On the way to Busancy the Chancellor further said: “The whole day I had nothing to eat but army bread and bacon fat. In the evening we got five or six eggs. The others wanted them cooked, but I like them raw, and so I stole a couple, and cracking the shells on the hilt of my sword, I swallowed them, and felt much refreshed. Early next morning I had the first warm food for thirty-six hours. It was only some pea-soup with bacon, which I got from General Goeben, but I enjoyed it immensely.”
The market-place at Busancy, a small country town, was crowded with officers, hussars, uhlans, couriers, and all sorts of conveyances. After a while Sheridan and Forsythe also arrived. At 11.30 the King appeared, and immediately afterwards we heard the unexpected news that the French were standing their ground. At about four kilometres from Busancy we came to a height beneath which to the left and right a small open valley lay between us and another height. Suddenly we heard the muffled sound of a discharge in the distance. “Artillery fire,” said the Minister. A little further on I saw two columns of infantry stationed on the other side of a hollow to the left on a piece of rising ground bare of trees. They had two guns which were being fired. It was so far off however that one could hardly hear the report. The Chief was surprised at the sharpness of my sight and put on his glasses, which I for the first time learned were necessary to him when he wished to see at a distance. Small white clouds like balloons at a great height floated for three or four seconds above the hollow and then disappeared in a flash. These were shrapnel shells. The guns must have been German, and seemed to throw their shot from a declivity on the other side of the hollow. Over this hollow was a wood, in front of which I could observe several dark lines, perhaps French troops. Still further off was the spur of a hill, with three or four large trees. This, according to my map, was the village of Stonn, from which, as I afterwards heard, the Emperor Napoleon watched the fight.
The firing to the left soon ceased. Bavarian artillery, blue cuirassiers, and green light horse, passed us on the road, going at a trot. A little further on, just as we drove by a small thicket, we heard a rattle, as of a slow and badly delivered volley. “A mitrailleuse,” said Engel, turning round on the box. Not far off, at a place where the Bavarian rifles were resting in the ditch by the road, the Minister got on horseback in order to ride with the King, who was ahead of us. We ourselves, after following the road for a time, turned towards the right across a stubble field. The ground gradually rose to a low height on which the King stood with the Chief and a number of Princes, generals and other officers of high rank. I followed them across the ploughed fields, and standing a little to one side I watched the battle of Beaumont till nearly sunset.
It began to grow dark. The King sat on a chair near which a straw fire had been lit, as there was a strong wind. He was following the course of the battle through a field-glass. The Chancellor, who was similarly occupied, stood on a ridge, from which Sheridan also watched the spectacle. It was now possible to catch the flash of the bursting shells and the flames that were rising from the burning houses at Beaumont. The French continued to retire rapidly, and the combatants disappeared over the crest of the treeless height that closed the horizon to the left behind the wood over the burning village. The battle was won.
It was growing dark when we returned towards Busancy, and when we reached it it was surrounded by hundreds of small fires that threw the silhouettes of men, horses, and baggage waggons into high relief. We got down at the house of a doctor who lived at the end of the main street, in which the King had also taken up his quarters. Those of our party who had been left behind at Grand Pré had arrived before us. I slept here on a straw mattress on the floor of an almost empty room, under a coverlet which had been brought from the hospital in the town by one of our soldiers. That, however, did not in the least prevent my sleeping the sleep of the just.
On Wednesday, August the 31st, between 9 and 10 A.M., the King and the Chancellor drove out to visit the battle-field of the previous day. I was again permitted to accompany the Minister. At first we followed the road taken the day before through Bar de Busancy and Sommauthe. Between these two villages we passed some squadrons of Bavarian uhlans, who heartily cheered the King. Behind Sommauthe, which was full of wounded, we drove through a beautiful wood that lay between that village and Beaumont, where we arrived after 11 o’clock. King William and our Chancellor then got on horseback and rode to the right over the fields. I followed in the same direction on foot. The carriages went on to the town, where they were to wait for us.
The Chancellor remarked that the French had not offered a particularly steady resistance yesterday, or shown much prudence in their arrangements. “At Beaumont a battery of heavy artillery surprised them in their camp in broad daylight. Horses were shot tethered, many of the dead are in their shirt-sleeves, and plates are still lying about with boiled potatoes, pots with half-cooked meat, and so forth.”
During the drive the Chief came to speak of “people who have the King’s ear and abuse his good nature,” thinking in the first place of the “fat Borck, the holder of the King’s Privy Purse;” and afterwards referring to Count Bernstorff, our then Ambassador in London, who, when he gave up the Foreign Office in Berlin, “knew very well how to take care of himself.” In fact, “he was so long weighing the respective advantages of the two Embassies—London and Paris—that he delayed entering upon his duties much longer than was decent or proper.”
I ventured to ask what sort of a person Von der Goltz was, as one heard such different opinions about him, and whether he really was a man of importance and intellect as was maintained. “Intelligent? yes, in a certain sense,” replied the Minister; “a quick worker, well informed, but changeable in his views of men and things,—to-day in favour of this man or this project, to-morrow for another and sometimes for the very opposite. Then he was always in love with the Princesses to whose Courts he was accredited, first with Amelia of Greece and then with Eugénie. He believed that what I had the good fortune to carry through, he, with his exceptional intelligence, could have also done and even better. Therefore he was constantly intriguing against me, although we had been good friends in our youth. He wrote letters to the King complaining of me and warning his Majesty against me. That did not help him much, as the King handed over the letters to me, and I replied to them by reprimanding him. But in this respect he was persevering, and continued to write indefatigably. He was very little liked by his subordinates, indeed they actually detested him. On my visit to Paris in 1862 I called upon him to report myself just as he had settled down to a siesta. I did not wish to have him disturbed, but his secretaries were evidently delighted that he should be obliged to get up, and one of them immediately went in to announce me. It would have been so easy for him to secure the good will and attachment of his people. It is not difficult for an Ambassador, and I too would do it gladly. But as a Minister one has no time, one has too many other things to think of and to do. So I have had to adopt a more military style.” It will be seen from this description that Von der Goltz was Arnim’s forerunner and kindred spirit.
The Minister went on to speak of Radowitz, saying he did not feel quite certain whether it was dulness or treachery on Radowitz’s part that was to blame for the diplomatic defeat at Olmütz. The army ought to have been brought into line before Olmütz, but Radowitz had intrigued against it. “I would leave it an open question whether he did so as an Austrian ultramontane Jesuit, or as an impracticable dreamer who thought he knew everything. Instead of looking to our armaments he occupied the King with constitutional trifles, of mediæval follies, questions of etiquette and such like. On one occasion we heard that Austria had collected 80,000 men in Bohemia, and was buying great numbers of horses. This was mentioned before the King in Radowitz’s presence. He suddenly stepped forward, looking as if he knew much more about it than anybody else, and said, ‘Austria has 22,493 men and 2,005 horses in Bohemia,’ and then turned away, conscious that he had once more impressed the King with a sense of his importance.”