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Updated: June 12, 2025
A French modification of the American 'gatling' was by them called a mitrailleuse; and nowadays we have settled down to the use of machine-gun. A franc-tireur was an irregular volunteer often incompletely uniformed; and when he was captured the Prussians shot him as a guerrilla.
To the English comprehension it is, for instance, surprising that in time of stress when Paris was besieged by a German army a hundred franc-tireur corps should spring into existence, who gravely decked themselves in sombreros and red waist-cloths, and called themselves the "Companions of Death," or some claptrap title of a similar sound.
I did not enter the Franc-tireur legion, although its captain was a countryman of mine, a chivalrous Hungarian: if I am not mistaken, his name was Varjassy. I returned to Brussels, and remained there. My broker, Mr. X., came to me, quite submissive, doing penance in sackcloth and ashes. Again he called me sage and prophet, and finally asked me, "What next?" "Nothing," I said.
At that distance he could not tell a franc-tireur from any regular foot-soldier except line-infantry; their red caps and trousers were never to be mistaken. As he looked, he wondered at a nation that clothed its troops in a colour that furnished such a fearfully distinct mark to the enemy.
Both he and his French comrade were captured, and Bach was twice court-martialed by the Germans on suspicion of being an American franc-tireur the penalty for which is death! He was acquitted but of course still languishes in a prison camp "somewhere in Germany."
Lest he be taken for a franc-tireur he was entirely unarmed, and he wore a thick blue blouse, gray trousers equally thick, and heavy boots. He also carried, carefully concealed about his person, a supply of gold and German notes, although there would not be much use for money in that region of the dragon's teeth into which he was venturing.
The soldiers, who had become cheerful and warm, had almost reformed their ranks, and an old 'franc-tireur' who was following the litter, waiting for his turn to replace the first of his comrades who might give out, said to one of his neighbors, loud enough for me to hear: "'I am not a young man now, but by , there is nothing like the women to put courage into you!
They passed into the grove beyond the hills. What the mischief are those cannon shelling, anyway? Well, good-by! Better not come up the hill with me, or you'll have to part with your sabre for good. We did lose our franc-tireur friends beautifully. I'll write Dorothy; I'll tell her that I captured you, sabre and all. Good-by! Good-by, old fellow!
He formed the word with his lips. The franc-tireur nodded with a ghastly smile and glanced down at his dripping gunstock. Lorraine's hand closed on Jack's arm. "Come to the hill," she said; "I cannot stand that." On the crest of the wooded ridge crouched Tricasse, bared sabre stuck in the ground before him, a revolver in either fist.
This second sentence may well give us heart of hope considering the horde of French terms which invaded our tongue in the long years of the Great War. If camion and avion, vrille and escadrille supply no permanent need of the language they may soon become obsolete, just as mitrailleuse and franc-tireur slipped out of sight soon after the end of the Franco-Prussian war of fifty years ago.
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