The Man of Iron

by Richard Dehan

XXIX

Von Moltke, the ancient war-wizard, went home from the Council-Extraordinary to his private quarters at the offices of the Great General Staff. He dispatched the three-word telegram, and the vast machine began to work....

All had been ready for two years. Nothing was left to finish at the last moment. Not a speck of rust marred shaft or spindle or bearing, not a drop of oil was clogged in any slot.

Days back, the Heads of Departments had been recalled by a brief telegram from the Chief who knew how to be taciturn in seven languages. Now, while in Berlin, as in every other city and town of Prussia Proper and her Eleven Provinces, palaces, mansions, restaurants and cafés, beer-gardens and schnaps-cellars blazed with gas and resounded with the clinking of glasses, and people sat late into the grilling July night discussing and rediscussing that special supplement of the North German Gazette—which was being distributed gratuitously by hundreds of thousands,—predicting the next move of the Man of Iron, and the latest ruse of the Man of Paris,—consuming tons of sausage, caviar, pickled salmon, herrings in salad, and potted tunny, with strawberries and other fruits and sweet dishes, all washed down by floods of cooling beer, or iced Moselle and champagne—the numberless huge barracks and other military establishments displayed another kind of activity.

Here no outbursts of patriotic song and festivity checked the rapid, organized, methodical scurry of warlike preparation. Soldiers ran about like busy ants, purposeful and unblundering. Long trains of Army Service carts and wagons streamed in at divers lofty gates, to emerge at others after the briefest interval, heavily laden with Army stores, Army baggage, War material of all kinds. Night and day, huge Government factories and foundries dithered and roared, filling up newly made vacuums in those huge magazines and storehouses which must always be kept full. In the gloomy dominions of the Iron King, Herr Krupp, that stout-loined Teuton who begat great guns instead of tall sons, and had them godfathered by Prussian Royalty—what forests of tall chimneys belched forth smoke, canopying begrimed and prosperous Westphalian towns, populated by innumerable swarthy toilers in the gigantic iron and steel foundries! At Essen, where mountains of coal kiss the sooty skies, and heavy locomotives ceaselessly grind over networks of shining steel rails, dragging strings of trucks, containing yet more fuel for the ever-hungry furnaces,—within an impregnable rampart of solid masonry,—he dwelt in a Babylonian palace. The panting of innumerable steam-power engines, the banging, moaning, crashing, groaning, and grinding of forges, lathes, and planing-machines; cutting, shaping, boring, and polishing machines; with the beating of sixty-two steam-hammers, of all weights up to that of fifty tons, which cost £100,000 to manufacture, sounded like a cannon whenever it was used, and was kept working without pause, so as not to lose a fraction of the interest of the capital sunk in it—made his concert by day, and by night served for his serenade and lullaby. He made laws for the control of his grimy subjects, this Briareus of ten thousand hands—and enforced them by the aid of his own police and magistrates. With orders in course of execution for Turkey, China, Egypt, Russia, and Spain, he was yet able to deliver eighty cannon per week to the different artillery depots of his Fatherland. His steel, tempered by his secret process, the new ore being brought him from his Spanish mines by his own fleet of transports, surpassed even Bessemer's. Yet he was not a conceited or purse-proud man. By the chief entrance of the biggest of all his factories stood the little soot-blackened forge where forty years before young Krupp had labored with his father and a couple of workmen. Small wonder the powerful Iron King had honor from his over-lord.

Conceive next the well-ordered bustle at the headquarters of the different Army Corps, when the withered finger of the Warlock pressed upon the button, and the spark of electricity leaped along a thousand wires, carrying with it the vitalizing word.... Moltke's methods were then fire-new, and made the world sit up.

You might have seen the Reserve men of the Twelve Provinces—whose summons for assembly lay ready in the Landwehr office of every city, town, village, or hamlet—streaming in at the district depots, bringing each Line regiment up to war-strength (nearly double its numbers in time of peace). Mobilization was no foreign word to them, for once a year, after Schmidt, the field-laborer, had done getting in the harvest, and when Schultz, the bank-clerk, and Kunz, the chemist's assistant, had got their annual autumn holiday, Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were accustomed to perform a series of carefully rehearsed physical exercises ending in maneuvers, and a safe if inglorious return to the domestic hearth.

Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were only remarkable by their unlikeness to each other—Schmidt being the brown, uncouth, and unshaven husband of a stout wife and numerous tow-headed babes. Schultz was more recently married to a young lady remotely connected on the maternal side with a family possessing the right to inscribe the aristocratic prefix "von" before its surname. The couple lived frugally on Herr Schultz's salary of thirty pounds a year, somewhere upon the outskirts of the select quarter of the country town (some four miles distant from Schmidt's native village)—while Kunz, the graduate of a University, and author of a text-book of Analytical Chemistry, sold impartially to both, squills, rhubarb-tincture, and porous plasters over the counter of his employer's shop.

Served by the Burgomaster's clerk, or a wooden-faced orderly-corporal, with the compelling bit of paper, Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz, having taken farewell embraces of their nearest and dearest, would sling over their shoulders canvas wallets containing a lump of sausage, a shirt or so, a huge chunk of bread, white or black, with a bottle containing wine or schnaps, and stowing next their skins leather purses containing a few coins, and a parchment volume resembling the English soldier's "small book," would hasten by rail or road in the direction of their regimental rendezvous, toward which bourne the Reserve contingent of other towns, villages, and hamlets would also betake themselves, until the roads were blackened with their tramping bodies and the trains would be packed chock-full. Arrived at Headquarters, batch after batch,—subsequently to a brief but exhaustive medical overhauling—would be dispatched to the arsenal, where attaching themselves to a tremendous queue of other Schmidts, Schultzes, and Kunzes, they would mark time in double-file outside a vast, grim, barn-like structure, until the moment arrived for entering; when with well-accustomed quickness, each would find his way to a certain hook or group of hooks, surmounted with his regimental number, from which depended a certain familiar uniform, with accoutrements and weapons equally well known.

Picture innumerable alleys formed by these dangling uniforms, radiating away to the point of distance,—and suppose Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz equipped in something answering to the twinkling of a Teutonic eye.

In—supposing Schmidt, Schultz, or Kunz to belong to the Infantry—a pair of dark gray unmentionables, red-corded down the side-seams, and a pair of mid-leg-high boots, very roomy and strong. Inside the boots were no stockings, tallowed linen bands being bound about the legs and feet. A single-breasted tunic of dark blue cloth with red facings followed, and a flat forage-cap of blue cloth with a red band, or a glazed black leather helmet with a brazen Prussian eagle front-plate and a brass spike-top. With the addition of a zinc label, slung round the neck, and bearing a man's name, number, company, and regiment, an overcoat made into a sausage and tied together at the ends, a canvas haversack, glass leather-covered canteen, a pipeclayed waistbelt with two cartridge-boxes of black leather, and a knapsack of calf-skin tanned with the hair, stretched upon a wooden frame, and slung by two pipe-clayed straps hooked to the waistbelt in front and then passing over the shoulders. Two shorter straps, going under the armpits, would be fastened to the knapsack, which had a receptacle for a packet of twenty cartridges at either end of it. Within, suppose the usual soldier's kit, with spoon, knife, fork, comb, and shaving-glass; and on top imagine a galvanized iron pot, holding about three quarts, with a tight-fitting cover which became, at need, a frying-pan. Arm with a strong waistbelt-sword about fifteen inches long, an unburnished needle-gun heavily grease-coated, and Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz, having hung their civilian garments on the hooks that erst supported the martial panoply, tugged at a final buckle-strap, wheeled and passed out, transformed, by yet another door.

Always the three had known that an hour would come when these familiar exercises would not end with half-a-dozen exceedingly strenuous field-days, and a return,—on the part of Schmidt and Schultz,—to the arms of their respective wives. Schmidt, on whose breast shone the war-medal of '66, and who must now be addressed as "Herr Sergeant" by his social superiors, seemed not to mind at all, though he swore at his boots, quite unjustly, for pinching. But the bank-clerk's espousals were too recent, and his first experience of paternity too near at hand, for any display of hardihood, while Herr Kunz was but newly betrothed to the apothecary's daughter Mina, and could not forget how the tears had rolled out of her large blue eyes at the prospect of parting with her beloved Carl.

Therefore, although the mouths of the trio were, when not professionally shut, busily engaged in bellowing "Die Wacht am Rhein," "Ich bin ein Preusse," and other patriotic songs, or sending up deafening "Hochs" for the King, the Crown Prince, Prince Friedrich Karl, "Our Moltke," and another public personage recently very much elevated in the popular esteem,—the mental visions of at least two of them were occupied with prophetic visions in which blue-eyed sweethearts pined and faded away out of grief for absent betrotheds, and young wives wept over empty cradles until they too expired, with faltering messages of love for the husband so far distant on their dying lips....

