"Blood and wounds, dying men and dead men, are the inseparable concomitants of War. One takes them then as natural, and pays no heed to them. Did armies fight with truncheons of sausages, and dumplings stuffed with plums instead of iron shells full of shrapnel, there would still be deaths in plenty."
The Chancellor said, laughing heartily:
"And the Field equipment of our Army surgeons would consist of calomel and rhubarb-pills. Here now are a collection of soaked macaws and paroquets. The fine feathers of the Napoleon's Guard Imperial have suffered badly from last night's rain."
In two fields right and left of the road they followed were crowded nearly four thousand French prisoners, under a heavy guard of Mecklenburg infantry. The Mecklenburgers were drinking their morning coffee and munching Army bread and raw ham rations. The emerald, pale blue, and scarlet Imperial Dragoons and Cuirassiers, the white-mantled, red-fezzed Chasseurs d'Afrique, the green-coated Chasseurs à cheval, the gorgeous Guides and Lancers, the Voltigeurs, and the red-breeched, blue-coated grenadiers belonging to individual regiments, standing as if in the ranks, or lying down in groups upon the muddy ground where they had spent the last night, looked with hollow eyes of famine, upon their munching jailers, but disdained to ask for food.
"They are wet," said Moltke, "for few of them have got their greatcoats. It is the love of display that leads the French soldier to throw away what extra weight of covering he carries when he is in the thick of a mêlée, or suddenly called upon to charge. While our stout fellows will come out of an assault with what they carried into it."
"Or perhaps a little more!" hinted the Chancellor.
"It may be—it may be!" admitted the Field Marshal. "The French love for gold-carrying is the cause of that enrichment. Hence most of their Guard Cavalry officers carry beneath their tunics or in the pockets of their tight pantaloons netted purses given them by their women, that stick out in a tempting style. A prod of our German lance, or a rip from the bayonet, and out pops the purse into the soldier's fist. You would not call him a thief for taking what he finds in this manner?"
"I cannot answer for myself," said the Chancellor, turning a laughing look upon the speaker, "but I can safely predict that my wife would exonerate him upon Scriptural authority. By the way, I see that your brigadiers have not thought it worth while to place the French wounded under surveillance." He pointed to a halting procession of roughly bandaged casualties in torn and muddy uniforms. "I have already passed at least a thousand of these limping fellows in red breeches, and of course there must be thousands more."
"How could they escape?" asked the Warlock, turning his ascetic, hairless face upon the speaker. "And did they succeed in doing so, of what use would they be as combatants? All these you see, have they not been wounded by shell-splinters in the head or arms, or hit in the legs and feet by our rifle bullets? Why should we burden ourselves with the maintenance of men who cannot fight against us? and must be helpless burdens upon their country even were they within the French lines?"
"I admit the clearness of your Excellency's judgment," said the Minister, "even while I doubt whether, if some of these red-breeched rascals happen to be in possession of concealed weapons—there would not be an excellent opportunity, at this moment, for ridding France of Bismarck or Moltke."