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It is true that the Germans in France never found any reason to lay the country waste, for they were never faced with a universal guerilla warfare as we have been, but they gave the franc-tireur, or the man who was found cutting the wire of the line, very short shrift; whereas we have never put to death a single bonâ-fide Boer for this offence.
Most of the Francs-tireurs, who had not fallen in the engagement, effected a retreat, and on discovering this, the infuriated Germans, to whom the mere name of Franc-tireur was as a red rag to a bull, did not scruple to shoot down a number of non-combatants, including women and children.
"Coeur Dieu!" muttered Brocard, gazing pityingly at Lorraine; "I've half a mind to turn franc-tireur myself and drill holes in the hides of these Prussian swine!" He stepped out into the road and beckoned Jack and Lorraine. When they came to his side he pointed to a stone cottage, low and badly thatched, hidden among the trunks of the young beech growth.
A near-sighted officer, thin and spare as Death, was talking in a loud, nasal voice and squinting at Burley where he still struggled, red and exasperated, in the clutches of four soldiers: "Also! That is no uniform known to us or to any nation at war with us. That is not regulation in England that collar insignia. This is a case of a franc-tireur! Now, then, you there in your costume de fantasie!
In warfare, a guerrilla, or bushwhacker, is an armed man who recognizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no commander. In France he is called a "franc-tireur," or free-shooter. The guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak, and never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his side.
The troopers, helpless, gnashing their teeth, shook their long lances towards the sky, where the moon was breaking from the banked clouds, and the looming balloon hung black above the forest, drifting slowly westward. And now Von Steyr had a weapon in his hands not a carbine, but a long chassepot-rifle, a relic of the despoiled franc-tireur, dangling from the oak-tree.
The Uhlans scoured the country as clean as possible, but the franc-tireurs roamed from forest to forest, sometimes gallantly facing martyrdom, sometimes looting, burning, pillaging, and murdering. If Germans maintain that the only good franc-tireur is a dead franc-tireur, they are not always justified. Let them sit first in judgment on Andreas Hofer.
At this time the French military authorities were not accepting volunteers as readily as they did later on, so Paul had much difficulty in getting rolled in the service as a Franc-tireur. A few days after he had landed in Havre, he was marching away with a chassepot rifle on his shoulder and a knap-sack and blanket on his back.
"Then," said Jack, "there are two things left for me to do go to Paris, which I can't unless Mademoiselle de Nesville goes, or join some franc-tireur corps and give the German army as good as they send. If you Uhlans think," he continued, violently, "that you're coming into France to hang and shoot and raise hell without getting hell in return, you're a pack of idiots!"
The Courts-martial which sit are a mere farce. I see that yesterday a Franc-tireur was tried for breaking his musket when ordered to march. He was acquitted because the court came to the conclusion that he was "un brave garçon." The application of military law to the Nationaux is regarded by these citizens as an act of arbitrary power.
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