled up through the church-yard, and came upon a Sister of Charity. She was stand- ing with one pretty little girl in her hand, an- other in her arms, gazing from a distance on the picture of the woe I have tried to sketch. She shook her head to an address in German, but her face cheered a little at the French. She had been the village school-mistress in days when the children came to school ; but " Bless- ed Saviour ! that was an eternity ago now." The school-house behind her had its shutters up, except for a little room to one side of the door. How the village had suffered since then ! ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 43 how she herself had suffered ! though that was little. But would monsieur give himself the pain to enter and see the interior of her school ? I followed her in, and she took down some of the shutters of the gutted rooms, where one or two broken benches or desks remained to show how they had been furnished ; the rest had clear- ly gone for fire-wood ; so had most of the skirt- ing-boards, and many of the laths in the walls ; not a pane of glass was left unsmashed ; and the very frame-work of the windows was knocked into splinters. I confess I was doubly grieved. It was a pitiful sight at best, and then it disen- chanted me of my preconceptions as to the con- duct of the Germans. Hitherto I had been hap- py to believe that they exercised the harsh rights of war as leniently as consisted with orders, and all I had witnessed that morning had confirmed me in my impressions. "Not the Germans, but the Turcos, monsieur," she hastened to ex- plain. '"The first Prussians who came here were something rough, it is true, but since that we have not had much cause to complain of them. But these Turcos ! Oh, my God ! to dream of launching such savages on a Christian land!" The men of the village, she told me, had al- most all of them left it with the French retreat- ing forces, taking their horses with them. They feared the one and the other would be impress- ed, and forced to take involuntary service. As she was talking, a respectable woman in deep black came slowly up from the little crowd be- fore the church, a picture of hopeless dejection. She had just deposited her loaf there, and came to reclaim her children — the children the Sister had in charge. She was ready enough with her woes, and no wonder. Where her husband was she did not know, nor her son by a former mar- riage. The one had followed the troops. What could he do, poor man? — better go with the French than the Prussians. The other had been drawn for a soldier, and was probably in the gar- rison at Metz. When she should see them she knew not, or whether she should be able to restore her husband his children. If the good God did not interfere, she thought, for her part, they must starve. And then she broke down in an unconti-ollable fit of sobbing, and the Sis- ter put down the child to take the mother in her arms. Really the dilettante tourist on the trail of the war ought to leave his feelings at home, or carry the purse of Fortunatus. For, after all, starvation is the palpable horror, and coarse plaster as they may be, your thalers and florins bring speedier relief, and are more elo- quent of sympathy than any thing. The detachment had done its work, and was evacuating the village. The crier had made a second promenade, announcing that those who wished to be paid must present themselves promptly ; and paid they duly were — in some form or other. The little column moved down the High Street, about every fifth man bearing his loaf, until it looked like a martial procession who had been celebrating a feast of Ceres. Bacchus had notliing to say to it, unless a jar or two of beer might be taken for Bacchanalian emblems ; and besides these were a couple of pails of milk, while one man carried in triumph a handful of slices of bacon. The sight we had witnessed was pitiable in every way — the mean- ness instead of the glory of war. If all the peasants had not suffered acutely, it was only because use had begun to dull their senses ; they had habituated themselves to the cries of their famished children, and learned to look on a blank future as an accepted fact. Yet they had been squeezed with exceptional tenderness, and if the proceedings of these good-natured Darmstadters may be taken as representative ones, never were the inevitable horrors of war more softened to the helpless. I saw one sol- dier clap a peasant on the back, not in irony, but honest sympathy, as he took his loaf from him ; and the peasant looked at him, and then cordially shook the hand that had robbed him of his bread. I saw nothing approaching vio- lence, either of action or speech, not even when Braun the aubergist flatly denied the existence of the beer which was drawn forthwith. I saw a pleasant-looking young volunteer, who was standing sentry at the entrance of the village, giving away cigars that were priceless to him, when knapsack space was so valuable. And I thought how different things would have been had the Turcos been slipped on a peaceful ham- let in the Bavarian Palatinate or the Schwartz- wald, with unprotected cottages and helpless,, women given over to their tender mercies. On the way back, we passed a commodious farm-steading, standing by the side of the road. It had all the outward signs of ease and affluence suddenly blighted. Vines clambered on the house-front, clustered round the windows, and looped and trellised themselves about the porch. The little flower-garden was gay with dahlias, the kitchen-garden with scarlet-runners, and the swallows were skimming the duckless duck- pond. There was square upon square of snug- ly thatched outbuildings; interminable cow- houses and stables, vast barns and spacious wagon-sheds. The wagons were there still, but the horses were gone, and the cows too, so far as we could see. Not a soul visible about the place except haggard women. There was & 44 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. venerable he-goat, and a half-starved cat, and a lean dog sniffing suspiciously at the ample boots of the sentry, who remained outside on duty while his superior officer passed into the house. The officer emerged again immediately, empty- handed, and shaking his head. ' ' I shall send tlie men round the place for form's sake, he said, but — " and an expressive pantomime with his fingers finished the sentence. The farm looked too comfortable, and was far too con- spicuous from the railway-station, not to have contributed more than its share in support of the occupation. Meantime, and in eccentric contrast with this pressure exercised upon house- holders, itinerant fruit-sellers were revenging the country people on the pockets of the troops. It was odd to see the column halted for the sake of ransacking the farm and appropriating what scanty stores it might contain on arbitrary terms, while solitary peasants were busy swindling its individual members in the most confident and barefaced manner ; selling their sour fruit at fancy prices, and regulating the conversion of groschen and kreutzers into sous, entirely to their own advantage. ■ CHAPTEE XI. ON THE KOAD TO THE REAR. At our rate of progress, yards were lengthen- ing out to kilometres and hours to days. In point of distance we were not very far from Remilly, to which we had the route in the first place ; but it was altogether another thing cal- culating the time that divided us from it. And once at Eemilly, it was still more problematical how soOn or how late we might reach the head- quarters of Prince Louis's division ; for all we knew or heard to the contrary, it might be in full march on Paris. We might find ourselves condemned to the proverbial tedium of a stern chase, and a stern chase in war-time was some- thing grave. If I cut myself loose from my pleasant military friends, and cast in my lot with some of the gentlemen on their way to the field- hospital before Metz, or if I laid myself out for a tour of the recent battle-fields on my own ac- count, I must make up my mind to a sacrifice of time I sorely grudged. Gravelotte and Ee- zonville, Mars-la-Tour, and Jaumont look near enough to each other on the map ; but sad and slow experience had taught me how little su- perficial considerations like these were to be trusted. It would have been interesting, doubt- less, to visit these historical scenes ; terribly in- teresting to inspect the shambles in their hos- pitals ; but, after all, it would be but a more sensational repetition of what I had already done. The actual war, by all accounts, had drifted away to the west, and Bazaine was re- posing sullenly among his guns on his doubtful laurels. So after long reflections, for which I found ample time, I very reluctantly decided to fall back on my original ideas, and make out a visit to Alsace. I may remark, in passing, that letters since received from the companions I left gave me every cause to congratulate myself, on the whole, on the resolution. So, early one morning, I took an affectionate farewell of my friends. They were to march on from St. Avoid ; I was to march back. I can answer for the sincerity of my own regrets. To say nothing of turning one's back on much you had counted confidently on seeing for days past, it was a grievous change for the worse to your own company and the companionship of your own thoughts. One made friendship so fast, penned up together by day and night, in a constant chat through the long waking hours ; in a perpetual picnic when you played at the same privations, and laughed them over to- gether. I slung my baggage accordingly, and found myself in what I called decidedly heavy marching order. As I said, my knapsack had been packed with no idea of carrying it person- ally, unless in case of necessity, and, since then, it had gathered books, and maps, and oth- er weighty articles. But now the necessity had arisen, and there was nothing to be said. A knapsack-bearer is always an insufferable nui- sance when he is your sole companion. At the best of times, he is a drag on your pace, a check on your free-will, and a tax on your pow- ers of conversation ; and, moreover, you would have been forced to keep a very close eye on the movements of any one you were likely to pick up on the trail of the war. The day was young and beautiful, and, al- lowing for all likely detours and delays, the dis- tance to Saarbruck easily within compass of fair exertion. So, tempted by the scenery, I left the rail and struck up among the woods that ovei-hung it. Except that it was an agreeable walk among woods and fields, delightfully fresh to the sight and smell after the heavy rains, there was not much to repay one for the in- creased labor. From the appearance of their gardens and orchards, it seemed clear some of the cottages and farms must have escaped mil- itary visits ; others, it was equally evident, had entertained exacting and mischievous guests — fortune of the war. One old lady I stumbled on by accident, after forcing a short cut through some thick undergrowth. Her cottage was none ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 45 the less picturesque that it had been dilapidated by time, not by violence, and it had withdrawn itself coyly from sight among the magnificent clump of walnut-trees that inclosed a luxuriant patch of vegetable garden, a bit of turf, and a quaint old draw-well. What attracted my at- tention first was a pear-tree on the gable of the cottage, loaded with magnificent fruit, which, after a hot walk up and down hill, was irresist- ibly tempting. At first the old lady seemed much put out at being found at all, was ex- tremely curt in her speech, and evidently only anxious to get rid of her unlooked-for and sus- picious visitor. On exhibiting credentials, how- ever, in the shape of some silver, she reassured herself rapidly, and her manner softened. She brought out a couple of chairs, set them by the side of the well, and proceeded to be at all the frais of the conversation, for she chattered on incessantly in the most execrable of patois. It was with difficulty I prevailed on her to inter- rupt her talk so far as to go and fetch me some of the coveted fruit, but that once done, her ideas took a hospitable turn. She made an ex- pedition into the cottage, to emerge with a lump of very tolerable bread, and a second one produced a bottle of not undrinkable wine. Finally, with the help of some chocolate of my own, which the old lady highly approved, I had brought my unhoped-for meal to a close just as the master of the house made his appearance. I only waited to be presented in form, and ex- change the customary compliments of the cam- paign, to take to flight ; for he was to the full as voluble as his wife, and being even more in- differently provided with teeth, was, if possible, more unintelligible. We separated, however, the best of friends, I carrying away many court- eous wishes on the part of the elderly couple that we might speedily meet again. In a military point of view there was not much to repay one on those high grounds, ex- cept that you could assure yourself of the ex- treme sti-ength of the positions Frossard fell back through when knocked out of time by the terrible blow Von Goebel struck him at For- bach. On one salient bastion — very much of a second Spicherenberg, except for its thicker cover — and commanding the rail and the ap- proaches by the valley, I came on a row of rifle - pits, protected, moreover, by the fire of a breast-work above them. Clearly they had never been held, although a good deal of labor and some thought had been expended on en- gineering them. Back again upon the rail, and dull work it would have been trudging alone along the road one had travelled so lately in such pleasant company. But now I moved by electricity compared to the rate at which I had come, and the relative velocity of my march was irresistibly exhilarating. Except a stray peasant or two, there was not a soul to be met between stations, but the stations were lively enough, and swarmed with Prussian reserves. There was a rush of troops coming up behind my Darmstadt comrades. A good many of the ofiicers and men stopped me, not officially, but with many apologies, to ask whence I came, and what news I brought. The presence of a man with a civilian knapsack marching the wrong way, evidently made a grand sensation, and it was humiliating to have to confess you had started from anywhere short of the be- leaguering force. At Cocheren, I think, one friendly officer, in exchange for the contents of my very meagre budget, intimated I should find some hot boiled beef and carrots going in the neighboring hostelry. Although far from hun- gry after my recent breakfast, the idea of hot meat after several days of cold rations, had a fascination of its own, and I turned aside, ac- cordingly, in quest of the flesh-pots. If I had reason to be grateful to this good - natured stranger, it was only because he put me in the way of acquiring a new war experience. The 'meat looked quite tempting enough to overcome any distaste one might have felt to burning your fingers through a thin sheet of dingy newspaper, and then hacking it with your pocket-knife. But ah, the toughness of the tissues ! The closeness of the texture, with its interwoven sin- ew and gristle, was enough to turn the edge of the most exquisitely tempered blade. I passed it on to a sharp-set Prussian, who was eying it hungrily ; and never, I believe, had I felt half such genuine sympathy for the hardships of the invading forces as at that moment. It is easy to conceive turning out after a good night and comfortable breakfast to go into action in toler- able spirits. It is not quite so easy to imagine it in the case of men detaching their numbed persons from the ground they have frozen to, or dragging them out of the beds of mud they have settled down in. But fancy keeping up health and spirits for months on fare like that, even if you once got over the initial difficulty of eating it all. I began, too, to realize the practical absurdity of calling the ban and ar- riere-ban of a population into the field. Pic- ture the serving-men whose teeth were sapped by time with new-killed rations hard as that ! Outside Forbach, on a high dry plateau be- tween the road and the trail, a Prussian regi- ment had bivouacked ; at least, one or two of its battalions. No chance of catching these fellows nap23ing, or surprising them eating their iG ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. soup. Even now, with no armed enemy nearer than Metz, you come on the sentries and the outposts all duly placed, and all on the alert. It was a picturesque scene, with the soldiers scattered about laughing, singing, and smok- ing ; the camp-fires smoking, and the kettles trying to boil ; the arms piled, the officers' horses picketed, the baggage-wagons drawn up in a circle in the centre of all. Forbach was just as I had left it ; if possible, rather more crowded ; but on the bare battle- field on the Saarbruck side were an immense park of artillery, interminable lines of guns, and a wilderness of ammunition-carts waiting to be forwarded by road or rail. I had had quite enough of walking in the way of exercise, and looked forward with very moderate pleas- ure to retracing the dusty road I had already gone over so carefully. But the inn-keeper in Forbach had assured me there was not a con- veyance of any kind in the neighborhood that had not been "required ;" and the provisional station-master said there was no chance what- ever of an immediate train. However, just as I was settling down into my stride, and begin- ning to swing away at it mechanically, a merry hail came over my shoulder, and a rattle, that I had heard approaching from behind, came to a sudden stop. It was one of those long, nar- row country wagons, the sides and ends con- structed of bars widely apart — wagons tolerably light in their way, notwithstanding the solid wheels and pole. This one was chartered by the military authorities, and at present occupied by a trio of gunners, who insisted on the weight- ed pedestrian taking place with them. Hand- some, good-humored fellows they looked ; and although apparently very slightly concerned in liquor, I did not wait for further pressing. One of them insisted on evacuating the snug corner to the front where the straw lay thick- est. Already they had picked up a German cattle-dealer ; immediately afterwards a comely peasant-woman was added to our party, who became forthwith the object of marked atten- tion, and, nothing loath, commenced a three- barrelled flirtation. The last addition was a very juvenile Prussian officer, in brand-new uni- form, whose gloss had been barely rubbed, very handsome, not only gentlemanly, but distinguish- ed-looking, and evidently desperately ashamed of the queer company in which he found him- self. But he had outstripped, or in some way missed, his battalion, which was then on the march from Saarbruck, and was in mortal ap- prehension of finding himself in a scrape. He shouted earnest inquiries on the subject to every passenger he met, and had to content himself with most unsatisfactory replies. At last the leading files did appear on the ridge before us between the poplars, and our young friend hop- ped out, and advanced to meet his corps in more dignified fashion. It was a I'egiment of Landwehr, the old colonel in his spectacles looking much as some of our own militia com- manders might have done — as if he thought the whole thing an immense nuisance, and involv- ing a great deal of trouble he had never serious- ly bargained for. The men were smart, soldier- like fellows, with plenty of substance, of course, and a great glitter of Danish and Bohemian med- als on their broad chests. Dusty and hilly as it was, they were swinging along at a good three- and-a-half miles an hour, although inquiries as to their distance from Forbach were not unfre- quent as we rattled past them. "Direkt aus Paris " was the standing chaff of our gunners ; and given with a wave of the hand and the ap- propriate expression of face of the express who shouts great news as he gallops past, it scarcely lost by repetition. Each time we laughed just as heartily, and it had the invariable effect of eliciting a hearty cheer from the military pedes- trians. Behind the battalions came the bag- gage-carts, the sutlers' wagons, and a couple of exceedingly ugly vivandieres in excessively showy bloomer costume. And then we passed a dozen or so of wagons and wagonettes, and carriages in various styles, going to the front. On some were painted the numbers of different army corps ; others were blazoned with the arms of royal or princely houses ; and on the banquet boxes of one or two were haughty me- nials in livery, looking woefully out of place. The worst of my friends was, that their pat- riotism would never permit them to pass a beer-house without descending to drink to the success of their armies, and they invariably in- sisted on treating any loungers they might find there. It was in vain, for my own part, I at- tempted first to decline, and secondly to pay. As to the first, their hospitality would not be denied, and for the second, the invariable reply was, " Nein, nein, wir haben sie eingeladen." There was nothing but to resign myself with a good grace, distribute the few cigars I fortu- nately had left, and pass them the cognac flask I had filled at Forbach. Although under the combined influences of beer, brandy, and rapid motion, their spirits were speedily becoming in- controllable ; yet through it all, and with the familiarity of " bons camarades " growing fast to demonstrative affection, there was nothing whatever of vulgarity about them. They were gentlemen slightly overtaken under circumstan- ces that made inebriety venial, and I question ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 47 whether any three non-commissioned gunners picked at random from Woolwich wpuld have come out of the ordeal half so well. The old Lotharingian who drove us did not appreciate them so much. On starting from the second auberge, I had taken my seat be- side him, in front ; and, while our military friends behind were loud in a patriotic chorus, ■we got into conversation in an under-key. The French had robbed him of one of his two horses while camping out on the Spicheren, before the affair of Saarbruck, giving him in exchange a lame one of their own, one of the pair he was now driving. Out of condition it was, and a little galled in the back, but otherwise his lost horse must have been a good one, if he had much reason to complain of the exchange. He assist- ed at the battle from the neighboring heights until he came down to help the wounded, and he dashed off a dramatic and perhaps slightly imaginative picture of it. He gave telling im- itations of the roar of the various engines of war down from the field-guns and mitrailleuses, dis- tinguishing carefully between the whiz of the Chassepot ball and that from the Nadelgewehr when he got among the small arms. After the action the Germans had pressed him and his team. At first he had been hard at work haul- ing and burying dead horses ; now he was gen- erally kept plying on the road between Forbach and Saarbruck with freights like liis present one. They paid him now and then in specie, generally in paper — alluding to which last, he shrugged his shoulders expressively. Thus we got gradually on so confidential a footing that our heads were continually jolting together when the wheels caught in the ruts ; and final- ly he volunteered that bit of paternal advice about not getting too intimate with my new- made friends, '^Bose Letite," he whispered, with a wink pregnant of meaning and warning ; and the next moment he had turned obsequiously to laugh at some jest they deigned to address him. It was all very natural. Of course hypocrisy is the refuge of the helpless, and both the peas- ants of Lorraine and the German gunners, al- though admirable people in their several ways, had been brought by the times into radically false relations. When Germany appropriates a strip of the province, they will learn to under- stand each other better. For myself, I parted from both with very pleasant recollections ; when thanking my gunners for their "lift," I resisted their importunities to accompany them through a course of the beer-houses of Saar- bruck. CHAPTER XIL WEISSENBURG AND WOERTH. No quarters to be had in Saarbruck, and no time for dinner, for a train was just starting for Neunkirchen and somewhere beyond. I had established myself in the corner of an open truck — the train was composed of nothing but trucks and close horse-boxes — when a friendly official, with whom I had renewed an acquaint- ance commenced on a previous visit, came to offer me a place in a carriage that was going to be hooked on. I found the carriage occupied by three officers, all fresh from Metz. One of them was a major of the Baden army, unwound- ed, and on his way to Mannheim on militai'y business. The others were wounded, both of them ; and one, who had been shot in the jaw, was suffering terribly to boot from violent rheu- matism in the head, caught from bivouacking in the open. He had had no sort of cover, and for days in succession, he said, had woke to find himself swamped in a pool and chilled to the marrow. The others found all his dismal ex- periences perfectly natural, although they had been somewhat more fortunate themselves. The Baden major had not got out of his clothes for a fortnight, and during all that time had seen next to nothing of water, except in the shape of rain : in that form he had had more than enough ; but he seemed cast in iron, and all the better for the exposure, which was a good deal more than you could say for his clothes. We were all of us hungry, and we clubbed our scanty means for a dinner. Tiie major pro- duced a bottle of capital sheny, shoved into his hands on the platform by some German Samaritan, an utter stranger. For my share I could contribute a corkscrew and a cake of patent chocolate — chocolate fortified Avith meat extract, and warranted remarkably nourishing. One of the invalids had a loaf of bread, and the other a basket of gi-een-gages. Our journey was the old story ; a snail's pace and perpetual stop- pages, and it was past midnight before we ar- rived at Neunkirchen. The train went on to Bingen, and the Badener and I, who were to change for the southern lines, were not alto- gether sorry to find there was no means of get- ting forward till morning. We knocked up the house at the small Hotel de Poste, and were too thankful to find sleeping-quarters in a couple of little attics opening into each other : he and I appropriated the beds — his suite, consisting of a couple of soldiers and a Krankenpjieger, coiling themselves up upon the floor. At 4 30 I was afoot again, and left the party snoring in chorus. Thev had heard of a Mannheim de- 48 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. parture to suit them at a Christian hour. As I looked forward to reaching Weissenburg some- time in the course of the morrow, and had learn- ed much of the vicissitudes of travel, I thought it prudent to take advantage of the early train that started at five. It was a pretty drive to Neustadt through the Bavarian Palatinate — farm-land like gar- dens, and gardens almost tropical in their lux- uriance, with their long rows of bee -hives among the wilderness of flowers ; fat cows wad- tile plains ; each bolder eminence crowned for the most part with its shattered keep or crum- bling castle. Now and then the fir-woods closed in upon the rail, scenting the fresh morning with resin, their clean red stems glowing in the golden sunbeams that struggled through the canopy of boughs. Here you looked up a sheer precipice — a red sandstone quarry, wrought by pickaxe and blasting- powder into outlines as savagely picturesque as if the cliff's had been the work of nature. There you gazed down into a THE OEOWN PKINOE, FEEDEKIOK WILLIAM. dling knee-deep in the grass of rich meadows — literally, a land flowing with milk and honey. What a country to support the war ; and what a desert it would have been by this time had the French army been as ready for the campaign as the French Ministry, and if the Marshals of Napoleon had followed the steps and game of those of the Grand Monarch. Not that the utilitarian element ruled supreme or even pre- dominant in the Palatinate landscape. There was a wooded Bergstrasse backing up these fer- gorge, where the green transparent stream came brawling over the boulders of its broken bed, sweeping round the quaint- gabled saw-mill, with its ponderous wheel, and past the gigantic piles of fresh-sawn timber. Leaving Neustadt, we wound round the corner of the hills, to mount the broad, level plains of the Ehine val- ley to Winden. Strange to say, the trains had kept time, or nearly so, and had already de- moralized me for delay. Starting very early, in apprehension of the worst, I should have ON THE TRAIL OE THE WAE. 49 been delighted to have compounded for reach- ing Weissenburg by nightfall. Now I found myself at Winden junction considerably before noon, and infinitely disgusted at hearing, in an- swer to my inquiry as to the train for Weissen- burg, the stereotyped response I had become so used to on the Saarbruck side, " Nichts ist he- stijnmt." Thanks to the pleasant travelling of the morning, I had half forgotten that Winden lay on the second of the converging lines of the German advance. Although since the day of less soldiery — all the excitement of the scram- ble, in fact, had lost its charm. Besides, after re- cent experiences in the way of pseudo-campaign- ing, I felt the natural contempt of a veteran for those unblooded recruits who had never been nearer to Metz than Winden. So I decided, in my haste, should the station-master assure me there was no immediate prospect of a departure, to sling my knapsack, and set forward on foot for Weissenbui'g. The station-master did say, hesitatingly, he thought he might venture to PEINCE FEEDEEIOK OHAEI.ES OF PEU66IA, Woerth the Crown Prince had marched for- ward " into the bowels of France " many a long league " without impediment," and al- though, consequently, there were now but few of those dismal caravans of wounded, yet troops and supplies must go forward somehow, and the gown still give place to arms, and civil traf- fic to military trains. The getting into a fresh rush of troops, stum- bling over heaps of cowskin knapsacks, and in a hot forenoon having to fight your way to a glass of beer through the disbanded ranks of a law- 4 pledge himself to a train in a couple of hours, al- though unforeseen contingencies might very pos- sibly defer the start. I thought I knew pretty nearly what that meant, and having gathered from my maps that the rail cut off a huge bend of the road, expressed my intention of walking, and begged his permission to stick by tlie line. Af- ter some benevolent expostulation, arguing from my weighty knapsack to the meridian sun, the courteous station-master ushered me into his sanctum, seated himself at his desk, and then requesting, as matter of ceremony, an inspec- 50 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. tion of my papers, wrote me in due form the re- quired permission. Had I had any one to join me in the joke, I should have been much inclined to laugh at the airs of the amiable dignitary. As events showed, he understood his subordinates and their austere discharge