The spirit shown collectively has, perhaps, been outdone by individuals. Endless instances of personal heroism exhibited singly might be quoted. What British boy can read without a thrill of the little Scotch drummer on the march with Roberts to Cabul, who, weary and footsore, refused to fall out, saying, “Nae, nae, I’ll nae fall out till I’ve washed my hands in the waters of the Caspian”? What of Major White, of the 92nd Highlanders, the present commander-in-chief in India, who cried to his men in the battle of Candahar: “Highlanders! will you take those guns”—which were galling them terribly—“if I give you the lead?” What of the men who followed him to their very mouth? What, especially, of the little Goorkha warrior who went up with his Scotch friends, and who took one of the first of the guns, shouting as he thrust his cap into the muzzle in sign of proprietorship, “This gun belongs to my regiment—2nd Goorkha, Prince of Wales’s!” What of Sergeant Cox, of the 72nd, bringing in wounded officers to Sherpur, and who, with only ten men, faced the whole garrison of the Bala Hissar and forced his way through, advancing firing, till the enemy broke and fled? The dhoolie bearers (the natives carrying the officers) would have set down their loads and fled, but Cox threatened to shoot them if they did not do their duty. Sergeant Cox, by his coolness and intrepidity, set such a good example that his men seconded him admirably, and all the wounded were brought in safe to the cantonments. Cox had already received the distinguished service medal for his gallantry in the campaign.

We have, of course, no monopoly in brilliant feats of arms. Other nations have shown equal prowess, whether against us or each other. Bravery, indeed, will never go out of fashion; the will and power to show it, as well as the spirit to appreciate it, may be met with in every civilised country. Other nations, moreover, have been tried more seriously than ourselves in longer, larger, and more portentous struggles. France sacrificed much treasure and many men in assisting the Italians to throw off the Austrian yoke, and the campaign of 1859 was distinguished by at least two great battles. Both are, perhaps, better remembered by the colours called after them; but Magenta was a narrowly lost battle, and Solferino was gained by the devoted gallantry of the French troops. Austria was an intruder, and had no heart in the struggle.

The War of Secession between the Northern and Southern States of America was a deplorable civil struggle fought out to the bitter end, but it was full of pregnant military lessons, full of strange vicissitudes in which victory inclined to either side, of tremendous conflicts over a vast extent of country. It was a war which embraced almost a whole continent: the whole of America was affected, from the gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains. The campaigns and battles were commensurate with the territory affected. In the first instance the two capitals of the opponents—Washington and Richmond—were chiefly threatened. Both lay comparatively near their respective frontiers; both were in imminent danger more than once. McClellan, after Fredericksburg was in striking distance of Richmond and Lee, but for Gettysburg, would have swooped down on Washington.

But as General Grant rose in fame and authority through his splendid successes in the west, he urged upon the Federal Government the necessity for more comprehensive operations. The Confederates, as the Southerners were called, could only be conquered by something like extermination; they must be attacked with equal vigour on every line, isolated alike from supplies and from supports. The North commanded endless resources, unlimited credit, the means of purchasing recruits without number, any quantity of munitions of war. The South, shut in within narrow limits, saw its population drained of fighting men, and was dependent upon blockade runners for powder and shot. Grant was absolutely right, as the end proved. When Sherman, having triumphed in the west, made the famous flank march from Atlanta to the sea, he could swing round and threaten Richmond from the south. This was the beginning of the end. Grant now reaped the benefit of his long-protracted, bitterly-contested campaign in the “Wilderness,” north of Richmond, and the armies closing round Richmond, the surrender of Lee became inevitable, and the Confederacy collapsed.

The war had brought forward many heroes, and several great commanders: Grant, Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson—the name he earned, some say (for there is another version of the story), because once, when hardly pressed, he said his men would stand like a stone wall—Stuart, the Southern cavalry raider; Sheridan, a cavalry leader, hardly inferior to Seidlitz or Murat; Sherman, Johnson, Hooker, and many more. Some of them were recurring types—Grant, silent as Moltke, and as tenacious and prescient; Robert Lee, the patriot soldier, who thought only of his country, a man of duty like Wellington; Jackson, who might have been a Puritan Cromwellian, praying and fighting by turns, a Charles Gordon in his absolute trust in Divine help, an Ironsides in his eagerness to smite the foe. The rank and file comprised all classes of the community—artisans, handicraftsmen, scientists—and not the least remarkable features in the war were its engineering achievements: miles of road made in a single night, bridges built, forests removed, extensive entrenchments thrown up as if by magic when the order was given.

