All Saints' Day was nearly as quiet as the preceding forty-eight hours. We re-established our trenches, and the Admiral reorganised his regiments and transferred his headquarters to Oudecappelle. In his journal Alfred de Nanteuil, who had been with our second line from the day before, notices the truce from marmites, if not from shrapnel and bullets, "singing past a little like summer flies." But farms were blazing all round the vast horizon, lighting up the November night and accentuating the fact that, although the enemy's attentions had changed in form, they had put on no amenity. "One of my men," says De Nanteuil, "found the severed hand of a small child in a German's knapsack...." And at Eessen, where the vicaire was a young priest of twenty-eight, the Abbé Deman, his murderers amused themselves by forcing him to dig his own grave before they shot him in the graveyard of his own church.[59]

A day later the temporary inertia of the enemy was explained. A few marmites on our trenches and on the farms occupied by our supply services were not enough to deceive us. We had been aware for several days of a continuous growling in the south-west, on the Ypres road. The enemy had transferred a part of his forces towards Mercken, where he was seeking contact with our Territorials and with the British troops. It seemed a good opportunity to break the iron girdle which held us and to afford some relief to our positions. The moral of our men had never been better. Rumours of a general offensive were current in the brigade, and nothing stimulates the French soldier more than the hope of an advance. On November 3 French aeroplanes passed over Dixmude, towards the German lines, and a balloon was hanging in the sky towards the west.

"Happy omen!" wrote De Nanteuil. "We have been without such encouragements all through the long defence.... Now my spirits rise. Everything points to an advance. The marmites have disappeared, for which no one is sorry. I have been in the first line since last night. The sun is shining; the lark is singing; the mud is drying. We are fearful to behold. Relieved by the Belgians in the night, I have to find and guide those who have to take the place of my company. On my way back, worn out, I stop a barrel of Belgian soup and have a delicious pull at it. My battalion is in reserve since last night. Passed the night in a barn, men in the trench. To-day it has been a case of 'packs on' ever since the morning."

"Where are we off to?" said this intrepid officer to himself. "Perhaps," he thought, "nowhere! Anyway, the guns are raging, and this time it is our own beloved guns, which we have awaited so impatiently. I cannot hear the others; I think it is all right."

Alfred de Nanteuil was not mistaken. This time it was our 75's which led the dance. The General had decided that an attack should debouch from the town "supported by a powerful mass of artillery and having for main objective the Château on the road to Woumen, about a kilometre from Dixmude." The attack was to be made by four battalions of infantry of the 42nd Division, a Marine battalion under Commandant de Jonquières acting as support, and the rest of the brigade as reserve. The whole was under the command of General Grossetti—Grossetti the invulnerable, as he had been called ever since his splendid defence of Pervyse, where he faced the shells sitting on a camp-stool.

The attack began about eight o'clock by an energetic clearing of the whole position. There was, perhaps, some little hesitation in the movements which followed. The fact is that by not moving off until half-past eleven in the morning our infantry lost much of the advantage given by the artillery preparation. The enemy had had time to pull himself together. The eighth battalion of Chasseurs could not debouch from the cemetery by the Woumen road until supported by the De Jonquières battalion. Then it was checked at the end of 200 metres. At the same time the 151st Infantry had made good a similar advance on the Eessen road. That was the total gain of the day. We renewed the offensive at 3 next morning, but with no more success than the day before. The attack always lacked "go." We scarcely advanced at all, well supported as we were by our 75's, which once more showed their superiority over the German artillery. The General now determined to reinforce the attack with the whole 42nd Division and two fresh battalions of Marines. A day was taken up by preparations for the passage of the Yser, a kilometre below Dixmude. For this purpose two flying bridges were brought down from the town. There was a thick fog, the best sort of weather for such an operation. One of the Marine battalions was directed to attack on a line parallel to the Yser. The remaining two, crossing higher up, were to make straight for the Château, while the 8th Chasseurs were to prolong the attack to the north. Fifty guns concentrated their fire on the buildings and the ground immediately about them. But this enchanted castle, with its fougasses, its deep trenches, its lines of barbed wire, its loopholed walls, its machine-guns on every storey, and its flanking fire, gave out a sort of repelling electricity which had the effect, if not of destroying the élan of our troops, at least of curiously blunting it. The ground, seamed with watercourses, was unfavourable, and trouble brooded in the fog. In short, when night fell we were still a quarter of a mile from the Château; we had not even reached the park. On the Eessen side we had made no progress. Finally, the Belgians near Beerst, who were defending the north front of Dixmude, sent word that they were no longer enough to man the trenches, and the Admiral had to send to their help two companies of the De Kerros battalion from the first reserve. This unwelcome necessity was made up for by the arrival of two long 120-mm. pieces, which were at once put in battery south of the level crossing at Caeskerke.

However, the night of November 5 was quiet all round Dixmude; but at dawn the attack was renewed. This time we had good reason to hope for success. Rising from the provisional trenches, our battalions moved simultaneously in echelon across the plain. The charge sounded, shouts of "Vive la France!" broke out, and, in spite of terrible machine-gun and rifle fire, the farm and the park were carried with a rush. Our men were at the foot of the Château. But there the rush was stopped. Contrary to report, the Château was not taken. The internal defences had been organised in the most formidable way, perhaps even before the war began. The enemy left in our hands some hundred prisoners, who had been barricaded in the pavilion at the main gate.[60] At nightfall the order was given to retire. The De Jonquières battalion returned to its billets. The 42nd Division went off in another direction,[61] and the brigade was again left alone at Dixmude with a handful of Senegalese and the Belgians.[62]

(Newspaper Illustrations)
THE "KIEKENSTRAAT" (CHICKEN STREET) AFTER THE FIRST DAYS OF THE BOMBARDMENT

"We don't budge," writes De Nanteuil on November 6. "Our reinforcements are being sent back. Visited the church and Hôtel de Ville of Dixmude. Frightful! They are nothing but shapeless ruins. There is not a whole house left. Certain quarters are destroyed down to their very foundations; they are nothing but heaps of stone and bricks.... Messina is in better case than this unhappy town."