of their duties better than I did. There were cottages stationed along the line at each few hundred yards, and at each of them the cantonnier was either lolling listlessly on the bench before his door, or delib- erately digging potatoes in his little garden, or else relaxing himself with affecting to repair the line. Everywhere he challenged you — com- manded you to stand, and demanded a formal production of documents from head - quarters. I do not say that a liberal largess of florins might not have proved as efficient a talisman to pass you through the chain of posts. But as- suredly it was a happy and economical presen- timent that prompted the humble request to the .chief, that flattered his vanity and saved my pocket. Had I only practised the lessons of patience I ought to have been learning during the last ten days, I might have spared myself a hot, dusty walk. Just as I entered Weissen- burg, excessively parched and slightly footsore, the train panted past me into the station, beat- ing me cleverly by a couple of hundred yards. Weissenburg is a quaint German-French old- fashioned little town lying just within the French border — "Weissenburg," I presume, the primitive German form of the French cor- ruption, Wissenbourg. When I call it Ger- man-French, I do not mean to assert the pres- ent existence of German" sympathies in the inhabitants. Far from that, they gave their Bavarian neighbors a reception that reflected much more credit on their "pluck" and pat- riotism than their prudence. But it and its inhabitants have a thoroughly German air; and although the citizens have been aspiring to learn French for a couple of centuries or so, as yet they have only succeeded in hopelessly cor- rupting their German. French takes prece- dence of German on the sign-boards, although you sorely stagger the shop-keeper when you address him in the tongue of his ambitious pre- dilection. With its venerable brown tiles and its picturesque white gables, its vine-covered windows often looking upon streams instead of streets, it reminds one greatly of a miniature Nuremberg. It is true, the mountain brooks that flow through Weissenburg are beautifully limpid, while the sluggish arms of the Pegnitz are a solution of greasy brown meadow-land. The Angel Inn, lately the head-quarters of so much martial authority, the haunt of so many special correspondents, is quite in keeping with the place. Standing a little back from the nar- row street, it lolls dreamily over a venerable bridge, pensively contemplating the stream that ripples past its moss-grown basement stones. A gallery, with a series of bedroom doors open- ing out upon it, runs round a spacious court- yard, embracing piles of fire-wood, medijeval carriages, and primitive carts, and vocal with pigeons and poultry. Under the archway you enter by, you turn aside into a double guest- chamber — the outer one appropriated to the de- mocracy of the place, the inner to the aristocra- cy and stranger guests. You have a choice of ascents to the bedrooms. There is a wooden staircase in the open air, and a well-worn stone one corkscrewing round a massive turret. And up stairs, if your curiosity tempts you to a study of the architectural arrangements, you find your- self hopelessly bewildered. Viewed from with- out, the inn seems small and compact enough ; seen from within, the upper floors would seem to go struggling all over the little town, such is the length of disproportioned side-passages and great halls vaulted over with rafters and pro- longed to deformity. The most modern things about it were a couple of smart, bustling waiters, one of whom had been trained in London, and was fluent of English with a faint cockney ac- cent. Weissenburg, commanded on all sides by hills, some of which threaten to topple over into it, is a fortified town. In time of peace its fortifica- tions provide the inhabitants with an agreeable lounge the whole length of its enceinte; while, in the event of war, they ought to have caused them no manner of inconvenience. It is said the attack which carried it on the 4th of Au- gust was a happy inspiration ; that the order was merely to drive the French back into the streets, and leave them undisturbed there until the rest of the field-guns should come up. Doubtless, the menace of batteries in position would have been quite sufficient to make the French abandon a place they could have no hope of holding, and, had they waited, the Ger- mans might have spared some bloodshed and a good deal of unnecessary ill-feeling. There was no artillery mounted on the antiquated lit- tle ramparts ; the dry moats are beds of nettles and heaps of rubbish, and happily the elms and poplars had been left to wave in peace over the very edge of the glacis. But the impetus and elan of the Germans naturally carried them for- ward ; they entered the place pell-mell in a hand-to-hand fight with the enemy, and made good their footing in it, while the French fell back on their supports on the Geisberg. The ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 51 gate by which they entered, with the adjacent houses, showed all the signs of serious work, al- though already, when I saw them, glazier and mason had been hard at work. And, while the fighting was going forward, those of the Ger- man pieces that were up protected the attack of their troops with a heavy fire directed on the .town. It caused some damage, although no great destruction, and, fortunately, a wonderful- ly trifling loss of civilian life. Although the , inhabitants opened fire here and there from their windows, to the extreme irritation of their Ba- varian neighbors and visitors, I could only hear of five well-authenticated deaths from shot, shell, ball, or bayonet. On the side of the Geisberg, you leave the town by a low-browed archway, under a mod- erately venerable tower. The bill-sticker has been abroad before the occupation and since. On one side are advertisements of American steam-packets of the Havre line, of Parisian Assurance-companies against fire and hail; on the other, various proclamations by the Pro- visional Military Government for the guidance and warning of Alsatians who wish to preserve their personal liberty or lay their heads on bloodless pillows. Light-blue Bavarians keep watch and ward all over the place : here at the gate ; outside of it, by the railings of the rail- way-station ; farther on by the wooden lazaret and on the skirts of the tents, where a battalion is camping in the open ; by a park of guns and wagons, some of them captured, others brought up from the rear. Under the broad avenues of fine old trees that circle that side of the town, there ruminated great herds of long -horned cattle, better off for provender and for flesh than any I had seen as yet. So far you follow the Strasbourg road. It rises rapidly for a long mile, to surmount the lofty ridge to the right of the main French positions on the Geisberg. As it threatens to carry you wide of the ground where the battle raged the hottest, you leave it, to set your face south-east- ward across the fields. These dip in an easy slope down to a ditch that divides them oblique- ly to the line you are following, and which runs nearly parallel to the heights you are advancing on. Beyond the ditch, the fields rapidly be- come the heights, rising stiffly until in places they are well-nigh as steep as the Spicheren. Whatever the faults of the French, when they did elect to make a stand, they can not be said to have neglected the natural advantages of the ground. The ridge of the Geisberg, properly so called, extends, on the left, fi'om a pair of isolated poplars, conspicuous objects from every- where on the plains to the east, so soon as the eye can detach them from the sky-line, to a mass of building on the right, half lost in a cluster of venerable trees. These poplars mark the spot where General Felix Douai fell ; the buildings are part of the farm-steading, and of the north- ern gable of the Chateau of the Geisberg. Im- mediately under the chateau gardens, the Geis- berg drops sheer into the flats, and then turns back to run sharply southward, roughly parallel to the opposite Berggtrasse of Baden. A lovely afternoon was drawing to evening as I struck across the fields. Here and there I came on the traces of camping and fighting — boughs stuck in the ground, the cooking trenches, the brushes and crushed kettles, the shreds of cloth, the scraps of weather-beaten paper. In the ditch at the bottom such objects had gath- ered thicker, and there were the remains of boots and knapsacks and helmets. But the dominant sensation was surprise that the signs of a battle- day little more than three weeks old should be so nearly effaced. Where the land that had been reaped prematurely had remained untouch- ed, it naturally bore marks of the tread of feet. But much of it had been turned by the plough, and one field of mangel-wurzel must have been forced by the warm rain drenching the heated ground, already it was so luxuriant. A great gang of peasant-girls were hoeing the drills, and in the surrounding stillness you might have heard their songs and their shrill laughter miles away. Neither the reality of foreign occupa- tion, nor the thought of the shambles they were working in, seemed to dash their spirits. Far- ther on, I stumbled upon a line or two of hasti- ly cast-up earth-works, half hidden among the mangels. Then I crossed a country road, grooved in the face of the Geisberg, a few yards under the brow, and then, with a sharp pull of half a minute, I stood by the poplars. One or the other might have served for head-stones to the pair of graves beneath — for there was noth- ing more than a little wooden cross upon the one, a couple of crossed branches upon the oth- er. Who slept there — French, German, or Kabyle — there was not even a line of pencil- writing to tell. Between these poplars and the farm-house that stood some few hundred yards behind, the Turcos were said to have suffered heavily, having for once at least fought most desperately. A Frenchman, who chanced to come sauntering by with a couple of pointers, told me that General Douai dropped while vain- ly attempting to persuade his barbarians to fall back before inevitable annihilation. Neither friend nor enemy, so far as I know, questions the chivalrous courage of this gallant ofiicer, who was fortunate in a soldier's death, and possibly 52 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. lav buried under the very mound I was seated on. But I should have given more implicit credence to that especial version of his fate, had I not read something much resembling it in one of the French journals — I believe the "Figaro." The view from the Geisberg is superb. To the north, south, and west, in the direction of Bergzabern, Soultz, and Woerth, you look over range on range of densely timbered chains of hills, the shades of the most distant woods melt- ing away into the blue-gray of the skies. It was the very country for outnumbered troops to wage a warof mountainbarricades. The mount- ains to the north are the Haardt ; those to the west and south, the Vosges. To the east the broad plain of the Rhine is bounded by the dis- tant hills of Baden. Weissenburg, in the val- ley below, looks, as they say of Stuttgart, as if, in a good year, it ought to be drowned in its wines. Thence the eye travels, by a street of villages, along ten miles of orchards to the church towers of Winden. The French field-glasses, if the French intendance thought of providing such things, ought to have disengaged every movement of the enemy from the straggling cover. From the poplars towards the farm of the chateau my path lay over new-ploughed land. One or two of the great square grave-mounds had been respected, although trenched on to the very edge ; but the team had not thought it worth while to turn the smaller ones, and the furrows lay straight and level across resting-places only marked by the fragile cross. The replacing the cross was a certain tribute to piety, when it might have seemed the farmer would have acted more prudently in effacing all traces of what would be popularly condemned as an outrage. The expression sacrilege, I presume, properly applies only to violating duly consecrated ground. For myself, I confess to some sympathy with him. If the house I had inhabited peacefully for years were suddenly made the scene and centre of hor- rors that sent a shudder through the civilized world ; if I were condemned to live on in it, I fancy I should do my very best, morally and materially, to consign them to oblivion. Not that any efforts of the tenant are likely to be crowned with full success, for six or eight hun- dred men lie buried within stone's-throw of his windows. If a single murder makes a haunted house, what should be the effect of a thousand violent deaths in the precincts of a lonely farm and a somewhat ghostly-looking chateau. The natives may be superstitious, but fortunately they are not imaginative. The dead had been buried Qut of their sight, the rains had washed their blood-stained walls and cleansed their gory gar- den-paths. They had repaired their roofs, and replaced the broken window-panes and the shiv- ered sashes. The new dairy-pails were stand- ing in a sparkling row before the freshly-painted door. The women were going singing about their work, and the children, with light screams of laughter, were playing about the court-yard. The family looked all the merrier after its es- cape from the terrible anxieties it had labored through. Yet the fight had left marks behind not so easily removed as the blood-stains or the broken glass. It must have found the chateau and farm-buildings a picture of rude luxury and primitive comfort. Each building in the court- yard, every antiquated appliance, was a study in its way. Through an orchard barked by ball, after the manner of the trees on the Spicheren, and past a new paling splintered to tooth-picks, you entered by a pair of folding-doors that had been held as desperately as the familiarly his- torical ones of Hougoumont. Immediately in the corner to your right stood the farm-house, its dented walls still bespattered with bullet- marks, its venerable tiles blotched all over with the gaudy new ones that patched the roof. The vine at the end had been nailed up again with shreds of German blue and French garance, om- inously suggestive ; but the double row of bee- hives stood tenantless, and more than one of them had tumbled over. Two sides of the quad- rangle were inclosed by a lofty stone wall with broad projecting eaves, sheltering long ladders that hung below. Opposite was a row of sta- bles and cow-houses. In the space between was the quaintest of mills, where the ponderous grindstone revolved in a massive granite trough by ox-power applied to the most clumsy wood- en leverage. Yet more old-fashioned was the draw-well beyond, with its bucket and winch and rope, and its extravagance of solid orna- ment in the shape of a couple of useless stone pillars supporting a ponderous and purposeless arch. You passed through a door in the farm-build- ings, to find yourself in a second court, of which the side that faced you was formed by the rear of the chateau, the other two by the out-build- ings, stables, and servants' apartments running back from it. Spacious as was the inclosure, it was more than half-shaded by a spreading chest- nut, which threw off its gigantic boughs so high that a quantity of the brobdingnagian hop-poles of these districts were piled comfortably round the trunk. The old clock-turret, with its peal of gilded bells, showed that once on a time the chateau had prided itself on its feudal splendor, although the beds of weeds and the crumbling ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 53 plaster looked as if of late years it had been suf- fered to get somewhat out of elbows. Bat the slow decay of years counted for little in pres- ence of the swift devastation of the 4th of Au- gust. Here, at the bacli, there were, of course, few signs of positive damage ; but when you passed in-doors, what a scene ! The bright blue sky smiled in mockery through half a dozen rag- ged holes in the roof and a great irregular em- brasure above the hall-door. You went out upon the spacious landing of the wide stone staircase that led down right and left to the garden by flights of a score of easy steps. One half the massive balustrade was smashed clean away, and the fragments of the rest had been sent flying all about the gravel. The facade of the house had been riddled, especially under the cornice ; the ridge of the roof had been shattered ; the chimneys had suffered heavily ; one of them, struck below, had been twisted half round where it stood. Strange to say, the trees had escaped miraculously, although one or two of the hop- poles that stood on either side had been cut across, and the withered bine drooped with the broken pole in contrast with the lush luxuriance of the plant below. The stone pavilion, at the corner of the balustraded terrace, had naturally come in for its full share of damage. Evident- ly for long it had been a favorite holiday- haunt of the neighboring Philistines, and its plastered walls were thickly scribbled with autographs of the hydra-headed. The view over the Biener- wald to the Schwartzwald in itself was worth the coming for. When I had had enough of the place, following an avenue that bore the marks of artillery fire, and crossing a field of French beans, through which you could trace the rush of the troops, I found my way into a road that led back to the town by what had been the left of the German advance. After Forbach and Weissenburg, I own, I be- gan to have enough of battle-fields ; that is to say, although the study of the positions rather gained than lost in interest, morbid curiosity as to graves and relics, devastated country and des- olated homes, was well-nigh satisfied, and such second-hand horrors b6gan to pall. As it must be duller still, the listening to repetitions of the same ghastly histories, I shall be all the hastier in my visit to Woerth. In simple scenery the expedition was a lovely one as you need care to make, and those who may go later to visit the scenes of the war are likely to come back des- perately enamored of the secluded beauties of the Vosges. I had supper-dinner at the "Angel," at the end of a long table crowded with Bavarian of- ficers. Overhearing a couple of them talking of an early start for the front next morning, I ventured to trouble them with some inquiries, and was informed that a military train would start next morning at five, and was likely to start punctually. Accepting the latter assur- ance with a certain reserve, and moreover not being over-particular as to how I found my way, I strolled down quietly at 6 30, just in time to present a military voucher and take my seat. An hour later I was deposited at Soulz, where I negotiated a more than tolerable breakfast, accompanied by an excellent flask of Durck- heim Feuerberger ; was served with coffee and chasse in due form, and started afterwards for Woerth. As picturesque scenery translated into mili- tary language generally means formidable posi- tions, it is not surprising that the fighting of the war has fallen among the fairest scenes of Alsace and Lorraine, Forbach, Saarbruck, Weissenburg, are all charming in their way ; so I believe are the three battle-fields of Metz, but none of them can be lovelier than Woerth. The village lies, as usual, in a hollow between a couple of spurs trending out from the great western ridge. As usual, there are the heights and the woods, and in this case the desperate scramble of the stormers was up the face of stone-walls, and over vineyard terraces. There are the usual bullet-marks everywhere in some- what more than the usual profusion, and far more than the usual number of graves. For the village itself, it had suffered terribly, having been assaulted again and again before being carried finally ; and for some time, as a cure' I met described it, it had been the centre of a per- fect waterspout of shot and shell. And with no great exaggeration apparently, for the woe-be- gone houses and the roofless church were there to bear him corroborative testimony. Picking up a young Prussian sergeant, who had been wounded in the shoulder and wrist by the same rifle-ball, very nearly on the identical spot where I found him smoking, we started on our walk. First we climbed to the ridge from which the French were driven, and then we turned off along the crest towards Froschwei- ler. It was the centre of their position, and there their artillery had been stationed. Froschwei- ler had suffered relatively even more seriously than Woerth : its church was destroyed, with a score or so of its houses, while scarcely one of the rest but could count its casualties. Beyond Froschweiler lies the chateau of the Count of Durckheim, where McMahon had his head- quarters when, to his intense surprise, he found himself commanding in a general engagement. It sounds incredible that the Marshal should not ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. have benefited by the very strong hint given him at Weissenburg, nor placed himself on guard in face of enemies so enterprising. He ought to have known, besides, what he seems never to have suspected, that he was so far outnumbered as in some degree to neutralize the immense superiority of his ground. He had extended his line to weakness; when the Germans at- tacked him in force from Soulz, it was literally rolled up upon its centre at Woerth and Frosch- weiler. Then the village of Woerth was taken, the heights above were stormed ; the desperate stand made at Froschweiler was overcome at abandoning their arms, and stripping off their very accoutrements. The general's baggage- wagons and the carriages of his suite became prize of the war. That night the Uhlans mas- queraded merrily round their camp-fires in the robes and chapeaux and crinolines found in the Marshal's military chest. The road back to Weissenburg wound about among the valleys of Vosges, through woods and vineyards and villages, fields of maize and to- bacco, and forest-locked meadows, watered by rippling streams and bubbling with sparkling fountains. Certainly, the Alsatians' lines had MAE8HAL M'MAHON. last by the German weight and the German courage, and the French fell back in full retreat. I tell the story as my Prussian guide told it me. At Woerth the French seem, in the first place, at least, to have owed their defeat to scandalous generalship and indiiferent leading. By all ac- counts the rank and file showed both courage and constancy in the battle. But, the battle lost, the demoralization was instantaneous ; the retreat became a rout, and the rout a flight. They left their dead and dropped their wound- ed, and whole regiments threw away every thing, fallen in pleasant places ; and for the enjoy- ment of such a country it seemed almost worth paying the penalty of a frontier position and oc- casional hostile occupation. But, except that men were scarce, there were few signs of the trail of the war. Every one was passively, if not demonstratively, friendly ; the women, rec- ognizing a stranger in the pedestrian, often volunteered a smiling good-evening; the men working by the road, or driving their wagons, turned to nod you a salutation. Assuredly they were no connoisseurs in I'ace or dress, and did ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 55 not set me down for an Englishman. It is nat- ural implicitly to accept the reluctant testimony of Germans when they talk of the strong anti- German feelings of Alsace. Yet of three Alsa- tians I held political converse with, in the course of that evening walk, one only expressed him- self virulently in regard to a transfer of alle- giance, and he was a Catholic cure. Of coui'se. North German Protestantism is the bete noire of a clergy — deluding guides of the blind — who have systematically swayed their humbler pa- rishioners by their superstition and credulity. Of the two laymen, one was a village host, and the other a well-to-do farmer. Perhaps the former's profession had made him somewhat latitudinarian in the matter of patriotism ; but so long as things settled back to a state of peace and plenty, he implied it was matter of utter in- difference to him whether he was taxed from the banks of the Seine or the Spree. As for the farmer, he was infinitely more violent against the Empire than its invaders. He abused the former for the sufferings of which the latter had been the instruments, and declared if he had not believed in its peaceful professions, he would never have voted, as he did, for the plebiscitum. I suspect that, like many others, he accepted the motd'ordre oi U empire <^est lapaix, in the sense of peace at home and unlimited right of victo- rious war abroad. At least, he denounced, with concentrated vigor of abuse, the forces who had failed to make good the frontier, from the com- mander-in-chief down to the drummer-boys, and railed at a standing army that, when it attempt- ed to move at all, could only move in retreat. CHAPTER XIII. ROUND STRASBOUKG. It was hard work reposing one's self at Ba- den-Baden. The bombardment of Strasbourg would not suffer one to rest. Afa^on deparler, of course — for, as Johnson said once, when rec- ommending Boswell to clear his mind of cant, men sleep none the worse and eat none the less for public misfortunes, however deeply they feel them : I quote the idea, and not the precise language. At Baden, in the absence of graver excitement — balls, concerts, flirtations, break- ings of the bank, and suicides — every one inter- ested themselves in the siege. The few French and Russian gentlemen who formed the little dinner-party at the table-d'kote speculated on the persistence of the assault and the tenacity of the defense. There were refugees recently arrived from the beleaguered place, who became the centres of curiosity and compassion, mobbed by the idle and the charitable. The practice of charity was the more creditable to the Badeners that, in the circumstances, it might well have begun and ended at home, for their prosperity was dying by inches of an atrophy. Up by the Jagdhaus you might hear, they said, faint inter- mittent murmurs in the south-west, the expiring waves of the sound of the bombardment, and parties each afternoon went up to drink beer and listen for them. Although the works held good as yet, the sus- tained bombardment seemed to have fairly breached the heavens, and brought them down in a steady rain-pour. The course of the Rhine was generally wrapped in dense clouds of fog ; and it was by no means favorable weather, for purposes either of travel or observation. Wait- ers and loungers were circumstantially minute as to the objections raised by the besieging forces to strangers caught prying about any- where in the vicinity of their lines. So, al- though placing no implicit faith in these, it was with a very vague notion how far I should be able to push my reconnaissance, that I took my ticket for Appenweier. Moreover, as my time was running short, and the weather execrable, I did not start with much of that determination of purpose that goes so far to command suc- cess. Appenweier, as most people know, is the junction for Kehl, Strasbourg, and Paris on the Baden railway. The station was much as it used to be, but of course the Kehl service was suspended. There was no descent of the mot- ley Parisian contingent — badauds and boursiers and lorettes, with their dramatic travelling-cos- tumes and their elaborate travelling appliances ; no canvas-covered chests, that would have held the fair wearers bodily, robes bouffe'es, and all; no brass-knobbed portmanteaux and brass-han- dled cartons de chapeaux. There was a numer- ous staff of railway officials, but, strange to say, few soldiers, and not many peasants. There was a train pulled up by the siding with hermet- ically-sealed and carefully-tarpaulined wagons ; and, judging by the strength of sentries patrol- ling the line on either side, the contents were inflammable and explosive. The sustained row of guns argued a steady demand for the ammunition needed to keep up a fire so warm. Having donned my water-proof and dropped my knapsack, I started on the Kehl road. Brought face to face with an infliction so appalling as a bombardment, for the first time, you found your- self half expecting to find every-day work par- alyzed in its immediate neighborhood ; and un- til you reflected how quickly familiarity with ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. 