The “Seven Weeks’ War,” as it has been styled by its historian, Colonel H. M. Hozier, was the first of the short, sharp, and decisive conflicts which are to be the rule in modern campaigns. It was between the Prussians and the Austrians, and it was fought for the future supremacy in the great empire of Germany. Before it no one knew how marvellously the Prussians had improved in the science and practice of war; how admirably their troops were trained, how splendidly armed, and with weapons of the newest invention. Still less was it expected that untried Prussian leaders would develop such unexpectedly superior generalship. From first to last this rapidly successful war was a surprise. It was carried into the enemy’s country with extreme boldness and celerity; the young soldiers of Prussia, under grey-haired but mostly inexperienced officers, soon established a marked superiority over Austrian veterans who had served in many hard-fought campaigns. It was proved in the earliest engagements that the possession of the needle-gun, the breech-loading rifle long carried by a portion of the Prussian army, but never hitherto used, put the Austrians, with their muzzle-loaders and their traditional belief in the bayonet, on very unequal terms. In the fight Austrian soldiers could not stand before the Prussians at all. Then the Prussian generals always out-manœuvred the Austrian; they largely used a system of flanking attack, of turning the enemy’s position at one end or side of it, while he was occupied and engaged by another attack on the front.

These were the tactics that led to the crowning victory of Sadowa, or Königgrätz, as it is sometimes called. After it the Austrians had no hope of success, and a retreat began, which soon after was completed by the ending of the war. At this battle the Austrians lost 40,000 men, the Prussians barely 6,000. Such is often the effect of superior generalship and better morale.

Not the least interesting part of this great battle was that Englishmen assisted in it as something more than mere spectators. The war correspondents of the Times on either side were both English officers. Captain Hozier rode with the Crown Prince of Prussia through the day, sharing his dangers as he noted the varying fortunes of the fight. On the Austrian side, Colonel C. B. Brackenbury was close by Benedek’s side from first to last; and the Austrian commander-in-chief, in spite of his misfortunes, found time to ask for “his Englishman,” and to praise him for his gallantry in facing the risks of the battle.

War is said to be full of surprises; and, again, that success is earned by the general who makes fewest mistakes. Napoleon III felt the bitter truth of both these sayings. The Franco-German war was a terrible surprise to him, and both the Emperor and his generals made innumerable mistakes. The French began by expecting a “walk over”—a parade march to Berlin; they found they had caught a Tartar, and that they could not keep the Germans out of France. Napoleon had been assured that everything was ready for the campaign: not a “single button was wanting on a single gaiter” was the boast of his War Minister, General Le Bœuf. Yet, when the first blow was struck, inextricable confusion still reigned within the French army—neither men nor supplies were properly organised; while, from the very first collision, it was clear that the science was all on the German side. Man to man, the French fought as well as their opponents; but they were never manœuvred wisely nor judiciously led.

On the other hand, from the moment war became inevitable, everything worked with clocklike precision. It is said that von Moltke, the famous chief of the Prussians, had only to touch a bell and all went forward. Anyhow, the Prussians and their allies were quickly mobilised, and able to take the field long before the French. The Crown Prince fell upon the French general when still unprepared, won the first battle, and held the advantage from then to the end.

It was a strategical advantage; in other words, the general movements of the armies put them in superior strength at decisive points, and this secured success all along the line.

Marshal MacMahon, beaten at Worth, had to retire, and become separated both from Bazaine about Metz and the army of the South. In between, the “Red Prince,” with the 1st German army, held Bazaine; and, after a series of fierce conflicts, the famous battles of Vionville, Gravelotte, and Mars La Tour drove him under the walls of the great fortress. MacMahon, frantic to regain communication with Bazaine, made a long detour—a dangerous flank march, as it was called—and found himself “headed off” at Sedan, with the Germans circling round him, and the neutral territory of Belgium, which he was forbidden to enter, in his rear. The surrender of the French army at Sedan, with the Emperor Napoleon at its head, was a disaster from which France never recovered. It was followed by the surrender of Metz and the whole of Bazaine’s army. Within five weeks France had been defeated in eight pitched battles; the bulk of the French regular troops were prisoners of war. France was not yet conquered. While the Germans pressed on to invest Paris—while their armies moved north, south, and west—the new Government which had replaced the fallen Emperor made the most heroic and unheard-of efforts to improvise new levies. To place recruits and moblots—youths half-trained and inexperienced civilians—in the front line against regular troops flushed with victory, seemed hopeless enough. It is to the undying credit of the French nation that it was able to maintain the struggle for so many months longer, and to the sturdy patriotism of such men as Thiers and Gambetta, who never despaired. France fought it out alone: she had no allies, or the result might have been different. There are those who say that the intervention of a couple of English army corps in favour of France would have changed the situation. But it was not our quarrel, and England could not have thrown her weight into the scale, except on the most sentimental and insufficient grounds.

