Part 33

Alas! vacillation, hesitation, and delay on the part of the Imperial Commander-in-Chief fatally clogged the movements of his magnificent Army. He did not put in an appearance with his staff at headquarters until a fortnight subsequent to the Declaration of War. A week later--and no Plan of Campaign had been issued to his generals. True, he had demolished, with field-fire, a beer-shop at Saarbrück. He had paraded on the hills with Frossard's Army Corps. He had witnessed the evacuation of the town by its tiny garrison--had withdrawn his advanced posts and gone home to Metz to dine and telegraph to Paris of the "capture of the heights" and the "short resistance of the Prussians";--to tell of the cannon-balls and bullets which fell at his own feet, and those of the Prince Imperial, "who showed admirable coolness." "Some of the soldiers wept," he adds, "beholding him so calm...."

And indeed, though one takes the soldiers' tears with a grain of salt, the spirited bearing of the boy must have cheered the sick heart of his father, and yet thrust another dagger in it, too.

Had the Imperial Commander-in-Chief any plan, one wonders.... Long after he had ceased to be Emperor, a pamphlet was published at Brussels, which is generally accepted as the work of the pen that signed the Capitulation of Sedan.

"_To Marshals MacMahon and Lebœuf alone, the Emperor had entrusted his scheme of warfare. His purpose was--to mass 150,000 troops at Metz, 100,000 at Strasbourg, and 50,000 at the Camp of Châlons. The concentration of the first two armies--one on the Sarre, and the other on the Rhine--did not reveal the purpose of the Imperial Commander-in-Chief, for the enemy would be left in uncertainty as to whether the attack would be made against the Rhenish Provinces or the Duchy of Baden._"

Would the Warlock have long remained in uncertainty? But hear the pamphleteer:

"_As soon as the troops should have been concentrated at the points indicated, it was the Emperor's purpose to instantly unite the armies of Metz and Strasbourg; and at the head of 250,000 men, to cross the Rhine at Maxau, compel the Southern States of Germany to observe neutrality, and hasten to encounter the Army of Prussia._" Later on occurs the pathetic complaint: "_If one could only know beforehand exactly where the enemy was, one's plans would be easy to carry out!_"

Indeed, the dispositions of Moltke were made with baffling secrecy. Even as the Heathen Chinee accommodated card-packs innumerable in his ample sleeves, so the Warlock hid the twelve Army Corps of the North German Confederation, with the Prussian Guard Corps, the Bavarian Field Army and the Württemberg and Baden Divisions, in the skirts of his military cloak.... When the moment came, the aged conjuror twitched open the garment and showed them: Steinmetz with the First Army at Treves, Prince Frederick Charles with the Second at Mayence, the Crown Prince with the Third at Landau.

When the Three Armies rolled on, the art of the strategist covered their movements with a baffling veil of cavalry. That immense, well-organized and highly mobilized arm was thrown well forward before the Germans crossed the frontier: at their first entry into France they came in contact with French troops. A day's march ahead of the Army Corps' advanced-guards, Divisions of Uhlans, Dragoons and Hussars--(in a little all were "Uhlans" to the terrified French peasants)--provided for the security of the huge infantry bivouacs behind them; made requisitions for provisions, fuel, and forage; rendered railways and telegraphs useless--scouted for the enemy's positions--took prisoner or shot dispatch-bearers and patrol-riders--harassed marches, and boldly fired into camps. Many fell in forays, or skirmishes, many were those accounted for by the long-range hitting chassepot, which was heartily detested by Prussia's mounted men.

"If I had not been called to Metz to attend an Imperial War-Council," Marshal MacMahon is reported to have said bitterly, when the news of the defeat of Wissembourg reached him, "this blow upon the south would not have fallen. My Second Division would still be left to guard the opening between the Vosges and the Rhine."

The thunder of the guns of Worth add their comment upon that utterance.

Over the head of the town, lying at the bottom of a fertile valley patched with hop-gardens and vineyards, and threaded by a river, was waged between the Marshal with 50,000 troops, the pick and flower of the French Army, and "Unser Fritz" with twice the number of men, a desperate and bloody fight.

