XLI
Three hours after the Emperor had driven out of Gravelotte the Red Prince had blocked the direct road to Verdun. The First Army had crossed the Moselle. Moltke and the Royal Headquarter Staff were already at Pont à Mousson, the Crown Prince was marching toward Châlons.
At this stage of the game, the Warlock gave the signal. Von Redern's guns opened suddenly on the French cavalry camp near Vionville. You remember the squadrons were watering: Murat's Dragoons stampeded with their baggage-trains, De Gramont's troopers sent in a volley of carbine-fire, mounted and retired in less haste. This was the opening figure of the three days of bloody conflict waged in the rural tract between the northern edges of the Bois de Vaux and the Forest of Jaumont. The French call it the "Battle of St. Privat," the Germans the battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat.
The Great Headquarters of the Prussian Commander-in-Chief were at the riverside town of Pont à Mousson, some ten miles distant from the war-theater—whose stage occupied some six square miles of undulating, wooded, ravine-gashed country-side.
And here, his possessing genius, or demon, prompting him, the tactics of Moltke abruptly changed.
I have fancied the Warlock getting up at cockcrow on the day of Vionville,—he had a little folding camp-bed he always slept upon. Undressed to shirt and drawers, he would roll himself in a gray-striped blanket which did not reveal the fact when it needed washing, and cover himself on chilly nights with a big, shabby, military cloak.
Beside the bed, with the extinguished candle-lantern, standing on a corner of it, was the little portable campaign-table, covered with faded green baize. His maps were spread on this, and an Army revolver of large caliber lay atop of them, well within reach of its owner's practiced hand.
He sponged his old face and sinewy neck economically in a basin of cold water, carefully washed his hands, rinsed his mouth and put on a clean white shirt. A white drill waistcoat went on under the old red-faced uniform frock, with the distinctive shoulder-cords of Chieftaincy of the Great General Staff and the Order of Merit dangling from the silver-gilt swivel at the collar. Then he polished his bald head with his silk handkerchief, reached his wig from the chest of drawers and assumed it, read a text in his Lutheran Bible, prayed a twenty-second prayer standing: lighted a thin, dry, ginger-colored cigar, such as his soul loved, and sat down to work at his maps.
Bismarck might well have likened him to some bird of the predatory species. With the rising furrows of his bald brow hitching up his wig, and his clear eyes, lashless with old age, crimson-rimmed by dint of fatigue and overstrain, his fierce hooked beak following the journey of his withered claw over the tough cartridge-paper—one can imagine him, very like an eagle, or a member of the vulture-tribe.
It grew lighter as he worked with his old chronometer and well-used compasses and stumpy pencils; and the little thumbed table of distance-measures to which he sometimes referred. He finished and rang his handbell for his orderly-servant; chatted with his Adjutant and secretary as he broke his fast on bread and black coffee. Then at a great jingling of cavalry bridles and stamping of iron hoofs upon the cobblestones below, he went down, carrying his rolled map-case, mounted, and rode away with his following.