For three days (December 8 to 10) Chanzy contested the German advance at Villorceau, but on December 12 Blois had to be evacuated, and the army withdrew to the line of the Loir in the neighbourhood of Vendôme. Meantime, at the very moment when the fate of Orleans was being sealed, orders reached Jaurès at Le Mans to advance to the support of the Loire Army. I was lodging at an inn in the town, my means being too slender to enable me to patronize any of the big hotels on the Place des Halles, which, moreover, were crowded with officers, functionaries, and so forth. I had become acquainted with some of the officers of the Breton division under Gougeard, and on hearing that they were going to the front, I managed to obtain from Colonel Bernard, Gougeard's chief of staff, permission to accompany the column with one of the ambulance parties. Now and again during the advance I rode in one of the vans, but for the most part I marched with the men, this, moreover, being the preferable course, as the weather was extremely cold. Even had I possessed the means (and at most I had about £10 in my pocket), I could not have bought a horse at Le Mans. I was stoutly clad, having a very warm overcoat of grey Irish frieze, with good boots, and a pair of gaiters made for me by Nicholas, the Saint Malo bootmaker, younger brother (so he himself asserted) of Niccolini the tenor, sometime husband of Mme. Patti.
There were from 10,000 to 12,000 men in our force, which now ranked as the fourth division of the 21st army corps. Nearly all the men of both brigades were Breton Mobilisés, adjoined to whom, however, perhaps for the purpose of steadying them, were three or four very small detachments of former regiments of the line. There was also a small contingent of the French Foreign Legion, which had been brought from Algeria. Starting from Yvré l'Evêque towards, noon on December 4, we marched to Ardenay, where we spent the night. The weather was fine and dry, but intensely cold. On the 5th we camped on some hills near the town of Saint Calais, moved only a mile or two farther on the 6th—there being a delay in the receipt of certain orders—then, at seven o'clock on the 7th, started in the direction of Vendôme, marching for about twelve hours with only the briefest halts. We passed from the department of the Sarthe into that of Loir-et-Cher, going on until we reached a little place called Ville-aux-Cleros, where we spent the night under uncomfortable conditions, for it snowed. Early the following day we set out again, and, leaving Vendôme a couple of miles or so away on our right, we passed Fréteval and camped on the outskirts of the forest of Marchenoir.
The night proved bitterly cold, the temperature being some fourteen degrees (centigrade) below freezing-point. I slept huddled up in a van, but the men generally were under canvas, and there was very little straw for them to lie upon, in such wise that in the morning some of them actually found their garments frost-bound to the ground! Throughout the night of the 10th we heard guns booming in the distance. On the 11th, the 12th, and the 13th December we were continually marching, always going in the direction of the guns. We went from Ecoman to Morée, to Saint Hilaire-la-Gravelle, and thence to the Chateau de Rougemont near Fréteval, a spot famous as the scene of a victory gained by our Richard Coeur-de-Lion over Philip Augustus. The more or less distant artillery fire was incessant both by day and by night; but we were only supporting other divisions of the corps, and did not find ourselves actually engaged. On the 15th, however, there was very sharp fighting both at Fréteval and Morée, and on the morning of the 16th our Gatlings went forward to support the second division of our army corps, which was being hard pressed by the Germans.
All at once, however, orders for a general retreat arrived, Chanzy having at last decided to fall back on Le Mans. There was considerable confusion, but at last our men set out, taking a north-westerly direction. Fairly good order prevailed on the road, and the wiry little Bretons at least proved that their marching powers were unimpaired. We went on incessantly though slowly during the night, and did not make a real halt until about seven o'clock on the following morning, when, almost dead-beat, we reached a little town called Droué.