The French on the bluffy wooded cliffs that are the foothills of the Vosges, occupied, as strategists have declared, an almost unassailable position. But the fire of the mitrailleuses was hampered by the artillery of the 2d Bavarians under Hartmann, that seasoned veteran, who had fought at Waterloo in 1815 and now led an Army Corps against France in his seventy-sixth year. Thus the Prussian infantry crossed the Sauerbach on bridges improvised of planks and hop poles; and though the chassepot proved an infinitely deadlier weapon than the needle-gun, the generalship of Von Kirchbach and Von der Tann,--in command of the Prussian 4th Division and 5th Corps, backed by a division of the 11th Corps,--forced MacMahon's hand.

Outnumbered, outflanked and disorganized, with the loss of 9,000 men killed, 5,000 taken prisoners, twenty pieces of artillery, six mitrailleuses, and two eagles, the Marshal fled by the way of Zabern, under cover of night, trailing after him the beaten remnant of the Army of Strasbourg.

The Third Army of Germany had lost 489 officers and 10,153 rank and file. Before night of the 7th the dead were buried in great trenches, the columns of the Society of the Red Cross, the Sisters of Mercy and Lutheran Deaconesses, with surgeons, volunteers, and Army ambulance-bearers, had cleared the wounded from the field.

"Ah! if we had only had this sort of thing at the Alma and at Inkerman!" a grizzled Zouave sapper growled to one of the ladies of the Red Cross. "I was wounded there--sacred name of a pipe! My belt-buckle was carried by a shell-splinter through my ceinture into my stomach. This very buckle, look you, that I wear to-day!" He added, rubbing the locality of the previous casualty: "There is nothing inside there now, because of late they have not fed us, or our chassepots. How the devil can men kill Prussians without soup in their bellies or cartridges in their guns?"

The Zouave spoke truth. It was a half-equipped and under-rationed army that had made such a splendid show at Froeschwiller. It was a starving, demoralized remnant that surged and weltered through the passes of the Vosges at MacMahon's flying heels. Cavalry on foot, Zouaves riding Artillery-horses, mitrailleuse corps without mitrailleuses, baggage-wagons crowded with men of a dozen different regiments, went clanking and jolting over the roads that were littered with discarded chassepots, bearing witness to the pitiable, ghastly disorder of the retreat.

The hour of their defeat had seen Frossard's Army Corps holding with Forton's Cavalry Brigade the heights over Saarbrück, simultaneously attacked by the 7th and 8th Corps of Unser Fritz's terrible army, and driven back in confusion and with slaughter, toward Metz.

XXXIX

The huge peacock-bubble of the Third Empire was pricked and leaking in good earnest. Thenceforward it was to shrink, and pale, and dwindle to its inglorious end.

The Emperor must have known its days were numbered, when those wires of the 6th reached him. On the 7th the news of Wörth electrified Paris. Can you hear Jules Ferry joyfully exclaiming to the father of Paul Déroulède, "The armies of the Third Napoleon are annihilated! At last there dawns a day of hope for France!" But fierce, triumphant voices like these were drowned in the muffled sobs of mothers, the moans of wives made widows, and the wailing of children now fatherless. Later, and as though to enhance the bitterness of defeat, lying telegrams were published in Paris, announcing that the Duke of Magenta had retaken Wissembourg, captured sixty guns, and made 25,000 prisoners. Chief among these unlucky ones figured the Prussian Crown Prince, who in an access of despair had shot himself....

For some hours the streets and boulevards were packed with rejoicing multitudes. Cries of "_Vive l'Empereur_," scarce at this era as snowflakes in summer, were suddenly heard again. Flags and Chinese lanterns were displayed from every window, the people stopped the hansom-cab in which the famous Opera tenor Capoul was being driven along the Place de la Bourse, and, hoisting their idol to the top of a stationary omnibus, compelled him to chant the "_Marseillaise_."

When the Emperor's sorrowful dispatches of the 7th revealed the cruel truth, and proclamations signed by the Empress and the Ministers made it public, rapture gave place to frenzy of the wildest. Troops of cuirassiers and mounted Gardes de Paris,--bands of National Guards,--companies of the Line, and Marines were employed to clear the Rue de la Paix, and the Places de l'Opéra and Vendôme, of rioters.

