XLV
Bismarck said, lowering his binoculars:
"Lucky that war is so confoundedly expensive. Otherwise, one might get too fond of it!"
The King groaned:
"My Dragoons of the Guard!—my Uhlans, slaughtered in regiments! My infantry shattered—decimated—annihilated in Divisions. The bravest blood of France—poured out upon French soil like water.... Great God!—how shall I defend this carnage to the Queen?..."
The voice behind him said, ironically:
"My wife writes me ten pages every three days, urging upon me in Biblical language the necessity for complete extermination of everything French! Believe me, Sire, he who is guided by the advice of a woman follows, not a Jack, but a Jinny o' Lantern, that will inevitably lead him into a bog!"
The King winced under the gibe, yet he said, striking his clenched hand passionately upon his knee:
"And this shadow that we follow southward, this vision, of a Crown Imperial! What is it but an ignis fatuus that has plunged us to the neck in the morass of War? If the whole Army of United Germany sink down in the death-sleep, for what have we offered up the sacrifice?"
The answer came, prompt and authoritative:
"Your Majesty may leave that question to be answered by the sons of these men who lie dead about us, and the sons they shall in their time beget. If your Majesty's whole army must be sacrificed to insure German Unity, let it be so, in the name of Heaven!"
The King tugged again at his white side-whisker and muttered something about "sinful ambition." The hand that had wrenched the curb now offered sugar. The voice said, mellowed and softened to persuasive tenderness:
"I have served a great King. I aim to serve a great Emperor. If my ambition be sinful, it is at least not base!"
"Ah, Otto!" The King rose, and his hard, yellowish-hazel eyes were full of tears as they met the Minister's. "You have no argument so strong as your disinterestedness. For even your bitterest enemies have never questioned that!"
Something took place in the brain behind the great domed forehead hidden by the Cuirassier cap, the fierce, almost challenging stare sank beneath the old man's tearful look of love. The Man of Iron was asking himself: "Am I, then, so disinterested? ... If I am, why is it that these words have power to gall me so? Can it be that I have my price as well as others? I think myself repaid in Power for what other Ministers will only sell for gold."
The momentary embarrassment passed. He said, pointing to one of those long blue mounds of dead infantry:
"And who could see our soldiers advance under the fire of these French chassepots and the terrible mitrailleuses, and doubt that they have understood the greatness of the issue at stake. Excuse me a moment, Sire! ... What is it, Götzow?"
The aide-de-camp, in the full uniform of the Chancellor's own regiment of Cuirassiers, was white as his own coat. He gulped out:
"Excellency, I am charged by His Highness, Prince Augustus of Württemberg, Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian Guard Corps..."
The Chancellor's prominent blue eyes lightened so fiercely upon the speaker that he began to stammer and boggle in his speech:
"Terrible intelligence ... only just received by His Highness.... Yesterday Your Excellency's sons, Count Herbert and Count William, were in the general cavalry charge which took place at Mars la Tour..."
The great soldierly figure standing with the huge spurred boots apart, the hands leaning on the long steel-hilted sword, might have been cast in iron or carved in granite for all the emotion conveyed by look or gesture. The voice said stridently and harshly:
"The First Dragoons of the Guard were not involved in the struggle. Only the brigades of Von Barby, the 4th Westphalian Cuirassiers, the 10th Hussars, and the 16th Dragoons."
The ghastly aide faltered, perspiring freely:
"At the moment of General von Barby's charge, it has been unfortunately ascertained, a squadron of Prussian Guard Dragoons of the First Regiment—returning from a patrol, dashed into the mêlée..."
The Chancellor drew a sharp breath, but stirred not a finger. His fierce eyes, staring from dark pits that had suddenly been dug round them, paralyzed the wretched bearer of the tragic intelligence. He asked in a tone that appalled by its tranquillity:
"Have both my sons been killed?"
The aide-de-camp got out that it was feared so. He was thanked and charged with a polite message to the Prince. As he saluted and retired, lightened of his tidings of anguish, the Minister focused his binoculars with a steady hand upon that point toward the northward where the dark bulk of the fortress of St. Privat loomed on a hill-top covered with masses of troops and traversed by a straight white, poplar-bordered road, regularly trenched for musketry. He said in the same tone of composure, though his set face and the hand that held the glasses were wet as though with rain:
"St. Privat still resists. General Pape, with the Guard's cavalry and the Saxons, will find their work cut out for them in driving those French battalions out of the village below the hill."