Nearly five-and twenty years have elapsed since this great struggle occurred, and its legacy of hate still rankles unappeased. France is once more as strong as her late foe—stronger, perhaps—and she is still pining to regain her provinces and her prestige. It may be that her rulers and her people are loth to be the first to draw the sword: the cost of unsuccessful war is a dear price in these latter days; and when she fights again it will be at the most fitting opportunity, when chance and a better cause than last time may be on her side. But that she will fight some day is nearly certain; and it is this conviction which keeps Europe on tenter-hooks, and converts the whole Continent into a standing camp.

England, happily, has been spared any life and death contest, any war on the gigantic scale of the foregoing. But while her neighbours have been at each other’s throats, she has been engaged in numerous “little wars”—wars misnamed little, indeed, for the issues have often been immense and the efforts made most severe. In an empire so extensive as ours, causes of conflict abound, and fighting must be frequent. Since the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny, we have had at least half a dozen campaigns. A diplomatic war with China, a war for supremacy in New Zealand, a war for the deliverance of captives in Abyssinia, of retaliation in Ashanti, of self-defence in Zululand, against a too-powerful neighbour, of aggression followed by “scuttle” in Afghanistan, of interference in Egypt, followed by the dire necessities of occupation.

In many of these the chief work lay in combating the physical and climatic difficulties. There was not much fighting in the march to Magdala, but it was a stupendous undertaking to convey a British army across the “mountains of Rasselas,” to the nearly inaccessible stronghold of King Theodore. When Sir Robert Napier reached his goal, his troops had only four days’ rations left, other than meat, and everything had been carried up from the sea on mule- or donkey-back. In Ashanti there was the same urgency as regards supplies, but as no four-legged animals will live on the Gold Coast, the only means of conveyance was on the heads of native men and women. The organisation of transport was one of the greatest, although not the only difficulty. There was also the climate, which was at times, and in most places, pestilential. There was the absence of all means and appliances, almost of food, and there was the certainty of encountering a brave, if savage, enemy in the field. How well the Ashantis fought was shown by their stubborn stand at Amoaful, and again in front of Coomassie.

The most trying phases of the campaign were those anticipatory to the arrival of the white troops. A small and select band of staff-officers, under the then new and little tried General Sir Garnet Wolseley, were sent out to prepare the way, to make roads and bridges, secure native allies, carriers, and last, not least, to hold their own as best they could against the enemy, who was close at hand and threatening the very existence of the Cape Coast Colony. Within five months the whole of the arrangements were completed; two good black regiments had been organised and drilled under Colonels Evelyn Wood and Baker Russell, Rait’s artillery was an effective body, and with these and a few sailors and marines from the fleet, the Ashantis had been driven back to the bush.

A good hard road had been made to the Prah, a rapid river which the engineers—under the indefatigable Colonel Home—had bridged, and when the English regiments arrived they had simply to go in and win. Two sharp engagements checked their progress, but only for a time, and Coomassie fell directly our army arrived before it.

Afghanistan is a country that will be always memorable in British military annals for the vicissitudes that have marked our operations. The earliest war in 1839 was a rapid and brilliant success; within a short year, through the treachery of our Afghan foes, thousands of our countrymen, their wives and children, were slaughtered in the mountain passes, and the

(From the Painting by W. B. Wollen, R.I.)] country had to be re-conquered only to be again abandoned. The Afghans were always troublesome neighbours, and again in 1878 the insolence of the Ameer led to a new invasion. It was called a triumphal progress; but there was some hard fighting—some brilliant feats of arms. The capture of the fort of Ali Musjid by Sir Sam Browne’s column, the crowning of the Peiwar Kotal, and the opening of the Shuturgardan Pass by General Roberts were successful operations that were followed by the flight of the Ameer, and paved the way to the treaty of Gandamak, by which we placed a new Ameer on the throne and stationed a British resident at his court.