The Chambers assembled amid tumult indescribable. Ministers were insulted on their way to attend the deliberations. "_À la Frontière!_" cried the huge crowd, thronging the quay before the Palace of the Corps Législatif. "_Vive Rochefort!_" "_À bas les Ministres!_" "_Chassepôts!_"

Their reiterated demands for arms could be heard within the Chamber. Where, when M. Schneider mounted the tribune to read the Imperial Decree of Convocation, the opening formula: "Napoleon, by the Grace of God and the national will, Emperor of the French," was vigorously howled down. Ollivier, the unpopular Head of the Imperial Cabinet, who had egged on the war, fared no better. Later, the fall of his Ministry was greeted with salvo upon salvo of enthusiastic applause, and when the news was published all Paris went mad once more with joy.

While the moment of supreme collapse of the great peacock bubble was coming nearer, the Crown Prince of Prussia was hunting MacMahon through the defiles of the Vosges, his flying cavalry snapping up scores of wounded or footsore stragglers, his advance batteries of light artillery harassing the bleeding flanks of the fugitive. The Second and First Armies were moving Metzward, the Warlock having knowledge that the Emperor's main Army, the Imperial Guard, and Bazaine's, Ladmirault's and Frossard's Corps, with part of Canrobert's, were concentrating there.

The Great Bubble was sagging pitifully. The weather was wet and chilly, the Imperial troops not yet in action were disheartened by the news of battles lost. Their equipment was incomplete, their new boots had proved to be of no better material than brown paper and American cloth. Worst of all, the Commissariat, always inadequate, showed signs of caving in. And the blame for all was heaped upon the shoulders of the Emperor, whose faith in his fortunate star had quite deserted him; a man tormented by telegrams of wifely censure and wifely advice from Paris; disgruntled, if ever man was; haunted and oppressed by premonitions of impending disaster; sleepless, shaky, sick, and prematurely old.

The taking of the fortresses of Bitche and Phalsbourg--memorable by reason of its brave Governor's resolute defense--the seizure of the undefended City of Nancy, the Zorn Valley railway line, Forbach with its immense military stores, Sarreguemines, and other garrison towns were lesser shocks, falling on a mind already paralyzed. Hasty decisions, contradictory orders, had emanated, one after another, from the Headquarters. He was confused and flurried, finding his good brother of Prussia so near. For the Warlock, scenting a movement of French troops to the rear, had crowned the uplands eastward of Metz with the 1st and 7th Corps of the First Army of Germany under the veteran General Steinmetz, cavalry well to the fore and outposts skillfully posted, so as to look into the French position from all points of view, while the Red Prince felt for a solid footing for his Second Army on the left or French bank of the Moselle. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince, whose clutches Marshal MacMahon had evaded by taking a vast circuit to Châlons, had swept round and was marching northward from Vigneulles toward Metz.

Ah! in what a hornet's nest the Imperial Commander-in-Chief found himself. Almost incapable of mental effort, he recognized, like Mr. Wilkins Micawber,--whose epistolary style is occasionally suggested by his Proclamations and harangues,--that something had to be done at once. To shake off the intolerable burden of authority was the most urgent necessity. He transferred it to the youngest of his Marshals, Bazaine.

"You will get us out of this, won't you, Marshal?" cried an officer of the Imperial Staff, as the new Commander-in-Chief came out of the Prefecture.

The Marshal had left his Imperial master in bed, expecting answers to letters he had penned to the Emperor of Austria and the King of Italy, soliciting aid and alliance, which these potentates did not bestow. True to himself, he could not quit Metz without a proclamation, penned in the old flourishing, ambiguous style:

"Inhabitants of Metz. In leaving you to oppose the invading enemy, I rely upon your patriotism to defend this great city. You will not allow the foreigner to seize this bulwark of France, and you will emulate the Army in courage and devotion.... I hope to return in happier times to thank you for your noble conduct."

Then he quitted the place with his son, his cousin and his personal following and escort. As his _cortège_ clattered through the streets choked with soldiers, guns, provision-carts and baggage-wagons, and faces of contempt, or derision, or hatred turned to see, did he hide his sick, humiliated face behind the green silk screen of the carriage window? How did he answer the inevitable questions of his son?

