The King, too, remained at a hamlet on the field. Only I and my two officers had to journey some twenty-four miles back to Gitschin, where the bureaux were.
We had set out thence at four in the morning, and had been fourteen hours in the saddle. In the hurry of departure no one had thought of providing himself with food. An Uhlan of the 2nd Regiment had bestowed on me a slice of sausage, bread he had none himself. On our way back we met the endless train of provision and ammunition waggons, often extending all across the road. We did not reach our quarters till midnight. There was nothing to eat even here at this hour, but I was so exhausted that I threw myself on my bed in great-coat and sash, and fell asleep instantly. Next morning new orders had to be prepared and laid before his Majesty at Horitz.
The Great King[87] had needed to struggle for seven years to reduce the might of Austria, which his more fortunate and also more powerful grandson[88] had achieved in as many weeks. The campaign had proved decisive in the first eight days from June 27th to July 3rd.
The war of 1866 was entered on not as a defensive measure to meet a threat against the existence of Prussia, nor in obedience to public opinion and the voice of the people: it was a struggle, long foreseen and calmly prepared for, recognized as a necessity by the Cabinet, not for territorial aggrandizement or material advantage, but for an ideal end—the establishment of power. Not a foot of land was exacted from defeated Austria, but she had to renounce all part in the hegemony of Germany.
The Princes of the Reich had themselves to blame that the old Empire had now for centuries allowed domestic politics to override German national politics. Austria had exhausted her strength in conquests south of the Alps while she left the western German provinces unprotected, instead of following the road pointed out by the course of the Danube. Her centre of gravity lay outside of Germany; Prussia's lay within it. Prussia felt her strength, and that it behoved her to assume the leadership of the German races. The regrettable but unavoidable exclusion of one of them from the new Reich could only be to a small extent remedied by a subsequent alliance. But Germany has become immeasurably greater without Austria, than it was before with Austria.
But all this has nothing to do with the legends of which I am telling.
One of these has been sung in verse, and in fine verse too.
The scene is Versailles. The French are making a sortie from Paris, and the generals, instead of betaking themselves to their fighting troops, are assembled to consider whether head-quarters may safely remain any longer at Versailles. Opinions are divided, no one dares speak out. The Chief of the General Staff, who is above all called on to express his views, remains silent. The perplexity seems to be great. Only the War Minister rises and protests with the greatest emphasis against a measure so injurious from a political and military point of view as a removal. He is warmly thanked by the King as being the only man who has the courage to speak the truth freely and fearlessly.
The truth is that while the King and his whole escort had ridden out to the Vth Army Corps, the Marshal of the household, in his over-anxiety, had the horses put to the royal carriages, and this became known in the town; and indeed may have excited all sorts of hopes in the sanguine inhabitants.
Versailles was protected by four Army Corps. It never entered anybody's head to think of evacuating the town.