56 hovrovs breeds indifference to them, you felt in- clined to be scandalized at the man quietlj' breaking stones by the side of the road, and the boy vacantly whistling as he brought home his team from the field. A moment's thought, of course, convicted you of the absurdity of the no- tion. You might as vrell expect to see the signs or none of your being in close proximity to one of the centres of the war. It was alto- gether an affair between the Strasbourgeois and the troops, and luckily no especial business of the parishes. So you would have said, at least, looking on the surface of things, and prob- ably you would have wronged the nation. GENKKAL TIEBIOH, OOMMAUDBE OF THE FBENOU IN 8TKAS130UBG. horses grazing by a great railway line gallop mad- ly round their pasture each time a train rushed by them. They did it the first time and the second ; the third they merely raised their heads, and afterwards they learned to have neither eyes nor ears for it. Except for the din I was walking into, so far as Kork, there were few They were sympathetic, although stolid and far from sentimental; quite ready to show their sympathy in more practical shape than by wringing their hands or raising them in horror over their heads. The unlucky refugees from the other Rhine bank received everywhere, as I was given to understand, the most friendly wel- ON THE TRAIL OF THE "WAR. 57 come, and the poor people did the very best they could for their beggared guests. On the Strasbourg side of Kehl, I came upon a Baden outpost, and was ordered to stand and explain. Having been succinctly candid as to my intentions, and having exhibited my pa- pers, the non-commissioned officer rubbed his hands, and turned awkwardly on his heel, as if he washed them of the responsibility either of sending me back or formally authorizing me to go on. So I relieved his embarrassment by walking forward, to be stopped again a mile and a half farther. This time the outpost was shel- tering in a shed at the entrance to a little ham- let, and looked hopelessly bored and rather out ofhumoi'. I was not surprised : their look-out was over a dismal swamp, into something wet and raw that might be fog, but felt like rain. Again I tendered the sergeant in charge my ex- planations and papers, which he received in si- lence and with evident distrust ; and then my cognac flask, which he promptly approved and gratefully thanked me for. After that voucher for my character, he became friendly, and, call- ing one of his men, ordered him to conduct me to the lieutenant. The lieutenant was civility itself; looked slightly at my pass ; observed that of course it was quite conclusive as to my iden- tity and motives, but that, at the same time, as it was not a direct admission to the works be- foi-e Strasbourg, he warned me I should be sub- jected to continual interruption in going for- ward. He could not venture to spare one of his men for the purpose, or he would have sent one with me to the commandant at Kehl, who would, doubtless, have passed me on to the proper quarter. I remarked to the friendly lieutenant that mine was only a flying visit, that I was, in fact, detached from my baggage, and that it seemed to me hardly worth while go- ing through so many tedious preliminaries for the very little I could hope to do. He quite concur- red. "Believe me, unless you mean to take up your quarters with us for some days, in this dog's weather you will see nothing to repay j'ou by going forward. The fire is all on one side now ; since yesterday morning there has been scai'ce- ly a shot from the fortress." I was willing enough to be persuaded, and to decide against submitting myself to a series of cross-examina- tions, to giving endless trouble, and inviting re- buffs in high quarters, for all the little I should have time to see. And just then a burly Kran- kenpfleger, who had been puffing his pipe in the Wirthsliaus parlor, where our conversation had passed, suggested that, instead of forcing the chain of posts on the road to Kehl, I should turn them by striking the Rhine bank elsewhere. The lieutenant saw no objection, but, on the contrary, handed me his card with a pencilled recommendation on it, in case of its proving useful ; and although my enthusiasm was some- what chilled by the cold and the wet, I felt com- mitted to act on the advice. As I turned out into the street, a long, narrow country cart with a powerful gray, some seventeen hands high, bearing stiffly away from one side of the pole, came rattling up. The young peasant who drove saw me eye it hesitatingly, and, jumping off, came up to place it at my disposal. Very brief bargaining ended in an amicable under- standing. I secured him for the afternoon, con- tracting to be landed at Appenweier some time in course of the evening. I can not say the expedition repaid me. The nearer you got to Strasbourg, the more you heard and the less you saw. Laps in the ground on the opposite bank seemed to hide most of the main batteries ; while an occasion- al heavy swirl of gray smoke out of some inno- cent-looking nook or hollow, some patch of wil- low or poplar, or the flash of a time-shell burst- ing in the air above the city, made up but poor- ly for the absence of any comprehensive impres- sion as to the siege operations. It was harder to feel sad or serious over the sufferings of the besieged than one had found it in England, for the sense of disappointment and failure turned your course of reflections into selfish and per- sonal channels. The roar was terrific, it is true, and terribly sustained, thunder-clap on thun- der-clap, bellow on bellow, when the reports got caught and entangled in the slight rising grounds ; and the intervals between the inter- mittent bass of great guns going off" singly, and sometimes by pairs, were filled up by a rattling treble of small-arms. But the ears only tanta- lized the eyes, and, having done so much, and satisfied myself how little worth doing, on the whole, it was, my first idea was to fall back on Offenburg or Achern, and hope for a bright day to give me a better idea of the general effect of the bombardment. And all this time, when I took time to reflect, I was painfully conscious of the growing heartlessness for which I had been inclined to blame the Baden peasants. I caught myself thinking of the siege as a spectacle, and yet honestly I believe that on occasions I could sympathize with the sufferings of the Stras- bourgeois, at least as sincerely as most people. I was very hungry, and it was raining heavier than ever ; and the horse was eating his corn, and it was fast growing dark, and it was just possible there might be more to be seen in the darkness. So, for these various reasons, I ar- ranged with my driver to defer our start from 58 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. Auenheim to eight o'clock. He was enjoying himself thoroughly, "hail fellow, well met," with the whole jovial village circle, and assent- ed heartily. I can not say I was rewarded for the delay by any thing I witnessed of the bom- bardment. Nor had we an agreeable drive to Appenweier ; for thick darkness was added to the dense rain, and the roads were frightfully heavy where they had not been newly metalled. At Appenweier, at last, I had a turn of luck. At the station a train of empty carriages were on the point of starting for the north ; the rail- way people made no objection to my taking up my quarters in one of them, and the guard un- dertook to put me out at Achern. I knew noth- ing of Appenweier hostelries, and was glad to avoid experiences of them ; but in the middle of the night I succeeded in knocking up the boots in the snug little Krone at Achern. To the south of Achern rises a vine-clad knoll, covered with a summer-house and al-fres- co tables and benches. Although not many hundred feet above the level of the Rhine, there is nothing higher between it and Strasbourg Minster spire. Thanks to the eminence on which it is built, the mass of the grand cathe- dral towers in solitary grandeur from a plain where you can distinguish no traces of a city, while the spire overtops the sky-line of the dis- tant mountain-range behind. It formed the centre-point of a rude circle, that might, rough- ly speaking, be some four miles in diameter — a circle marked in the wreathing rings of white smoke, that lighted and thickened and broke and joined again, in time, to the horrible music of the cannonade. They might be directing the bombardment on the citadel and the face of the earth-works ; but the fire was incessant, and apparently most impartial. Even the stray shots that must overfly their mark were enough to spread terror in every quarter of the city. One could dimly picture the feelings of quiet- going citizens, who found their homes the cen- tre of a circle of targets, in the midst of a con- verging fire of heavy guns. No wonder they ran like rats to their sewers and cellars ; no wonder the women and children, who had sought shelter behind the batteries, began to feel they had fled from the phantom of the war to face its reality — that they had leaped literally into the fire out of the frying-pan. Neither common- sense nor sad experience seems to have taught the French that civilians who run to cover in a fortress in war-time might as well clasp a light- ning-conductor in a thunder-stoi'm, or take ref- uge behind the plates of a floating-battery on the approach of the enemy's fleet. Fortunate- ly, modern war does not stand upon the utmost jot and tittle of its stern rights. Even then the city gates were periodically thrown open, and the besiegers temporarily suspended their fire to sufffer an exodus of the helpless. And, as I said, those who found their way out to the Ger- man side had no reason to complain of their welcome, and perhaps had the best of it. At least they found themselves in quiet waters at once, instead of being buffeted back in the ebb of retreat before the flood of the invasion, among people whose own case was desperate enough to exhaust their personal sympathies. Coming from Baden the day before, we had passed the monument erected to the great architect of Strasbourg among the vineyards at the back of his native village. It was enough to make Er- win of Steinbach " walk," if he were conscious of the frightful risks that, in these frightful times, threatened his master-piece he had de- signed for eternity. One felt for the moment that even the triumph of the right would be dearly bought, if it should find Strasbourg Min- ster a pile of ruins. Yet, what was the great Cathedral, with all its treasures, to the peaceful homes that were being wrecked around ? I do not mean wrecked by actual bombardment — by all accounts, Strasbourg had suffered nothing in its stone and lime compared to Kehl — but by the irretrievable desolation and ruin that must be left behind. That was the strain of moralizing one re- lapsed into, none the less painfully real that it was very commonplace and closely bordering on the maudlin. Only the exceedingly ci'editable sentiments one entertains generally as to the horrors of war, and the awful responsibilities of those who wage it, do gain something in shape and intensity even by so distant a view as I had from Achern. I could not help wondering whether events would have passed as they did could the Minister who fanned the flame with his fiery accents in the French Chambers, or that other who blew the bellows with a light heart — I say nothing of their fallen master — have been taken a tour in the spirit round the battle-fields, hospitals, and beleaguered cities for which France is indebted to their " policy." In the absence of vultures, the only natives of France and Germany to whom the war seem- ed to bring health and peace and prosperity were the Alsatian and Baden geese. Chevet, Potel, and Chabot had shut up shop, so far as they were concerned, and pate defoie gras was at a discount. Nor, account for it as we may, did their numbers seem thinned ; nor could they have been cooked to any great extent in simpler fashion. It was absurd to talk of scarcity in Alsace, while Weissenburg and the ON THE TRAIL OE THE WAE. 59 adjacent villages were vocal with them ; while they still mobbed the passing stranger on the skirts of each hamlet from Appenweier to the Rhine. In the streams that water Weissenburg especially, you remarked them disporting them- selves in a flush of exuberant spirits. "Fine season for the liver," you could imagine one hissing to the other. " Wonderful, wonderful ; haven't heard of sickness anywhere." Then a duet : " God bless the Emperor and the second Empire ;" and the interlocutors would take simultaneous headers, waving their tail feathers enthusiastically as they disappeared in the mid- dle of the widening circles. CHAPTER XIV. THE TOTTRIST-COTTNTRT IN VTAE-TIME. Considering that the people who supply the tourists of Central and Southern Germany are neutral or native ; that Frenchmen never move across their frontiers except to visit Spa, Ems, or Baden, it might have been imagined the banks and baths of the Rhine would have been nearly as crowded as usual. Not a leaf of their sylvan beauties had been disturbed ; none of the menaced trees had fallen by Fort Con- stantine or Fort Alexander or on the rocky slopes of Ehrenbreitstein, and the orchards and gardens still came confidingly up to the armed works of Mayence. Railway-travelling might unfairly try the patience of those who had to scramble out their allotted holiday-time at ex- press speed ; but when the phantom of a for- eign invasion had been dispelled, the German steamers resumed the service the Dutch ones had never suspended. Once upon the double line of rails at Mannheim, the communications with Heidelberg, Baden, and Basle were very reasonably regular, and north, east, and south, to the Hartz, the Elbe, Bohemia, and Tyrol, there were, I imagine, few difiiculties or none. The season had been almost too lovely until the weather broke, towards the middle of August, and for invalids and valetudinarians assuredly the breezes of the Taunus and the Bergstrasse had lost none of their freshness, nor the Brun- nen of Nassau and the Schwartzwald any of their virtue. But if the rails had been taken up from Cologne to Mayence ; if the Rhine bed had been paved with torpedoes ; if the springs of the baths had been poisoned, and the mountain air had come breathing off the tainted battle-fields by Metz, the fair country could hardly have been more generally shunned. The Rhine had never seen so slack a season since the introduction of steam made Cologne Cathedral as familiar to Cockneys as St. Paul's, and, for the benefit of Wiesbaden, robbed Gravesend and Rosherville of their adorers. The steamers would have plied empty, but for a sprinkling of Germans travelling for business, not for pleasure. Where you did hear an Eng- lish word, the chances were that it was correct- ly aspirated, and had its due number of letters. There were no corpulent matrons nor wire- drawn old maids in fungus hats and clinging jackets and looped-up robes. There were no Msenades in miniature pork-pies and monstrous chignons, tartan petticoats, and tasselled boots ; no mountebanks in Tyrolese hats and eye-glass- es, courier-bags and gorgeous jewelry, velvet- een cutaways and knickerbockers advertising the missing calves that had slipped out of sight in the highlows. The stewards, albeit they had no need to bustle, looked harassed, as if from overwork, and, instead of treating you de haut en has, stooped to inquire for orders. There was no brazen band of music; only some solitary minstrel with flute or harmonium. No bugle sounded nor cannon fired to wake the echoes of the Lurlei ; no jingling of pianos came from open pension-windows at Konigswinter. If you had ever been wronged by bill or otherwise at the great hotels, your sense of wrong might have melted away in gentle pity. The head- waiter had no heart to order you away up to the eighth floor, on the time-honored principle of packing his house from the attics downward ; the idea of persuading you that such a happy consummation was possible would have been too absurdly audacious. The number of his subordinates was more in keeping with that of the clientele than of the spacious salons they lounged through ; few of them had emerged from jackets and early boyhood. In the towns, the landlord sat pensive in his sanctum; or, under the trellised boughs of his terrace in the country, he watched for guests who never came, and sipped his own coffee, in default of any one else to call for it. In cities like Cologne there might be a few passing men of business, and in the neighborhood of the great hospitals there were generally some tolerably well-to-do Kran- kenpfleger. But with their single dish and their temperate pint of white ordinaire, half of it left over to the next meal, how diff'erent from the reckless Britons, who used to feed freely in the vast bosoms of their families ; from the luxurious connoisseurs who dined en gargon, and command- ed in advance soignes little banquets and choice crus. It was most pitiful, perhaps, from a land- lord's point of view, in great rural estaiilishments like the Victoria at Bingen, where you trod the 60 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. deserted banquet-halls and thought of the mobs you had seen there of summer evenings, actual- ly crowded out from the long tables within doors, round the small ones in the garden with- out. The Englischer Hof at Mayence, one of the very best houses on the river, by-the-way — ask for Laubenheimer of their own growing, if you desire to unite economy of drinking with excellence ; and the Europaischer Hof at Mann- heim : try ForsterKirchenstiicke, if you care for the powerfully bouqueted wine which sells for three times the money in England under the nickname of Johannisberg — were to a certain ex- tent exceptions. The former, indeed, was scai-ce- ly as full as it deserves to be, but the latter show- ed a muster of guests, nearly all German, that in number might have challenged rivalry with more fortunate years. To be sure, Mannheim is a centre of railway travel, as well as the start- ing-point of the steam companies for the lower Rhine and Holland. Even more desolate than the Rhine towns were the watering-places. You are so used to see them a perpetual swarm of life — still-life, perhaps, during the indolent siesta of the hot hours, but life always vigorous and always visi- ble. Now, at Wiesbaden, the shutters were up along the whole dismal front of the Vier Jah- reszeiten, and the Nassauer Hof was watching your movements drowsily out of a bare half dozen of open windows on one side of its door. The merchants in the arcades, male and female, after their sex, were smoking or flirting, or doing crochet or sleeping, or spelling out the newspa- pers. The arcades themselves were paced by a handful of maimed officers, probably ordered for health to the steaming fountains, and a few elderly citizens with their poodles and grand- children. On the garden front of the Kursaal, although it was high afternoon, there was no band in the kiosk, and few consommateurs at the cafe tables. With the exception of a stray American or so, these were Germans almost to a man, indulging in vulgar beer instead of cof- fee, ices, or absinthe. It was almost a surprise to hear the familiar rattle of the coin, and see the liveried sentries on duty at the side doors of the grand hall, just as they used to be. Whom in the world could they tempt to play in this dead-alive place ? or were the croupiers keeping their hand in and making a private game, as billiard-markers knock the balls about Avhen the table stands unhired ? Not at all. The rouge- et-noir, and I think the customary couple of roulette-tables, had the usual run on them, and the crowd clustei-ed round them to the full as thickly as it used to do. But a glance at those who filled the seats of honor, right and left of the croupier, told of the changed times. You missed not only the old familiar faces, but the old familiar style. There were none of the aristocratic elderly roues from Paris, Vienna, or St. Petersburg, with their sad, solemn, fag- ged, high-bred expression, going through their fixed hours of professional excitement with con- scientious determination. No beetle-browed Boyards from the Principalities. None of the demoralized old ladies in spectacles and mit- tens, who played so deep, until they seemed to have outlived passion and be superior to sen- sation ; nor of the younger ones, the lackered sirens in primrose-colored small sixes, who flung away other people's money with stoical equa- nimity. Instead of them, you had shady-look- ing Hebrews with silver rings on their thumbs and diamond-paste brooches in their frilled shirt-fronts ; cadaverous men who twirled a sol- itary two-florin piece in their fingers for a full quarter of an hour, before they decided to chance it for a two-days' dinner — or none at all. Females, jaded in face and garments, opened and shut strong-clasped portemonnaies between each small stake they risked desperately at long intervals, and who distrustfully denied their Gampish umbrellas to the afi^able menials who sought to relieve them of them. It was a " sil- ver hell" instead of one of gold and notes; gambling stripped of all its graces, and brazen- ing it out in its money-grubbing meanness. For, except the Hebrews, few there had super- fluities to risk ; and as the score or so of florins were raked into the bank after each of the deals, there was far more of baffled covetousness, dis- gust, and even despair, in the faces of the circle, than I have seen when the tables were having a grand field-night, and sweeping up the rou- leaux and the bank-notes by the rakeful. It was war-time, and the intelligence of the day not uninteresting, and yet the reading-room was well-nigh deserted. Of course the excite- ment of remote battle-fields has no chance with that of the neighboring gaming-tables ; the dis- tant roar of the guns by Metz was drowned in the chink of coin next door. Those who never ventured a florin in their lives make it a duty "to observe human nature," and go on un- weariedly observing it day after day. Those who denounce gaming find horror deepen with the sense of danger, as they find themselves ir- resistibly fascinated towards .he skirts of the fatal vortex. So the reading-room was nearly empty, and yet the journals were well worth the perusal. The French ones, in especial, were inimitable. It was not only their delightfully audacious mendacity, their supreme contempt for all consistency ; although the play of fancy ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 61 in the columns devoted to official announcement and ' ' authentic " war intelligence utterly blank- ed the interest of the sensational romance in the feuilletons. It was the brilliant bouquet of pat- riotic epigram and dramatic episode that bright- ened their pages and dazzled their readers ; the Spartan utterances of gamins of the stamp of Gavroche reported verbatim, and of veteran war- riors in retreat, of maids, wives, mothers, and children, and all bearing the brand-new stamp of the same mint always hard at work turning out the daily supply. They were all so thor- oughly Parisian in their spirit, even when they came from the most remote departments, and each so hen trovato. The "Debats" and the " Siecle "might preserve some genuine dignity of deportment in face of tremendous national disaster. But the others attended scrupulously to the stage proprieties while the terrible trage- dy was culminating. They reminded you of Pope's lady rouging on her death-bed, or an el- derly coquette arranging her night-cap before risking herself on the fire-escape, except that while they cheered others on to the breach, they made themselves snug in the casemates. Cer- tainly French journalism has come even worse out of the war ordeal than French general- ship. At Hombourg, although I did not go there, M. Blanc, or his representative, was, as I under- stood, still offering the gaming world the advan- tages of their trente et quarante with the demi-re- fait and the i-oulette with the single zero, as per advertisement. At Baden - Baden the tables had been cleared away into lumber-rooms, in the absence of the French contingent that usually filled their owners' sti'ong boxes. The Tyro- lese or Swiss in the booths of the Vanity Fair before the Kursaal found even less to do than their brothers and sisters at Wiesbaden ; cha- mois horns, Bohemian glass, and model chalets hung heavily on hand. Among other necessa- ry economies, the administration had retrench- ed freely upon the English papers, and had lim- ited its subscription to the '' Pall Mall Gazette," " Galignani," and the "Daily Telegraph." The hotels were all open, it is true, but how their glory had departed ! There were three or four storm-stayed habitues at the L'Europe, pip- ing melancholy notes to be chorused forthwith by the rest, and wandering ghost-like round the scene of departed gayeties. There was no eat- ing in the garden restaurant of the Oos ; slight clinking of beer-glasses by the Alte Schloss and Schloss Eberstein. The gorgeous striped sun- blinds had been put away against better times, and even the lustre of the garish flower-beds seemed dimmed. It was very hard, upon a place, doomed at best so speedily to lose its surest lure, and yet the Badeners bore it like men. As I said, they managed to interest themselves in the fate of Strasbourg, and to re- lieve the wretchedness of its refugees. With rare exceptions, all that seemed left the hotel- keepers to prey upon, was an occasional wan- dering horde of Americans, each made up of several separate fathers and mothers, of nu- merous sons, and endless daughters of assorted sizes. In the midst of the prevailing solitude and dullness they seemed to have rolled up to- gether for mutual protection against moping ; and landlord, porter, and waiter, standing in their respective archways, hungrily eyed the long train of luggage-laden flies roll past their webs. But even those fortunate ones the trans- atlantic strangers favored had scarcely time to rejoice in their prize before it escaped them again. The Americans, finding nothing but the simple beauties of the Schwartzwald to tempt them to linger, travelled on even more hastily than their wont. How enjoy moderately rapid travel through Europe, when there was no Paris waiting for them, open-armed, to repay them for having gone creditably through their course of Murray, and bored themselves conscientious- ly to death with dull Nature ? Better a thou- sand times Saratoga and Newport. But it was melancholy to reflect how much we English could have done to lighten the burdens of the war and our own, had we only gone our annual way. How much flaying we should have been spared in English watering-places, how much scrambling and huddling in Highland inns. CHAPTER XV. GERMANY AND HEK NEIGHBORS. One leaves the scenes of the war with a deep conviction of the strength of new-born Germany. Possibly the tacit sense of it displayed by Ger- mans of every class may be contagious, and the imagination may be dazzled by the splendor of the German victories. But the more searching- ingly you scrutinize the grounds of your con- viction, the stronger it becomes. You watch the progress of a stupendous Power only in course of development, and you are lost in speculation as to when it may culminate, or where it shall find its limits. We are all fa- miliarized by this time with the details of the system that can practically mobilize the intel- ligence as well as the full force of the country — with the different classes of army proper, re- serve troops, Landwehr, and Landsturm. We G2 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. all understand something of that extraordinary organization that has become a by-word ; an or- ganization that forgets nothing and provides for every thing. We know how each corps works in entire independence of the others, although in absolute harmony with them. We know how things are ordered so that a single over-cum- brous machine shall not break down with its own weight in the working, while the central depot that feeds the war shall be easy of access and practically inexhaustible. We begin to learn something of a system the very reverse of our own, by which a people who know the value of money as well as most, go near assuring suc- cess, in the event of war, by what seems lavish expenditure on war material in time of peace. We see Science travelling in the rear of the armies, all ready to be called into consultation, and civil engineering prepared to play its part ; telegraphic and postal communications opened up to the positions that were stormed yesterday, and drilled corps of navvies laying railways round Metz, before the army in occupation there has made up its mind it is surrounded. Yet formidable as is the German power for offense in numbers, equipments, and resources, all these would relatively be the skeleton of strength, without the intelligence that pervades and the spirit that animates it. To begin with the humbler elements : look at its rank and file, at their military training, their civil educa- tion, and their enthusiasm. Those who have spared themselves the three years' careful train- ing in the strictest military school in the world, have only done so by giving satisfactory evidence that they have learned in twelve months sufS- cient to satisfy the requirements of exacting au- thority. Most of them men of a certain posi- tion and cultivation, they are almost too precious stuif to be sacrificed on ordinary service in the ranks, and the sending them to shoot and to be shot at by French peasants, to charge Russian emancipated serfs with the bayonet, is like cut- ting grindstones with razors. But precious as the material is, it pays the country to utilize it in the ranks. In the first place, as these men enjoy no special privileges in war-time, except the soli- tary one of carrying revolvers if they care to buy them, their presence inspires their comrades with the feeling of fraternity and equality in the best sense. In case of need, that feeling will be found a sovereign specific for those dangers from ex- treme democracy with which foreign republic- ans threaten aristocratic Germany. Then these young men are in readiness to fill up blanks among the subaltern officers just as casualties occur; an advantage hardly to be overrated when good leading is every thing, and in days when officers often suflfer out of all proportion to their men. About the training of the officers there can be no question. It may be too exclusively mili- tary to turn out masters in the belles-lettres. These gentlemen may have devoted themselves to military authors to the neglect of Erckmann- Chatrian, and contemporary French fiction. But that is, at least, no fault in estimating their value in a military point of view. Their attainments in military geography, and in French geography in particular, are unmistak- able. Nor could they have any excuse had they neglected the study, for every captain when he marched over the frontier was sup- plied with a map of France that would take a dumb pedestrian through the length and breadth of the land in entire independence of guides. But they not only profit by the thought and works of other people ; they learn to think in- dependently for themselves. Perhaps nothing gives a better idea of the qualities of the German troops than the doings of those terrible Uhlans. How audaciously have they pushed their reconnoitring ! how rarely have they been trapped ! That first re- connaissance that ended so tragically at Nie- derbronn was only a foretaste of all that was to follow. Nor was it a mere barren bravado. The dashing little party spied out all the scenes since made historical — Soultz, Woerth, Eeichen- hoffen. Since then the same sort of thing has been done over and over again ; done hundreds or thousands of times with equal courage, and perhaps less over-confidence. Men have been found by the hundred quite capable of taking the command of an expedition which, although only composed of half a dozen or a score of men, needed all the higher qualities of general- ship — dash, sagacity, promptitude of decision, and the capacity of changing rapidly matured plans in obedience to the spur of the moment. What must the leaders be who inspire blind confidence in men so thoroughly able to think and act for themselves ? In such an army, no wonder the discipline is as nearly perfect as discipline well can be. Apart from that system of requisitions which is governed by purely military considerations, and in no degree aifects my argument, what invasion ever left behind it fainter traces of its progress, or contributed fewer well-authenticated scandals to the history of its march ? Without reading evidence or listening to it, common sense is suffi- cient to dispose of the main accusations brought against it. For it must be conceded that the first idea of the authorities is the absolute eflS- ciency of the armies: the generals who cut ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. 