A prey to hideous uncertainties, for the new Commander-in-Chief had suddenly applied to be superseded, the luckless Emperor spent the night at the camp at Longeville, waking upon a foggy morning--if he could be said to sleep, who never slept--to a brisk salute of Prussian guns. For a patrol of Uhlans with a half battery had made, during the night, a bold attempt to seize upon the Imperial person, and being foiled within an ace of success, had retreated, plumping a shell or so into the lines from the German side of the river. And while these hornets were being repulsed with heavy metal, the muddy, travel-stained Army of the Red Prince crossed the river lower down; the little episode described having diverted attention from their transit; effected, even as in a jam of batteries, battalions, squadrons, baggage and ammunition-trains, the French retreat was being made.

So choked were the roads that the Emperor and his suite with the Imperial Guard Escort only managed to struggle as far as Gravelotte, a village some eight miles from Metz, where Bazaine had his headquarters:

"Gentlemen, we will remain here, but keep the baggage packed!" had been the Emperor's instructions to his following upon alighting at the inn, where two miserable bedrooms were with difficulty obtained for himself and his son. Prince Napoleon and the other personages of the suite found harborage at various cottages; the lackeys slept in the baggage-fourgons, it may be hazarded. For in the morning these vehicles and their attendants were found to have disappeared. They had departed for Verdun, whither their master was now to follow them. Bazaine, who could not shuffle off his now detested responsibilities, was summoned, to find the Imperial carriage standing in readiness before the tavern door.

XL

One can see the splendid bays, clamping their bits of solid silver, their sleek skins and their costly harness glittering in the sunshine that had driven the early morning fogs away, the postilions and outriders in their green and gold liveries sitting in the saddle, the landaus of the suite drawn up at the distance prescribed by etiquette.

Everybody was breakfastless, save the Emperor, his son, and cousin, and their immediate following. The regiment of Chasseurs d'Afrique, the gorgeous Cent Gardes in gold-crested, crimson-tufted, silver helmets with flowing white horsetails and caped cloaks of azure, were empty of all but air, like their own famous kettledrums. Their horses had cropped a little grass in the fields during the night's bivouac, and were better off than their riders, by one meal.

The young Prince Imperial looked sulky and discontented, but neat and soldierlike in his new uniform of a subaltern of infantry. Prince Jerome Napoleon, the portly M. Plon-Plon of the Crimean War caricatures, wore a cocked hat pulled down hard over his eyes, and was buttoned up in a military cloak.

The Emperor had suffered in the night, for a traveler who had slept in an attic above his bedroom had heard him pacing to and fro and groaning. He wore a black-caped, red-lined waterproof cloak over the uniform of a General of Division; a glimpse of the Star of the Legion of Honor fastened on his breast showed as he raised his hand to throw away the butt of the inseparable cigarette, and set his neat little polished gold-spurred boot on the carriage-step, and beckoned with a small white-kid-gloved hand.

Obeying this signal, a green-and-gold equerry and a demure elderly valet hoisted him respectfully on one side, while a keen-eyed, lean-jawed young man, accurately attired in deep black, propped him scientifically upon the other. We know this deft and silent personage to have been a brilliant young Paris surgeon, retained about the person of the Emperor; a specialist whose ministrations, in dulling unbearable pain with subcutaneous injections of morphia, and combating the progress of disease by skilled surgical treatment, became more necessary every day.

They got him in. The sweat was starting through the rouge upon his livid face as he sank heavily upon the seat of the carriage. His son and cousin followed. Bazaine,--who was accompanied by Canrobert and Bourbaki, and did not dismount, rode up to receive his master's farewells.

He did not entreat again to be relieved of the supreme responsibility. Perhaps the Emperor imagined that he might. For he put out his hand in haste and shook the Marshal's, reiterating:

"All will go well! Excellently, I have no doubt of it! You understand, you have broken the spell."

Of ill-luck, did he mean, clinging to the fatalist whose Star was on the point of setting. He added:

"I go to Verdun and Châlons. Put yourself upon the road for Châlons as soon as possible.... May you be fortunate! _Au revoir! En avant!_"

The brigadier-general in charge of the escort gave the word. The Advance was sounded, the Chasseurs on their gray Arabs dashed onward, riding in fours, keeping a sharp lookout for Uhlans. A half-troop of Cent Gardes preceded the Emperor's carriage, his equerries and aides and those of the Prince's household followed on their empty, chafing beasts. Another _peloton_ of Cent Gardes were succeeded by three Imperial carriages containing the surgeon, secretaries and valets; grooms followed with led horses; and the Empress's regiment of Dragoons, brass-helmeted, black-plumed warriors, in green with white plastrons, brought up the rear.

