Charlie Pierrepont's regiment was formed in brigade with the 7th, or King's Grenadiers, and the 37th, or Westphalians. The war establishment of a Prussian regiment is never less than 3,006 men, with 69 officers. His brigade was among the first troops actively employed, with orders to occupy the line of the Saar, resting its right on Saarbrück, with advanced posts at that place and in the schloss of the Princes of Nassau, at Saarlouis, which had been fortified by Vauban, at Bliescastle, where the Prussians and French fought a great battle in 1793, and at Merzig.
The second army, with the royal headquarters, crossed the Rhine at Mayence, and took a position on the left of General Steinmetz, occupied Zweibrucken (which the French had named Deux Ponts), and Pirmasens, with its main body echeloned along the line of railway from the ruined castle of the Counts of Sickingen at Landstuhl to the strong fortress of Landau.
The third army came on by the way of Mannheim and Germesheim, and formed to the left of the second, at the latter place, Speirs, Neustadt, and Landau. All these formidable columns could communicate with each other by railway, and were well secured in the rear in case of having to retreat. But no thought of retreating was in the Prussian ranks.
From the suddenness and efficiency of these arrangements, it was clear 'that Count Bismarck and his master had been long and actively preparing for war, and had not been entirely absorbed in peaceful and innocent designs, as we were constantly assured by certain writers in this country, who desired to present France to the world as a crafty and ravening wolf, and Prussia a meek and inoffensive lamb.'
Something of this kind was said by Heinrich to Charlie, as their brigade approached Saarbrück. But the latter would scarcely admit it, as his love for Ernestine, and his high military enthusiasm, made him, for the time, 'German all over—German at fever-heat,' as he said.
And splendid was the aspect of the strong brigade, with the King's Grenadiers in front, the Westphalians in the centre, and the 95th Thuringians in the rear, as it defiled across the bridge that led to the suburb of St. Johann, each battalion with its carts of reserve ammunition, drawn by six horses. After each battalion, also, came thirteen baggage and one canteen waggon, all the brass drums beating smartly to make the men step quick. The colours of the King's Grenadiers, black and white; of the other corps, black, white, and red—the standard of the North German Confederation—were floating in the wind, above the long lines of spiked helmets, and of bright bayonets and brighter musket barrels sloped in the sunshine, for the Prussian arms are not browned as ours are now, but pure, white steel. Hence the glitter over all the column was great, though the uniforms were sombre and blue.
Anon the brass bands struck up between the echoing streets of Saarbrück; but amid all the enthusiasm of the time, the crash of the martial music, the measured tramping of thousands of marching feet, Charlie's mind could not help reverting to those happy moments in the stair of the Hoch Munster, and the sadder ones in the quiet little church of Burtscheid, and, in memory, he still saw the rosy, trembling lips of the girl he loved, and the full bosom that rose and fell with sobs and sighs.
When would he be marching home, and what might happen then? Would it come to pass that he might never return, but find a grave in the soil of France? They were now within thirty miles of Metz. He cast a backward glance to where the rearguard was descending a slope, and, as if to reply to his surmises, there came marching with it a corps of grave-diggers, for a force of this kind was attached to every column, while 'by an arrangement characterised by a grim horror, yet unquestionably useful,' every Prussian officer and soldier was ordered to wear round his neck a label, to establish his identity in case of his being killed.
These reflections were but momentary, so Charlie's spirit rose again, and his heart beat responsive to the sharp and regulated crash of the drums; for there is much elasticity of mind in healthy twenty-eight or thirty years, and Charlie's were no more.
The enthusiasm all over Germany was unquestionably great at this time, and as a specimen of it, Heinrich told Charlie, exultingly, how his father's old comrade and brother officer, Field Marshal the Count Von Wrangel, then in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on seeing his old regiment, the 3rd Cuirassiers, marching through Berlin, had petitioned the king for leave to join them as a private, as he was now too aged to lead; but the king declined the offer of the brave old man, and requested him to remain in Berlin, and make himself useful in a more peaceable way.