63 down their own modest kits to a minimum, must be the last men to foster effeminacy, or tolerate excesses which every child knows to be the ruin of a force. Granting, for the sake of argument, that they may wink at liberties with larders, cel- lars, and cigar-boxes after a long fast and a hard , march, is it conceivable they should countenance an organized system of pillage ? Picture a Ger- man regiment who, at the risk of mortal sickness, are not suffered to burden themselves even with light tentes d'abri, staggering along under the hangings and carpets and mirrors we are as- sured they have carried off by wholesale ! We are told the officers set the example to their men. Imagine the captain of a company passing under the eyes- of the Staff on his way to the siege of Paris with a Claude Lorraine or a marble stat- uette tucked away under his arm ! Possibly the consideration of the authorities permitted the sus- pension of the transport of wounded, while the looters sent trains of spoil to the rear ; or per- haps they gave them leave of absence, that they might deposit their plunder in their homes, as the Highlanders used to do in the wars of Mon- trose and the Chevalier. It is not a pleasant subject, yet one would be curious to know when the gentleman who detected, by the smell, the presence of burning women and children in the smouldering ruins of Bazeille, became connois- seur in the odor of masculine, feminine, and in- fantine flesh. A cannibal connoisseur of the Sandwich Isles must have been puzzled. As for tales of insulted women, these have been flatly contradicted everywhere by impartial evi- dence, and they sound utterly incredible to those acquainted with the stuff and tone of the Ger- man armies. There are indifferent characters everywhere ; and there may have been occasional crimes perpetrated on the trail of the war, as there are every day in Belgravia and Tyburnia. But nowhere would injured innocence find read- ier champions than among the educated and married men who leaven so largely the German ranks ; and to suppose that commanding officers would tolerate the crimes we are told are per- petrated habitually, is to believe they are ready to sacrifice their own military reputation and the future of their country to the vices of a handful of scoundrels. We need scarcely feel surprised at the monstrous averments of Frenchmen smart- ing from defeat, when we see honest neutrals list- ening so credulously to extravagant calumny. The German army is strong, not only in in- tellect and discipline, but in spirit. People are slow to realize that the former weakness of Ger- many is now in reality one of the chief sources of her force. The jealousies and rivalries of the States of the old Bund may still survive. But the jealousy is of the military fame of the Prussians, and of their reputation for superior discipline ; the rivalry who shall show the most steadiness under murderous fire — who shall ex- hibit most elan in a desperate advance. The French journals fabled of Bavarians and Han- overians hemmed in and guarded by correspond- ing forces of Prussians in the line of battle. "Thus half the enemy are spies on the other half, " wrote the pleasant ' ' Figaro." As matter of fact, it is well-nigh inconceivable that a Han- overian or Bavarian corps should give way be- fore the enemy with Prussians looking on, of vice versa. More than that, as each man fights in the circle of his immediate neighbors, he must stand his ground, or be damned to local infamy as a coward. There are obvious objections to the plan, inasmuch as a single disastrous day may weed a district of its manhood ; but there can be no doubt it is a guaranty for a desperata resistance and a bloody butchery. Then, while the disposition of the allied forces gives full scope to the spirit of chivalrous emulation, all are moved by one iron hand, in obedience to one far-seeing brain. Von Moltke plays the great game as he goes, as you might work out the problem of a checkmate on a chess-board. He has his war map, with the flags and pins and the silken threads, and never yet has he made a false move on it. Chance may have served him, or incapacity played into his hands, but his sol- diers attribute it ail to skill ; and by consent the great German strategist is credited with the in- fallibility the Roman Pontiff sighed after in vain. Von Moltke does not seem much in the way of making mistakes, but he has such a fund of con- fidence to his credit that he has a wide margin to blunder on. Nor is there any reason to be- lieve that the issues of the war hang on his sin- gle life. His mantle would probably fall on shoulders worthy to wear it, and he would be- queath a legacy of experience for admiring pu- pils to profit by. The Crown Prince, Prince Frederick Charles, General Von Blumenthal, and many others, are generals, not puppets, and their souls are in the profession they devote themselves to, in season and out of season. It is no secret that when Prince Frederick Charles entertained a few soldier friends in Berlin, the amusement of the evening was the indication of a plan of campaign by one of the party, to be dis- cussed and criticised by the others. The result is — it can not be repeated too often — that the army thoroughly believes in its leaders, while the leaders do all that men can do to deserve the confidence of their men. The German organization has answered well, and yet, political development apart, the Ger- 64 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAK. man army will probably enter on its next cam- paign on yet more advantageous terms. In the first place, I fancy there can be no question now as to the superiority of the Chassepot to the needle-gun, at least in the hands of the cool, imperturbable Teuton. It has greater lightness, and far superior precision at long ranges. Then all Germans confess now that the Mitrailleuse comes much nearer to the terrible weapon the French paraded in anticipation of the war than to the exploded bugbear which was sneered at after Forbach and Woerth. At Gravelotte and Rezonville it tore terrible gaps in the German ranks, and the consciousness of its being a mo- nopoly of the enemy might easily have demor- alized inferior troops. Moreover, whether we look forward to a comprehensive German em- pire or to an expansion of the North German Confederation in any future war, South Ger- many must necessarily contribute a stronger and more highly-disciplined contingent. One would be almost tempted to blind admi- ration of the German organization as it stands, were it not for one obvious weakness. Every thing seems calculated on the assumption of certain and rapid success. It is all very well sending troops into the field in summer with no protection but their cloaks ; but what if you have a drenching season, and if defeats and checks prolong the campaign into winter ? What if cholera, and typhus, and dysentery fairly get the upper hand? What of a Russian campaign, for instance — if Russia chose to provoke the war in late autumn ? It is true, all precautions in the way of ample supplies, and all specifics in the shape of medicines and dispensary stores, are taken against these diseases. But that very luxury of heavy wagons would be a serious em- barrassment in the event of a retreat ; while a tremendous disaster seems actually courted by dispensing with tentes cTabri, and attaching im- portance so excessive to extremely light march- ing order. Yet, whatever be the advantages or disadvantages of the present system, it is. un- questionable that, before another war, experi- ence will have made up its mind and finally struck the balance between them. Germany is almost dangerously strong, and she will be stronger. One comfort is, she is essentially a Conservative power, and bound over by the very conditions of her strength to exert it with moderation. She can use it when it is a question of self-preservation, or when the national mind is stirred to its depth ; to abuse it would be suicidal, if not impracticable. She is not likely to paralyze her progress and con- vulse her whole social system, that she may go to war for an idea. No amount of withered laurel- ] leaves would repay her the blood and treasure she must expend in gathering them ; and she has no wish to garrison hostile territory, and undertake the perilous task of taming strange and uncongenial races. And there is this fea- ture in heV strength, that the more she is threat- ened from without, the more she hardens. Any thing in the way of harmony and unity that the French war may leave incomplete, an aggres- sive coalition would assuredly perfect. If she were threatened by socialism or rapid republic- anism, they would be hopelessly crippled for mischief by the tender of foreign aid, if they were not stifled by the national common sense. The other day, when her armies were marshalling for this national war, the high-handed Bismarck, the darling of the Junkers, met round a quiet family dinner-table the men condemned in '48 to death and dungeons, and reactionist and rev- olutionist cordially touched their glasses as they pledged the health of their common country. So it would happen again at the first note of defiance to the Fatherland they are all devoted to. ■ The danger of Germany, the danger to her neighbors, so far as she is concerned, is that paramount passion of nationality, that makes sage Germans lose their heads wherever Ger- mans are concerned. "Das Deutsche Vater- land " is the German " Marseillaise." I would trust her with Belgium or Poland, if all Europe were disarmed, and she had only to step over the frontier to annex them. I should be sorry to answer for her, even after the drain of this bloody struggle, if it were a question of cham- pioning Teutons in the Baltic Provinces of Rus- sia, or repelling advances from the hereditary states of Austria. Hardly a German but is honestly persuaded that the Danish war was a holy one ; and if there were big battalions on the side of the fancied oppressors, I can con- ceive a state of exaltation where the danger would be an additional inducement to the cru- sade. The house of Hapsburg has lost much lately, and I have no pretension to cast its hor- oscope. But I can not conceive myself that, sooner or later, its German subjects can help gravitating to the Fatherland — a destiny to be precipitated inevitably by any Austrian declara- tion of war. I can not imagine that a great German empire should be any thing but a men- ace to the tranquillity of the Czars, so long as they have German subjects they are laboring to Russianize. Even if they treated these subjects with all conceivable consideration, I should be sorry to answer for their not finding themselves in very hot water, with a choice between the frying-pan of propagandism and the fire of war. ON THE TEAIL OE THE WAR. 65 And it is just possible that, by force or by treaty, Germany may be over-impulsive in appropriating mixed populations— in the Baltic, for example, or in Bohemia — and may thus stick thorns in her sides that may cause her trouble later. There are shoals that German statesmanship and good sense may steer her clear of. I mere- ly indicate them now, because they must inevi- tably influence the present attitude of neutrals. Say what they will, it is not possible that Rus- sia or Austria can regard otherwise than with apprehension the marvellous aggrandizement of their neighbor and rival. So far as Russia is concerned, independently of that other con- sideration I have in-ged, she must know Ger- many will never suffer her to go to the mouth of the Danube. The truth is, of the great Powers there is but one veritable neutral just now, and that is England. It is hardly con- ceivable German interests or ambition can clash with ours. It is certain the interests of the two countries are often identical. If we were to name the causes likely to embroil us on the Continent, we should say, of course, a French occupation of Belgium and a Russian advance towards Constantinople. The former Germany will never tolerate, nor can Russia offer her any thing worth acceptance to buy her assent to the latter. Assuming Germany, in her expansion, should ever absorb Austria proper, it is probable European opinion would be inclined to let the Hapsburgs compensate themselves on the side of Turkey ; the governing Ottomans would re- cross to Asia, and we should see a Christian Power that gave us no cause for umbrage garri- soning Constantinople, and holding the castles of the Bosphorus against the Russian fleets. Nay, although any thoroughly friendly under- standing between ourselves and our Amei-ican cousins may seem wildly chimerical, is it not just possible that a cordial understanding with Germany may bear fruit across the Atlantic, through the mediation of German-Americans ? In any case and for every reason, our political sympathies ought to be with Germany now ; and if they are so, is it not a solemn duty to let them speak aloud ? If we think the German claims not unreasonable, only in fact what Ger- many may fairly ask, is it any i-eason why we should suppress our opinion, because her patri- otism, her efforts, and her sacrifices have been crowned with startling success ? Certainly we can not be suspected of wishing unnecessarily to weaken France ; for, whatever we may hope of Germany, there is no answering for every contingency, and she is too strong already for prudence to care to see her stronger. But if we rely on German moderation, and distrust the 5 natural resentment of humbled France ; if we believe, by right of sacrifice and of conquest, she has established a fair title to the military frontier she would erect against a repetition of this wanton aggression — if we believe all that, in our character of really disinterested neutrals — are we not bound to say so ? At the same time — holding, as I do, that Ger- many's growth is England's safety, that her mighty resources are in a manner our own, that, where Germans are not in question, her feeling is essentially Conservative, and her strength purely defensive — it is impossible to look sanguinely to the future, or to hope the coming peace may mean the advent of the mil- lennium. We can not expect that the neigh- bors who feel themselves overshadowed by her rise, and menaced indirectly by her greatness, will trust themselves to her moderation, or re- sign her the dictatorship of Europe. And if not, and if they contemplate possible war in a future more or less remote, what is to limit their armaments ? If Russia, for example, or France under its next master, in the teeth of difficulties, were to adopt the German system, it would be an irresistible temptation to absolute power to abuse it for personal ambition. If they expand their standing armies, where is expansion, with its train of expenses, to stop ? Those mighty armaments of the Second Empire that clogged so heavily the progress of Fi'ance, collapsed at once in contact with half-organized Germany, and in their numerical strength proved utterly inadequate. What, we may ask, might have been the chiffres that would have made success matter of certainty, or even of possibility ? We may be sure, Germany will never consent to lay aside the harness she wears so lightly in peace- time ; and, in presence of that silent provoca- tion, what, we ask, must be the attitude of her neighbors ? SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. WEISSENBURG, WOBRTH, SEDAN. From the first — after the too precipitate dec- laration of war — hesitation was the evil genius of the French Emperor and his marshals. Taken by surprise by an act of state, Prussia was allowed time to mobilize her vast forces and seize the initiative, before Napoleon was ready to strike a blow. The French army was to be ready for the march to the Rhine by the 20th of July at the latest ; but the 20th of July came, and nothing had been done. Nine days afterwards — nine days spent in preparations that 6'6 ON THE TRAIL OP THE WAR. should have been made before the declaration of war — the Emperor took tardy command at Metz, and the world looked for an immediate advance. There was still time, as apjieared later, for the march to the Rhine ; yet the army did not move. Hesitation appears to have gone so far that the Emperor could not deter- mine whether to attack at all, or to take up a position for defense. The heads of the German columns were already converging from all di- rections towards the Palatinate, and every day they might be expected to attack. Yet the French remained in their positions on the fron- tier — positions designed for an attack which was never made, and altogether unfit for the defense which was so soon to be their only choice. This fatal hesitation was accompanied by tac- tical blunders of the most extraordinary char- acter. The French army, placed close to the frontier, was without advanced guards at the proper distance in front of the main body ; but there were two ways in which a bold command- er might have remedied this defect. The ad- vanced guards might have been pushed forward into German territory, or the main body of the French army might have been withdrawn a day's march into the interior, leaving the guards on the frontier. But neither Napoleon nor his marshals were ready to run the risk of actual collisions with the enemy involved in the first plan, nor bold enough to face the political con- sequences of an apparent retreat before the first battle was fought, and they seem to have thought that the Germans would imitate their inactivity. So hesitation was still the order of the day, and priceless time, priceless to both sides alike, was wasted by the French, and employed by the German commanders in preparing for that series of masteiiy movements that has crushed the .military power of France and laid her, humili- ated, at the feet of her adversary. On the 4th of August, before the whole of their forces had reached the frontier, the German commanders resolved to take advantage of the faulty dispo- sition of the French. The sharp battle of Weis- senburg forced the whole of M'Mahon's and Failly's corps to a still greater distance from the centre of the position ; and on the 6th, being now fully prepared, the Third German Army de- feated M'Mahon's six divisions at Woerth, and drove him, along with Failly's remaining two divisions, by Saverne towards Luneville, while the advanced bodies of their First and Second Armies beat Frossard's and part of Bazaine's troops at Spicheren, and drove the whole centre- and left of the French back upon Metz. Thus all Lorraine lay between the two retreating French armies, and into this wide gap poured the German cavalry and, behind it, the infantry, in order to make the most of the advantage gained. As soon as the defeated troops were driven so far south that they could regain the main army under Bazaine only by a long and circuitous rout^p, the victorious pursuers, march- ing straight on Nancy, kept continually between the two, and prevented their union. The Emperor now resigned his command into the hands of Marshal Bazaine, who might cer- tainly have known that his adversary would not let the grass grow under his feet. Yet the same hesitation that proved the ruin of M'Mahon was exhibited in Bazaine's movements. The main body of his army was at and around For- bach. The distance from this j)lace to Metz is not quite fifty miles. Most of the corps had less than thirty miles to march. Three days would have brought all of them safely under shelter beneath the walls of the strong fortress ; and on the fourth the retreat towards Verdun and Chalons might have been begun. For there could no longer be any doubt as to the necessity of that retreat. Marshal M'Mahon's eight di- visions and General Douay's remaining two di- visions — 'more than one-third of the army — could not possibly rejoin Bazaine at any nearer point than Chalons. Bazaine had twelve divis- ions, including the Imperial Guard ; so that even after he had been joined by thi'ee of Can- robert's divisions, he can not have had, with cav- alry and artillery, above 180,000 men — a force quite insufiicient to meet his opponents in the field. Unless, therefore, he intended to aban- don the whole of France to the invaders, and to allow himself to be shut up in a place where famine, as the event has shown, would soon com- pel him to surrender or to fight on terms dic- tated by the enemy, it seems as though he could not have had a moment's doubt about retreating from Metz at once. Yet he did not stir. On the 11th, the German cavalry was at Luneville; still he gave no sign of moving. On the 12tlx they were across the Moselle ; they made requisi- tions in Nancy, they tore up the railway between Metz and Frouard, they showed themselves in Pont-a-Mousson. On the 13th their infantry occupied Pont-a-Mousson, and were thenceforth masters of both banks of the Mosejle. At last, on Sunday, the 14th, Bazaine began moving his men to the left bank of the river ; an engage- ment at Pange was drawn on, by which the re- treat was again retarded. On Monday, the 15th, the actual retreat towards Chalons was com- menced by sending off the heavy trains and ar- tillery ; but on that Monday the German caval- i-y were across the Mouse at Commercy, and within ten miles of the French line of retreat ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 67 at Vigneulles. The sequel of this unparalleled series of blunders was the capitulation of Metz. The mismanagement which cost the French so dear at Woerth and Weissenburg was even surpassed by that which attended the ill-fated movement of M'Mahon's army from Chalons towards Sedan, to relieve Bazaine, who had al- lowed himself to he cooped up in Metz. To effect this hazardous flank march with safety, watched by so vigilant a foe as Prussia, M'Ma- hon should have had a thoroughly disciplined and well-appointed army, capable of meeting the enemy upon something like equal terms. Instead of this, he led a mob composed of de- moralized fugitives from half a dozen defeats, and raw levies, most of whom had never handled a rifle. The camp at Chalons was abundantly supplied with provisions ; but he departed in such haste that only a few biscuits were served out to each soldier, with the expectation that an army of over a himdred thousand men could be subsisted on the country through which they were to march. The consequences were such as might have been foreseen. A day or two sufiiced to exhaxist the supply of biscuits, and the soldiers were left to shift for them- selves. Discipline was relaxed. The country was filled with stragglers. According to the diary of a French officer, from which these par- ticulars are taken, the troops received no regu- lar rations for six days, but foraged on an al- ready exhausted country. Meanwhile the pur- suit was pressed with vigor ; and in all their encounters with the enemy, the French fought under circumstances the most disheartening to soldiers. Nor was this all. Added to the pangs of hunger and other discomforts, there was a fatal neglect of discipline. The rnai'ch was like the retreat of a defeated and disorganized army. We are told that corps and divisions marched by themselves, and that there was no concert of action among the superior officers, who indeed were generally not on hand when their presence was most wanted. The diary gives an instance when, after a long and severe engagement, on the 29th of August, the Fifth Corps marched the whole of the night without food or rest. The passage is as follows : " August 30. — We arrived at Beaumont, a hilly and woody country, at 4 a.m. The men are utterly exhausted by the march, by hunger, and above all by want of sleep. There is no pos- sibility of bringing order into the ranks. The presence of the generals was indispensable, but none of them was to be seen on the spot, and the soldiers fell down asleep, Avithout guards, with- out a single sentry. The sight was most lament- able," From this disorderly and unguarded bivouac, they were roused a few hours later by the thun- der of Prussian cannon. The scene that fol- lowed is thus described in the diary : ' ' The whole camp seizes its arras in disorderly fashion ; the officers do their best to give some kind of organization to the first movements ; the artillery is soon at work, and the battle begins. But a tremendous panic arises in the village, crowded with unai'med soldiers, who were gone from the camp in search of provisions. A fran- tic rush begins in the direction of Mouzon ; and the flying mass would naturally have drawn with it a part of the troops already in line on this side of the village, if the officers had not intervened, pistols in hand. The generals, just as much sur- prised as the troops, presently come to their senses. They take the command. The retreat is gradually oi'ganized, and on reaching rather el- evated ground we come out from under the in- tolerable fire. " A striking contrast to this picture of imbe- cility and demoralization is presented by the Prussian army in pursuit. While M'Mahon was gathering his forces at Chalons, those Prus- sian corps not required before Metz had contin- ued to advance in a western direction, and the Third Army, under the command of the Crown Prince of Prussia, which had been steadily pushing on, now proceeded with greater rapidi- ty. Says the German official report of the operations that resulted in the battle of §edan : " In its onward march it was accompanied by a new army, formed of a portion of the forces under Prince Frederick Charles, and placed under the Crown Prince of Saxony. Both these armies, the latter of which consisted of tlie Guards and Fourth and Twelfth Corps d'Armee, marched in the direction of Paris. It would have been de- cidedly desirable if they had found their way blocked up by the French, and if a battle could have been fought on the road to the capital. Marshal M'Mahon might have awaited us in a strong position or under the very ramparts of Paris. Another course open to him was to as- sume the offensive, with a view to rescue General Bazaine. As much depended upon our ascer- taining the intentions of the enemy as soon as possible, our cavalry were sent far in advance of the army to watch his movements. Up to the 24th of August the Marshal held the Camp of Chalons. The two Prussian armies, not allow- ing their advance to be delayed by the fortifica- tions of Verdun, marched straight on, and had already reached the line Clermont- Vitry, when, just as they were concentrating preparatory to the attack upon Ch§,lons, news arrived on the 25th which rendered it probable that M'Mahon had evacuated his camp. He was reported to have taken the road to Rheims. One of the in- ferences to be deduced from this was that, picking his way along the narrow strip of land between the Belgian frontier and the right wing of the Crown Prince of Saxony, the Marshal might pos- sibly attempt to relieve Metz. It was evident that if the proper measures were taken instanta- 68 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. neously by us, the Marshal would find it very dif- ficult to succeed in his enterprise. Accordingly, our advance upon Paris was suspended on the night of the 25th. On the 26th, the 8^th Corps d'Armee, which had been marching west, effect- ed a change of front, and, turning north, pre- pared to intercept the enemy on his march along our flank. The difficulties of this movement were increased by our march lying partly through the Argonne forest. Care was, moreover, taken to prevent the enemy from falling back upon Paris, in case he should find it impossible to pen- etrate to Metz. Supposing our being able to sui-- round M'Mahon he would be obliged to fight un- der the most unfavorable conditions, or to find safety for his army in Belgium. ' ' The Corps Vinoy not having as yet ariived, we had a great numerical superiority over the French, then estimated at about 120,000 ; but it was not so easy for us to bring up our forces in time to use them. While our troops were approaching from a considerable distance it became certain that M'Mahon had really a flank-march in view. On the 29th his four corps were stationed on the two roads from Le Chene to Stenay, two being echelonnes on each. On that day our troops ex- tended from Grand Pre to Stenay, our van being in front of the enemy. The Twelfth Corps d'Armee, by the engagement at Nouart, prevent- ed the most easterly division of the French from continuing its march. Under these circumstances, Marshal M'Mahon had only to choose between fighting on the left or the right bank of the Meuse, in which latter case he would be able to profit by the vicinity of Sedan. He chose the latter alternative, and on the 30th of August be- gan to cross the Meuse. Before his retreat could be efl'ected, his left wing was attacked by the Crown Prince of Saxony at Beaumont, and his rear surprised at Mouzon. The French Corps sent to tlie rescue of the latter force suffered much in crossing the river in presence of our troops. What followed is kno^vn. We may add that, from what has recently come to light, M'Ma- hon's army was not 120,000 strong, as had been supposed, but very nearly 150,000." The story of the great battle that followed, known as the battle of Sedan, which decided the fate of the Empire, is thus described by the German official account, dated at Donchery, September 2d : "After the engagement of August 30, it be- came probable that the French Arme'e du Nord was fast approaching a final catastrophe. On the evening of the 80th, the enemy, after a sharp can- nonade against the 4th Prussian Corps d'Armee and portions of the Bavarian corps, had been obliged to retreat from Mousson. The greater part of the German army on that day remained on the left bank of the Meuse ; but the forces un- der the Crovra Prince of Saxony, having partly crossed the river, advanced beyond Mouzon in the direction of Carignan and Sedan . Our Third Army executed the following movements on the 31st : The First Bavarian Corps marched by Raucourt to Remilly. The Eleventh Prussians proceeded ft-om Stonne to Chemery and Cheveuse, with or- ders to stop on the left bank of the Meuse, and encamp opposite Donchery, a little town on the other side of the river. The Fifth Prussian Corps followed the Eleventh, and the Second Bavarian the First. The Wiirtembergers likewise moved on to the Meuse by way of Vendresse and Bou- tencourt. The routes prescribed to the difterent portions of the Third Army thus converged on Sedan, where the French Northern Army was concentrated. The task given us was to surround the enemy and compel him either to surrender or to retreat beyond the Belgian frontier. The lat- ter contingency being considered very possible, the order of the day of the 30th contained a pas- sage to the effect that in the event of the French not being immediately disarmed on the other side of the border, our troops were to follow them into Belgium without delay. " The 31st passed without any remarkable en- counter. Only at Remilly the First Bavarian Corps fell in with the enemy, and, driving him back after a prolonged caimonade, in the course of the forenoon approached the Meuse. This operation, the most important of the 31st, was watched by the Crown jprince with his staft' from a height close by the church of the village of Stonne. His Royal Highness, who had arrived from the camp at Pierremont at 9 a.m., from this point saw a portion of the valley of Remilly be- fore him. The engagement having come to an end, the Crown Prince repaired to Chemery, there to take up his quarters for the night. The Sec- ond Bavarian Corps and the Wiirtembergers had no difficulty in carrying out their orders. The Fifth Prussian Coi-ps, which went by Chemery, and there defiled past the Commander-in-Chief, did not reach its allotted position before a late hour in the evening. Before the morning of the 1st of September dawned every thing was com- plete. The troops on the left bank of the Meuse, and especially the Guards, stood ready to cross ; those on the right, under the Crown Prince of Saxony, were only waiting for orders to assume the offensive, and from one end of our position to the other we were able to close in on Sedan at the shortest notice. " It was originally intended to put off the deci- sive blow to September 2d. It seemed desirable to give a day's rest to the Saxon army, which had undergone considerable fatigue in their forced marches on the 30th and 31st. But when the King, between 5 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon of the 31st, passed Chemery on his way to Ven- dresse, he held a consultation with the Crown Prince and Generals Moltke and Blumenthal, in consequence of which he determined that the at- tack of Sedan, and the French lines between the Meuse and the Ardennes, should