ra, ra,
Comme des rats,
Comme des rats.
Comme Bismarck rira!
rira!"
An officer commanding a fort applied for re-enforcements to relieve his exhausted men. They sent him a battalion of our Belleville gentlemen. The next day he sent them back, saying they had been drunk and fought in the trenches all night, and that he preferred to get along as well as he could with his overworked garrison.
Trochu planned a sortie to the south-east. It was necessary to cross the Marne. The troops arrived at the appointed hour, but the pontoons did not. A whole day was lost, and the sortie was une affaire manquée. Outside, things were nearly as badly managed. No serious effort was ever made to cut the German lines of communication. The railways to the east were all-important to them, not so much for provisions (for they drew these mostly from France), but for ammunition. With the enormous guns in use, the transportation of ammunition was a serious matter, taxing the railroad facilities of the Germans to the uttermost. An interruption might have compelled them to raise the siege. Sheridan, who, being at the King's head-quarters, and treated with the greatest kindness and attention, naturally sympathized with the Germans, could not help exclaiming that if he had been outside with thirty thousand cavalry, he would have made the King *** Well, it is not worth while to quote Sheridan's exact words; they were a little in the style, of the commander of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo; but the substance of them was, that an active officer with a good cavalry force could have so broken up the communications of the German army as to compel it to raise the siege. For the Germans are not particularly handy at repairing a broken road or bridge; and a German general does not, as the rebel soldier said of Sherman, carry a duplicate tunnel in his pocket.
As I am quoting Sheridan, let me here record his opinion of the German army. He believed that they were brave soldiers. They were well disciplined, well led, and had every appearance of thorough soldiers; but he could not say so positively, for, so far as his observation went, they had never met with any serious resistance. He looked upon the German army as in no respect superior to one of our great armies at the close of the war—the Army of the Potomac, for instance—except as regards the staff. That was far superior to ours, and to any staff in Europe. Their field telegraph, too, excited his admiration. It had been borrowed from us, but improved.