Fritz and Eric Part 11

"Especially since I would lose your valuable protection!" laughed Madaleine.

"Ah, wait till I get up and am strong!" said Fritz. "When you see me again, I promise to be able to protect you."

"Aye, when!" repeated the girl with a sigh. "However, I must say good- bye now, Herr Lieutenant I have told our man Hans, whom the baroness leaves behind, to see that you want for nothing until you shall be able to attend to yourself. I'm sorry you'll have no female nurse now to look after you."

"I wouldn't let another woman come near me after you go!" exclaimed Fritz impulsively. "Mind, you have promised to write to me, you know."

"Yes," said she, "I will answer your letters; and now, good-bye! Don't forget me quite when you get amongst the gay ladies of Paris, who will quite eclipse your little German nurse!"

"Never!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Good-bye, till we meet again!" and he pressed her hand to his lips, looking up into her eyes.

"Good-bye!" said she in a husky voice, turning away; when the dog, which had been lying down in his usual place by his master's bedside, started up, "Good-bye you, too, my darling 'Fritz'!" she added, throwing her arms round the retriever's neck and kissing his smooth black head; "I nearly forgot you, dearest doggie, I do declare!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the other Fritz, mortally jealous of his dog for the moment, "I wish you would only say farewell to me like that!"

Madaleine blushed a celestial rosy red.

But "Auf wiedersehen!" was all she said, as she left the room with a speaking glance from her violet eyes; and, towards the evening, from the confused bustling about which he heard going on within the villa, and the sound of carriage wheels without driving off, Fritz knew that the Baroness Stolzenkop and her party--amongst whom, of course, was Madaleine--had quitted Mezieres, on their way back to the banks of the Rhine.

CHAPTER TEN.

ON THE MOVE AGAIN.

"I wonder if she cares about that French fellow still?" thought Fritz to himself when Madaleine had gone. "I don't believe she could have felt for him much, from the manner in which she listened when I told her of his death and the way she looked at that ring. Himmel! Would she receive the news of my being shot in the same fashion, I wonder?"

Fritz, however, could not settle this momentous question satisfactorily to his own mind just then; so he had, consequently, to leave the matter to be decided at that blissful period when everybody thought that "everything would come straight"--the period to which he had alluded at the interesting instant when his slightly confidential conversation with Madaleine was so inopportunely interrupted by the maladroit entrance of Doctor Carl. In other words, "when the war should be over!" But, as the worthy disciple of Aesculapius had sapiently remarked on the occasion of his accidental interference with what might have been otherwise a mutual understanding between the two, the war was not over yet. The halcyon time had not arrived for the sword to be beaten into a ploughshare, nor did there seem much prospect of such a happy contingency in the near immediate future; for, although the contest had already lasted three months--during which a series of terrible engagements had invariably resulted in the defeat of the French--from the commencement of the campaign to the capitulation of Metz, each crushing disaster only seemed to have the effect of nerving the Gallic race to fresh resistance and so prolong the struggle. Indeed, at the beginning of November, 1870, with Paris laughing the idea of a siege to scorn and new armies being rapidly organised, in the north at Saint Quentin, in the west at Havre, and in the south at Orleans, the end of the war appeared as far off as ever!

Fritz missed the attentions of his unwearying little nurse much, and his convalescence did not progress so rapidly in consequence; but one morning, some three weeks after the departure of the party of the baroness' from Mezieres, he was agreeably surprised by Doctor Carl giving him permission to rejoin his corps.

"I don't quite think you exactly strong enough yet, you know; but I've received orders to clear out the hospitals here, sending forward all such as are fit to their respective regiments, while those not sufficiently recovered I am to invalid to Germany. Now, which is it to be, Herr Lieutenant? I candidly don't believe you're quite up to the mark for campaigning again yet; but still, perhaps, you would not like being put on the shelf, and no doubt you'd gain strength from the change of air as you moved on with the army. Which course will you select, Herr Lieutenant? I give you the choice."

"To rejoin my regiment, certainly, doctor!" answered Fritz, without a moment's hesitation. "I'm tired of doing nothing here, and I fancy I've been well enough to move for the past fortnight."

"Ah, permit me to be the best judge of that, young man," said the other.

"No doubt you feel wonderfully strong just now! Can you lift this chair, do you think, eh?"

"Certainly," replied Fritz, laying his hand on the slight little article of furniture the doctor had pointed out with his cane, and which he could have easily held up with one finger when in the possession of his proper strength. He was quite indignant, indeed, with Doctor Carl for suggesting such a feeble trial for him, as if he were a child; but, much to his astonishment, he found that he was utterly unable to raise the chair from the ground. Besides which, he quite panted after the exertion, just as if he had been endeavouring to lift a ton weight!

"Ha, what did I say, Herr Lieutenant?" said the surgeon with a laugh.

"You will now allow, I suppose, that we doctors know best as to what is good for our patients! But, come, you will not be wanted to raise or carry about a greater weight than yourself until you come up with your regiment, which is now with Manteuffel's division near Amiens, for, by that time, you'll be yourself again. I'll now go and sign your certificate and papers, so that you may get ready to start as soon as you like."