be undertaken on the ensuing day. Towards 1 a.m., of Septem- ber 1, the Crown Prince of Saxony received or- ders to advance. Fire was to be opened at 5 a.m. "Our line of battle was formed in thiswise: On our right we had the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony. His van consisted of the Twelfth Corps d'Armee ; next came the Fourth and the Guards, the rear being brought up by the Fourtli Division of Cavalry, with their back to Remilly. Those troops of the Crown Prince of Saxony still on the left bank of the Meuse cross- ed at Douzy. To the left of his army Avas sta- tioned the First Bavarian Corps, and behind this the Second. The Bavarians threw their bridge opposite the village of Bazeilles. The Pjleventh Prussian Corps had placed its pontoons during ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 69 the night about lODO paces below Doncheiy. A little to the left crossed the Fifth Corps on anoth- er bridge, and still farther in the same direction, near the village of Dorn-le-Mesnil, the Wiirtem- bergers. The Sixth Corps, as a reserve, was stationed between Attigny and Le Chene. To these troops were opposed the corps of M'Mahon, Failly, Canrobert, the remnants of Douay'sarmy, and the newly-formed Twelfth Corps under Gen- f eral Lebrun. The centre of the French position was the fortress of Sedan, their flanks extending from Givonne on the left to Mezieres on the right. In the rear of the French position were seen the ' spurs of the Ardennes. " The Crown Prince left Chemery in his car- riage at 4 A.M. Having mounted his horse near Cheveuse, on the road to Donchery, he took up his position on a hill projecting over the valley of the Meuse, near the town of Donchery, not far from a small mansion called Chateau Donchery. From this point the whole array of the German army could be surveyed, and the progress of the battle watched in all directions. "Sedan is situate at one of the finest points of the valley of the Meuse. Hills crowned with forests rise in terraces on either side of the river. On the right bank there is a narrow strip of meadow-land by the water-side : on the left, a little to the left of Sedan, is an open plain, with the town of Donchery pleasantly situated in its centre. The plain is traversed by a slight eleva- tion. To the right the river Meuse makes a double curve, inclosing a strip of land on which lies the village of Iges, with Villette to the left, and Glaize to the right. Between. Iges and Se- dan there is Floing, and farther to the right Gi- vonne on the right bank. The main road be- tween Doncherry and Sedan proceeds from a bridge at the former city, and half-way touches the village of Frenoy. Bazeilles, which was op- posite to the Bavarians, is south-west of Sedan ; Douzy, where the Guards crossed, on the extreme right. " A dense fog covered the valley and the hills. Only at 7^ a.m. the sun broke through the clouds, when the day became hot and sultry. The army of the Crown Prince of Saxony began operations a little after 5 o'clock. At 6^ a con- tinuous cannonade was heard on our right, some- what in the rear of Sedan, indicating the left flank of the enemy to have been attacked by our troops. But the French were in excellent posi- tion on the hills, and could not be so easily dis- lodged. While the fight was going on in this lo- cality, our left wing prepared to turn the other flank of the enemy. The Eleventh Corps pro- ceeded along the slight elevation in the midst of the plain ; the Fifth marched straight on to get to the enemy's rear. According to the plan of the battle, these corps were eventually to effect a junc- tion with our right mng, and, entirely surround- ing the enemy, to cut off his retreat towards the Ardennes. The Wiirtembergers and the 4th Cav- alry Division, subsequently sent to their support, were to protect the plain in case the enemy should push forward in this direction, which, however, was not very probable, as he would have found it difficult to cross the Meuse, and indeed had him- self destroyed the railway bridge between Don- chery and Sedan. At 9j the Eleventh Corps d'Arme'e had so far turned the enemy's flank as to come close upon Ms position. An increased fire of the batteries marked this moment. The Saxons, who had designedly reseiwed their strength for this contingency, now attacked with an overpowering shock. Shortly after the right wing of the French began to fall back, but only to find themselves in the iron embrace of the two Prussian corps in their rear. At the point where the Eleventh Coi-ps descended from the hills upon the surprised enemy the resistance of the Fi-ench sensibly diminished since 10|-. In some places, especially at Iges and on the fields leading do^vIl to Sedan, the fight assumed a desperate character. Being chiefly attacked by artfllery, the French sent their horse to charge our guns in flank. The French cavahy made two brilHant onslaughts, some regiments, and, above all, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, behaving with the utmost gallantry. The infantry gave way earlier, the number of those battalions which surrendered without fur- ther resistance being considerable even before 12 o'clock. In the mean time the Fifth Corps had performed the long distance to the extreme heights, and after a sharp encounter succeeded in driving back the detachments making for the Ai'dennes. ' ' Things now assumed a favorable aspect. At 12^ it was announced that the French reserve ar- tillery, which the Emperor had opposed to our Fifth Corps, was repulsed, and that only a few scattered bodies of infantry had effected their re- treat across the frontier. Flight being thus ren- dered impossible, we had to deal only with the central portion of the battle-field — the slight ele- vation crossing the plain, the hills stretching from it to Sedan, and the fortress itself, which formed the last refuge for the troops driven from the heights. Since 12f , the fire of the Prussian batteries on the right and left wings so rapidly approached one another that it was evident the enemy would soon be completely surrounded. It was a grand sight to watch the sure and irre- sistible advance of the Guards, marching on, on the left wing, partly behind and partly by the side of the Twelfth Corps d'Armee. Since 10;^ the Guards, preceded by their artillery, had been pushing towards the wood to the left of Sedan. By the advancing smoke of their fire we noticed how fast they were gaining gi'ound. " They were effectively assisted by the Bava- rians. After a smart resistance by the French, the Bavarians had stormed Bazeilles, which was burned. They then took Balan, south-west of Sedan, where a narrow gorge gave them much trouble. Towards noon they posted two batteries in a meadow to the left of the road to Sedan. From this point they fired on Villette, the spire of which was soon enveloped in flames. The French artillery having been compelled to yield at this point likewise, there was nothing to stop the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps from pressing forward in the direction of Sedan. The enemy was now hastening to make good his retreat to the fortress walls. While the fight was still go- ing on, large numbers of prisoners were seen be- ing led down the hills to the plain. "In the mean time the Guards, a little before 2 o'clock, had effected a junction with the Fifth Corps, on the slopes in the distance. This closed the circle around the French. Encom- passed by a living wall, they found themselves thrust back within the ramparts of their small stronghold. 70 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. " Here and there villages and hamlets were still burning. Small detachments were continuing the fight in isolated localities, and the roar of cannon had not yet entirely ceased, A little la- ter there was a pause, when we waited for the French commanders to resolve on what they had better do in their embarrassed position. If they determined on prolonged resistance, the fate of Sedan was sealed. "Towards 4 o'clock the Crown Prince sent the message ' Complete victory ' to head-quarters. Immediately after. His Royal Highness, with the Duke of Coburg, the other Princes, and the orderly officers, proceeded to the Eng, who had halted during the day on a hill to the right of the heights of Donchery. As there was no white flag to be seen on the tower of Sedan, we re- sumed firing at 4^. The Bavarian batteries sent the first shots into the fortress. "Within a quar- ter of an hour one of our igniting grenades set the place on fire. A straw shed having caught light, dense black smoke rose immediately to the sky. Upon this the enemy opened negotiations. The Crown Prince was still with the Eng, when news arrived that the Emperor Napoleon was in Sedan. We now became aware that we had not only crushed the principal army of the French, but also, in a twelve hours' fight, secured a guar- anty for the victorious issue of the war. " That same evening the Prussian Lieutenant- colonel Von Brousart, the officer intrusted with the negotiations on our part, brought the King an autograph letter from the Emperor of the French, now a prisoner of war. It contained these few words : ' Comme je n'ai pas pu mourir au milieu de mon armee^ je rends mon epee a voire Majeste.' It is a fact that Napoleon, when he became aware of the probable result of the bat- tle, for four hours stood the fire of our grenades near the village of Iges. The Emperor remain- ed the night at Sedan. The capitulation will be concluded to-day. ' ' Not till 9 o'clock did the Crown Prince re- turn to his head-quarters. The company of the 58th, which had been acting since yesterday as convoy, the staff-guard, and all attached to his head-quarters, vied with each other in giving the Commander of the Third Army a festal recep- tion. The main street of the village was illumi- nated, and the soldiers who lined the way, in de- fault of better materials, held small ends of tal- low candles in their hands. Loud hurrahs wel- comed the arrival of His Royal Plighness. The bands struck up the German national anthem, and then played the Dead March in honor of the fallen. "When the troops returned from the battle-field they evinced the greatest eagerness to ascertain the details of the action. It was obvious they had realized the importance of the day, and were proud of having contributed to a victory which will react on the history of the world, and has few to equal it in the annals of our countiy." A French version of the circumstances lead- ing to the surrender of M'Mahon's army is given in the following statement made imme- diately after the battle to the correspondent of a New York journal by a member of the Em- peror's staff, who was present with him at the battle, and whose official position afforded the best opportunity for acquaintance with the facts : " At 5 A. M. on the morning of the battle of Sedan, my informant, who slept at a hotel in the town, was suddenly roused by a loud noise in the street beneath his window. On looking out he found the Emperor and his suite passing along. He dressed in great haste, and was soon with the staff', from whom he learned that the battle of the two previous days had begun afresh at 6|- A.M. Marshal M'Mahon was brought in severely wounded, but perfectly self-possessed. He at once gave orders, in presence of the Em- peror, to General Ducrot that the troops should be immediately massed, and retreat upon Mezieres, and expressly directed that they should not ac- cept a battle. He further ordered that General Ducrot with a certain force should immediately occupy the heights which overlook Sedan. Meas- ures were taken at once to carry out his instruc- tions, when General De Wimpffen appeared on the scene. He promptly addressed General Du- crot, saying, 'I have undertaken the command of the army. Besides, I am an older general than you, and I hold the position you are about to take to be entirely wrong. On the contraiy, the troops must be commanded to advance di- rectly.' The order was given, and the advance was made, with what fatal results a few hours showed. It is but justice to Marshal M'Mahon to make known the accurate foresight he showed. The battle soon began at all points, and with in- tense vigor, especially on the side of the Prus- sians. Towards 11 o'clock General De Wimpffen communicated to the Emperor that the French troops had the advantage in eveiy direction. At this time shells were falling fast near and round the position occupied by the Emperor and his staff', but all escaped, so far, unhurt. Sud- denly the Emperor perceived a French brigade suffering fearfully from the fire of the enemy. The men fell like wheat battered by a storm. The Emperor asked an officer of artilleiy, 'D'ou viennent ces projectiles ?^ No one knew. Short- ly after another artillery officer answered, ' Sire, the balls which fall on them and us come from a new Prussian battery erected at a distance from here of 4900 metres.' The Emperor was incred- ulous ; he could not believe in their murderous effects at such a remote range. He, however, immediately ordered cannon to play upon this newly - discovered batteiy, but to no purpose. The balls chiefly fell into the river Meuse, at a distance of only 1500 metres. The Emperor then joined the division and marched steadily forward. Balls continued to fall near and around him, but he still remained untouched. There seems no doubt at present that he did expose himself at the moment with considerable cour- age. Again assured that the French troops were gaining advantages at all points, he said to his staff that he should return to Sedan to breakfast, and would remount his horse and take the field again in an hour. He had scarcely entered Se- dan when he found soldiers flying in all direc- tions utterly panic-stricken. They rapidly filled the town. At the same time a terrific cannon- ade resounded from the very heights which Mar- shal M'Mahon, with admirable prescience, had ordered to be occupied by the French troops, but which were now in possession of the Crown ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. Prince and a portion of his corps d'armee. This advantage was fatal. Then and there the battle was virtually lost. The Crown Prince continued to rain fire upon the town, without intermission, and the streets were strewn with dead. Presh crowds of soldiers arrived in fright without arms, adding to the general confusion and wild terror. About 10 o'clock the Emperor, appalled by the enormous slaughter around him, and the bom- bardment at the same time increasing in force, summoned the generals, etc., of his staif, and asked in simple language, ' What was to be done?' All immediately decided in favor of capitulation, and the Emperor at once ordered Captain Lauriston to mount the ramparts and hoist the white flag. Previously, owing to the exterminating fire directed by the Crown Prince, especially on the troops surrounding the town, a general rout had taken place. All the efforts of the officers to rally the men were fruitless, and the belief was general and proclaimed throughout the ranks that they were betrayed. It is quite certain that the Crown Prince had resolved upon the complete reduction of the town at all costs had not the surrender ensued. The superiority of his artillery had been terribly proved. His guns were loaded at the breech, and could be fired five times against those of the French once. Further, in nearly all these battles the proportion of Prussian troops to the French has been four to one, and taking into account the greater ar- tillery power of the Prussians, it has been esti- mated that their total advantage was as twenty to one against the French. " The surrender of M'Mahon's army accom- plished, the Emperor was assigned a residence at the Chateau of Wilhelmshohe, whither he immediately set out. He appears to have em- ployed his leisure in writing a pamphlet on. the campaign and the causes which led to the ca- pitulation at Sedan. According to a telegraph- ic summary of this pamphlet, the fallen Empe- ror recalls to mind his manifesto issued just af- ter the declaration of war, and the misgivings with which he listened to the cry, " On to Ber- lin!" He says his plan was to mass 150,000 men at Metz, 100,000 at Strasbourg, and 50,000 at Chalons, and to cross the Rhine near Hague- nau with a large force in order to separate Southern Germany from the Northern Confed- ei-ation. He hoped to win the first great battle, and secure the alliance of Austria and Italy with France in imposing neutrality on Bavaria, Ba- den, and Wiirtemberg. The defects in the French military system, and the delay in bring- ing up men and material, defeated this plan. He enumerates the difiiculties encountered, but acquits the War Office of blame. The Germans having had ample time to bring their foi-ces into the field, the French were, out- numbered and put on the defensive. A new plan was necessary, involving a retreat on Cha- lons. This the Regency disapproved as dis- couraging to the public, and the Emperor was urged to resume the offensive. Yielding his convictions, M'Mahon's advice and plan were adopted. He alludes to his situation after he had given up the command of the army, and when his name and authority were ignored at Paris, as exceedingly painful. . He acquiesced in the march for the relief of Metz, though conscious of the danger of that enterjDrise. He describes the operations, and analyzes the battles which preceded the surren- der at Sedan, and gives an account of his inter- views with Count Bismarck and the King of Prussia. The pamphlet closes with the declaration that the German successes are due to superiority of numbers, improved artillery, rigorous discipline, respect for authority, and the military and pa- triotic spirit of the people, which absorbs all other interests and opinions. It censures the loose habits introduced by the African wars in which the French regular troops have been en- gaged, which it enumerates as want of disci- pline, lack of cohesion, absence of order, careless- ness of bearing, and the excess of luggage car- ried by the infantry. The efficiency of the army was weakened, too, by the excesses of the opposition in the Corps Legislatif and the Re- publican press, introducing into it a spirit of criticism and ins'ubordination. n. SAAEBRTJCK, GEAVELOTTE, METZ. Aftee the severe defeat sustained by General Frossard at Saarbruck, on the 6th of August, and the complete dissolution of the right wing under Marshal M'Mahon, the main body of the French army retreated on the line of the Moselle, to which the fortress of Thionville and Metz with its intrenched camp gave extraordi- nary strength. A direct attack upon this line, so admirably situated for defense, would have involved so much risk, and so great a sacrifice of life, that the German commanders moved their armies towards a point on the Moselle to the south of Metz, in order to pass the river above the fortress and attack the French where the advantage of position woiild be less in their favor. The German forces comprised the First Army, under command of General Steinmetz, and the Second Army, under command of Prince Frederick Charles. The movement of immense masses of men, which had to be made in a broad and open space of country, had to be secured against interruptions by special precau- tions ; and the First Army undertook to cover their march. As the French for a time appeared disposed 72 ON THE TRAIL OE THE WAE. to await an attack on the right bank of the Moselle, where they occupied a strong position, the nearest divisions of the Second Army were so placed as to afford support to the First, should it require assistance. Meantime the other corps of the Second Army had already crossed the Moselle above Metz, threatening Bazaine's communications with Paris, and forc- ing him to evacuate the right bank of the river, as he could not venture upon an offensive move- ment. The advanced guard of the First Army discovered his retreat on the lith of August, and, promptly attacking his rear guard, forced it forward upon the main body of the French army. On the German side, the first and sec- ond corps of the First Army, and several de- tachments of the ninth corps of the Second Army, joined in the engagement. After very severe fighting, in which both armies displayed indomitable courage, the French were forced back with great slaughter, and pursued till un- der shelter of the cannon of the Metz forts, on the right bank of the Moselle. The great ad- vantage of this victory, besides the very consid- erable losses inflicted on the French in men and material, was that it delayed their retreat, and enabled the German commanders to per- fect their plans for the isolation of Metz. Two roads lead from Metz to Verdun, the direction which the French army had to take in case of a retreat upon Paris. Those corps of the Second Army which had already passed the Moselle were immediately directed against the southei'n road, the one most easily reached, in order, if possible, to arrest the enemy's flank inarch on that side. This important task was brilliantly accomplished through a bloody and victorious battle. The 5th Division, under command of General Stiipnagel, on the 16th threw itself on the Frossard corps, which cov- ered the flank of the French army, the whole of which was gradually engaged. On the Prus- sian side. Prince Frederick Charles assumed command ; and after a bloody struggle of twelve hours, the south road from Metz to Verdun was gained and held, and the French retreat on Paris by this road cut off. The conduct of both armies, in this severe battle, was truly he- roic. On both sides the losses were heavy. Only two lines of retreat were now open to Bazaine — the flank march by the north road, or by a wide detour still farther north. Al- though such a retreat would be hazardous in the extreme, it seemed probable that Bazaine would undertake it, as the only mode of escape from a highly unfavorable situation, since oth- erwise he would be cut off from Paris and all means of succor. On the German side, the whole of the next day, the 17th, was occupied in bringing forward for the final struggle every available man. That part of the army still on the right bank of the Moselle threw several bridges across the river above Metz. In direct- ing the movements of the German troops, two things had to be considered — the possibility that Bazaine might attempt to escape by the north road, or that, perceiving the hazard and difficulty of this, he might prefer to accept bat- tle immediately before Metz, with his back turned towards Germany. His position, after the previous operations of the German armies, left him no other course but these. The conflict in which the fate of Bazaine's army was decided, was fought on the 18th of August. The First Army occupied a position, in the morning, south of Gravelotte, and was flrst directed to cover, in the wood of Vaux and at Gravelotte, the movement of the Second Army against any sortie from Metz. The story of the great battle is thus told in the Prussian official report : "The Second Army advanced in the morning by echelons of the left wing towards the north road, maintaining communication on the right with the First Army. The Twelfth Corps took the direction by Mars-la-Tour and Jarny, while the Guards Corps advanced between Mars-la- Tour and Vionville on Doncourt, and the Ninth Corps crossed the highway to the west of Rezon- ville, towards Caulre farm, north of St. MarceL These three corps composed the first line, and if the assigned points were reached, the north main road was gained. Saxon and Prussian cavalry preceded the column as skirmishers. ' ' As soon as it was foimd that the enemy did not contemplate a retreat, and could therefore only remain before Metz, it was necessary to move these three corps considerably to the right, and to bring up both armies against the enemy. The Tenth and Third Corps foUowed in a sec- ond line, and then as the last reserve the Sec- ond Army Corps, which since 2 a.m. had been marching from Pont-a-Mousson towards Buxi- eres. About 10 30 it was evident that the ene- my had abandoned his retreat, and had taken up a position on the last ridges before Metz. The Second Army was thereupon ordered to carry out its sweep to the right, and, keeping up com- munication with the first, to direct its centre and left wing on Verneville and Amanvillers. The general attack was not to begin till the move- ment was entirely executed, and till the front of the strong position could be simultaneously at- tacked on the right flank. The Ninth Corps first threw itself on advanced detachments of the enemy. Towards noon artillery fire from the neighborhood of Verneville announced that the corps at that spot was engaged. The Fu-st Army was consequently ordered to occupy the attention of the enemy on the heights by artil- lery fire from its front. About 12 45 they open- ed a slow and, well-directed cannonade upon the eminences of the Point-du-Jour, to which the enemy replied from numerous batteries. The ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 73 thunder of the cannon was drowned by the strange noise of the mitrailleuses. " The position was an exceedingly strong one, and its security was increased through fortifica- tions and by ranges of rifle-pits ; at certain points it had quite the appearance of a fortress. The attack could not succeed until our commanders had achieved the difficult task of so directing their measures that the whole of the troops were ready as well for the battle on the north as on the east, and the latter attack could only com- mence when it was apparent that the enemy had given up a retreat. It was not practicable, more- over, to completely carry out the movement which was to envelop the enemy's right wing ; and laothing remained but to attack the front of this formidable point. The struggle was long and difficult at various points. On the left wing the Saxons fought, and the Guards near St. Ma- rie-aux-Chenes, afterwards near the precipitous slopes of St. Privat-la-Montagne, then in that vil- lage and in Eoncourt. On the right, at St. Ail, and beyond at Habonville, the wood of La Cusse and Verneville, as far as the northerly road from Metz to Verdun, the Guards and the Ninth Army Corps sustained the struggle ; at Gravelotte and in the Vaux wood up to the Moselle, the Eighth and Seventh Corps ; and from the farther side of the river bank a brigade of the First Corps took part in the fight, likewise some single Divisions of the Third and Tenth Corps, especially artilleiy. On the enemy's side the whole of the main French army was engaged, even the troops originally destined for the Baltic expedition, with the ex- ception of M'Mahon's Divisions not stationed at Metz, and the larger part of Failly's corps. " The unsurpassable bravery of our troops suc- ceeded at the approach of dusk in storming the heights and driving the enemy from his whole line, the Second Corps, which had been marching since 2 a.m., taking a decisive part in this on the right wing. The battle terminated about 8 30, when it was quite dark. During the night the enemy drew back into his intrenched camp at Metz. Numberless wounded and stray detach- ments still wandered in the neighborhood of the battle-field. His majesty, who had directed the battle ultimately from the hill of Gravelotte, made Eezonville his head-quarters. The slaughter was terrible on both sides. "I shrink from inquiring after the casualties," wrote King William to the Queen of Prussia, the day after the battle. A correspondent who was an eye-witness of the struggle, and rode over the field after the fighting had ceased, de- scribes the slope on the Verdun road, immedi- ately in front of the French position, as a "frightful spectacle." Hundreds of Prussian corpses were heaped together on the fatal de- clivity. In one place, where a Prussian battery had been stationed, there were thirty horses ly- ing almost touching one another, many with the drivers beside them, still grasping their whips. Most of the coi-pses were on their backs, with their hands clenched. This position was ex- plained by the fact that most of the men had been shot grasping their muskets, and their hands clenched as they dropped their weapons and fell. Many corpses of Prussian officers lay by those of their men, with their white glove ^ on their left hands, the right ones being bare, in order better to grasp the sword. In the hol- low road itself the bodies of men and horses also lay thick, the corpses all along the sides of the road, for nearly 1000 yards, made one continu- ally unbroken row. A little lower down were found the tirailleur corpses. Many of these men had still their muskets in their hands, many forefingers being stiff on the trigger. On the left of the French position were two small cot- tages which had been a mark for the Prussian cannon, and their shells had made a complete ruin of the buildings. One roof was com- pletely gone, and the whole front wall of the upper story of the other had been blown in. On the plateau behind the French earth-works all the ground was ploughed and torn by the Prus- sian shells, which, when they got the range, were admirably aimed. One-third of its horses lay dead beside it. A shell had burst beneath one of the horses, and had blown him, the limber, and one of the gunners all to pieces. The famous mitrailleuses, of which so much was expected, did terrible execution at close quarters, but at long range their fire was less effective than that of the Chassepots. It is gen- erally admitted that this rifle is really superior to the needle-gun, but it is equally true that the French soldiers have not done justice to their v/eapon. The Germans, as a rule, never dream of drawing trigger until sure of their aim, and their fire, though less rapid than that of the French, is far more deadly. The following graphic and enthusiastic letter by a soldier gives a French view of the fighting of the 18th : "You have heard of our battle on the 18th ; what slaughter again from 10 o'clock till night- fall ! The Prussians occupied the woods, from the heights which command Briey to the rail- road which skirts the Moselle. The marshal had returned at full speed by the Woippy road ; they said in camp that we should have a new army to crush — a fresh army, which came from Treves and meant to throw us back on Prince Frederick Charles. The enemy suffers more than we do ; he may hold the inhabitants to ransom, but there is no bread for so many, no more wine, no more help for the wounded, nothing for the sick, whose number increases every day. They have no tents, and these poor devils of the Landwehr al- ready shake with fever, or run to the brooks to wash their red eyes. Alas ! what a hurry they are in to have it over ! At 11 o'clock they over- flowed us. We thought for a moment that they were cutting off our left by the Etain road. Their artillery, under cover of wood, was send- ing grape among us point-blank ; my poor, good G , who was behind me, to the left of the sec- 74 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. ond rank, received three balls fall in the chest. That day then- projectiles carried well. They fired from above in the thicket, and we had but one resoiu-ce — to find a road by which we could take them in flank and dislodge them. My com- mandant, the good old man whom you know, had lead in his thigh. He grew visibly paler. I embraced him that night at St. Privat with the joy of a child. It was not possible to send