A little after 3 o’clock two French guns, with their ammunition waggons and still drawn by French horses, passed through our street. The words “5, Jäger, Görlitz” were written in chalk on one of the guns. Shortly afterwards a fire broke out in one of the streets to the left of our quarters. Würtemberg soldiers had opened a cask of brandy and had imprudently made a fire near it.
Considerable distress prevailed in the town, and even our landlord (he and his wife were good souls) suffered from a scarcity of bread. The place was overcrowded with soldiers, who were quartered on the inhabitants, and with the wounded who were sometimes put up in stables. Some of the people attached to the Court tried to secure our house for the Hereditary Grand Duke of Weimar, but we held out successfully against them. Then an officer wanted to quarter a Prince of Mecklenburg upon us, but we also sent him packing, telling him it was out of the question, as the Chancellor of the Confederation lodged there. After a short absence, however, I found that the Weimar gentlemen had forced themselves into the house. We had reason to be thankful that they did not turn our Chief out of his bed.
The Minister only returned after 11 o’clock and I had supper with him, the party also including the Hereditary Grand Duke of Weimar, in the uniform of the Light Blue Hussars, and Count Solms-Sonnenwalde, formerly attached to the Embassy in Paris, and now properly speaking a member of our staff, although we had seen very little of him recently.
The Chancellor gave us very full particulars of his ride over the battle-field. He had been nearly twelve hours in the saddle, with short intervals. They had been over the whole field, and were received with great enthusiasm in all the camps and bivouacs. It was said that during the battle our troops had taken over 25,000 prisoners, while 40,000 who were in Sedan surrendered under the capitulation, which was concluded about noon.
The Minister told us that Napoleon was to leave for Germany, that is to say for Wilhelmshöhe, on the following morning. “The question is,” said the Chief, “whether he is to go by way of Stenay and Bar le Duc or through Belgium.” “In Belgium he would no longer be a prisoner,” said Solms. “Well, that would not matter,” replied the Chief, “and it would not even do any harm if he took another direction. I was in favour of his going through Belgium, and he seemed also inclined to take that route. If he failed to keep his word it would not injure us. But it would be necessary to communicate beforehand with Brussels, and we could not have an answer in less than two days.”
About 8 o’clock on the following morning, just as I was at breakfast, we heard a noise which sounded like heavy firing. It was only the horses in a neighbouring stable stamping on the wooden floor, probably out of temper that they also should have been put on short commons, as the drivers had only been able to give them half measures of oats. As a matter of fact there was a general scarcity. I heard subsequently that Hatzfeldt had been commissioned by the Chief to go to Brussels. Shortly afterwards the Chancellor called me to his bedside. He had received 500 cigars, and wished me to divide them among the wounded. I accordingly betook myself to the barracks, which had been transformed into a hospital, and to the bedrooms, barns and stables in the street behind our house. At first I only wished to divide my stock amongst the Prussians; but the Frenchmen who were sitting by cast such longing glances at them, and their German neighbours on the straw pleaded so warmly on their behalf—“We can’t let them look on while we are smoking, they too have shared everything with us”—that I regarded it as no robbery to give them some too. They all complained of hunger, and asked how long they were going to be kept there. Later on they were supplied with soup, bread and sausages, and some of those in the barns and stables were even treated to bouillon and chocolate by a Bavarian volunteer hospital attendant.
The morning was cold, dull and rainy. The masses of Prussian and Würtemberg troops who marched through the town seemed however in the best of spirits. They sang to the music of their bands. In all probability the feelings of the prisoners who sat in the long line of carts that passed in the opposite direction at the same time were more in harmony with the disagreeable weather and the clouded sky. About 10 o’clock, as I waded in the drizzling rain through the deep mud of the market-place in fulfilment of my mission to the wounded, I met a long procession of conveyances coming from the Meuse bridge under the escort of the black death’s-head hussars. Most of them were covered coaches, the remainder being baggage and commissariat carts. They were followed by a number of saddle horses. In a closed coupé immediately behind the hussars sat the “Prisoner of Sedan,” the Emperor Napoleon, on his way to Wilhelmshöhe through Belgium. General Castelneau had a seat in his carriage. He was followed in an open waggonette by the infantry general, Adjutant-General von Boyen, who had been selected by the King as the Emperor’s travelling companion, and by Prince Lynar and some of the officers who had been present at Napoleon’s meeting with the Chancellor on the previous day. “Boyen is capitally suited for that mission,” said the Chief to us the night before; “he can be extremely rude in the most polite way.” The Minister was probably thinking of the possibility that some of the officers in the entourage of the august prisoner might take liberties.
We learned afterwards that an indirect route through Donchery had been taken, as the Emperor was particularly anxious not to pass through Sedan. The hussars went as far as the frontier near Bouillon, the nearest Belgian town. The Emperor was not treated with disrespect by the French prisoners whom the party passed on the way. The officers on the other hand had occasionally to listen to some unpleasant remarks. Naturally they were “traitors,” as indeed from this time forward everybody was who lost a battle or suffered any other mishap. It seems to have been a particularly painful moment for these gentlemen when they passed a great number of French field pieces that had fallen into our hands. Boyen related the following anecdote. One of the Emperor’s aides-de-camp, I believe it was the Prince de la Moscowa, thought the guns belonged to us, as they were drawn by our horses, yet was apparently struck by something in their appearance. He asked:—
“Quoi, est-ce que vous avez deux systèmes d’artillerie?”
“Non, monsieur, nous n’avons qu’un seul,” was the reply.