The second invasion of Afghanistan, in the autumn of 1879, was to revenge the base murder of this resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, in Cabul, and it resulted in important operations. Sir Frederick Roberts, who advanced through the Shuturgardan Pass, direct upon Cabul, reached the capital after fighting the successful battle of Charasia, and was occupied in meting out punishment and strengthening his hold until the winter set in. But with the early snows there came very serious troubles. Nearly the whole of the Afghan tribes had been aroused to a jehad, or holy war, and the Ghazis gathered round the flag of a chief named Mohammed Jan to the number of 40,000. It was said that 100,000 might be expected to take up arms. Roberts’ whole force, English and native, was barely 5,000, but the former were veteran troops, and the latter made up of Sikhs and Goorkhas, the bravest of our Indian levies. The force now arrayed against us was so threatening that he withdrew entirely within our lines, and there, practically besieged, held the enemy at bay. It was a humiliating change for an invading army, but it was the only safe course to pursue. At last, Mohammed Jan was rash enough to attack Sherpur, and was repulsed with tremendous loss. We had not been strong enough to go out and meet him in the field, but he was much too weak to capture our entrenchments.

Our restored supremacy was not again affected until the chiefs at Ghazni showed signs of turbulence, and a force was detached from Cabul to join hands with one coming from Candahar to punish the offenders. The battle of Ahmed Khel, fought and won by Sir Donald Stewart, was a brilliant victory over a most determined foe. Never in the annals of Afghan warfare had Ghazis shown such indomitable courage. They came right in among our men, fighting hand to hand, pistol and sword against breechloader and bayonet, selling their lives so dearly that they did great mischief before they were repulsed. A thousand dead Ghazis were counted on the field, and some of them were women.

But this did not end the fighting, nor did success always smile upon our arms. Another Afghan army, advancing from Herat under Ayoub Khan, was met on the Helmund by General Burrows from Candahar, and a deplorable defeat followed. The causes of the already mentioned disaster at Maiwand were bad generalship and imprudence, but the sting of the defeat was somewhat taken out of it by the devotion displayed. Maiwand imperilled Candahar, which was speedily invested by the triumphant Ayoub, and the garrison was in some danger. Two armies were at once set in motion to relieve the place. General Phayre moved up from Quetta; Sir Frederick Roberts was sent from Cabul, to perform the great forced march which has become famous in military history. Cutting himself adrift from his base—an act which is deemed most rash and generally unjustifiable in military science—he started off with 10,000 men, hampered by 8,000 baggage animals to carry food and indispensable supplies, with 8,000 camp followers, to march 300 miles across an enemy’s country. His troops were the flower of the Indian army, their temper was the finest; no privations checked, no terrors daunted them; they bore without flinching the wide changes of temperature—between 45 degrees at daybreak and 105 degrees at noon; they were never sure of food, and they knew that certain death awaited them if they lagged behind.

The march from Cabul to Candahar was accomplished in twenty days, making an average of fifteen miles daily march during that time: a splendid feat in pluck and unyielding endurance; and they reached Candahar travel-stained but unwearied, ready to join issue with the enemy directly they met him. Ayoub had raised the siege at the approach of Roberts, but he awaited him in a strong position; and then followed the decisive victory of Candahar, fought under the walls of the city, in which the defeat at Maiwand was fully avenged.

The Zulu war will be remembered with mixed feelings: sorrow for grave and regrettable disasters, pride at great achievements, which in a measure atoned for and avenged them. We entered into the struggle a little too lightly, perhaps, although enough must have been known of our opponents to have exacted respect for their prowess. The Zulus were a military nation, every able-bodied man was a soldier, trained in the skilful use of his weapons, light of foot, ardent for glory, highly disciplined and drilled. The Zulu generals were admirable tacticians, and their now well-known plan of attack with centre held back and two great horns thrust out on each flank was quite scientific. Cetewayo, the king, a despot who could deal with his braves as he pleased, could send some 50,000 of them into the field, all ready to sacrifice their lives for him.

Lord Chelmsford, when the invasion of Zululand was decided upon, did not command more than 16,000 men, of whom 9,000 were native levies. His plan of operations covered a wide front: his forces marched in five columns, widely apart, from the sea-mouth of the Tugela River to Luneberg and the borders of the Transvaal. The centre, which he led himself, was the first to suffer, and barely escaped annihilation while the general-in-chief was out on a reconnaissance with half his whole force. The enemy he was looking for, some 20,000 Zulus, swooped down upon the other half in an open undefended camp and destroyed it. The massacre of Insandlwana, when a battalion of the 24th Regiment and a number of native troops were cut to pieces, would have been avoided with proper precautions. What even light entrenchments could do to stave off even overwhelming attack was seen the same day at Rorke’s Drift.