him to the ambulance. A large blue handkerchief, well twisted round the wounded thigh, was the only dressing it had. This old grumbler dragged himself about thus till night. At 1 o'clock we lost our footing; one would have thought that fresh troops arrived every moment for the ene- my. But on the left, under the little village of Amanvilliers, the chasseurs sounded to charge. Our men recovered courage on hearing the clar- ion sound. The cannon roared among the pines which crowned the first quarry ; Canrobert was coming with his reserves ; Bourbaki was going to support the movement. We had once before re- pulsed the enemy ; our sharp-shooters were keeping up the devil's own fire through the smoking gaps in the wood which we had at our backs when we arrived. The regiment went up the only street of the village at full speed — a rocky road, which turns abruptly towards the second quarries, to the right of the church and cemetery. This move- ment was so rapid that we lost but few men in it. Three or four wounded dragged themselves to the oak-clumps between Champenon and Lorry. From our new position above the first quarries we could see in the valley the grenadiers driving the enemy out of the copse which was burning to the left of the hollow road, and, almost under our feet, two batteries sheltered behind the heaps of rough stones. In front, between St. Privat and Eoncourt, the enemy was re-forming almost in the open on the plateau which bounds the wood of Jaumont to the right. Tv/o little farms were burning on the edge of these woods ; the peasants had abandoned every thing to tumble down the steep slopes and get to the other side of the Moselle. That evening we had to break the doors in to put some of our wounded out of reach of the damp. The battle recommenced more furiously than at 11 and 12 o'clock. But we had no moi-e to fear from the side of Sainte Marie aux Chenes, nothing to fear on the side of Briey. We held the famous semicircle under cover in our town, only we held it from south to west, and the road to Metz was fully occupied. The marshal had gone to the left ; he wished to direct the movement ; one more effort and we went to form in masses on the edge of the ravine. The white lancers came to find themselves thrust on the bayonets at the opening to Aman-\dlliers ; our grenadiers ascended with drums beating to- wards the plateau, without burning a single car- tridge. It was magnificent. I had my sabre under my left arm, like a man who is there to look on, not to fight. The fire was spreading to the north, and came in one's face like puffs of hot wind. It was then the great movement from left to right was made, by the ravine and the quarries. I did not see what happened there, but two comrades of the brave 10th said this morning that no one could imagine such a slaughter Never mind, it was rough work, and the ranks had to close in very often. .... And we know what awaits us on the other side of the river. When I have time I will send you a necrological list, which will suggest singular reflections to amatem's. Keep up your heart. " The immediate result of this great victory was the complete isolation of the fortress of Metz. This was accomplished on the 19th of August. The Prussians, knowing that the surrender of the forces there cooped up was mei'ely a question of time, and willing to avoid a repetition of the terrible slaughter of the 18th, withdrew to strong positions on thie line of re- treat, cutting off the fortress from supplies and preventing the escape of the French army. The force thus isolated, and in effect neutral- ized, originally formed the left wing and centre of the grand army of invasion with which Na- poleon intended to cross the Ehine and march upon Berlin. It consisted of the Second, Third, Fourth, and Eighth Corps, commanded respect- ively by Frossard, Bazaine, Ladmirault, and Bourbaki, comprising in all about a hundred and seventy thousand men. In co-operation with M'Mahon's movement for his relief, Ba- zaine soon after the investment made a despe- rate effort to escape, and attacked the Landwehr on the north-east of Metz. They stood their ground with the bravery and steadiness of old troops, and, after a bloody but fruitless straggle, the French withdrew under cover of their works. The attempt was several times renewed, with similar results. Nowhere could the French marshal find a weak point in the Prussian line, nor did he ever succeed in taking his wary ad- versary at disadvantage. The Prussians mean- time made no effort to capture the fortress, con- tent to hold their own and let famine and sick- ness do the work of reduction. During the progress of the siege — if such an investment may be called a siege — the most con- tradictory rumors were circulated concerning the fidelity of Bazaine to his country, and the condition of the troops confined within the town and fortress. At one time it was asserted that provisions were abundant, and that Metz could hold out for six months; at another, that soldiers and citizens were starving, and that a fortress which a regular garrison of 10,000 men might have held for months would be reduced, in a few weeks, by famine. This seems to have been the true state of the case ; for Bazaine, after several fruitless attempts to cut his way through the Prussian lines, made proposals for the ca- pitulation of his army. The negotiations were brought to a close on the 27th of October, and the next day the surrender was made. Thion- ville and other forts about Metz refused to ac- knowledge the capitulation, and continued to ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. 75 hold out. By this surrender, three Marshals of France, sixty-six generals, 6000 officers, and 173,000 troops fell into the hands of the Prus- sian commanders. At the time of the surrender the conduct of Marshal Bazaine was freely and severely criti- cised. He was accused of treachery, and charged with having sold out to the Prussians. It is impossible, at this time, to decide as to the correctness of these charges. The fallen mar- shal has himself indignantly denied them in an address to his soldiers, in which he says they sur- rendered only to famine. in. THE SIEGE OF STRASBOURG. The heroic defense of Strasbourg by General Uhrich will form a memorable chapter in the history of sieges. Cut off from communication with the rest of France by the defeat of M'Ma- hon's army and the occupation of the railroads leading to Paris by the German forces, the fall of the city was merely a question of time, and its early surrender was confidently predict- ed. But General Uhrich, a man of action and determination, resolved to make a brave fight for the possession of the city. The time between M'Mahon's defeat and the final investment was spent in energetic preparations for defense. The surrounding country was scoured for pro- visions, in addition to the stores already on hand. The batteries were put in perfect order. In all his operations General Uhrich had the warm support of the inhabitants. Soon after the siege commenced in earnest, he received a deputation from the council formed for the de- fense of the city, and opinions were freely inter- changed between them. The general admit- ted the difficulty of making a successful de- fense ; the council enlarged on the dangers of prolonging a hopeless resistance. The result was an understanding that the council should strain every nerve to prevent the city from falling into the hands of the besiegers, while General Uhrich, on his part, pledged himself to avert the exposure of the city to the horrors of an assault. As a soldier who had resolved to do his duty, he reserved to himself the sole right to determine when the critical moment had arrived, and would not listen to any propo- sition to surrender until it became impossible to continue the defense. Strasbourg was considered second to Metz only of the frontier fortresses of France. The de- fenses consisted of a bastioned enceinte of irreg- ular outline, admirably designed for defense. The numerous re-entering angles in the enceinte were well secured by towers and demi-bastions, while the salients were protected by a powerful cross-fire from the supporting works. The main ditch or moat was filled with water for nearly the whole distance around the city. Be- tween the city proper and the Rliine, connected with the enceinte and occupying a commanding position, was the citadel, constructed by Vauban, and generally considered one of his most impor- tant works. The investment of this powerful fortress was at first languidly pushed forward, and meantime provisions and reinforcements continued to flow into the city ; but by the 10th of September the works were completed and siege commenced in good earnest, and was kept up with increasing severity until the capitulation, A correspond- ent who witnessed the bombardment from the opposite bank of the Rhine, describes the scene as very striking, especially by night. The ef- fect from a distance was like the play of what is called heat-lightning. Sometimes a particu- larly bright flash would light up the horizon and show the long lines of poplars stretching away right and left, and the old Cathedral spire rising above them, and then all was black again, and the dull boom of the shot came rolling back through the night. Sometimes, too, the shells of the garrison burst high over the batteries with a bright blue flash like diabolical fire- works ; but the Strasbourg fire was for the most part slow and intermittent. From inside the walls came a different story. A refugee, who escaped during the siege, as- serted that while be was in the city shells some- times fell at the rate of twenty-five a minute. The destruction of property was enormous, and the loss of life not inconsiderable. In spite of several determined sorties by the garrison, the German works were daily pushed nearer the walls, and their fire became more effective with the shorter range. The walls were breached in several places, an attempt to divert the course of the river 111, and shut off the water supply of the beleaguered city, was not successful ; but at length it became evident that an assault was imminent, and General Uhrich reluctantly determined to surrender. On the 27th of September a white flag was displayed on the great Cathedral tower. The bombardment ceased immediately, and shortly afterwards the terms of a capitulation were agreed upon be- tween General Uhrich and General Werder, commander of the besieging army. At 8 o'clock the next morning the French guards were relieved by German soldiers, who took possession of the gates and all other im- portant posts, and at noon a body of troops, 76 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAE. numbering about 3000, marched in with flying colors and band playing. Previous to this the formal ceremony of surrender had taken place. The German army was paraded on an enormous piece of open ground abutting on the glacis be- tween the Fortes Nationale and De Saverne, General Werder at its head, surrounded by a brilliant staff in full uniform. As the clock struck ]1, General Uhrich emerged from the former gate, followed by his staff, and advanced towards the German commander, who alighted from his horse, and stepped forward to meet him, holding out his hand. Next came Admiral Ex- celmano. Brigadier-general De Barral, and the rest of the superior officers; then the regulars, marines, douaniers, and moblots, with flags fly- ing and arms shouldered. Eye-witnesses of the surrender say that, with few exceptions, the troops behaved disgracefully, and contravened the terms of the capitulation in a manner that but too plainly betrayed the state of utter in- subordination into which they had fallen. At least two-thirds of the men were drunk — vio- lently and offensively drunk ; hundreds, as they stumbled through the ruined gateway, dashed their rifles to pieces against the walls or the paving-stones, and hurled their sword-bayonets into the moat ; from one battalion alone ema- nated cheers of "Vive la Republique!" "Vive la Prusse !" and " Vive I'Empereur !" The offi- cers, it is said, made no attempt whatever to keep the men in order, or prevent them from destroying the arms which the signers of the capitulation had engaged themselves to deliver up to the German victors. Many of the men even danced to the music of the Prussian and Baden bands ; some rolled about on the grass, uttering inarticulate cries ; others made ludi- crous attempts to embrace the grave German legionaries, who repulsed them in utter aston- ishment at their unworthy bearing. The whole scene, say the authorities above quoted, was "exceedingly painful, disgusting, and, above all, undignified ; calculated to bring the French army into contempt, and considerably to modify the small remnants of respect for les militaires Fran- fais that still survived in the breasts of a few of the foreign by-standers — the terrible desillu- sionements of this miserable war." By this surrender, 17,000 men, including Na- tional Guards, and 451 officers, fell into the hands of the Prussians. Inside the gates the work of destruction was painful to behold, and testified to the heroism of the defenders. "As we passed through the streets," writes a correspondent who entered the city the day after the surrender, " we walk- ed between whole rows of houses unroofed, bat- tered to pieces, and in many places completely gutted by fire. Of the fine old Library, only some portions of the bare walls remain. The adjoining Temple Neuf is equally gutted. On the stone floor of the Library, among masses of broken stone and rubbish, lie remains of the carved enrichments of the pillars, which will no doubt be greedily carried away in a few days by relic-hunters. I was contented with some charred fragments of manuscripts, of which masses are blown by the wind into all corners. Not a book or manuscript seems to have escaped the flames. The Cathedral itself, close at hand, has not escaped quite imhurt, but, al- though so prominent a mark, it has been re- markably spared. The upper wooden roof seems to be quite burned away. A shell falling through the roof has smashed the organ. Some of the upper tier of windows are a good deal damaged, but the lower windows have been taken out, and are carefully stowed away, I be- lieve, intact ; so also the window at the east end, and the greater part of the church furni- ture and the ' tresor.' Here and there the stone- work of the outer galleries is slightly injured, but the clock is uninjured, and on the whole the edifice has suffered no irreparable damage. The Cathedral swarmed with German soldiers, who had hastened to assure themselves of its safety, and were loud in their exclamations of delight at finding it so little injured. In the lady-chapel were living some families of women and children. Their houses had been burned by shells, and, being poor and homeless, they had been permitted to stretch their mattresses on the floor there during the siege, and they did not yet know what other shelter to seek. The shops were slowly beginning to take down the mattresses and soaked bags piled up in front of their shutters to save their contents from the ex- ploding shells. The gratings giving access of light and air to the underground rooms and cellars were being freed from the embankments of earth which had been heaped over them to give safety to the inmates ; for these were the dwelling and sleeping places of most of those who could afford to consult their security dur- ing the siege. Strasbourg was shaking off its nightmare, and the people, amidst all their dis- tress, wore an aspect of gladness. The most frightful scene of destruction is in the suburb known as Schiltigheim, or the Quartier St. Pierre. This has been utterly burned and torn to pieces, chiefly by the guns of the citadel, lest the Germans should find shelter in it. I can compare it to nothing but Bazeilles, and that will only convey an idea to those few who have yet visited the battle-field of Sedan. The ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAK. 77 streets are strewed with debris ; of the houses there remain here some blackened walls, there a heap of stones and brick-work. The sign- boards, the police announcements, in many- places bear testimony to the recent active life which pervaded this mass of ruins ; but they rather add to than detract from the bitterness of its desolation." Among the curiosities found in Strasbourg, after the surrender, were back numbers of the "Courrier du Bas Ehin," published in the city throughout the continuance of the siege, and by means of which, aided by the less trust- worthy souvenirs of the inhabitants, one may live again through the horrors of the bombardment. In the earlier numbers one traces the conflict- ing feelings with which the people of Strasbourg watched the beleaguering soldiers close around them. The battles of Weissenburg and Woerth brought the fight nearly home to them. Al- ready on the ramparts they were beginning to feel the near approach of the enemy. Com- munications by letter and telegraph were cut off, and the surrounding villages were occupied by German troops. Then the siege begins. At first the greatest amount of harm is done by the defenders. The French destroy the roads, cut down the trees, and fire the buildings out- side their lines, that the enemy may find no shelter. The Garde Mobile are "familiarized with handling cannon " by cannonading and destroying the establishment of the Bon Pas- teur. In the interests of that part of the city near the Quartier St. Pierre, its rich suburb of Schiltigheim is given to the flames, and the plantations of the cemetery of St. Helen's are cut down ; then follows the destruction of brew- eries and workshops — "millions destroyed and great and lucrative industries annihilated." Then come the stern realities of bombardment. "Never will Strasbourg forget the emotions of the first two weeks of August," says the writer of the local chronicle; "but last night — the night of the I8th and the morning of the 19th — has been the most terrible of all." It was the night of the first effective bombardment ; the fall of the bombs, the fii'es they caused, the destruction, and the deaths, are described in painful detail. An "eloquent lawyer " writes to the paper a letter descriptive of his terrible fright, and how he took refuge in a cellar, and did not come out till the firing was over. These become every-day incidents very soon, and no one writes about them ; every body lives in the cellar who can afford to be idle and take no part in the fight. Of people who move about the street, men, women, and children are daily killed. The civil registers 'of births, deaths, and marriages, were kept up for some time after the beginning of the siege. The last marriage recorded is that of Marc-Emile Sau- vanel, peintre-doreur, veuf, et Marie-Madeleine Nicola. This was on the 19th of September, eight days before the capitulatii. , the wedding- music must have been martial and hoarse. On the same day were killed by shells Charles Klotz, ten years old, Marie Espinasse, aged six- ty-nine years, Emile Eay, aged ten years, with eight or nine other adult citizens. Burials could not be made in the ordinary cemeteries outside the city ; the Botanical Gardens were temporarily assigned for the purpose. The in- habitants were beginning to get pinched for food. On the 20th of August middle-men were prohibited from buying up meal and rais- ing its price, and all sales were ordered to be made in open market. Nevertheless, beef rose to four francs a pound, and finally could not be had. Horse-flesh was good and jDlentiful at half the price. Potatoes seventy francs a sack. The price of bread was fixed by authority on the 9th of September — white bread at i^d. and black bread at 3^d. the two-pound loaf. Eice was plentiful and beer and wine. Pates de foie gi'as do not seem to have failed, for a gentleman brought away a pile of them to give away as "souvenirs of the siege." On the last day of the siege the " Courrier " appeared on a smaller sheet, and was full of horrors. As usual, the day's list of the victims of bombardment in- cludes the names of several women and chil- dren. " The bombardment has been terrific. It seemed as if the danger could be no longer in- creased, and most terrible engines of war had already been used ; but last night they hurled incendiary bombs of a weight previously un- known to incredible distances ; they burst through even into the cellars ; in one house six people were killed and twelve wounded almost simultaneously." This was the last night of these horrors. Thirty hours afterwards the troubles of Strasbourg were at an end — for the present, at least. The shops were being open- ed, the German-speaking soldiers who had bom- barded the town were drinking beer with the German-speaking inhabitants who had suffered from the bombardment, and all Germany was afoot to seek to repair the harm it had unwill- ingly done. IV. THE SIEGE OF PARIS. M'Mahon's army sun-endered on Friday, September 2d. Up to Saturday night the news was not generally known in Paris, but state- ments had been made in the Chambers with 78 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. the view of preparing the public mind for the worst. In the Senate Baron Jerome David ad- mitted that Marshal Bazaine had failed in his attempt to escape from the hostile armies that had hemmed him in at Metz, and that M'Ma- hon's attempt to relieve him had "terminated in a manner unfortunate for our armies." In the Corps Legislatif the Count of Palikao said that grave events had occurred, which for the time would prevent the junction of M'Mahon and Bazaine. He added : " The position is se- rious. We must no longer dissimulate. We are determined to make an appeal to the vigor- ous forces of the nation. We ai'e organizing 200,000 of the National Guard Mobile, who will be called to Paris, and will form an army which will insure the safety of the capital. We shall act with the greatest energy, and shall only arrest our efforts when we have expelled every Prussian from French territory." The instant the tenor of the Ministerial statements became known, the popular agitation was intense, though very few were aware that the Emperor had been made a prisoner. At 8 o'clock the same evening a crowd of about 6000 people demanded of General Trochu, command- ing the French forces in Paris, that he should proclaim the decheance of the imperial dynasty ; but the General replied that he was a soldier, and could not break his oath. It was for the Chamber to comply with this demand. He would, however, defend Paris until death. The crowd received this reply with shouts of " Ab- dication ! Abdication!" Another crowd of about 10,000 people also sent to General Tro- chu with' the same object as the first, and re- ceived the same reply with shouts of "Abdica- tion!" " France forever !" " Trochu forever !" Meanwhile the streets and boulevards were densely crowded, but the people were reserved and silent. The approaches to the Chambers were guarded by a strong force of cavalry and infantry, though there appears to have been no reason to apprehend a disturbance. It was not until Sunday morning that the whole extent of the disaster that had befallen M'Mahon was disclosed to the Parisians by the "Journal Official," which published the follow- ing proclamation, issued by the Council of Ministers : " Frenchmen ! a great misfortune has befallen the country. After the three days of heroic struggles kept up by the army of Marshal M'Ma- hon against 300,000 enemies, 40,000 men have been made prisoners. General WimpfFen, who had taken the command of the army, replac- ing Marshal M'Mahon, who was grievously wounded, has signed a capitulation. This cruel reverse does not daunt our courage. Paris is now in a state of defense. The military forces of the country are being organized. Within a few days a new army will be under the walls of Paris, and another is in formation on the banks of the Loire. Your patriotism, your concord, your energy will save France. The Emperor has been made prisoner in this contest. The Government co-operates with the public author- ities, and is taking all measm-es required by the gravity of these events." The Corps Legislatif had, however, been told the news some hours earlier. At half-past nine Saturday night, summonses were issued by M. Schneider for a sitting at midnight ; but it was after one on Sunday morning when business ac- tually commenced. The Count of Palikao then made the Chamber acquainted with the news, without reservation, and proposed that the Chamber should adjourn further deliberation till the following day. M. Jules Favre then rose and said that if the Chamber wished to postpone discussion, he would offer no opposi- tion to the proposal, but he wished to submit in his own name, and for a certain number of his colleagues, the following propositions : "1. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and his dj'- nasty are declared to be divested of the powers conferred upon them by the Constitution. " 2. A governing Commission consisting of — members shall be aiDpointed by the Corps Legislatif, which Commission shall be invested with aU the powers of Government, and which shall have for its special mission to offer every resistance to invasion, and to expel the enemy from the territory. " 3. General Trochu is continued in his func- tions as Govenior-general of the city of Paris." The only remark made upon this proposition was made by M. Pinard, who said the Chamber had not the power to decree a forfeiture of au- thority, and it was then resolved to adjourn till noon. As soon as the sitting was over, the Minis- ters went to the Empress and told her that they felt themselves in honor bound to stand by the dynasty, but that they were convinced that for her and her family all hope was over. The Empress, however, desired that an effort should be made. General Trochu was consulted, but he stated that he was responsible for the defense of Paris only, and he could do nothing for the dynasty. It was then decided that Count Pali- kao should propose a Provisional Government, with himself at its head, which was to assume power by a decree of the Empress. But in the mean time the Deputies of the Left Centre had held a meeting, in which they agreed to support a proposal of M. Thiers, which, without saying as much in words, par- tially suspended the Empire, and gave power to ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 79 a Committee of National Defense, in which all parties would be represented. General Trochu promised to recommend the Garde Nationale to go down to the Chamber, and to support this combination. The Left, too, held their meet- ing, and agreed to insist upon the decheance, and the nomination of a Provisional Govern- proaches across the bridges, about 3000 troops were in the court-yard of the Tuileries, some few regiments had been consigned to their bar- racks ready to act, and the rest of the soldiers in Paris were left to their own inspirations. When the sitting commenced, it soon, liowever, became evident that the ' ' Eight, " composed of GENERAL TEOOHir. ment of nine, five of whom should be deputies of Paris. Thus matters stood when, at 9 o'clock, President Schneider announced that the sitting of the Chamber had commenced. General Palikao had surrounded the Palace of the Corps Legislatif with troops, a body of Gardes de Paris were guarding all the ap- official candidates, were awed, and could not be depended on. The troops, too, were so thor- oughly disgusted with the surrender of the Em- peror that they would not act against the Na- tional Guard, and gi-adually fell back, and were replaced by the latter. The three propositions of Count Palikao, M. Thiers, and M. Jules Fa- 80 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. vre were then submitted to the Chamber, and collectively referred to a committee. The sit- ting was then suspended. On the resumption of the sitting, the galle- ries and floor of the Chambers were invaded by- crowds of people, demanding the deposition of the Emperor, and the proclamation of the Re- public. An announcement, by M. Gambetta, that the Chamber was deliberating on the deche- ance, was received with vociferous applause, cries of "Vive la France," and national songs. Cries of "Down with the Bonapartes!" and "Vive la France!" prevented the transaction of business by the Chambers. M. Gambetta ascended the tribune and addressed the people in the galleries, and groups of citizens and Na- tional Guards invaded the floor of the Chamber. Silence having been at length obtained, Presi- dent Schneider took the chair, and addressed a few words to the Corps Legislatif, represented by the Left and a few members of the Right who had slipped timidly into their seats. The Count of Palikao made a short appearance, but M. Brame was the only minister who faced the storm. M. Schneider protested against the in- vasion of the Chamber, and declared that the House could not deliberate under intimidation. There were fierce cries for the Republic, and again the Chamber was invaded, the benches taken by storm, and the President driven from his chair. M. Jules Favre then managed to gain possession of the tribune, and proclaimed the downfall of the Bonaparte family. M. Gambetta confirmed his words ; and, in fact, the d&cheance had been decreed in committee, by a vote of 195 deputies against 18. After these stirring events, the deputies of Paris, attended by an immense crowd of people, proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, which they were allowed to enter without opposition, and there M. Gambetta proclaimed the Republic. Then the crowd, intoxicated with frantic joy, rushed about the streets, singing national songs and shouting " Vive la Republique !" The sol- diers and the National Guard fraternized with the people, and for several hours the streets pre- sented scenes of almost ludicrous manifestations of enthusiasm. Perceiving that the cause of the Empire was for the present lost, without a resort to arms, and willing to avoid bloodshed, the Empress, who had borne herself with admirable dignity through all the trying events of the preceding fortnight, left the Tuileries in a private carriage and took train for Belgium, and thus the Sec- ond Empire came to an end, without bloodshed or violence. The only mischief done by the mob was the destruction of a picture of the Em- peror at the Hotel de Ville, and the pulling down and destruction of busts and portraits of the Imperial family, and all emblems of Impe- rialism, wherever they were seen. In the course of the day (Sunday) a new gov- ernment, calling itself "The Government of National Defense," was formed, consisting al- most exclusively of members of the Left. The one signal exception was General Trochu, who was named President, " with full military pow- er for the national defense," and who installed himself at the Tuileries. M. Jules Favre was made Minister of Foreign Affairs ; M. Gambetta Minister of the Interior ; M. Picard, of Finance ; General Leflo, who owed his generalship to the government of 1848, when he was a deputy. War ; M. Fourichon, who has been since 1864 President of the Council of Naval Works, Ma- rine ; M. Cremieux, Justice, the same office which he filled in the Provisional Government of 1848; M.Jules Simon, Public Instruction and Religion ; M. Magnin, an iron-master and land- ed proprietor. Agriculture ; andM. Dorian, also an iron-master. Public