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By nightfall we were all reunited, except one unfortunate fellow who had been slightly wounded and whom a Saarbruecken doctor had kindly received into his house. On the 6th August came the Prussian repossession of Saarbruecken and the desperate storm of the Spicheren. The 40th was the regiment to which was assigned the place of honour in the preliminary recapture of the Exercise Platz height.
In the afternoon of the next day his battalion approached Saarbruecken and bivouacked about two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to welcome it; some bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the drink-offering of potent Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole inmates of the Hagen, delicacy preventing their accompanying us.
He was compelled, therefore, to renounce his plan for decisive offensive action. He came to that resolve most unwillingly, for Paris was behind him, ready to rise unless he should make some show of advancing. It was to reassure the excited spirits of the capital, rather than to effect any military result, that on the 2d of August, he moved with sixty thousand men in the direction of Saarbruecken.
You have all read the record day by day, sorrowing for Humanity, how, after briefest interval of preparation or hesitation, the two combatants first crossed swords at Saarbruecken, within the German frontier, and the young Prince Imperial performed his part in picking up a bullet from the field, which the Emperor promptly reported by telegraph to the Empress, how this little military success is all that was vouchsafed to the man who began the war, how soon thereafter victory followed, first on the hill-sides of Wissembourg and then of Woerth, shattering the army of MacMahon, to which the Empire was looking so confidently, how another large army under Bazaine was driven within the strong fortress of Metz, how all the fortresses, bristling with guns and frowning upon Germany, were invested, how battle followed battle on various fields, where Death was the great conqueror, how, with help of modern art, war showed itself to be murder by machinery, how MacMahon, gathering together his scattered men and strengthening them with reinforcements, attempted to relieve Bazaine, how at last, after long marches, his large army found itself shut up at Sedan with a tempest of fire beating upon its huddled ranks, so that its only safety was capitulation, how with the capitulation of the army was the submission of the Emperor himself, who gave his sword to the King of Prussia and became prisoner of war, and how, on the reception of this news at Paris, Louis Napoleon and his dynasty were divested of their powers and the Empire was lost in the Republic.
Anxious, however, to assume the offensive, he dictated the following plan to his marshals. Bazaine, with the Second, Third, and Fifth Army Corps, should cross the Saar at Saarbruecken, covered on his left by the Fourth Corps, which should make a show of advancing against Saarlouis, while MacMahon, pushing forward from his position near Strasburg, should cover his right.
The battalion quartered there was under orders to join its first battalion at Saarbruecken, and young Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and meet him there, that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go on a campaign from which he might not return. The arrangement was certainly a charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen!
The insignificant encounter at Saarbruecken was termed everywhere the premiere victoire! The caricatures in the shop-windows likewise betrayed terrible arrogance. One was painfully reminded of the behaviour of the French before the battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's Henry V.
Johann, the suburb of Saarbruecken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbruecken was full to the door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds.
Bazaine, for instance, was left on the 5th in ignorance of the emperor's intentions with respect to MacMahon; on the 6th none of the subordinate generals knew that the flank march was contemplated. Frossard, who had fallen back to Spicheren, considered his position so insecure that he suggested to Leboeuf that he should be allowed to retire from the Saarbruecken ridge.
After all the French, although they might have done so, did not occupy Saarbruecken; and towards evening our friends came dropping into the Hotel Till, singly or in pairs. Kuester and George brought the Vogt sisters out in a waggon it was surprising to see the coolness and composure of the girls.
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