Retreat after Insandlwana was imperative. At one time it seemed as though the Zulus would pursue, and invade the colony of Natal. Fortunately, our arms were upheld elsewhere. The Tugela, or sea-coast column, under Colonel Pearson, had advanced some way towards Ulundi, and had established itself at Ekowe when the news arrived of Lord Chelmsford’s misfortune. After a short debate, it was wisely and bravely resolved to stand firm. Ekowe was roughly fortified and bravely held against thousands of Zulus for more than three months, until it was at last relieved by Lord Chelmsford in person, who on his way up had fought and won the battle of Ghingilovo.

Another column, under Sir Evelyn Wood, the nearest to the two overwhelmed at Insandlwana, had also been hardly pressed. Wood was active, and his attitude firm. At the action called that of the Zlobane Mountain he was for a time surrounded, but in the subsequent fight, when he was attacked in “laager” at Kambula, his force gallantly repulsed quite ten times their number. Two companies of the 80th, with the fifth column, were, however, unfortunate, and one of the detachments sent out to escort waggons coming in with supplies was surprised and destroyed upon the Intombi River. The Zulus had come upon them unawares in the mist—4,000 men to 150—and none of the British escaped alive.

Presently reinforcements began to arrive, and before May the army numbered 22,000 men, of whom 17,000 were Europeans. A new general—the then Sir Garnet Wolseley—was also sent out to supersede Lord Chelmsford; but the latter, utilising his greater means, was able to recover his prestige before the arrival of his successor. Fresh columns were organised; Generals Newdigate and Wood converged upon Ulundi from the north side; General Crealock was to advance from the Tugela (but never got very far); General Marshall, with a cavalry division, joined in with Wood.

The battle of Ulundi, when the king’s kraal was captured and burned, ended the war. The Zulus by this time had lost much of their spirit; they were “beginning to be frightened,” as one of their own chiefs said; and no doubt they now realised that the strength was on our side. Cetewayo was for some time a fugitive after Ulundi, and his pursuit and eventual capture by Colonel Marter and Lord Gifford were not the least exciting episodes of the Zulu war.

This was not to be our last campaign in South Africa. The war with the Boers, which followed, is not a brilliant chapter in our military history. In the Transvaal, as in Zululand, we began by under valuing our enemy, and time was not allowed to recover our reputation. The fate of the general whose name will always be associated with the Boer war was its saddest episode. Misfortune pursued Sir George Colley: he was one of the “unlucky.” Opinions differ concerning his latest failure, but there are many who hold that the story of Majuba—of the craggy and, seemingly, inaccessible hill climbed by Colley and his devoted band, only to find death and defeat on the top—ought, with better fortune, to have ranked with Wolfe’s scaling of the Heights of Abraham, or Charles Napier’s desert march on Emaum Ghur.

Egypt has been our latest battle-ground. The campaign against Arabi and his insurgent troops may not seem a very glorious achievement, but the Egyptians were well disciplined; they had admirable weapons, and they fought behind strong entrenchments, armed with most powerful artillery.

The cavalry combat at Kassassin, the storming of the lines of Tel-el-Kebir, were very successful feats of arms. Fighting of a much more serious character was in store for us before we were long in Egypt. The Great Nile Expedition, for the relief of the ill-fated hero Gordon, was akin to those to Magdala and Coomassie, but it differed rather in scope and greatly in results. To ascend a mighty river, running down with a steady stream five miles an hour and barred at intervals by cataracts and rapids, was a greater task than scaling mountains or penetrating the bush. The enterprise was further hampered by the opposition of a most determined and courageous foe. “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” as our soldiers christened the shock-headed Soudanese warrior, was an opponent worthy of our steel. His contempt for British squares and British breechloaders has been sung in strong language by Kipling, the soldier’s poet, and was shown by the recklessness with which he threw himself on the one and faced the other. Of all the brilliant battles fought by British soldiers, they may be most proud of Abu-Klea, Tamai, and El-Teb.

