The horses were brought. King William and Von Roon mounted. The Chancellor's mare had been sent to water; his orderly appeared with her as the King's party rode on. With a hasty word of reproof the Minister swung his great figure into the saddle, but the brawn and bone of his beast had not carried him clear of the threatened spot before a retreating wave of German foot and horsemen swept over it, followed by the thundering gallop of a retreating battery.
It was a sauve-qui peut, caused by the smashing fire from the French shrapnel and mitrailleuse batteries, and the practice of the French riflemen entrenched at the Moscow Farm. A general officer rode through the rout, laying about him with the flat of his drawn sword and swearing horribly, to judge by his bloodshot eyes, and purple countenance.
"Hares! Gottverdammt! hares!" he gasped breathlessly, finding himself face to face with a gigantic officer of Cuirassiers. "A thousand pardons, Excellency. I did not at once recognize you. Surely you will follow his Majesty to the rear?"
"Willingly," said the Chancellor, as a brace of French shells exploded, digging pits in the sandy ground over which the Headquarter Staff had passed. "Only, as shell does not fall twice in the same place, I am waiting to make sure." And, with a knee-touch, he put the brown mare into her stride.
There was a backward surge of disorganized infantry as the huge beast lifted herself over the yawning craters. But she passed through the press by the bore and thrust of her great shoulders, and the beast and the big man she carried were swallowed up in the roaring dusk.
Moltke, the bald-headed war-eagle, remained brooding his coign of observation upon the verge of the ridge south of Flavigny, his feathers drooping, his shoulders hunched, his sharp, hooked beak inclined toward his breast; his red eyes, burning with the battle-lust, staring fixedly from under the wide, hairless brows.
The sun sank in clouds of smoky gold and crimson over that country of copses, ravines, ruddy brown farmhouses, and white villages. Evening came down and dipped her wings in billows of salt-tasting gunpowder smoke, rose-tinged above and beneath by the reflection from the red sky and the red earth. The green Moselle was tinged with blood. Little rivers ran blood, streams and springs became blood. Wells were filled with blood, as in old time under the rod of the Lawgiver of Israel, and still the battle raged over hill and valley, common and highroad.
Flavigny village still smouldered, Malmaison was burning, houses and barns at Verneville were wrapped in roaring flames. Yet the gunners of the French batteries at Moscow, Point du Jour, La Folie, and the Quarries of Amanvilliers and Rezerieulles, continued to make practice of the deadliest; and still French cavalry charged the Teuton's dwindling infantry-squares.
Had not a comparatively fresh and vigorous Prussian Army Corps dropped in at the crucial moment success had hardly crowned the arms of United Germany. They had been marching every day since they quitted the Saar, those solid-thewed Pomeranians of the 2d Corps, but at Puxieux they had cooked and eaten, and now appeared like giants refreshed.
Not only Steinmetz rode at their head, with their commander Von Fransecky, but the Warlock in person directed their attack. Battalions that had retired in disorder reformed and rushed back to meet afresh the brunt of battle. Wherever the red eye glittered and the withered finger pointed, fresh swarms of fierce assailants were hurled against the dwindling hosts of France.