"Hurrah!" exclaimed Fritz. "It is 'Forwards' again--the very word puts fresh life in me!" and, trying once more, he lifted the chair this time with ease. "You see, Herr Doctor, I can do it now!"

"Ah, there's nothing like hope and will!" said the doctor, bustling out of the room--which Fritz, unlike many poor victims of the war, had had entirely to himself, instead of being only one amongst hundreds of others in a crowded hospital ward. "By the time you join your comrades again, you'll be double the man you were before you came under my care!"

"Thanks to you, dear doctor," shouted out Fritz after him in cordial tones; and he then proceeded to overhaul his somewhat dilapidated uniform to see whether it was in order for him to don once more.

On the termination of the siege of Metz, by its capitulation at the end of October, the large German force which had been employed up till then in the investment of Marshal Bazaine's entrenched camp before the fortress, became released for other duties; thus enabling Von Moltke, the great strategical head of the Teuton legions, to develop his plans for the complete subjugation of the country.

In accordance, therefore, with these arrangements, two army corps, each of some thirty thousand men, proceeded at once to aid the hosts encircling Paris with fire and steel; while two more corps were led by Prince Frederick Charles towards the south of France, where they arrived in the nick of time to a.s.sist the Duke of Mecklenburgh and the defeated Bavarians under Van der Tann in breaking up the formidable army of the Loire commanded by Chanzy, which had very nearly succeeded in altering the condition of the war; the remainder of the German investing force from Metz were sent northwards, under Manteuffel, in the direction of Brittany and the departments bordering on the English Channel, so as to crush out all opposition there.

With this latter force marched the regiment of our friend Fritz, which he was able to rejoin about the beginning of December at Amiens, where were established the headquarters of General Manteuffel, the present commander of the first army--"Old Blood and Iron."

Steinmetz having been shelved, it was said, on account of his age and infirmities, he having fought at Waterloo, but more probably on account of his rather lavish sacrifice of his men, especially at Gravelotte.

This force kept firm hold of Normandy with a strong hand, threatening Dieppe and Havre on either side.

Fritz had a tedious journey to the front.

Partly by railway where practicable, and partly by roads that were blocked by the heavy siege guns and waggon loads of ammunition going forwards for the use of the force besieging Paris, the young lieutenant made his way onwards in company with a reserve column of Landwehr proceeding to fill up casualties in Manteuffel's ranks--the journey not being rendered any the more agreeable by the frequent attacks suffered from franc-tireurs when pa.s.sing through the many woods and forests encountered on the route, in addition to meeting straggling bands of the enemy, who opposed the progress of the column the more vigorously as it abandoned the main roads leading from the frontier and struck across country.

It was not by any means a pleasure trip; but, putting all perils aside, regarding them merely as the vicissitudes of a soldier's lot, what impressed Fritz more than anything else was the ruin and devastation which, following thus in the rear of a triumphant army, he everywhere noticed.

The towns he entered on his way had most of their shops shut, and the windows of the private houses were closed, as if in sympathy with a national funeral, those which had been bombarded--and these were many-- having, besides, their streets blocked up with fallen masonry and scattered beams of timber, their church steeples prostrate, and the walls of buildings perforated with round shot and bursting sh.e.l.ls that had likewise burnt and demolished the roofs; while, in the more open country, the farms and villages had been swept away as if with a whirlwind of fire, only bare gables and blackened rafters staring up into the clouds, like the skeletons of what were once happy homes. The vineyards and fields and gardens around were destroyed and running to waste in the most pitiful way, for every one connected with them, who had formerly cherished and tended them with such care and attention, had either been killed or else sought safety in flight to the cities, where their refuge was equally precarious. Along the highway, the trees, whose branches once gave such grateful shade to wayfarers, were now cut down, only rows of hideous, half-consumed stumps remaining in their stead; while here and there, as the scene of some great battle was pa.s.sed, great mounds like oblong bases of flattened pyramids rose above the surface of the devastated plain--mounds under whose frozen surface lay the mouldering bodies of thousands of brave men who had fallen on the b.l.o.o.d.y field, their last resting-place unmarked by sepulchral cross or monumental marble. Everywhere there was terrible evidence of the effects of war and the price of that "glory" which, the poet sings truly, "leads but to the grave!"

Fritz was sickened with it all; but, what struck his keen sense of honour and honesty more, was the wholesale pillage and robbery permitted by the German commanders to be exercised by their soldiery on the defenceless peasantry of France. A cart which he overhauled, proceeding back to the frontier, contained such wretched spoil as women's clothes, a bale of coffee, a quant.i.ty of cheap engravings and chimney ornaments, an old-fashioned kitchen clock, with an arm-chair--the pride of some fireside corner--a quant.i.ty of copper, and several pairs of ear-rings, such as are sold for a few sous in the Palais Royale!

The sight of this made his blood boil, and Fritz got into some trouble with a colonel of Uhlans by ordering the contents of the cart to be at once confiscated and burnt, the huckster being on the good books of that officer--doubtless as a useful collector of curios!