It has been often said in disparagement of our small wars, that they have been mostly waged against savage foes. But this is surely to our soldiers’ credit, for they have, in this way, encountered some of the most warlike races in the world, many of impetuous, of reckless fanatical bravery, who accepted none of the recognised canons and conventions of civilised warfare. To kill or be killed was the only watchword of the Afghan Ghazi, the stalwart Zulu, or the irrepressible Soudanese. There was no quarter, no making prisoners, except for subsequent butchery. In these desperate campaigns, our men fought with their lives in their hands. It was truly war to the knife, and called for the highest courage.

Nothing shows this better than the many deeds of heroism recorded in these wars, deeds that earned the most coveted of English military distinctions—the Victoria Cross. A chaplain, Mr. Adams, in the first fight outside Sherpur, bravely extricated a trooper who was under his dead horse in a mêlée, and who would certainly have been slain. In the Mutiny, Sir Charles Fraser, now a gallant general, won both the cross and the Humane Society’s medal at one and the same time for saving, under a heavy fire, a man who was drowning. In the closing affair of the Zulu war, before Ulundi, Lord William Beresford gallantly picked up a trooper, whose horse had been shot under him, and carried him off behind him on his own horse. The Zulus were near at hand in great numbers, and the fate of the fallen man would have been sealed. Commandant D’Arcy, of the frontier Light Horse, exhibited the same self-sacrificing courage on this occasion, but his own horse was wounded and fell under the double weight, whereupon D’Arcy mounted his man upon another trooper’s horse, and saw them safely off before he rode away.

Well, we have had our glance at the wars of the century—a cursory glance enough, and attracted chiefly by the red coat of the British soldier; let us now turn over the leaves of our book, and pass from battle to battle. We shall “go as we please”—passing from Plevna to Austerlitz, from Bull Run to Gravelotte, just as the spirit moves us, and unfettered by sequence either of date or place. Now we shall follow the fortunes of the Great Napoleon, now of Napoleon “the Little”; now of Wellington, now of Roberts and Wolseley; now of Moltke, Skobeleff, MacMahon, Sherman, Garibaldi. At one moment we shall be listening to the thunder of a broadside from the Victory, at the next to the bombardment of Alexandria. We shall pass from the shots and shells of civilised warfare to the assegais and spears of the Zulu, the hatchets of the Maori, the knives of the Soudanese. We shall see all the glories of war, deeds of daring and heroism, acts of noble self-sacrifice and devotion; but we shall see also that reverse side of the picture which should indeed be engraved still deeper on our minds: we shall see that its glories are outweighed by its horrors, its sufferings, its pitifulness.

The pleasant little frontier town of Saarbrück was a very interesting place at the beginning of the Franco-German war. Within the distance of a mile from the low heights covering Saarbrück towards the west, ran the frontier line dividing France from Germany. The place was being held “on the bounce,” for its garrison consisted merely of one battalion of the Hohenzollern infantry regiment and two squadrons of the 7th Rhineland Uhlans. All along this frontier line down in the broad smooth valley between the Saarbrück heights and the loftier and more abrupt Spicheren heights inside of the French border, the hostile piquets and videttes confronted each other.

As one stood in front of the little “Bellevue” public-house on the Reppertsberg, one saw in the plain below among the trees a Prussian piquet of Uhlans and infantry; and on the little knolls further in advance the videttes circling singly, their lance-pennons fluttering in the wind. Several hundred yards further away, by the side of the Forbach road, was the frontier custom-house which the French now used as a piquet house. Outside of it the red-breeched linesmen were to be seen sitting or lounging about in considerable numbers. In their front was the chain of their videttes. All along the frontier line, to the right and left of this point, there ran this arrangement of outposts confronting each other. On the Spicheren upland a French force was gradually gathering until, by the end of July, the whole of Frossard’s army corps was massed on the Spicheren, within gunshot distance of the low heights covering Saarbrück.

In those pleasant early days, while as yet there were no graves on the Spicheren Berg and no shattered men lying in the Saarbrück hospitals or littering the platform of the Saarbrück railway station on the blood-stained stretchers, the opposing piquets and videttes formed quite the diversion of the Saarbrück people. After the day’s work was over, the labouring folk used regularly to stroll up to the “Bellevue” to watch, as they drank their beer, the dropping fire, fain to see a German marksman proving his skill by hitting a Frenchman. Both sides were very cautious and few casualties occurred. As yet the Saarbrück hospital contained but two wounded Germans, both linesmen of the Hohenzollern regiment. The French were reputed to be in force in Forbach as well as on the Spicheren Berg—as many, it was said, as 15,000 men. Saarbrück, however, was in no trepidation and kept a good face with its little garrison of some 1,200 men all told.