He lowered and wiped the glasses with his handkerchief. The King said entreatingly, laying a hand upon his arm:
"Go, go! Find out the truth about your sons, Bismarck.... Leave not a stone unturned, in God's name!"
Even as the King spoke, German drums and trumpets sounded the charge; and there was a sudden shifting of masses of troops in the direction of St. Hubert. Then as a wave of dark blue men began to roll out from the deep woods that flanked the village of Gravelotte, so fierce a storm of cannon and mitrailleuse and chassepot began to beat about their heads that the unseasoned horses of the Princes of the suite kicked and plunged and the Minister said:
"It would be wise did your Majesty remove out of this neighborhood. These bon-bons thrown by Frossard's artillery are coming much too near."
"I will ride back—I will move out of the way," said the old man in great agitation. "But you, Bismarck!—you must go and see about your sons!"
He answered, and his great bloodshot eyes and sagging jowl were more than ever those of a mastiff:
"When I have seen your Majesty in a place of safety I will ask your permission to do so."
An orderly from Steinmetz, who now had his field headquarters at St. Hubert, arrived with an urgent entreaty that the King would at once retire.
The horses were brought. King William and Von Roon mounted. The Chancellor's mare had been sent to water; his orderly appeared with her as the King's party rode on. With a hasty word of reproof the Minister swung his great figure into the saddle, but the brawn and bone of his beast had not carried him clear of the threatened spot before a retreating wave of German foot and horsemen swept over it, followed by the thundering gallop of a retreating battery.
It was a sauve-qui peut, caused by the smashing fire from the French shrapnel and mitrailleuse batteries, and the practice of the French riflemen entrenched at the Moscow Farm. A general officer rode through the rout, laying about him with the flat of his drawn sword and swearing horribly, to judge by his bloodshot eyes, and purple countenance.
"Hares! Gottverdammt! hares!" he gasped breathlessly, finding himself face to face with a gigantic officer of Cuirassiers. "A thousand pardons, Excellency. I did not at once recognize you. Surely you will follow his Majesty to the rear?"
"Willingly," said the Chancellor, as a brace of French shells exploded, digging pits in the sandy ground over which the Headquarter Staff had passed. "Only, as shell does not fall twice in the same place, I am waiting to make sure." And, with a knee-touch, he put the brown mare into her stride.
There was a backward surge of disorganized infantry as the huge beast lifted herself over the yawning craters. But she passed through the press by the bore and thrust of her great shoulders, and the beast and the big man she carried were swallowed up in the roaring dusk.
Moltke, the bald-headed war-eagle, remained brooding his coign of observation upon the verge of the ridge south of Flavigny, his feathers drooping, his shoulders hunched, his sharp, hooked beak inclined toward his breast; his red eyes, burning with the battle-lust, staring fixedly from under the wide, hairless brows.
The sun sank in clouds of smoky gold and crimson over that country of copses, ravines, ruddy brown farmhouses, and white villages. Evening came down and dipped her wings in billows of salt-tasting gunpowder smoke, rose-tinged above and beneath by the reflection from the red sky and the red earth. The green Moselle was tinged with blood. Little rivers ran blood, streams and springs became blood. Wells were filled with blood, as in old time under the rod of the Lawgiver of Israel, and still the battle raged over hill and valley, common and highroad.
Flavigny village still smouldered, Malmaison was burning, houses and barns at Verneville were wrapped in roaring flames. Yet the gunners of the French batteries at Moscow, Point du Jour, La Folie, and the Quarries of Amanvilliers and Rezerieulles, continued to make practice of the deadliest; and still French cavalry charged the Teuton's dwindling infantry-squares.
Had not a comparatively fresh and vigorous Prussian Army Corps dropped in at the crucial moment success had hardly crowned the arms of United Germany. They had been marching every day since they quitted the Saar, those solid-thewed Pomeranians of the 2d Corps, but at Puxieux they had cooked and eaten, and now appeared like giants refreshed.