Works. A Committee of National Defense was also formed, consisting of all tlie Paris deputies, including M. Roche- fort ; General Trochu was made President, and M. Jules Favre, Vice-president. M. Etienne Arago was appointed Mayor of Paris. One of the first acts of the new Ministry was to proclaim an amnesty for all political offenses, and many persons who had been condemned for such offenses were set at liberty. The Govern- ment also decreed the dissolution of the Legis- lative Chamber and the suppression of the Sen- ate and the Presidency of the Council of State. Seals were placed on the doors of the Chamber. The manufacture and sale of arms was declared absolutely free. On the following day, September 5th, the "Journal of the French Republic" published the subjoined proclamation : "Frenchmen ! The people have disavowed a Chamber which hesitated to save the country when in danger. It has demanded a Republic. The friends of its representatives are not in pow- er, but in peril. "The Republic vanquished the invasion of 1792. The Republic is proclaimed. " The Revolution is accomplished in the name of right and public safety. " Citizens! Watch over the city confided to you. To-morrow you will be with the army, avengers of the country. " , On Tuesday, September 5th, M. Jules Favre, as Foreign Minister, issued a circular to French diplomatic agents abroad, in which he vindi- cated the position of the Provisional Govern- ment, and stated, in broad outline, the princi- ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAE. 81 pies on which it was prepared to treat for peace. He stated that he had always been in favor of peace, and of leaving Germany to manage her own affairs. The King of Prussia having de- clared, says Mr. Favre, that "he made war, not upon France but upon the dynasty," and the dynasty having fallen, he would be responsible to the world should he continue the war. M. Favre declared further that "France will not yield an inch of her territory or a stone of her fortresses. A dishonorable peace would be a war of extermination at an early date. The Government will only treat for a durable peace. The interest of France is that of all Europe ; but were she alone she would not be enfeebled. Paris has a resolute army well provided for ; a well - established enceinte, and. above all, the breasts of 300,000 combatants determined to hold out till the last. After the forts," M. Favre says, ' ' we have the ramparts, after the ramparts we have the barricades. Paris can hold out for three months, and conquer. If she succumbs, France will start up at her ap- peal, and avenge her." France would continue the struggle, and her aggressor would perish. "We have not," he adds, " accepted power with any other object. We will not keep it a mo- ment if we do not find the population of Paris and the whole of France decided to share our resolutions. We wish only for peace, but if this disastrous war which we have condemned is continued against us, we shall endeavor to do our duty to the last, and I have the firm confi- dence that our cause, which is that of right and of justice, will triumph in the end." The Republic was immediately proclaimed in Havre, Marseilles, Nantes, and other cities, with great enthusiasm. Meanwhile, preparations for the defense of the capital were pushed forward with unabated activity. General Trochu issued a procla- mation, giving notice of the approach of the en- emy, declaring the defense of the city assured, and appealing to the patriotism of the people. As the isolation of the city from the rest of France was but a question of time, the seat of government was transferred to Tours, whither most of the ministers immediately proceeded. A more difficult or more embarrassing task than the defense of Paris was never laid upon a soldier. A powerful enemy flushed with vic- tory was before the walls ; within, were a sol- diery demoralized by defeat, raw levies, and a populace split up into a hundred factions. The strength of the outlying girdle of forts assured him time to organize his forces and drill his recruits into a serviceable condition, if he could only control the impatience of the populace, who, 6 having just declared the overthrow of the Em- pire, were clamorous to direct the defense of the city. They demanded immediate action. For a time they were amused with unimportant sal- lies and reconnoitring parties, which also had the effect of accustoming the young and raw levies to military movements. The appai'ent inactivity of the Prussians inflamed their spirit of impatience. Their lines closed about Paris about the 18th of September, and the immedi- ate bombardment of the city was expected. But when day after day went by, and the bom- bardment was still deferred, the sanguine Pa- risians attributed the delay to weakness, and began to clamor for more serious offensive movements. This doubtless led to the formi- dable sortie of October 21. Former sorties and reconnaissances had been directed from the south front of the fortifications, either in ex- pectation of assistance from the army of the Loire, or because this was thought to be the weakest part of the investing line ; the attack of the 21st was made in nearly the same direc- tion, but with larger bodies of men, supported by a numerous field of artillery, under protec- tion of the guns of Mont Vale'rien. The French fought well, but were ultimately compelled to withdraw, leaving one hundred prisoners and two guns in the hands of the Prussians. A letter in the "London Times," written from Paris October 6th and sent out of the city by "balloon post," will give the reader some idea of the condition of the capital, and the nature of the difficulties with which General Trochu had to contend in the earlier part of the siege. " There has been between the Government and an extreme section of the Democrats a collision which I fear threatens mischief. M. Gusfavc Flourens, at the head of five battalions of the Na- tional Guard, four of which he himself commands, marched yesterday afternoon to the Hotel de Ville, and in somewhat peremptory fashion request- ed the Government to arm the National Guard with Chassepots, in order to qualify them for sorties ; to change the present defensive for an offensive system of tactics by perpetual sorties ; to dispatch Special Commissioners to the prov- inces in order to raise a levy in mass ; to hold at once the municipal elections, and to commence an official distribution of food to the population of Paris. According to some accounts M. Flourens went farther, and wanted the Government to un- dertake a policy of Republican propagandism in foreign countries. However, the five points 1 have mentioned constituted the essence of hi^ programme. The reply of the Government, rep- resented by General Trochu and M. Gambetta, was in the main unfavorable, and M. Flourens has, in consequence, it is said, resigned the command of his battalions. As his undoubted personal courage and his reputation for political integrity have made him very popular with a perhaps small, but by no means uninfluential, section of the Re- 82 ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAR. publican party, this split in the camp, if it is not speedily mended, may produce very serious con- sequences. General Trochu disposed A'ery easily of the first demand by declaring he would gladly give the National Guard better weapons, only he did not happen to have enough of them. "On the question of perpetual sorties, the Gen- eral found himself compelled to differ from M. Flourens. Indeed, there is more difference of opinion on this question than on any other, and it may perhaps be considered, next to the supply of food, the principal question of the day. A large party chafe ceaselessly at what they consid- er the indecorous and impolitic attitude of the Army of Paris. Despite the j-epeated assevera- tions of their journals, they can not feel sure that it is altogether 'heroic' Victor Hugo, indeed, in a recent manifesto, quite turns the tables upon the Prussians by declaring that they are cowards for not trying to storm Paris. ' Here we are, ' he cries, ' waiting, all ready for you ; longing to fight you : why don't you come on ? It is be- cause you can no longer hide yourselves in woods, and kill us without oiu* having the honor of even malting your acquaintance ; you are afraid of us.' And naturally struck by the contrast between the cowardice of the Prussians and the bravery of his own countrymen, he concludes with the eloquent prophecy that, 'as Paris has crowned the statue of Strasbourg with flowers, so history will crown Paris with stars.' Unluckily, how- ever, many of the Parisians are of a less poetical v/ay of thinking, and consider that, so far as it is a mere question of courage or cowardice, it is their business to go out and meet the Prussians, instead of shouting defiance from behind batter- ies and loopholed walls. They hold it disgrace- ful that 500,000 men should be unable to look 300,000 in the face, even though they can always select their own point of attack, and, massing rapidly near the centre, traverse the diameter of the circle while their enemy are compelled to move round the circumference. Why not hurl every night 100,000, or, if you like, 200,000 men, since we shall still have enough left to guard Paris from any surprise in another quarter, some- times upon one weak point, sometimes upon an- other of the hostile camp, which can not bring at first more than one man against your six, and then retreat into Paris, having done as much mischief as you can before the enemy can muster in strength ? The Prussians ought not to be al- lowed a moment's breathing-time. The present delay which the Government has the conscience to declare in our favor is allowing them quietly to form intrenchments, in which they will be as strong as we are in Paris, and from which we shall find it difficult, if not impossible, to dis- lodge them. We, on the other hand, are eating up our provisions, and are by every day's delay brought twenty-four hours nearer to a state of famine, in which no amount of courage or en- durance can save us. Every day, too, the Prus- sian cancer eats farther into France, wasting her substance, breaking her spirit, and disgracing her in the eyes of all Europe. Such are the views of the party which M. Flourens represents, and they are, at any rate, in keeping with his personal courage. It is possible also that he and his friends are stung by certain sayings attributed to distinguished foreigners, both here and in the Prussian camp, that if there were only half as many Americans, or even English, in Paris as there are Frenchmen, the Prussians would have to raise the siege in a week, finding the environs of Paris much too hot for them. But there is a good deal to be said on the other — General Tro- chu — side of the question. It is much easier to talk of hurling 100,000 men at once upon this or that point than to hurl them — to say nothing of the still greater difficulty of hurling them back ; and when they happen to be, most of them, raw troops, who a few weeks ago were beginning the A B C of drill, while their opponents are the best soldiers in Europe, it is as well to remember that discipline has, before now, proved more than a match for overwhelming numbers, and that one regiment can keep the largest mob at bay. This hurling in masses of raw but brave recruits was all very well in 1792, but modern artillery has now made it dangerous. The Prussians at this moment far excel us in artillery, as they do in drill ; but we are casting cannon rapidly. We may soon be provided as well as they are, and meantime our troops, incessantly exercised, are getting into better shape every day. The prov- inces, too, have time to organize levies, and may be able to take the Prussians in rear while we take them in front. These are the views of the Government and, I fancy, the great majority of the Parisians. The only flaw that strikes me in them is that, according to all accounts we can get — though it must be admitted these accounts are not worth much, most of them being, I be- lieve, fabricated in Paris — the Provinces, instead of rising en masse, are showing a most strange and discouraging apathy. If so, the case of Paris is hopeless." As soon as it became apparent that France was unable to resist the invasion she had drawn upon herself, an attempt was made by the new government to enlist the sympathy and active co-operation of other governments. The United States had acknowledged the i-epublic, in an in- formal manner, and this example was followed by several of the European states ; but France wanted more than a recognition of a change of government. Material aid, an alliance with a power willing to take part in the war and com- pel Prussia to abate some of her pretensions, were necessary to her preservation. The new government hoped to effect such an alliance by working upon the jealousy excited by the sud- den growth of Prussia, and the vision of an im- mense German Empire that now began to loom up before Russia and Austria. The veteran statesman M. Thiers was selected to carry out, if possible, this design, and with this end in view he visited, in turn, London, Vienna, St. Peters- burg, and Florence. It probably surprised no one that he returned disappointed. He himself could hardly have looked upon his mission in any other light than that of a forlorn hope. He deserved credit for his patriotism ; and it must also be admitted that, if there was no chance for him, no other could have looked for better for- ON THE TKAIL OF THE WAR. 83 tune. The affair was already prejudged and closed. For years the French emperor had been looking for allies. He regarded his en- counter with Prussia as an inevitable contin- gency, and, to do him justice, he never under- valued his adversary. For a long time he reck- oned on Austria's burning desire to revenge Sadowa. He was no stranger to the petty jeal- ousies and anxious apprehensions of the South German Courts. He felt confident that he held in Rome a pledge for the subserviency of Italy. He fancied he could hold out a bait by which he could tempt Russian cupidity. Finally, he made sure of England's acquiescence, grounding his confidence partly on this country's estrange- ment from Continental politics, partly on that "cordial understanding" of which he thought we had greater need than himself. The end was that he took the field single-handed. He may, even while crossing the frontier, have cher- ished sanguine anticipations that success might develop new political combinations; and no one even now can say what results a splendid victory on the Saar or a rapid march across the Rhine upon Stuttgart or Munich might have Iiad on the unquiet Hohestauffen and Wittels- bach Councils. But it was otherwise decreed. The first encounters on the frontier were irrep- arable reverses for France, and every waverer thanked his stars that he had not embarked in the sinking ship. At the last moment, when the waves were almost closing over the sinking ship, M. Thiers was charged to bear aloft the signal of dis- tress. That he would fail was evident from the beginning. What could he propose ? What could he say to Russia or Austria that was not already known to those powers ? The astound- ing present and the threatening future were manifest to all men. The vision of Prussia, a gigantic military nation, ambitious and unscru- pulous in the use of her power, at the head of a vast consolidated empire ; Holland, Switzer- land, above all, Austria, menaced with absorp- tion, or with subordination to the leading state, as satellites round the guiding luminary ; the balance of power hopelessly disturbed ; a Teu- tonic preponderance, with the eventual annihila- tion of the Latin and Slavonic races — the very sun of Europe gone down with France's fall, and the stagnation of all national development ; all this, and much more, M. Thiers might urge as the evil to be dreaded, and to be averted only by saving France through a military coalition against Prussia. But, as we have already re- marked, this had been tried by the Emperor when France held the position of the first mili- tary power in the world ; and if it failed then, how could it be expected to succeed when France was stricken down and helpless ? When M. Thiers begged the neutral Powers to "save France," the very natural reply was, in sub- stance : " Most willingly, if you would only tell us how she is to be saved." No doubt he had considerations to urge which would bring them to the aid of France. For Russia, there was the prospect of a revision of the Treaty of Paris, with a distant glimpse of Danubian lands and Hellespontic waters ; for Austria, a recovery of German ascendency, a compensation in Silesia for Lombardy and Venice ; for Italy, Rome — or, at least, France's good-will to Italy's occupa- tion of Rome. For England alone, says the " London Times " with some irony, there could be no tempting offer ; but in that country M. Thiers probably thought "virtue is its own reward," and, undoubtedly, adds the "Times," peace is in itself at all times the greatest boon that England can receive at the hands of her Continental sisters. M. Thiers returned from his mission with nothing but the good-will of every body and his own disappointment. It was now evident that France had nothing to hope for from other powers, and that she must depend upon her own endeavors to win the most favorable terms from Prussia. For a time the heroic defense of Strasbourg, and other fortified places, the stubborn attitude of Bazaine at Metz, and the awakening through tardy patriotism of the provinces, gave rise to the hope that peace might be made without humiliating concessions. The fall of Strasbourg and Metz dispelled this hope. But in the mean time the English Cabinet, either taking alarm at the threatened annihila- tion of her only ally, or from notions of human- ity, sought an opportunity for peaceful interven- tion. About the middle of October, Earl Gran- ville, supported by the cabinets of all the neu- tral powers, proposed a meeting between M. Thiers and Count Bismarck, to which both as- sented, for the purpose of arranging the terms of an armistice, to allow the convocation of the French Assembly, and the formation of a stable government with which a treaty of peace could be concluded. On the 1st of November, in accordance with the aiTangements perfected by Earl Granville, M. Thiers was admitted to an audience witli King William at Versailles. The conference called there lasted three hours, and the condi- tions of the proposed armistice were fully dis- cussed. The next morning a military council was held, in which Count Bismarck partici- pated, and in the aftenioon M. Thiers and the 84 ON THE TEAIL OF THE WAR. Count were closeted together for a long time. Nothing was concluded at these interviews. On the 3d and 4th of November, the interviews were renewed. At the first, according to the telegraphic account, M. Thiers showed Count Bismarck his authorization from the Paris Gov- ernment to arrange an armistice on the basis proposed by Lord Granville. The Count re- plied that it was all very well as far as it went, but an authorization from the Tours Govern- ment was also necessary. M. Thiers said M. Gambetta and his colleagues would not disa- vow an agreement made by the Paris Govern- ment and supported by General Trochu and the army of Paris. But he would undertake at once to communicate with Tours, and obtain a formal authorization in addition to the in- formal powers already received. Count Bis- marck insisted on the necessity of convoking an Assembly to speak with authority in the name of the country. He said he was willing to sus- pend active hostilities for this purpose, but un- til all had been arranged the siege operations would have full course. At the second interview, Count Bismarck waived the point of the Tours Government's authorization, and discussed the conditions of the armistice. He proposed that Paris should receive daily one day's food on the scale of present rations, and both belligerents proceed on their matei'ial preparations ; the Germans to continue to occupy the whole territory now held by them, to cease to make forced requisitions, and to be allowed to bring forward all their stores and war material without interruption. M. Thiers agreed to these points, and asked, " Will Alsace and Lorraine be permitted to send deputies to the Assembly ?" Count Bis- marck replied in the negative ; but at length intimated that he mi^ht consent. Thus far appearances were all in favor of the armistice. M. Thiers was positive that the Provisional Government would accept the con- ditions that had been agreed upon, even though they looked to the cession of the Rhine prov- inces and the payment of an indemnity. But, at the last moment, the Provisional Government rejected the protocol, and ordered M. Thiers to inform Count Bismarck that the conditions could not be accepted. The rupture was un- derstood to be partly owing to the persistence of Count Bismarck in insisting on guaranties for the cession of territory, and partly to the disordered condition of Paris, Previous to the attempt of M. Thiers to treat with Count Bismarck, General Burnside, who was at the Prussian head-quarters, proffered his services as the bearer of proposals for an armistice. He arrived in Paris on the 3d of October, bearing a letter from Count Bismarck to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. This letter, however, exclusively concerned the complaint made by the members of the Diplomatic Body residing in Paris, and who had demanded that they should be allowed to send dispatches to their respective governments once a week. General Burnside had no official capacity, and it was his own idea, and yielding to a generous impulse, that he endeavored without any com- mission to effect some conciliatory arrangement between the hostile parties. He was unable, however, to effect this object. A second visit took place a day or two afterwards, at which both the Minister for Foreign Affau's and Gen- eral Trochu were present. He was not this time the bearer of a letter from Count Bis- marck, nor had he been intrusted with a verbal message ; but it was evident to the Paris au- thorities, from his conversation, that the views of the Chancellor of the North German Confed- eration had undergone no change, and that if he considered an armistice as practicable for the convocation of an Assembly he would grant it for the actual space of forty-four hours only ; that he would refuse to include Metz in it; that he would prohibit all re-victualling ; and that he would exclude from the elections the citizens of Alsace and Lorraine. The friendly interposi- tion of General Burnside was therefore without result. THE END. \ BtrngcTToi ^aSilln.sM ^^ JV' r^^iai >. yCincj ^ astet ^® ^*7^as/erff JSahtcnhach.' iesbac 'r^^ , JiCZl 'Damfrmt V.oSuez BcaTznvoTLt VeTsalUesj: lisibouiTlst-! 7) I >eii^'^'"'>''--i^' ClmrLTesjL ,\ ,a\ Ximgn cvtll e , ^ *Uuiieajidvw Bino emOTos >v TTeherathj' -licence' Ji«c OherstBin'f vVoTmSV HuojiTille S[ TsToi&lrirokeTtX'^-^'SJ^' "■uji^, _, ■ <^- - -t fj..-„ + (l tweilcrctciceii , *< '*•'■ ~ -(3!=lS^;^S:']amehou.ld jlolz jBcviiuers MAP SHOWING THE SEAT OF VVAK IN FKANCE. HARPER'S LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS. ■ Mailing Notice.— Uatcpeb, & Beotuees will send their Books by Mail, postage free., to any part of the United States, on receipt of the Price. PRICE 1. Pelham. By Bulwer $0 75 2. The Disowned. By Bulwer 75 3. Devereux. By Bulwer 50 4. Paul Clifford. By Bulwer 50 5. Eugene Aram. By Bulwer 50 6. The Last Days of Pompeii. By Bulwer 50 7. The Czarina. By Mrs. Hoiland 50 8. Eienzi. By Bulwer 75 9. Self-Devotion. By Miss Campbell 50 10. The Nahob at Home 50 11. 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[For the New Novels, see Third Cover Page.] DU CHAILLU'S APINGI KINGDOM. My Apingi Kingdom : with Life in the Great Sa- hara, and Sketches of the Chase of the Os- trich, Hyena, &c. By Paul Du Chaillu, Author of "Discoveries in Equatorial Africa," "Stories of the Gorilla Country," "Ashango Land," "Wild Life Under the Equator," &c. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75. BEECHER'S MORNING AND EVENING EXERCISES. Morning and Evening Devo- tional Exercises : selected from the Publish- ed and Unpublished Writings of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Edited by Lyman Abbott, Author of "Jesus of Nazareth," " Old Testament Shadows," &c. Crown 8vo, Cloth. {Just Ready. ^ LIGHT AT EVENING TIME : a Book of Support and Comfort for the Aged. Edited by John Stanford Holme, D.D. Crown 8vo, Cloth. {Just Ready.) ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG NATU- RALIST. By LuciEN BiART. Edited and adapted by Parker Gtllmore, Author of "All Round the World," "Gun, Rod, and Saddle," &c. With 117 Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth. 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Me- moir of the Rev. John Scudder, M.D., Thir- ty six Years Missionary in India. By the Rev. J. B. Waterburt, D.D. Portrait. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75. HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES, re- lating to all Ages and Nations. For Univers- al Reference. Edited by Benjamin Vincent, Assistant Secretary and Keeper of the Library of the Royal Institution of Great Britain ; and Revised for the Use of American Readers. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00 ; Sheep, $6 00. TENNYSON'S POETICAL WORKS. Poet- ical Works of Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laure- ate. With numerous Illustrations and Three Characteristic Portraits. New Edition, con- taining many Poems not hitherto included in his collected works, and with the Idyls of the King arranged in the order indicated by the Author. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents ; Cloth, $1 00. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L. With a Portrait of WiUiam of Orange. 3 vols., 8vo, Clotli, ^10 50; Sheep, $12 00; Half Calf, Extra, $17 25. The style is excellent, clear, vivid, eloquent ; and the industry with which original sources have been investigated, and through which new light has been shed over perplexed incidents ana characters, entitles Mr. Motley to a high rank in the literature of an age peculiarly rich m history. — North British Review. A work of real historical value, the result of accurate criticism, written in a liberal spirit, and from first to last deeply interesting. — Athenceum. Mr. Motley's work is an important one, the result of profound research, sincere convictions, sound princi- ples, and manly sentiments : and even those who are most familiar with the history of the period will find in it a fresh and vivid addition to their previous knowledge. It does honor to American literature, and would do honor to the literature of any country in the world. — Ediriburgh Jieview. A serious chasm m Englisb historical literature has been (by this Dook) very remarkably filled. . . .A his- tory as comptete as industry and genius can make it now lies before us, of the first twenty years of the Re- volt of the United Provinces All the essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. His mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic description no modern historian, except, perhaps, Mr. Carlyle, surpasses him, and in analysis of character he is elaborate and dmtinct.— Westminster Review. It belongs to a class of works in which we range our Grotes, Milmans, Merivales, and Macaulays, as the glories of English literature in the department of his- tory. — Nonconformist. The best contribution to modern history that has yet been made by an American. — Methodist Qimrterly Re- view. To the illustration of this period Mr. Motley has brought the matured powers of a vigorous and bril- liant mind, and the abundant fruits of patient and judicious study and deep reflection. — North American Review. THE UNITED NETHERLANDS. History of the United Netherlands : from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce. With a full View of the English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L., Author of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic." Portraits. 4 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $14 00; Sheep, $16 00 j Half Calf, Extra, $23 00. fertile as the present has been in historical works of the highest merit, none of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qualities of inter- est, accuracy, and truth. — Edinbiirg Review. Mr. Motley, the American historian of the United Netherlands— we owe him English homage.— London Times. This story Mr. Motley has narrated with increase of his old brilliancy, power, and success. In its episodes and other by-ways the story is as glowing, nervous, and interesting as in the main details of the marvel- ous contest. — Athenceum, This noble work. — Westininster Review. One of the most fascinating, as well as important histories of the century. — Cor. N. Y. Evening Post. Mr. Motley's prose epic. — London Spectator. His living and truthful picture of events. — London Quarterly Review. His history is as interesting as a romance, and as reliable as a proposition of Euclid. Clio never had a more faithful disciple. We advise every reader whose means will permit to become the owner of these fas- cinating volumes, assuring him that he will never re- gret the investment.— C/irfeWaft Intelligencer. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Habpbk & Brothebs loill send the above books by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. The Student's Scripture Histories. THE STUDENT'S OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. THE OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. From the Creation to the Return of the Jews from Captivity. Edited by William Smith, LL.D., Classical Ex- aminer in the University of London. With Maps and Woodcuts. • Large 1 2 mo, 715 pages. Cloth, $2 00. This volume is unquestionably one of the best Scrip- ture histories we have. The style is simple, terse, and vigorous, the latest biblical researches are embodied, and much useful information is given touching sub- jects not strictly historical. Maps and woodcuts are freely introduced, and the volume possesses more than ordinary value. — Hound Table. A scholarly, thorough, and condensed account of the history recorded in the Old Testament, and will be f )und to be admirably adapted to the purposes for which it is designed. — Churchman (Hartford). The history of the Jews is here told in a better man- ner than in any other work of the same size, and all the results of the deep and accurate inquiries into that history are incorporated with the narrative. It is in- deed a popular, though grave and learned commenta- ry on the Old Testament — a commentary taking the form of regular historical writing, and written with force and clearness. — Boston Traveller. The sabbath-school teacher will find this volume a help to him in his preparations, and the student of the Bible wiU be prepared by it for special investigations of particular portions ot the sacred hooks.— Presbyte- rian (Philadelphia). In the preparation of the text it is evident that great care has been taken to render the work one that, while reverent and recognizing the sanctity and claims of Revelation, she aid be suitable for the characteristic criticism and exegesis of the age. It is an excellent condensation of nearly all the valuable matter that criticism, historical, ethnographical, topographical, and chronological investigations have accumulated round the Old Testament Word of God.