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There is an old French proverb according to which "he who seeks to prove too much, proves nothing," and thus it happened that this open telegram which reached the czar at Châlons, and which was published in the German newspapers, even before Nicholas had made it known to the members of his entourage, merely served to convince people that the kaiser had really been in Paris when he was supposed to be buried amidst the gloomy forests of Hubertusstock.
The reader knows the manner of death of Robert de Clermont, Marshal of France, and of Jean de Chalons, Marshal of Champagne; and yet the question was only of a certain Perrin Marc, the clerk of a money-changer, a miserable assassin; but the two marshals had broken the doors of St. Mery. Therein lay the enormity.
Their monarchical allies would be thereby violently stimulated. It was determined, therefore, that, regardless of consequences to their friends, the invading army should cross the border into Lorraine and, marching by way of Sierk and Rodemach, occupy Châlons.
They were informed, on their entering France, of the distress the nobles were in; and they learned at the city of Chalons that the Duchess of Orleans and three hundred other ladies, under the protection of the Duke of Orleans, were fled to Meaux on account of these disturbances.
At Metz he involved in one promiscuous massacre priests and children; he burned the city, so that a solitary chapel of St. Stephen was its sole remains. At length he was signally defeated by the Romans and Goths united at Chalons on the Marne, in a tremendous battle, which ended in 252,000, or, as one account says, 300,000 men being left dead on the field.
No delay for wandering among the meadows of the pleasant town, for gossip with the men and women who were in childhood playmates of her father and her mother; no strolling along lovely river-banks. Chalons had nothing for Elizabeth; only one green nook of all the world had anything for her, an island in the sea, a prison on that island, and there work to do worthy of Gabriel.
There had already been much issuing of bulls by the pope, and much burning of bulls by the hangman, according to decrees of the parliament of Chalons and other friendly tribunals, and burning of Chalons decrees by Paris hangmen, and edicts in favour of Protestants at Nantz and other places measures the enactment, repeal, and reenactment of which were to mark the ebb and flow of the great tide of human opinion on the most important of subjects, and the traces of which were to be for a long time visible on the shores of time.
Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and the Paris politicians." Here closes the first and most dramatic phase of the war. Thereafter the enemy was smitten hip and thigh. At once hurry orders were given to open the line which led from Nancy to Paris. What followed must be briefly told.
In order to estimate the full importance to mankind of the battle of Châlons we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were, and the important distinctions between them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman Empire; and it is to be understood that the Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race.
This sudden change of direction I did not at first understand, but soon learned that it was because of the movements of Marshal MacMahon, who, having united the French army beaten at Worth with three fresh corps at Chalons, was marching to relieve Metz in obedience to orders from the Minister of War at Paris.
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