It was a current report amongst the French at the time that the German army was followed by a tribe of Jew speculators, who purchased from the soldiers the plunder that they certainly could not themselves expect to carry back to their own country; and this incident led Fritz to believe the rumour well founded.

"Heavens, little mother," as he wrote home subsequently to Madame Dort, after his experience of what went on at headquarters under his new commander. "I do not fear the enemy; but the only thing which will do us any harm, G.o.d willing that we come safely home, is that we shall not be able to distinguish between mine and thine, the 'meum' and 'tuum'

taught us at school, for we shall be all thorough thieves; that is to say, we are ordered to take--'requisition' they call it--everything that we can find and that we can use. This does not confine itself alone to food for the horses and people, but to every piece of portable property, not an absolute fixture, which, if of any value, we are directed to appropriate and 'nail' fast!

"Through the desertion of most of the castles here in the neighbourhood by their legitimate proprietors, the entry to all of them is open to us; and now everything is taken out of them that is worth taking at all.

The wine-cellars in particular are searched; and I may say that our division has drank more champagne on its own account than I ever remember to have seen in the district of Champagne, when I visited it last year before the war.

"In the second place, our light-fingered forces carry off all the horses we can take with us; all toilet things, gla.s.ses, stockings, brushes, boots and shoes, linen--in a word, everything is 'stuck to!'

"The officers, I may add, are no exception to the private soldiers, but steal in their proper precedence, appropriating whatever objects of art or pictures of value they can find in the mansions we visit in these archaeological tours of ours. Only yesterday, the adjutant of my regiment, a n.o.ble by birth, but I am sorry to say not a gentleman either by manners or moral demeanour, came to me and said, 'Fritz Dort, do me the favour to steal for me all the loot you can bring me. We will at all events show Moltke that he has not sent us into this war for nothing.' Of course, this being an order from a superior officer, I could not say anything but 'At your command, your highness!' But what will come of it all only G.o.d knows! I'm afraid, when there is nothing left to lay our hands on, we will begin to appropriate the goods and chattels of each other; although, little mother, I will endeavour to keep my fingers clean, if only for your sake!"

Fritz, however, soon had something more exciting to think about than the morals of his comrades; for, only a few days after he joined his regiment, he went into action again at the battle of Amiens, when the Germans drove back Faidherbe's "army of the north," routing them with much slaughter, and taking many prisoners, besides thirteen cannon. A French regiment of marines was ridden down by a body of German Hussars, who were almost decimated by the charge--which resembled that of Balaclava, the "sea soldiers" standing behind entrenchments with their guns.

Later on, too, Fritz was in a more memorable engagement. It occurred on the morning of the 23rd of December at Pont Noyelles, where the army of General Manteuffel, numbering about fifty thousand men with some forty guns, attacked a force of almost double the strength, commanded by Faidherbe, the last of the generals on whom the French relied outside of Paris. The two armies confronted each other from opposing heights, separated by the valley of the Somme and a small, winding stream, which falls into the larger river at Daours, on the right and left banks of which the contending forces were respectively aligned; and the combat opened about eleven o'clock in the forenoon with a heavy cannonade, under cover of which the German tirailleurs smartly advanced and took possession of several small villages, although the French shortly afterwards drove them out of these at the point of the bayonet, exhibiting great gallantry. In the evening, both armies rested in the same positions they had occupied at the commencement of the fight; but, although the French greatly outnumbered their antagonists, being especially superior in artillery, the fire of which had considerably thinned the German ranks, they did nothing the whole of the succeeding day. On the contrary, they rested in a state of complete inactivity, when, if they had but pushed forwards, they might have compelled the retreat of Manteuffel.

The next morning was that of Christmas Day.

Fritz could not but remember it, in spite of his surroundings, for he received a small parcel by the field post, containing some warm woollen socks knitted by Lorischen's own fair fingers, and sent to him in order "to prevent his appropriating those of the poor French peasantry," as he had intimated might be the case with him in his last letter home, should he be in need of such necessaries and not have any of his own. His good mother, too, did not forget him, nor did a certain young lady who resided at Darmstadt.

It was the morning of Christmas Day; but not withstanding its holy and peaceful a.s.sociations, Fritz and every one else in Manteuffel's army corps expected that the anniversary would be celebrated in blood. Judge of their surprise, however, when, as the day advanced, the vedettes and outposts they sent ahead returned with the strange intelligence that the enemy had abandoned the highly advantageous ground they had selected on Pont Noyelles, retiring on Arras.

The news was almost too good to be true; but, nevertheless, the German cavalry were soon on the alert, pursuing the retreating force and slaughtering thousands in the chase--thus Christmas Day was pa.s.sed!

The new year opened with more fighting for Fritz; for, on the 2nd of January, occurred the battle of Bapaume, and on the 19th of the same month the more disastrous engagement for the French of Saint Quentin, which finally crumbled up "the army of the north" under Faidherbe, which at one time almost looked as if it would have succeeded in raising the siege of Paris, by diverting the attention of the encircling force.

However, in neither of these actions did Fritz either get wounded or gain additional promotion; and from thence, up to the close of the war, his life in the invaded country was uneventful and without interest.

Yes, to him; for he was longing to return home.