"I forgot to tell you that several out of our battalion escaped from Phalsbourg before and after the muster-call of the prisoners: in the number was Jean Baptiste Werner. It is said that they have joined Garibaldi: I wish I was with them. The Germans tell us that if they can catch them they will shoot them down without pity; yes, but they won't let themselves be caught; especially Jean Baptiste; he is a soldier indeed! If we had but two hundred thousand of his sort, these Badeners would not be bothering us with their haricot-soup, and their cannons full of grape-shot.
"RASTADT, January 6, 1871."
From that moment my wife only thought of seeing Jacob again; she made up her bundle, put into her basket sundry provisions, and in a couple of days started for Rastadt.
I put no hindrance in her way, thinking she would have no rest until she had embraced our boy.
Grédel was quite easy, knowing that Jean Baptiste Werner was with Garibaldi. I even think she had had news from him; but she showed us none of his letters, and had again begun to talk about her marriage-portion, reminding me that her mother had had a hundred louis, and that she ought to have the same. She insisted upon knowing where our money was hidden, and I said to her, "Search; if you can find it, it is yours."
Girls who want to be married are so awfully selfish; if they can only have the man they want, house, family, native land, all is one to them. They are not all like that; but a good half. I was so annoyed with Grédel that I began to wish her Jean Baptiste would come back, that I might marry them and count out her money.
But more serious affairs were then attracting the eyes of all Alsace and France.
Gambetta had been blamed for having detached Bourbaki's army to our succor by raising the blockade of Belfort. It has been said that this movement enabled the combined forces of Prince Frederick Charles, and of Mecklenburg, to fall upon Chanzy and overwhelm him, and that our two central armies ought to have naturally supported each other. Possibly! I even believe that Gambetta committed a serious error in dividing our forces: but, it must be acknowledged, that if the winter had not been against us—if the cold had not, at that very crisis of our fate, redoubled in intensity, preventing Bourbaki from advancing with his guns and warlike stores with the rapidity necessary to prevent De Werder from fortifying his position and receiving reinforcements—Alsace would have been delivered, and we might even have attacked Germany itself by the Grand Duchy of Baden. Then how many men would have risen in a moment! Many times George and I, watching these movements, said to each other: "If they only get to Mutzig, we will go!"
Yes, in war everything cannot succeed; and when you have against you not only the enemy, but frost, ice, snow, bad roads; whilst the enemy have the railroads, which they had been stupidly allowed to take at the beginning of the campaign, and are receiving without fatigue or danger, troops, provisions, munitions of war, whatever they want; then if good plans don't turn out successful, it is not the last but the first comers who are to be blamed.
But for the heavy snows which blocked up the roads, Bourbaki would have surprised Werder. The Germans were expecting this, for all at once the requisitions began again. The Landwehr, this time from Metz, and commanded by officers in spectacles, began to pass through our villages; they were the last that we saw; they came from the farthest extremity of Prussia. I heard them say that they had been three days and three nights on the railway; and now they were continuing their road to Belfort by forced marches, because other troops from Paris were crowding the Lyons railway.