It was on one of the earliest of those early days that the midday table d’hôte in the Rheinischer Hof was broken up abruptly by the report that French cannon were being moved forward to the edge of the Spicheren Berg. Immediately the drummers paraded the town, beating to arms. A company of the Hohenzollerns occupied each of the two bridges and a third marched up the hill and took up a position among the trees skirting the exercise-field. A detachment of the Uhlans rode up on to the heights, while the rest stood to their horses in the Central Platz. From the “Bellevue” the French cannon were easily discernible through the field-glass, as they were being drawn forward into position by infantrymen.

Almost immediately came a puff of white smoke from the mouth of one of the guns, and a shell struck on the road close by the little beer-house, bursting as it fell. There was a stampede on the part of the civilians from their beer-mugs in the “Bellevue,” and they hurried into cover behind the crest of the height. They were only just in time. Another shell, ricocheting off the road, struck the front of the beer-house, went through the wall as if it had been paper, and burst inside, blowing out the windows and part of the roof. Four more shots were fired, and then the French withdrew their cannon. Their practice, no doubt experimental, was very good—of the six shells fired, three struck the “Bellevue.” Two rooms of it had been blown into one, the bar knocked into little pieces, the furniture wrecked, and a great gap in the floor made by a shell on its way to the cellar to cause a smash-royal among the bottles.

The outposts blazed away at each other until dusk. One of the last shots killed a soldier on patrol—he was the first man killed in the war. The poor fellow was hit full on the forehead, and he must have died instantaneously. His comrades carried in the corpse on a stretcher improvised of their rifles. The drops of blood pit-patted on the road as they carried him past, the moonbeams falling on the pale dead face. Quite a lad he was, with the down hardly grown on his face—likely enough a mother might have been thinking of and praying for her lad, little knowing that he was lying stark and cold, waiting for a grave.

The slow days passed in a strange bewildering calm, unbroken save by the trivial skirmishes occurring in the course of the constant reconnaissances and patrolling parties.

Frossard lay passive on the Spicheren save for the “potato-reconnaissances” his hungry soldiers occasionally made, sending out a screen of skirmishers to the front while the working parties dug potatoes with great industry.

Brave old Major von Pestel of the Lancers, who commanded the handful of men holding Saarbrück, had received an order from Moltke to evacuate a place which was regarded as untenable; but von Pestel pleaded successfully to be left where he was, on the undertaking that he would not compromise his little command, but would fall back as soon as serious danger threatened.

Meanwhile he was never out of the saddle. Every afternoon he would come cantering over the Bellevue height with his cheery greeting and his shout, “Come along, English sir! I go to draw de shoots of de enemy!” The French marksmen expended a considerable quantity of ammunition on the worthy major; but the range was long and they never succeeded in hitting him, although certainly he gave them plenty of chances.

But in spite of Major von Pestel’s cordiality, it was rather a tedious time. Men asked each other if it were possible that the French on the Spicheren were not aware of the weakness of the land on the other side of the frontier. The Prussian infantrymen and Uhlans, it was true, were manipulated dexterously and assiduously to make a battalion seem a brigade and a couple of squadrons a powerful cavalry force; yet it was felt that the place was being held only by dint of sheer impudence—for there were no supports as yet nigh at hand—and that the bubble must burst summarily if Frossard should abandon his unaccountable inactivity. Why the soldiers in red breeches lay so long basking lazily in the sun on the Spicheren slopes the men of Saarbrück could not comprehend; but the day must surely be near now, they said one to the other, when the red-breeches would gird up their loins and roll their columns on over the Reppertsberg, the exercise-ground, and the Winterberg, and across the Saar into the Köllerthaler Wald or the Pfalz. In their path—surely they must have known it—there stood but an open town, a couple of bridges partially barricaded with barrels, a single battalion of infantry and two reasonably strong squadrons of Uhlans.

The 1st of August, while the French on the Spicheren Berg were still supine, brought to near Saarbrück what all hoped was the earnest at last of a host, not alone of resistance, but also of invasion. On the afternoon of that day, the 1st and 3rd battalions of the Hohenzollern regiment, with a battery of artillery, reached the vicinity and bivouacked on the edge of the forest at Raschpfuhl, some two miles north-west of the town. General Gneisenau also arrived and assumed the command.