It was four o'clock in the morning when they started. Deep defiles rather than roads, with wooded, precipitous banks, stretch between Metz and Gravelotte. By the time the Imperial _cortège_ had extricated itself from the stray columns and batteries choking these, and the cliffy banks had lowered to hedgerows, it was six o'clock and a gloriously sunny morning.

One may imagine, as the landscape broadened and smoothed like a human face relieved from carking anxiety, the young Prince Imperial turning in his seat, and looking back upon the scene he was unwillingly quitting, with a scowl of resentment and dissatisfaction that changed and aged his boyish face.

He saw the white tents of the huge camps of the Imperial Divisions snowing over a vast area of country on the French side of the river, and the clotting of cavalry and infantry in swarms upon the roads, where vast aggregations of baggage and provisions and ambulance wagons impeded their passage. He saw the Imperial Standard break out above the Tricolor on the flagstaff of the Fort of Plappeville, signifying that Bazaine had entered. He could see the artillery-batteries on the high ground at Rezerieulles, and he knew that others were posted behind the woods of Genivaux, and yet others near the quarries of Amanvilliers. The glitter of steel and the flutter of red and white lance-pennons told of the Light Cavalry outposts at St. Ruffine. And sinister moving specks upon the hill-crests beyond the river above St. Barbe--and others moving in the villages, with darker, bigger patches toward Sarrebourg, testified, like the gray-white drifts of powder-smoke that came down upon the northeast breeze, with the reduplicated rattle of musketry, the detonation of field-guns and the yapping of mitrailleuses--to the near, active presence of the ancient, racial foe.

_He_ was drawing nearer, always nearer, to the coveted key-city of the Two Rivers, seated within her ancient fortifications, guarding the northeast frontiers of France. _He_ wanted Metz, with her vast modern arsenal, her huge hospitals and military colleges, her fifteen bridges--(the railway-bridge had been blown up by Bazaine's engineers on the night before last, when the squadron of Uhlans, greatly daring, had made their way into the French lines, with the project of seizing upon the person of papa)--and her glorious Cathedral, whose vast gray bulk was now bathed in the misty golden sunshine of a perfect autumn day.

Soon, soon, those indomitable dark blue soldiers would be at grips with Frenchmen for the possession of Metz. Oh! not to be able to fire a shot, or strike a blow with her defenders, because of one's pitiable weakness and youth! Oh! to be perpetually guarded and protected and plucked from the very possibility of danger, because one happened to be Heir to the Imperial Throne.

Why had the Emperor resigned the supreme command of the Army? There had been reverses--does a Commander-in-Chief give up for that? True, he was not well, but the First Napoleon had fought battles and won them, in spite of cramps and colic. _He_ would never have driven away under the noses of King Wilhelm and Count Bismarck and the Prince Commanders. He would have called the nephew who could commit such an _impair_ as that a _godichon_. He would have said: "To the devil with you, who boast yourself of my blood! A Napoleon--and not a general! You might have proved yourself a fighter, at least!"

The soldiers regarded the Emperor's resignation as the Great Napoleon would have done. They had not cried "_Vive l'Empereur!_" when papa had driven out of Metz. Upon the contrary, they had maintained silence, scowling or sneering covertly. To-day, the meanest piou-piou had presumed to wink or grin. More, voices from the depths of company-columns had called out horrible insults; things that had made the son's teeth set and his fists clench with the passionate desire to thrash the offenders, yet had not twitched one muscle in the father's impassive face....

"Why do you look back so often, Louis? What are you thinking about?"

The Emperor's question brought the young head round. He muttered, twisting the gold knot of his little sword:

"I am looking at the Army, and at Metz--and at those Uhlan outposts. And I want to know why we are going away--just because the Prussians are coming? Why cannot we stay--and fight?"

The diplomatic, evasive answer came:

"Because for the present it is more prudent that we should withdraw ourselves."

The boy shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and his young face took on an expression of heavy obstinacy, bringing out, quite startlingly, a resemblance to the sire. He muttered:

"All very well.... But it isn't nice to--absquatulate!"