Not only Steinmetz rode at their head, with their commander Von Fransecky, but the Warlock in person directed their attack. Battalions that had retired in disorder reformed and rushed back to meet afresh the brunt of battle. Wherever the red eye glittered and the withered finger pointed, fresh swarms of fierce assailants were hurled against the dwindling hosts of France.
Down came the dark, and now St. Privat was burning; the village under the lee of the fort was burning—sending up great columns of livid smoke shot with licking tongues of flame. The day was over. But crackling lines of fire outlined the position of the rifle-trenches; the mitrailleuse batteries still spat death unwearyingly, as what remained of Bazaine's Army retired in comparative safety to the Fortress of St. Quentin under cover of that fiery screen.
There the shattered brigades and mutilated divisions clung like swarming wasps "with plenty of sting in them yet," said Moltke, "and the hive"—meaning the huge Fortress of Metz—"handy in their rear. But, on the whole," he added, "I am excellently well satisfied. My calculations have worked out correctly. Those Pomeranians of the Second Corps arrived just in time!"
And the veteran galloped joyously as a young trooper of twenty-five to cheer his King with the good news.
And can you see that other man, to whom Emperors and Kings and Ministers referred when they mentioned Prussia, who outwitted nations in policy and made wars at will, spurring the great brown mare wildly through the weltering darkness, with salt drops of mortal anguish coursing down his granite cheeks?
"Bazaine's right has been turned by the Saxons, the Guards have smashed his center, and the Pomeranians of the Second Corps have taken St. Privat and forced him to retreat, leaving Germany master of the field. Success has crowned beyond hope the arms of the Fatherland, but where are the sons who called me father? ... Is this Thy judgment upon one through whom so many fathers are sonless, O my offended God?"
Perhaps he groaned forth such words as these, as he bucketed the great brown mare through the perilous darkness, over roads bestrewn with helmets, swords, and cuirasses, knapsacks, talpacks, forage-caps, and schakos, needle-guns, and chassepots, and camp kettles, as well as the human débris of War. The flare of a lantern tied to and swinging from one of the great steel stirrups threw a treacherous and fitful light upon his road.
Follow him as he ranged from camp to camp, questioning, investigating.... It was black night and raining heavily when a gleam of hope dawned upon the man.
The cavalry piquet-officer who had given the clue beheld the great brute and her huge rider vanish in a cloud of their own steam. A furious clatter of hoofs came back out of the welter ing darkness, as the flaring lantern, gyrating like some captive fiend at the end of its tether, dwindled to a dancing will-o'-the-wisp and vanished, the officer exclaimed:
"Kreuzdonnerwetter! he must have a neck like other men. Yet he rides as though it were forged of tempered steel!"
"Who rides? ... What was that?" asked a brother officer, waking from a doze of exhaustion beside the hissing logs of the rain-beaten watch-fire. He got reply:
"Only the Pomeranian bear ranging in search of his lost cubs." He added: "I was able to tell him that he would find the eldest of them at the field-hospital of Mariaville, upon which he galloped away like mad."
"The field-hospital of Mariaville" proved to be a farmhouse on a hill-top near the battlefield of Mars la Tour. Candles stuck in the necks of empty wine-bottles revealed, through the open, unblinded windows, the figure of the surgeon in charge and those of his orderly-assistants passing to and fro.
"Have you a Bismarck here?"
The stentorian shout from the yard made wounded men turn upon their improvised pillows, and brought the head and shoulders of the bibbed and shirt-sleeved surgeon thrusting out of a window on the first floor. A colloquy ensued between the unseen and the medical officer. Presently the arbitrary voice interrupted:
"What do you call not seriously wounded, man? Describe the casualty clearly, without professional Latin, or too many crackjaw words."
The dressers winked to each other behind the back of the surgeon. He said, supporting himself with one hand against the crazy window-frame as he thrust his head and shoulders forth into the dripping darkness and gesticulated with a hand that held a probe:
"Excellency, your elder son has received three bullets. One lodged in the breast of his tunic, another hit his watch, and the third is at present in the upper part of his thigh. I was about to place the patient under chloroform when Your Excellency's call summoned me from his side."