"Sapperlot! What in thunder are you gaping at, you gimpel, you?" a rough, loud voice would shout, and a terrific thump from the hard and heavy hand of Sergeant Schmidt would visit the shoulders of Private Schultz, or Kunz. Who thus addressed would jerk out:

"Oh, nothing, nothing, Herr Sergeant, truly nothing at all!" and receive from their recently despised inferior the rude counsel to look alive and keep cheery:

"For this will be a war worth fighting in, mark you! The Man on the Seine has played the part of the Evil Neighbor too long. France and Prussia have got to come to clapperclaws—there's no help for it! The soup is cooked, so let us eat it. He is the luckiest who gets the spoon in first!"

You may suppose precisely similar scenes and dialogues occurring in the experience of Kraus, Klaus, and Klein, who, having served their time with the active Army and passed from the Reserve into the Landwehr, were now fetched out with the First Call, not only to replace the garrisons of Saxony, Prague, Pardubitz, and all the other fortified points on the lines of communication, but to guard and patrol those lines of road and railway over which the three marching armies were to receive supplies of food, ammunition, clothing, stores, and medicine; and maintain telegraphic communication with Berlin. Meanwhile Grein, Schwartz, and Braun, men of riper years, stiffer joints, and older experiences, remained at home; waiting the hour when, Death having thinned the ranks of the fighters in the forefront of the battle, the Second Call should sound. When these hardy veteran battalions, formed into divisions of the same numerical strength as those of the regular Army, would roll over the frontiers, to fill up the bloody gaps left by the scythe of the Red Mower, and play their part in the vast, chaotic, multi-tableauxed drama of War.

Prussia contributed some 652,294 actors of small parts to the said drama, not counting the leading men, stars of the war-theater, who supported the heavier roles. And Bavaria, Würtemburg, and Baden contributed their contingents, bringing up the strength of the cast to 780,923 performers. The equine actors numbered 213,159.

The vast machine worked wonderfully. It is interesting to know that the German Staff maps of France showed recently made roads which in July, 1870, had not been marked upon any map issued by the Imperial War Office at Paris, and that within three days from that three-word signal-wire of Moltke's, military trains full of men, guns, horses, ammunition, and proviant, began to run at the rate of forty per day, from north, east, and south, toward the narrow frontier between Strasbourg and Luxembourg.

"For God and Fatherland!" and "Watch well the Rhine!" said the miniature banners carried by thousands of people. You could see them fluttering from crowded roofs and packed windows, and variegating the sidewalks of thoroughfares below, as regiment after regiment marched to the station, in shining rivers of pickelhaubes and bayonets, or Dragoon helmets, Hussar busbies, and Uhlan schapkas, flowing between upheaped banks of waving women and cheering men.

Speedily, in response to communications addressed by the Crown Prince to the South German sovereigns, notifying these potentates of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of their armies, came replies expressing satisfaction of different shades and qualities. The Grand Duke of Baden's bubbled with joy, and expressed the determination of his troops to gain their Royal Commander's confidence by fidelity and bravery. The King of Würtemburg rejoiced likewise, but in cooler terms, "in our German affair" being brought to a head at last; and was anxious to have the opportunity of saluting the heir of Prussia. The King of Bavaria telegraphed "Very happy. Many thanks your Royal Highness's attention!" A message which conveyed no more warmth than was felt.

His telegram of martial support, addressed at the outset of affairs to Onkel Wilhelm, had seemed quite genuine. Had not Count Bismarck quite a sheaf of documents, more or less compelling, signed in the youthful monarch's scrawling hand? King Ludwig had ordered immediate mobilization of the dark green and light blue uniforms—expended millions of gulden in variegated lamps, public fountains of white beer and red wine, bands, Royal Command Opera performances, patriotic set-pieces in fireworks (representing the tutelary genii of Prussia and Bavaria, cuirassed and armed, upholding the standards of black-and-white and blue-and-white), joined in the "Wacht am Rhein" as though he liked the tune (which he abhorred), and certainly enjoyed the tumultuous plaudits with which his subjects greeted their monarch's first and last appearance in the character of a man of action.

But instead of riding away at the head of the South German Army, Nephew Ludwig sent an excuse to Onkel Wilhelm—one has heard a gumboil named as occasion of the disability—and Cousin Fritz was dispatched to take over chief command.

