After the fearful loss they had suffered at Woerth, which battle was followed up by the sanguinary defeat of Frossard at Forbach, to the left of their line, on the same day, the French fell back on Metz as their rallying point, hoping by means of the vast entrenched camp there and its facilities of communication with Chalons and Verdun, to be able to make a stand against the enemy, now pressing them so sore. Military critics say that this was the greatest mistake made by the Emperor Napoleon’s advisers; and that, had the forces under Bazaine retreated farther to the west—after throwing a sufficient garrison into Metz—they might have been able to effect a junction with the defeated army of Mcmahon, which that general was withdrawing into the interior and from which they were now completely cut off.
Be that as it may, however, during this interval of inactivity, when the shattered fragments of the magnificent French army—which had so proudly assumed the offensive but a bare fortnight before along the frontiers of the Rhine—were idling away precious moments that were fraught with peril and disaster to the Gallic race, the huge German masses, animated by a sense of victory and the consciousness of a superiority in arms as well as in numbers, were sweeping forward like a whirlwind of destruction. The Crown Prince, who had routed Mcmahon at Woerth and driven the wedge in that separated him from Bazaine, continued his onward march on the left of the German line through the passes of the Vosges into the fertile plains of Champagne. At the same time, Prince Frederick Charles, with the main portion of the second army, had crossed the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson; and, moving northwards, was already in a position to threaten the line of the French retreat on Verdun, while the remainder of the Red Prince’s forces were advancing to the eastward of Metz. The columns, too, of Steinmetz, moving with mathematical regularity at an equal rate of progression, were also being echelonned along the northern face of the fortress, just within striking distance.
To put it concisely, some two hundred and fifty thousand unbeaten German soldiers, with an artillery numbering over eight hundred guns, almost surrounded the stronghold of Lorraine and the far weaker and partly demoralised force which the French had gathered together beneath its walls, only, as it turned out subsequently, to court defeat and annihilation.
It was not until the 14th of August that the series of battles that were to rage round Metz, began.
Early in the morning of that day—apparently for the first time struck with an apprehension of having his retreat on Chalons by way of Verdun interfered with and his communications with his base of supply cut off, thus appreciating his critical position only when it was too late to remedy it—the French Marshal commenced crossing the Moselle with his vanguard. The entire body of troops, however, did not reach the river; for, three corps, which had been encamped to the eastward of the fortress, delayed their departure until the afternoon—a tardiness that enabled Steinmetz to attack their rear and detain them on the spot, until the flanking movement of Prince Frederick Charles’ army beyond the Moselle towards Pont-à-Mousson had been completed. A bloody and indecisive action was the result, in which, if the Germans did not gain a victory, they succeeded in accomplishing their object—that of detaining the French troops before Metz, until their retreat on Verdun should be impossible of achievement.
On the 16th occurred the battle of Vionville; and, two days later, that of Gravelotte, the bloodiest contest that took place between the opposing forces throughout the entire war—the first general engagement, too, in which our friend Fritz really “smelt powder” and became an active participant.
The rough skirmishing work which some of the divisions of the army corps under Steinmetz had already had, during the intervening days since the 14th, somewhat prepared the soldiers of the Waterloo veteran for butchery. They could plainly perceive from his tactics that their general was one who would spare no sacrifice of human life in order to gain his end and defeat the enemy. The corpses piled high on the field of Vionville of the Cuirassiers and Ziethen Hussars, who had been ordered to charge batteries of artillery in Balaclava fashion, afforded proof enough of that; and the men said, with a laugh and a shrug of the shoulders, “Ah, yes; we’re going to have a warm time of it now with ‘Old Blood and Iron,’ we are!”
And they had!
Fritz had barely dropped to sleep on the evening of the 17th, when, towards midnight, he was aroused by the wild music of military trumpets, blown apparently from every bivouac in his neighbourhood for miles round.
“Who goes there?” he exclaimed, raising himself up on his elbow, but half awake and dreaming he was on sentry duty.