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Updated: June 7, 2025
Hunger, the terrible cold, forced marches in the snow without boots, over bad mountainous roads, had caused us francs-tireurs especially the greatest sufferings, for we were without tents and almost without food, always in front when we were marching towards Belfort, and in the rear, when returning by the Jura.
But Count Bismarck resolutely insisted on the cession of Alsace and German Lorraine, including Metz and Diedenhofen. Only with difficulty were the Germans persuaded to separate Belfort from the rest of Loraine, and leave it still in the possession of the French.
The element of additional opposition supplied by the Belgian army and the small British Expeditionary Army, if it came to the Continent, did not offset in the German mind the strength of the French barrier fortresses from Verdun to Belfort, and Belgium seemed the line of least resistance even if that resistance were to be reckoned at the maximum.
Now Belfort, being a fortified town, was an obviously impossible place for me to get into, because I shouldn't get out again in a hurry. So I took a slow train, descended at a small station on the outskirts, prepared to make my way across country to Remiremont. This I achieved, very slowly, and with many difficulties, by means of peasants' carts and an occasional ride on horseback.
The whole of the Jura district, intersected by hilly roads as far as the plateau of Langres, where, in the days of Caesar, the Romans and Gauls were wont to measure their strength with each other, formed during November and December the scene of action of numerous encounters which, in conjunction with sallies from the garrison at Belfort, inflicted severe injury on Werder's troops.
From there a Hun army can strike the French trenches from the rear strike Toul, Nancy, Belfort, Verdun why, the road is open to Paris that way open to Calais, to England!" "This is frightful!" cried the girl. "If such a dreadful " "Wait! I told you that it is merely a surmise. I don't know. I guess.
It seemed to the peasants that thus they deserved better of their country than Belfort and Strassburg, that they had set an equally valuable example, and that the name of their little village would become immortalized by that; but, with that exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.
But not a German!" said the waiter, absolutely whitening with indignation. "He was at Belfort. So was I. Mon Dieu! No, a thousand times no!" "But has he been living here long?" said the consul. "In Paris, a few months. But his Department, M'sieur understands, takes him EVERYWHERE! Everywhere where he can gain information." The consul's eyes were still on the Captain Christian.
And then, little by little, there came over me the sense of that mute reciprocal watching from trench to trench: the interlocked stare of innumerable pairs of eyes, stretching on, mile after mile, along the whole sleepless line from Dunkerque to Belfort.
I did not know the name of the little river that went slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far off, meant once 'Slow Water'.
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