SIGHTING THE ENEMY.
(From an American Correspondent with the French Army.)
Chaumont, June 29, 10 P.M.
At length the embargo placed on all letters since the 30th of May has been removed, and the correspondents are free to telegraph without restriction as to matter or quantity. Since May the 25th, until ten days ago, General de Galliffet’s magnificent army has been quiescent under shelter of the strong camps of Langres, Epinal, and Belfort. Even our cavalry has had little to do beyond sending out numerous officers’ patrols, north, east, and west. The General preferred trusting to a strong screen of infantry outposts; and on their side the Germans, though reported to be very strong in the neighbourhood of Bar-le-Duc, have remained inactive.
It is surprising with what patience the French soldiery endured this weary time of waiting; but the men have supreme confidence in the hero of Sedan, and their intelligence is of a very high order. However, your Frenchman is a restless being, and discipline was put to a severe test when rumour of a German advance on Paris filtered through the camps. But General de Galliffet, by most judicious orders of the day, exposing the errors of the Germans in advancing without first securing their communications, and enlarging on the strength of the fortifications of the capital, appealed to the soldierly intelligence of the army, and not in vain. Still, the fierce desire of the troops to meet their detested enemies had been curbed almost beyond bounds by the 20th of June, and I scarcely think, strong as the General is, that he would have dared to delay movement for another day.
Long before day had broken on the 20th the march began; and for nine days, over the magnificent roads which run through the rich pastoral country west of the Moselle, the long columns moved past in the blazing summer weather, their faces set northward, and their hearts longing for the battle so long deferred. The splendid marching powers of the French Infantry of to-day, as well as the high-training and experience of the Staff, make the movement of 200,000 men and more than 700 guns a matter of child’s play. The marches are long, and the dust stifling; but still order and regularity are the characteristics of the great exodus from the fortresses. The ambulances are empty, and, heavily weighted as they are, the little linesmen in their long blue capotes and wide red trousers swing steadily along, laughing and singing as the sun nears his setting even more cheerily than when the fields on either hand were fresh with the morning dew. Loud are the cheers that greeted the General, active as the youngest subaltern of Hussars in spite of his sixty odd years, as magnificently mounted, he rides slowly past the regiments, with cheery word of greeting and encouragement to his sturdy fantassins.
On the morning of yesterday reports came in from the cavalry, riding more than twenty miles to the front, that the Prussians were also advancing; and the same evening came the first presage of the storm: two or three ambulances—full this time—and half-a-dozen captured Uhlans. This sight stilled song and jest: a grim silence fell upon the columns, and an air of fierce determination took the place of the eager excitement which had hitherto lit up those mobile faces. The bivouacs that night were very quiet; the men gathered in little groups round the camp kettles, or sat apart in their shirt-sleeves, assiduously cleaning their rifles.
Late last night, as I was turning into my humble billet, shared by two officers of the Staff, in the Curé’s cottage at Maison d’Or, I received a message from the Major commanding a Chasseur battalion, who had for the past three days been moving forward with the cavalry, that he had obtained permission for me to accompany him on the morrow. It was unlikely, so my friends on the Staff informed me, that the armies would come into collision, and if I joined les petites vitriers I would have an opportunity of seeing something of the cavalry fighting.
Before daybreak, therefore, I found myself in a tiny village consisting of a church and half-a-dozen farm-houses, with substantial granaries and gardens, and a single cabaret, in company with one of those battalions d’elité of the army, the Chasseurs à pied, who boast that the cavalry can neither leave them behind nor do without them.
The village stands in the centre of a rolling valley nearly three miles broad, running east and west, with a long ridge to the south and another to the north, dotted with vineyards and potato-patches; but without hedge, or wall, or ditch.