Tu n’es donc plus pour mes vieux jours.
O toi, ma Diane chérie,
Je te pleurerai toujours.
At length, about 6 o’clock, the Chancellor returned. No great battle had taken place that day, but it was highly probable that an engagement would occur on the morrow. The Chief told us at dinner that he had visited his eldest son, Count Herbert, in the field ambulance at Mariaville, where he was lying in consequence of a bullet wound in the thigh, which he had received during the general cavalry charge at Mars la Tour. After riding about for some time the Minister at length found his son in a farmhouse with a considerable number of other wounded soldiers. They were in charge of a surgeon, who was unable to obtain a supply of water, and who scrupled to take the turkeys and chickens that were running about the yard for the use of his patients. “He said he could not,” added the Minister, “and all our arguments were in vain. I then threatened to shoot the poultry with my revolver and afterwards gave him twenty francs to pay for fifteen. At last I remembered that I was a Prussian General, and ordered him to do as I told him, whereupon he obeyed me. I had, however, to look for the water myself and to have it fetched in barrels.”
In the meantime the American General Sheridan had arrived in the town and asked for an interview with the Chancellor. He had come from Chicago, and lodged at the Croix Blanc in the market-place. At the desire of the Minister I called upon General Sheridan and informed him that Count Bismarck would be pleased to see him in the course of the evening. The general was a small, corpulent gentleman of about forty-five, with dark moustache and chin tuft, and spoke the purest Yankee dialect. He was accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Forsythe, and a journalist named MacLean, who served as an interpreter, acting at the same time as war correspondent for the New York World.
During the night further strong contingents of troops marched through the town—Saxons, as we ascertained next day. In the morning we heard that the King and Chancellor had gone off at 3 A.M. A battle was being fought on about the same ground as that of the 16th, and it appears as if this engagement were to prove decisive. It will be easily understood that we were still more excited than we had been during the last few days. Uneasy, and impatient for particulars of what was passing, we started in the direction of Metz, going some four kilometres from Pont à Mousson, suffering both mentally and physically, from our anxiety and suspense as well as from the sweltering heat of a windless day and a blazing sky. We met numbers of the less severely wounded coming towards the town, singly, in couples, and in large companies. Some still carried their rifles, while others leant upon sticks. One had the red cape of a French cavalryman thrown over his shoulders. They had fought two days before at Mars la Tour and Gorze. They had only heard rumours of this day’s battle, and these, good and bad as they happened to be, were soon circulated in an exaggerated form throughout the town. The good news at length seemed to get the upper hand, although late in the evening we had still heard nothing definite. We dined without our Chief, for whom we waited in vain until midnight. Later on we heard that he, accompanied by Sheridan and Count Bismarck-Bohlen, was with the King at Rezonville.
On Friday, August the 19th, when we ascertained for certain that the Germans had been victorious, Abeken, Keudell, Hatzfeldt and I drove to the battle-field. At Gorze the Councillors got out, intending to proceed further on horseback. The narrow road was blocked with all sorts of conveyances, so that it was impossible for our carriage to pass. From the same direction as ourselves came carts with hay, straw, wood, and baggage, while ammunition waggons and vehicles conveying the wounded were coming the other way. The latter were being moved into the houses, nearly all of which were turned into hospitals and were distinguished by the Geneva cross. At almost every window we could see men with their heads or arms in bandages.
After about an hour’s delay we were able to move slowly forward. The road to the right not far from Gorze would have taken us in little over half an hour to Rezonville, where I was to meet the Minister and our horsemen. My map, however, failed to give me any guidance, and I was afraid of going too near Metz. I therefore followed the high road further, and passing a farm where the house, barn and stables were full of wounded, we came to the village of Mars la Tour.
Immediately behind Gorze we had already met traces of the battle,—pits dug in the earth by shells, branches torn off by shot and some dead horses. As we went on we came upon the latter more frequently, occasionally two or three together, and at one place a group of eight carcases. Most of them were fearfully swollen, with their legs in the air, while their heads lay slack on the ground. There was an encampment of Saxon troops in Mars la Tour. The village seemed to have suffered little from the engagement of the 16th. Only one house was burned down. I asked a lieutenant of Uhlans where Rezonville was. He did not know. Where was the King? “At a place about two hours from here,” he said, “in that direction,”—pointing towards the east. A peasant woman having directed us the same way, we took that road, which brought us after a time to the village of Vionville. Shortly before reaching this place I saw for the first time one of the soldiers who had fallen in the late battle, a Prussian musketeer. His features were as dark as those of a Turco, and were fearfully bloated. All the houses in the village were full of men who were severely wounded. German and French assistant-surgeons and hospital attendants, all wearing the Geneva cross, were busy moving from place to place.
I decided to wait there for the Minister and the Councillors, as I believed they must certainly pass that way soon. As I went towards the battle-field through a side street I saw a human leg lying in a ditch, half covered with a bundle of blood-stained rags. Some four hundred paces from the village were two parallel pits about three hundred feet in length, and neither wide nor deep, at which the grave diggers were still working. Near by had been collected a great mass of German and French dead. Some of the bodies were half naked, but most of them were still in uniform. All were of a dark grey colour and were fearfully swollen from the heat. There might have been one hundred and fifty corpses in all, and others were being constantly unloaded from the carts. Doubtless, many had already been buried. Further on in the direction of Metz the ground rose slightly, and there in particular great numbers appeared to have fallen. The ground was everywhere covered with French caps, Prussian helmets, knapsacks, arms, uniforms, underclothing, shoes, and paper. Here and there in the furrows of a potato field lay single bodies, one with a whole leg torn away, another with half the head blown off, while some had the right hand stretched out stiffly pointing towards the sky. There were also a few single graves, marked with a chassepot stuck in the ground or with a cross made from the wood of a cigar box roughly tied together. The effluvium was very noticeable, and at times, when the wind came from the direction of a heap of dead horses, it became unendurable.