Prince Luitpold of Bavaria accompanied the First Army Headquarter Staff. Alas, the appointment but served to inflame the gumboil of the jealous King,—the accounts that were daily to reach him of the prowess of his martial cousin of Prussia worked like poison in his blood. He drew the hood of his mantle of dreams more closely over his head to shut out those fanfares of triumph, those "Hochs!" and cheerings, and plunged more deeply into the solitudes of his forests and mountain-caves. Blood and iron were his bugbears, and yet they might have been his tonics too. They might have staved off the black hound of Destiny, already baying at his heels, and saved him from vicious decadence, ultimate madness, and a strange and sordid end.

And yet, how did his chivalrous cousin die, at the meridian of robust manhood, under the newly imposed weight of an Imperial Crown? Not the swift, soldierly death that is given by the bullet of a chassepot—the projectile from a mitrailleuse—the flying fragment of an exploding shrapnel-shell—but a straw-death, a bed-death such as angry seers and cursing Valkyrs of Scandinavian legend foretold as the speedy punishment of warriors who had broken faith and tarnished by false oaths the brightness of their honor.

But no shadow of the grim fate that was to befall him darkened those brave blue eyes at this period. Laboring night and day at the mobilization of his Third Army, in concert with his Chief of Staff, Von Blumenthal, he was buoyantly happy, despite his hatred of the shedding of blood and his undisguised compassion for the conjectured plight of the Man on the Seine.

With whom Britannia at first expressed a sympathy not at all restrained or guarded, and for the success of whose arms she was openly eager, until, toward the close of this momentous month of July, 1870, the text of a brief but pithy diplomatic document, penned in precise and elegant French, and dated a few years previously—made its appearance in the columns of the Times.

The movements of the opposing forces camped on the banks of the Meuse and the Saar lost interest for the public eye in perusal of this rough memorandum of a proposed treaty between the Third Napoleon and the King of Prussia, scrawled in Count Benedetti's flowing Italian hand.

Since the spring of '67 it had been hidden away in a snug corner of Bismarck's dispatch-box, waiting to jump out. You recall the terms of the thing—one of many overt attempts to seize a coveted prize. The Empire of France was to recognize the acquisitions made by Prussia in the war of 1866 with Austria. Prussia was to aid Napoleon III. to buy from Holland the debatable Duchy of Luxembourg. The Emperor was to shed the luster of his smile and the ægis of his approval upon Federal Union between the North German Parliament and the South German States—the separate sovereignty of each State remaining. In return, Prussia was to abet the Bonaparte in the military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kingdom of Belgium. And in furtherance of these laudable ends, an alliance, offensive and defensive, against any Power, insular or otherwise, was to be compact between the great gilt eagle of the Third Empire and the black-plumaged bird across the frontier.

Britons, with inconveniently good memories, perusing this draft, recalled the existence of a treaty existing between France, England, and Prussia, mutually binding these Powers to protect the neutrality of Belgium, and drew reflections damaging to the betrayer and the betrayed. French diplomatists asserted that the project had been drawn up by Benedetti at Bismarck's dictation. Why preserve so explosive a document, they argued, if it was never to be drawn out and supplied with detonators in the shape of signatures? Later on M. Rouher's boxes of official papers, found at his château of Cercay, gave up the original draft-treaty annotated in the Emperor's handwriting.

For it was his nature, may God pardon him! to be false and specious, ungrateful and an oath-breaker. He must always repay great services with great wrongs. Thus in the red year 1870, England, who in '54 had poured out blood and treasure lavishly to aid him, receiving this plain proof of treachery, stood sorrowfully back and saw him rush upon his fate. Sick and desperate, madly hurling his magnificent Army hither and thither upon the arena, a Generalissimo out-generaled before the War was a week old.

He had made France his mistress and his slave, and now her fetters were to be hacked apart by the merciless sword of the invader. Through losses, privations, and humiliations; through an ordeal of suffering unparalleled in the world's history; through an orgy of vice and an era of infidelity; through fresh oceans of blood shed from the veins of her bravest; she was to pass before she found herself and GOD again.

Meanwhile, North, East, South and West, prevailed a great swarming scurry of military preparation, the tunes of the "Wacht am Rhein" and "Heil dir im Siegeskranz" clashing with "Partant pour la Syrie" and the "Marseillaise"; and the solemn strains of masses rising up together with Lutheran litanies, as two great nations strove to convince Divine Omnipotence that Codlin deserved to whip, and not Short.

Strange! that Christian men, who frankly confess themselves to be sinners, worms, and dust-grains before the supreme Majesty of the Creator, should be so prone to offer Him advice.