— Presbyterian (Chicago). A most careful and voluminous compendium of all recent discoveries throwing light upon the Old Testa- ment. — Albion. THE STUDENT'S NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. THE NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. With an Introduction, connecting the History of the Old and New Testaments. Edited by William Smith, LL.D., Classical Examiner in the University of London. With Maps and Woodcuts. Large lamo, 780 pages, Cloth, $2 00, A valuable and cheap compendium of accurate infor- mation drawn from the most recent results of scholar- ship. — Advance. Those who have read the New Testament only in a desultory fashion, or in the disorderly method in which it is arranged in our version, will find a new light cast upon it by the study of the Book in its chro- nological order, and with such helps as Dr. Smith has here presented. — Ainer. Presbyterian (Philadelphia). Very complete and excellent as a book of reference. — Observer. It meets a want which every young student of the Bible feels. — Cincinnati Christian Advocate. The chapters treating of the Maccabees and the times of Herod, the sects and several branches of the Jews, and their new forms of worship, are thought- fully written, though necessarily from a Christian standpoint ; but the book is prepared for Christian students, and they will find it exceedingly useful and valuable. — Jewish Messenger. Sabbath-school teachers, and the more advanced pupils of sabbath-schools, as well as intelligent pri- vate students of the Scripture, will find this a helpful and remunerative volume. — Congregatioiialist. By far the best of its kind of any thing that has yet been published. — Churchraan. The history itself reads smoothly, and without break. Facts which give picturesque vividness to the narra- tive are woven into the narrative sentences, so that the whole panorama seems to stand out with stereo- scopic vividness. And this, too, without any apparent endeavor to paint pictures, and without the slightest approach to "fine writing." The casual reader is borne on without eff"ort on the smooth surface of the text, and the student stops at the end of each chapter to find a storehouse of treasures under the head of "Notes and \\\\ist\:a.iions." — Sunday-School Teacher (Chicago). A very timely and necessary compendium of Bible 'knowleAge.-Christian Review. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New Yoek. Haepeb & BnoTHEKS loill send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. HARPEE'S PICTORIAL HISTORY OF The Great Rebellion IN THE UNITED STATES. By ALFEED H. GUEENSEY and HENEY M. ALDEN. With nearly One Thousand Illustrations. Quarto, Cloth, $12 00. This work contains 998 Illustrations. Of these 562 are authentic representations of Scenes and Incidents in the War ; 99 Maps and Plans of Battles, among which is a large Colored Map of the Southern States, showing the position of nearly every place of note, together with the great lines of communication ; and 337 Portraits of persons who have borne a prominent civil or military part in the war, I have seen no other History of the Eebellion that seems to embrace so many admirable qualities as this does. I wisli that so carefully prepared, beautifully illustrated, and reliable a History of our late Civil War might be placed in the library of every Grammar and High School and Academy in our country. — Abneb J. Phipps, Agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Edu- cation. This is one of the great enterprises of the day. The historical matter is really valuable ; the sketches of individuals and incidents are admirably drawn, not only by the pen of the historian, but by the pencil of the artist, and both combined will make, when bound, one of the marked histories of this war, if not the great history of the war. There are official documents on every page, at the bottom, which add much to the value of the work. It will be found on the centre- tables of thousands of our countrymen. — Boston Post. The writer judiciotisly combines the spirit of philo- sophical reflection with a vivid and picturesque de- lineation of facts. His style is at once lively and pol- ished, and every page gives evidence of careful study and preparation. — New York Tribune. This is as valuable a work as ever was compiled on a historical subject. — Zion's Herald. A careful, comprehensive, mintite, and graphic record of the origin and progress of the war ; and in the size and beauty of its pages and paper, in the profuseness, costliness, elegance, and completeness of its illustrations, far exceeding any other history yet attempted. — Neio York Observer. We speak confidently in praise of the manner in which the work is brought out. This narrative, em- bellished by the picturesque illustrations, afibrds an interesting commentary on the war, and will be of priceless value foV preservation. — Boston Advertiser. We have seen no other History of the Eebellion which strikes us as combining so many attractive qualities as this — clear narrative, just proportion of space to the topics, excellent and abounding illustra- tions. — Philadelphia Lutheran. Many of its illustrative pictures are the best that we have seen in such a work ; and some of the numerous portraits of prominent actors in the war are admirable as likenesses and works of art. — London Athenceum. Combining historic accuracy and impartiality with sound constitutional and moral opinions, it exhibits unusual skill in the seizure and grouping of salient points in the tragic drama. These pass before the mind in intelligible, imposing order, and are discussed in a style that leaves little to be desired in respect of graphic power and perspicuity. — ChristioAi Advocate. The most thorough history of the struggle yet writ- ten. — Boston Journal. The most popular history of the struggle. — Amer- ican Quarterly Church Review. Without any affectation of profound philosophy, or without fine writing, this history is, in our judgment, one of the best and most valuable records of our great struggle, and we have no doubt that it will maintain this reputation. In future years, when the records of the war office and the bureaus of the other departments are opened up to the future Prescotts and Motleys, we shall have secrets revealed and light shed on points respecting which we must remain uninformed for the present ; but for all ordinary purposes we desire no better record than the one that is steadily going on to completion. — Chicago Presbyterian. The Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion in no sense depends upon its illustrations for its worth, though they are excellent specimens of the art, and help the reader to understand the incidents of the war. The real merits of the work are apart from its engravings. Those merits are a strong and lucid style, a vast amount of well-digested and well-told in- formation, just and well-considered criticisms, and impartial statements of all points about which there are disputes Every library should have this work, for it is one of singular vjilue as a book of reference, because of its comprehensiveness as well as accuracy. As a work of general reading it is of tmsurpassed value. — Boston Traveller. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. By the Author of "John Halifax.'' FAIR FRANCE. Impressions of a Traveller. i2mo, Cloth, $i 50. A BRAVE LADY. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. THE UNKIND WORD, and Other Stories. 12 mo, Cloth, $1 50. THE WOMAN'S KINGDOM. A Love Story. Profusely Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, %\ 00 ; Cloth, $1 50. THE TWO MARRIAGES. i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. A NOBLE LIFE. i2mo. Cloth, ^i 50. CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE. i2mo, Cloth, $1 50. JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents ; Library Edition, i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. A LIFE FOR A LLFE. Svo, Paper, 50 cents ; Library Edition, i2mo, Cloth, $1 5°- A HERO, and Other Tales. A Hero, Bread upon the Waters, and Alice Lear- mont. i2mo. Cloth, %\ 25. AGATHA'S HUSBAND. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. A VILLION, and Other Tales. Svo, Paper, %\ 25. OLIVE. Svo, Paper, 50 cents ; i2mo, Cloth, $1 50. THE FAIRY BOOK. The best popular Fairy Stories selected and rendered anew. Engravings. i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY. Svo, Paper, 75 cents. MISTRESS AND MAID. A Household Story. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. NOTHING NE W. Tales. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. THE OGILVIES. Svo, Paper, 50 cents; i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. O UR YEAR. A Child's Book in Prose and Verse. Illustrated by Clarence DoBELL. i6mo. Cloth, Gilt Edges, $1 00. STUDIES FROM LIFE. i2mo, Cloth, Gilt Edges, %\ 25. A FRENCH COUNTRY FAMILY. Translated from the French of Mad- ame De Witt (;ze^ Guizot). Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, ^i 50. From the North British Review. MISS MULOCK'S NOVELS. She attempts to show how the trials, perplexities, joys, sorrows, labors, and successes of life deepen or wither the character according to its inward bent. She cares to teach, not how dishonesty is always plunging men into infinitely more complicated external difficulties than it would in real life, but how any continued' insincerity gradually darkens and corrupts the very life-springs of the mind ; 7ioi how all events conspire to crush an unreal being who is to be the " example " of the story, but how every event, adverse or fortunate, tends to strengthen and expand a high mind, and to break the springs of a selfish or merely weak and self-indulgent nature. She does not limit herself to domestic conversations, and the mere shock of character on character ; she includes a large range of events — the influence of worldly successes and failures— the risks of commercial enterprises— the power of social position — in short, the various elements of a wider economy than that generally admitted into a tale. She has a true respect for her work, and never permits herself to "make books," and yet she has evidently very great facility in making them. There are few wTiters who have exhibited a more marked progress, whether in freedom of touch or in depth of pur- pose, than the authoress of " The Ogilvies" and "John Halifax." Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 'Harper & Brothers will send the above works hy Tnail, postage paid, to any part of tJie United States, on receipt of the price. By TVILKIE COLLINS. Man and Wife. A Novel. With Illustrations. 8vo, Paper, ^i oo; Cloth, $i 50. The Moonstone. A Novel. With Illustrations. 8vo, Paper, $1 50 ; Cloth, $2 00. Armadale. A Novel. With Illustrations. 8vo, Paper, $1 60; Cloth, $2 oo. No Name. A Novel. Illustrated by John McLenan. Bvo, Paper, $1 50 ; Cloth, $2 00. The Woman in White. A Novel. Illustrated by John McLenan. Bvo, Paper, $1 50 ; Cloth, %2 00. The Queen of Hearts. A Novel. i2mo, Cloth, $1 50. Antonina; or^ The Fall of Rome. A Romance of the Fifth Century. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. No amount of mechanical ingenuity would, however, account by itself for the popularity of Mr. Wilkie Collins's works. He has several other important quali- fications. He writes an admirable style ; he is thoroughly in earnest in his desire to please ; his humor, though distinctly fashioned on a model Mr. Dickens invented and popularized, is better sustained and less fantastic and affected than any thing which Mr. Dickens has oi late vears produced. — London Review. We can not close this notice without a word of eulogy on Mr. Collins's style. It is simple and so manly ; every word tells its own story ; every phrase is perfect in itself — London Reader. Of all the living writers of English fiction no one better understands the art of story-telling than Wilkie Collins. He has a faculty of coloring the mystery of a plot, exciting terror, pity, curiosity, and other passions, such as belong to few if any of his confreres^ however much they may excel him in other respects. His style too, is singularly appropriate — less forced and artificial than the average modern novelists. — Boston Transcript. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS. Debenham^s Vow. A Novel. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. Barbara^s History. A Novel. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. The Ladder of Life: A Heart-History. A Novel. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. My Brother'^s JVife. A Novel. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. Miss Carew. A Novel. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. Hand and Glove. A Novel. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. Half a Million of Money. A Novel. Svo, Paper, 75 cents. A-t this day, when so many indifferent namby-pamby novels are thrust upon the public— novels which it is a wearisome waste of time to read— we are quite sure that it is a kindly act to direct our readers' attention to such beautifully-written, and, in many cases, supe- rior works of fiction as are these by Miss Edwards.— New York Evening Post. Miss Edwards has won an enviable reputation as a writer of fiction. Her novels are far superior to the average of such productions, inasmuch as they evince a highly cultivated intellect, a wide range of reading, and an apparently thorough knowledge of art. Add to these a graceful and sometimes eloquent style, sparkling dialogue, and a genuine depth of feeling, and we have some important essentials of a good nov- elist. The peculiar charm of her books to us consists in the beautiful enthusiasm with which she describes music and musicians, painting and painters, the dim interiors of ancient cathedrals, the golden gloom that pervades pillared aisles, the poetry and loveliness of the castled Rhine- all objects and associations that recall historic glories, or lighten up the life of to-day with the mellow hues of old romance. — Brooklyn Daily Times. Miss Edwards's stories are all well written.— Port- land Transcript. Her stories indicate vigor and iasie.— Chicago Journal. Miss Edwards is a scholar and a poet, and gives ns occasionally poems of much strength and sweetness. — Boston Traveller. Miss Edwards possesses many of the finest attributes which distinguished Charlotte Bronte.— /vondow Morn- ing Post. Miss Edwards's novels are rapidly taking their place among the books which every body reads and enjoys. — Boston Post. Miss Amelia B. Edwards, whose "Barbara's His- tory" was so greatly admired by all who were so fortunate as to read it, has deservedly taken her place among the best living novelists.— Bosfora Transcript. Miss Edwards's works of fiction are of a high order, and represent, both in the subjects chosen and the treatment of them, a deep tendency of our time— this, namely, of looking within and not abroad, writing what is personal and domestic rather than what is conventional, and, in short, dealing with spirit instead of mere custom and costume. Miss Edwards always selects domestic subjects, and delineates characters as though she stood at their centre, and not on the out- side or at a distance. We suspect there is much that is autobiographical in her books. They all have a charming style and wholesome tone, and betray a fire range of reading, observation, and reflection. — Clem- land Leader, Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Harpek & Beothees viill send any of the above if orks by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. Price 35 cents. DICTIOMRIES AND WORKS OF REFERENCE, PUBLISHED BY HARPEK & BROTHERS, New York. ANDREWS'S LATIN - ENGLISH LEXICON. Fouuded on the larger Germau-Latin Lexicon of Dr. Wm. Fbeuni). With Additions and Corrections from the Lexicons of Gesuer, Pacciolati, Scheller, Georges, &c. Koyal 8vo, Sheep extra, $T 50. ■ ANTHON'S CLASSICAL DICTIONARY. Contain- ing an Account of the principal Proper Names men- tioned in Ancient Authors, and intended to elucidate all the important Points connected with the Geogra- phy, History, Biography, Mythology, and Pine Arts of the Greeks and Romans, together with an Ac- count of the Coins, Weights, and Measures of the Ancients, with Tabular Values of the same. Royal 8vo, Sheep extra, $6 00. ANTHONS SMITHS CLASSICAL DICTIONARY, A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology, and Geography. Partly based upon the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. By Wm. Smith, LL.D. Revised, with numerous Corrections and Additions, by CuAKLES Anthon, LL.D. Royal Svo, Sheep ex- tra, $5 00. ANTHON'S SMITH'S DICTIONARY OF ANTIQ- UITIES. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman An- tiquities. Edited by Wm. Smith, LL.D., and Illus- trated by numerous Engravings on Wood. Third American Edition, carefully revised, and containing also numerous additional Articles relative to the Botany, Mineralogy, and Zoology of the Ancients. By CnARi.E8 Antuon, LL.D. Royal Svo, Sheep ex- tra, $0 00. AMTHON'S LATIN -ENGLISH AND ENGLISH- LATIN DICTIONARY. A Latin-English and En- glish-Latin Dictionary, for the use of Schools. Chief- ly from the Lexicons of Freund, Georges, and Kalt- schmidt. Small 4to, Sheep, $3 50. ANTHON'S RIDDLE AND ARNOLD'S ENGLISH- LATIN LEXICON. A Copious and Critical En- glish-Latin Lexicon, fouuded on the German-Latin Dictionary of Dr. C. E. Geokges. By Rev. Joseph Esmond Riddle, M. A., and Rev. Thomas Kekohevee Arnold, D.D. First American Edition, carefully re- vised, and containing a copious Dictionary of Proper Names from the best Sources. By Charles Anthon, LL.D. Royal Svo, Sheep extra, $5 00. CRABBS ENGLISH SYNONYMS. English Syno- nyms, with copious Illustrations and Explanations, drawn from the best Writers. By George Cbabu, M.A., Author of the "Technological Dictionary" and the "Universal Historical Dictionary." Svo, Sheep extra, $2 50. ENGLISHMAN'S GREEK CONCORDANCE. The Englishman's Greek Concordance of the New Testa- ment: being an Attempt at a Verbal Connection between the Greek and the English Texts ; includ- ing a Concordance to the Proper Names, with In- dexes, Greek -English and English - Greek. Svo, Cloth, $5 00. FOWLER'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The English Language in its Elements and Forms. With a His- tory of its Origin and Development, and a full Gram- mar. Designed for Use in Colleges and Schools. Revised and Enlarged. By William C. Fowler, LL.D., late Professor in Amherst College. Svo, Cloth, $2 50. HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES. Haydn's Dic- tionary of Dates, relating to all Ages and Nations. For Universal Reference. Edited by Benjamin Vin- cent, Assistant Secretary and Keeper of the Library of the Royal Institution of Great Britain ; and Re- vised for the Use of American Readers. Svo, Cloth, $5 00 ; Sheep, $0 00. LIDDELL AND SCOTT'S GREEK • ENGLISH LEXICON. Based on the German Work of Fran- cis Passow. With Corrections and Additions, and the Insertion, in Alphabetical Order, of the Proper Names occurring in the principal Greek Authors, by Henuy Drislek, LL.D. Royal Svo, Sheep extra, $7 50. M'CLINTOCK AND STRONGS CYCLOP/ED!A of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Litera- ture. By Rev. Joim M'Clintook, D.D., and James Strong, S.T.D. With Maps and numerous Illus- trations. To be completed in about Six Volumes, Royal Svo, of about One Thousand Pages each. Vols. I., II., and III., comprising the Letters A to G, are now ready. The remaining Volumes are in progress. Price, per Volume, Cloth, $5 OG ; Sheep, $6 00 ; Half Morocco, $8 00. MARCH'S ANGLO-SAXON GRAMMAR. A Com- parative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, in which its Forms are Illustrated by those of the San- skrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Friesic, Old Norse, and Old High-German. By Francis A. March, Professor of the English Language and Com- parative Philology in Lafayette College, Author of "Method of Philological Study of the English Lan- guage," "A Parser and Analyzer for Beginners," «&c. Crown Svo, Cloth, $2 50. ROBINSON'S GREEK LEXICON OF THE TEST- AMENT. A Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament. By Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D., late Professor of Biblical Literature in the Union Theo- logical Seminary, N. Y. A New Edition, revised, and in great part rewritten. Royal Svo, Cloth, $6 00. YONGE'S ENGLISH-GREEK LEXICON. An En- glish-Greek Lexicon. By C. D. Yongb. With many New Articles, an Appendix of Proper Names, and Pillon's Greek Synonyms. To which is prefixed an Essay on the Order of Words in Attic-Greek Prose, by Charles Short, LL.D., Professor of Latin in Colum- bia College, N. Y. Edited by Henry Dribler, LL.D., Professor of Greek in Columbia College, Editor of "Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon," &c. Svo, Sheep extra, $7 00. ZW Harper & Bkotiiees tvUl send either of the above hooks &;/ mail, postage prepaid, to any iMrt of the United States, on receipt of the price. THE NEW NOVELS PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. THE WARDEN AND BARCHESTER TOWERS. In One Volume. Bv Anthony Tuollope, Author of " He Knew He was Kight," "Phineas Finn, the Ii-ish Mem- ber," "The Vicar of Bullhamptou," &c. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. THE VIVIAN ROMANCE. By Moktimek Collins. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. WHICH IS THE HEROINE? Svo, Paper, 50 cents. VERONICA. By the Author of " Mabel's Progress," ifec. Svo, Paper, 50 ceuts. IN DUTY BOUND. Illustrated. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. GWENDOLINE'S HARVEST. By the Author of " Car- lyon's Year," &c. Svo, Paper, '25 cents. BENEATH THE WHEELS. By the Author of "Olive Varcoe," &c. Svo, Paper, 50 ceuts. TRUE TO HERSELF. By F. W. Robinson, Author of "Stern Necessity," "For Her Sake," &c. Svo, Paper, . 50 ceuts. STERN NECESSITY. By F. W. Eobinson, Author of "True to Herself," "Carry's Confession," &c. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. A DANGEROUS GUEST. By the Author of "Gilbert Rugge," &c. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. MAN AND WIFE. By Wilkif. Coi.hns, Author of "Arm- adale," "Moonstone," "The Woman in White," &c. With Illustrations. Svo, Paper, $1 00 ; Cloth, $1 50. FROM THISTLES — GRAPES? By Mrs. Eiloap.t, Au- thor of "The Curate's Discipline," &c. Svo, Paper, 50 ceuts. DICKENS'S EDWIN DROOD. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. By Cuarles Dickens. Illustrated. Svo, Pa- per, 25 cents. THE NEW TIMOTHY. By William M. Baker, Author of " Inside : a Chronicle of Secession," &c. I'imo, Cloth, $1 50. JOHN : aLoveStory. By Mrs. Olipiiant, Author of "Ag- nes," "Browulows," "Chronicles of Carlingford," "Miss Majoribanks," "Laird of Norlaw," &c., &c. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. THE HEIR EXPECTANT. By the Author of "Ray- mond's Heroine," "Kathleen," &c. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. ESTELLE RUSSELL. Svo, Paper, T5 cents. MISS VAN KORTLAND. By the Author of "My Daugh- ter Elinor." Svo, Paper, ^1 00 ; Cloth, $1 50. RECOLLECTIONS OF ETON, By an Etonian. With Illustrations. Svo, Paper, 50 cents. E^~ Habpeb (fe'EuoTHEKS ivUl send either of the above ivorks hy mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. kl INDEX TO HARPER'S MAGAZINE. An Index to Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Alphabetical, Analytical, and Topical. Volumes I. to XL. : from June, 1850, to -May, 1870. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. "The Index just issued by the Harpers to the forty vol- umes of their Magazine is an 'open sesame' to a new Hasserack's cave, tilled with more than the treasures of the 'Forty Thieves.' It is the key to a repository of bi- ography and history, literature, science, and art, unequaled by any other American publication. * * * It is saying no- thing depreciatingly of other Magazines to declare that no other can now successfully compete with Harper's. It has the start in the race. Already the forty volumes are as valuable as a mere work of reference as any cyclopaedia we can place in our libraries. Harper's Magazine is a record of travel every where since the hour of its establishment. Livingstone and Gordon Cumming in Africa, Strain among the Andes and Ross Browne in the East, Speke on the Nile and Macgregor on the Jordan — indeed, all recent travelers of note — have seen their most important discoveries repro- duced in these pages. Most of our younger and many of our older writers find here their literary biography. Our artists see the best evidences of their genius and the most enduring specimens of their work in the Magazine. And there is yet much to do even at home. The Alleghanies, and the Green and Blue Mountains, the ten thousand beau- ties of a thousand streams, the lakes of New York, the bays and shores of New England, the valleys and mountains of Pennsylvania, the fields and rivers of the South, the un- known wonders of the West, are waiting for pen and pen- cil to disclose their beauties. History, biography, and travel, art, science, and literature, must continue to enrich these pages. If the same judgment and taste and liberal- ity continue to characterize the Magazine in the future which characterized it in the past, before the close of this century the trite remark so often made about inferior books, ' indispensable in every library,' will for once be- come a true saying. * * * As a Magazine, Harper's has been conducted after no other model ; and, as a work of refer- ence even, it fills a place which bo other periodical can ever hope to fill. » * * The Index will tend to make the Magazine even more popular than it has been, by making its treasures accessible without imposing the trouble upon the reader of examining the list of contents to each sepa- rate volume for some chapter of knowledge stored away somewhere in the 38,000 pages of these forty volumes." — N. Y. Stanbaku. " The Index to the forty volumes of Harper's Monthly has evidently been prepared with great care and judgment. An article may be sought under its proper title, under the class to which it belongs, or under its author's name, if known ; and, so far as we have tested the Index by cross references, the search can hardlv fail to be rewarded. Even the con- tents of such crowded departments as the 'Editor's Easy Chair' and the 'Record of Current Events' have been, in the one case, put in alphabetical order, in the other chronologically an-anged, of course adding very much to the general value of the Index. Finally, each alternate page'has been left blank for private indexing of subsequent volumes. We have gratified our curiosity in noting at ran- dom the names of the principal contributors to what is at once the most popular and, in its scheme, the most orig- inal of our Magazines. Mr. G. W. Curtis, Mr. A. H. Guern- sey, Rev. S. I. Prime, Mr. Donald G. Mitchell, and others, who have shared the editing of Harper's, we will leave out of view. Among the authors of the lighter stories, which the reader has learned to expect with every number, we recognize Miss Louise Chandler Moulton, Mrs. Harriet E. P. Spofford, and the late Fitz James O'Brien, as among the most prolific ; along with Mr. Charles Nordhoff", Miss Car- oline Cheesebro, Mr. F. B. Perkins, Mr. J. W. De Forest, Miss Marv N. Prescott, and the Misses Cary— Miss Alice being much the more frequent. Rev. W. M. Baker, author of "Inside" and "The New Timothy," has written more or less of short stories and serials. Mr. Justin McCarthy made good the time he spent here with Harper's. Mr. Lossing, Mr. Headley, and Mr. J. S. C. Abbott have fur- nished history; Mr. Strother ('Porte -Cray on') has writ- ten much and pleasantly of his excursions and adventures in this countrv, chiefly at the South ; and Messrs. E. G. Squier and J. Ross Browne began early to narrate their experiences in foreign parts. Among the miscellaneous essayists have been Mr. Charles T. Congdon, Mr. M. D. Conwav, Mr. H. T. Tuckerman, Mr. Bayard Taylor, Mr. Grant White, Prof. Tayler Lewis, and Rev. Samuel Osgood. The late Mr. Ravmond -ivi-ote three articles, Mr. Greeley one, and Mr. A. Oakey Hall three. * * * On the whole, it would be difficult to make up a list of writers better calcu- lated to please and edify the average American citizen."— Tub Nation, New York. Harper & Brothers will send the aboz'e work by ?nail, fostage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of $3 00. VOLUME 42. I TT 1\ /r i NEW YORK, NUMBER247.J HARPER'S Magazine, i DEc.,1870. THE Forty-second Volume of Harper's Magazine opens with the present Number. From the matter which they have on hand or which has been secured for this Volume, the Publishers con- fidently expect that it will even surpass its predecessors. Each Number of Harper's Magazine con- tains from fifty to one hundred per cent, more matter than a single Number of any other monthly period- ical in the world, its contents being equal to those of a volume of Macaulay's History of England. Each Number contains Serials and Short Stories from the best writers in Europe and America, contributed ex- pressly for Harper's Magazine ; richly illustrated articles of Travel ; carefully prepared papers of a Historical and Scientific character, a large number of which are profusely illustrated ; timely articles upon important Current Topics ; lighter papers upon an infinite variety of subjects ; Poems from our most bril- liant and popular writers ; and, in addition to all these, five Editorial departments covering every matter of current interest, in Art, Society, History, Science, Literature, and Anecdote. The Editor's Scientific Record contains every month from thirty to forty separate articles, giving the latest discoveries in Science, with special attention to their practical application. Harper's Magazine, while it has so much for every class of readers, maintains throughout a high standard of literary excellence, not surpassed by that of any other periodical. The Life of Frederick the Great will be continued through the present Volume. In the February Number will be commenced a thrilling and exceedingly humorous story, " The American Baron," by Prof. James De Mille, Author of "The Dodge Club," "The Cryptogram," etc. "Anne Ftirness" will be continued through the present Volume. Published Monthly, with profuse lUustraiipns. VOLUME ITT WT (For XIV. f Harper's Weekly, i ^z^o. HARPER'S WEEKLY is an illustrated record of and comrrlfentary upon ihe events of the timesj It will treat of every topic, Political, Historical, Literary, and Scientific, which is of current interest, and will give the finest illustrations that can be obtained from every available source, original or foreign. Published Weekly, with profuse Ilhistrations. VOLUME] T T "O (For m. [ riARPER'S J3AZAR. 1 1870. HARPER'S BAZAR is a Journal for the Home. It is especially devoted to all subjects pertaining to Domestic and Social Life. It furnishes the latest Fashions in Dress and Ornament ; describes in-door and out-door Amusements ; contains Stories, Essays, and Poems — ^every thing, in brief, calcu- lated to make an American home attractive. Published Weekly, with profuse Illustrations. Harper's Magazine, Weekly, and Bazar, One Copy of either for One Year, ^4 00. 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