Jaurès, I should mention, had received the order to retreat at about four o'clock on the afternoon of December 16, and had speedily selected three different routes for the withdrawal of the 21st army corps. Our division, however, was the last to quit its positions, it being about eight o'clock at night when we set out. Thus our march lasted nine hours. The country was a succession of sinuous valleys and stiff slopes, and banks often overlooked the roads, which were edged with oaks and bushes. There were several streams, a few woods, and a good many little copses. Farms often lay close together, and now and again attempts were made to buy food and drink of the peasantry, who, upon hearing our approach, came at times with lights to their thresholds. But they were a close-fisted breed, and demanded exorbitant prices. Half a franc was the lowest charge for a piece of bread. Considering how bad the men's boots were, the marching was very good, but a number of men deserted under cover of the night. Generally speaking, though there was a slight skirmish at Cloyes and an engagement at Droué, as I shall presently relate, the retreat was not greatly hampered by the enemy. In point of fact, as the revelations of more recent years have shown, Moltke was more anxious about the forces of Bourbaki than about those of Chanzy, and both Prince Frederick Charles and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg had instructions to keep a strict watch on the movements of Bourbaki's corps. Nevertheless, some of the Grand Duke's troops—notably a body of cavalry—attempted to cut off our retreat. When, however, late on the 16th, some of our men came in contact with a detachment of the enemy near Cloyes, they momentarily checked its progress, and, as I have indicated, we succeeded in reaching Droué without loss.
That morning, the 17th, the weather was again very cold, a fog following the rain and sleet of the previous days. Somewhat later, however, snow began to fall. At Droué—a little place of about a thousand inhabitants, with a ruined castle and an ancient church—we breakfasted as best we could. About nine o'clock came marching orders, and an hour later, when a large number of our men were already on their way towards Saint Agil, our next halting-place, General Gougeard mounted and prepared to go off with his staff, immediately in advance of our rear-guard. At that precise moment, however, we were attacked by the Germans, whose presence near us we had not suspected.
It was, however, certainly known to some of the inhabitants of Droué, who, terrified by all that they had heard of the harshness shown by the Germans towards the localities where they encountered any resistance, shrank from informing either Gougeard or any of his officers that the enemy was at hand. The artillery with which our rear was to be protected was at this moment on the little square of Droué. It consisted of a mountain battery under Sub-Lieutenant Gouesse of the artillery, and three Gatlings under Sub-Lieutenant De la Forte of the navy, with naval lieutenant Rodellec du Porzic in chief command. Whilst it was being brought into position, Colonel Bernard, Gougeard's chief of staff, galloped off to stop the retreat of the other part of our column. The enemy's force consisted of detachments of cavalry, artillery, and Landwehr infantry. Before our little guns could be trained on them, the Landwehr men had already seized several outlying houses, barns, and sheds, whence they strove to pick off our gutiners. For a moment our Mobilisés hesitated to go forward, but Gougeard dashed amongst them, appealed to their courage, and then led them against the enemy.
Not more than three hundred yards separated the bulk of the contending forces, indeed there were some Germans in the houses less than two hundred yards away. Our men at last forced these fellows to decamp, killing and wounding several of them; whilst, thanks to Colonel Bernard's prompt intervention, a battalion of the 19th line regiment and two companies of the Foreign Legion, whose retreat was hastily stopped, threatened the enemy's right flank. A squadron of the Second Lancers under a young lieutenant also came to our help, dismounting and supporting Gougeard's Mobilises with the carbines they carried. Realizing that we were in force, the enemy ended by retreating, but not until there had been a good deal of fighting in and around the outlying houses of Droué.
Such, briefly, was the first action I ever witnessed. Like others, I was under fire for some time, being near the guns and helping to carry away the gunners whom the Germans shot from the windows of the houses in which they had installed themselves. We lost four or five artillerymen in that manner, including the chief officer, M. de Rodelleo du Porzic, whom a bullet struck in the chest. He passed away in a little café whither we carried him. He was, I believe, the last of his family, two of his brothers having previously been killed in action.
We lost four or five other officers in this same engagement, as well as a Breton chaplain of the Mobilisés. Our total losses were certainly larger than Gougeard subsequently stated in his official report, amounting in killed and wounded, I think, to from 120 to 150 men. Though the officers as a rule behaved extremely well—some of them, indeed, splendidly—there were a few lamentable instances of cowardice. By Gougeard's orders, four were placed under arrest and court-martialled at the end of the retreat. Of these, two were acquitted, whilst a third was shot, and a fourth sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a fortress. [From the formation of the "Army of Brittany" until the armistice the total number of executions was eleven. They included one officer (mentioned above) for cowardice in presence of the enemy; five men of the Foreign Legion for murdering peasants; one Franc-titeur for armed robbery, and four men (Line and Mobile Guards) for desertion in presence of the enemy. The number would have been larger had it been possible to identify and punish those who were most guilty in the stampede of La Tuilerie during the battle of Le Mans.]