The voice said, with a clang of anger in it:
"You should not have left him had it been the King who called. Go back to him instantly. I am coming up."
And he came striding in his great boots up the crazy one-flight stair. Ghastly faces of wounded soldiers turned upon their pillows of straw as that gigantic figure filled up the doorway. His shadow, thrown by the flaring tallow-candle flames, loomed portentously on the whitewashed walls. He wore no cloak or overcoat and dripped as though he had swum, not ridden, through water to his finding; the peak of his field-cap discharged quite a little deluge upon his son's white face as he stooped over the stretcher where the young man lay and touched his hand, and kissed him on the cheek.
"Never mind. Clean water does no hurt," he said, for he had drawn out his handkerchief to wipe the splash away, and finding it soiled with dust and powder-grime had returned it to his pocket.
The surgeon returned:
"I wish we had clean water—it would be above price. But all the springs are fouled with blood, and there are dead French in the courtyard-well."
"They must be got out and the well cleansed, if possible," said the Chancellor. "Meanwhile, a temporary supply must be found.... What nourishment have you, fit for wounded men?"
The surgeon responded, busy with a cotton-wool chloroform pad:
"Nothing, Excellency, except wine and a little Extract of Liebig."
The Chancellor said harshly:
"Yet this appears to be a farm-house, and I heard the clucking of fowls down below!"
The surgeon, who was a bullet-headed, obstinate East Prussian, and did not relish this sort of hectoring, returned, thrusting out a stubbly under-jaw:
"Excellency, there are certainly fowls in the farmyard. But they are not mine, nor have I money to buy. They belong to the unhappy wretch who owns this place, and has lost everything else."
And he gave back the stare of the fierce eyes that raked him. The Minister began to lisp, an ominous sign:
"Ah, indeed! ... May I—may I ask where you—where you gained your notions of the code of ethics that should prevail in warfare?"
Said the surgeon, fronting him fairly and squarely:
"Excellency, from my father, who was an honest man!"
Straw rustled under heads that slewed to look at the blunt speaker. There was a long instant's pause. Then the Chancellor thrust his hand into his breeches-pocket, pulled out a gold coin, and said, tendering it to the medical officer:
"Kindly pay this to the object of your pity for twenty fowls at a mark apiece. Now I will keep you no longer from your patient. Good night to everyone here."
"Good night, Excellency!" came in chorus.
He gave his brusque salute and had already reached the threshold, when his son, a colossal, black-haired, brown-skinned young trooper, who lay back upon his stretcher, staring sulkily at the smoke-blackened rafters, or contemplating the twitching bare toes of the leg that bore a tourniquet above the plugged and bandaged wound, started slightly, looked round, and called:
"Father!"
"What is it, my dear fellow?"
His great stride took him back to the prone young giant on the stretcher. Count Herbert said, barely removing his eyes from the ceiling, and speaking in a studiously indifferent tone:
"If you are upset about Bill, sir, there's no need to worry. His horse was shot under him, but he got hold of another. I saw him ride off all right with a wounded comrade behind him. That's all. Goodnight!"
The son nodded surlily and resumed his inspection of the ceiling. The sire, who had received the news in silence, went out at the door, stooping under the lintel, his great shoulders rasping the posts on either side. They heard his heavy footsteps pass down the crazy staircase. A curt sentence or two reached them, spoken as he went through the kitchen on his way to the door. Then he was in the yard, loudly calling for an orderly to bring a lantern. An instant, and three revolver-shots cracked in rapid succession, each followed by a significant cackling and squawking. The surgeon, now fitting the cotton-wool pad upon the wire mouthpiece and signing to his assistant to hand him the chloroform, clapped the pad upon the mouth and nostrils of young Bismarck, and said, with a dry chuckle as he poured the pungent anaesthetic upon the wool:
"His Excellency is having a little sport. All the same, without water, one cannot cleanse wounds or boil hen-broth."
Water arrived an hour later, two barrelsful upon a hand-cart drawn by terrified peasants, behind whom rode a trooper of Uhlans, accelerating their movements with prods of the lance. A general officer had sent the barrels for the use of the wounded at Mariaville. This service rendered to his son, he rode in search of his King.