On the morning of the 2nd, when the Hohenzollerns were basking in their sunshiny bivouac, the French Emperor, with his son, was travelling by train from Metz to Forbach. The German videttes down the valley heard the gusts of cheering with which Frossard’s soldiers welcomed the Head of the State and his heir. Ignorant of the cause, some attributed the cheering to the announcement of a French success somewhere; others ascribed it to an extra issue of wine. How were the honest Uhlans to discern that the imperial parent had come to the frontier to make a military promenade wherewithal to throw dust in the eyes of his Parisians, and that “Lulu,” as they impertinently styled the heir of the dynasty, accompanied his father that he might receive his “baptism of fire”?

The night had passed in quiet along the frontier, and in the morning it seemed as if the 2nd of August was to be as monotonous as had been the 1st. General Gneisenau and old von Pestel, now a lieutenant-colonel, had made a reconnaissance from the “Bellevue” and had come back to a leisurely breakfast. The soldiers in the barrackyards and in the several posts on the environs of the town, slept and smoked and gossiped, their arms stacked as usual; the officers sat under the trees drinking their Rhine wine, and the whole place seemed oppressed by the drowsiness of a fervently hot day.

But the torpor was soon to give place to alert activity. At ten a.m. Saarbrück awoke at the announcement sent in from the outposts that the enemy was at last advancing. The two companies in front of Saarbrück moved at once into the line of defence. The company from St. Johann hurried by at the double to occupy the “Red House.” Major von Horn hastened to strengthen the post on the Winterberg, which was most imminently threatened. Captain Gründer occupied the Löwenberg, and moved with Leydecker’s company and the rest of his own out to St. Arnual, where his rifle fire and the fire of two guns sent to him from Raschpfuhl gave a warm reception to the enemy debouching from the Stiftswald. As some English spectators hurried up to the “Bellevue” height, there rattled past them at a sharp trot a couple of guns which the general had ordered to be put in position on the Exercise Platz. The battery chief waved his hand cheerily as he galloped to the front.

From the “Bellevue” one looked upon an imposing spectacle. Three roads, crossing the plain from the wooded heights on the French side of the frontier, converge on Saarbrück. One of these is the great post-road from Forbach. Another, starting from the village of Spicheren, winds tortuously down the right flank of the precipitous “Rothe Berg”—the “Red Crag”—crosses the hollow and enters Saarbrück between the Reppertsberg and the Nussberg. The third, further to the east, is a mere green track of considerable breadth, which falls abruptly down into the valley by the poplar-clad slope from the plateau towards St. Arnual.

Down all these three roads were flowing from the upland dense and glittering streams of French troops, the stream on the great road flowing swiftest and fastest. The sunrays flashed on the bright bayonets, and threw up from the green or grey background the red and blue of the uniforms. The troops came on in the true careless, irregular French style, with scarcely a pretence of formation, but with a speed that was remarkable. The moment that the head of a column reached the valley, it broke into spray. As file after file reached a certain point, it became dissipated; the nimble linesmen extended further and further to right and left, till by the time that the heads of all three columns were in the valley, an unbroken but loose chain of skirmishers was drawn across the plain several hundred yards in advance.

Then began the steady deployments of company after company, battalion after battalion, regiment after regiment; and almost before one had realised the situation, a long dense line had been ruled along the valley behind the more ragged line of the skirmishers. Squadrons of cavalry streamed down, and forming line at a gallop, rapidly overtook the infantry. Passing through the intervals, they re-formed and pushed on to occupy and cover the flanks of the advance.

While all this was going on in the valley, the streams from behind the wood and the hill seemed to flow from a source that never would run dry. It was hardly a break that was caused in it by the two batteries that came down and wheeled off the road on to the verge of the plateau, the gunners unlimbering and standing ready by the venomous pieces that presently gave fire from their wicked black, mouths. Higher up on the crest were visible other batteries, apparently of larger guns. The peculiarity of the movements described was their perfect quietness and uninterruption. The French tirailleurs had already begun to breast the gentle slope leading up to the positions held by the Germans, when the chassepots began to give tongue; and then the silence gave place to a steady rattle of musketry fire, through the smoke of which the main advance moved steadily and swiftly forward.

Bataille’s division formed the first line; of it Bastoul’s brigade on the right of the main road moved against the Reppertsberg, the Winterberg, and St. Arnual; Pouget’s brigade on the left of the road moved towards the exercise-ground. In the second line were the brigades of Michelet and Valazé; the remainder of Frossard’s corps, the strength of which reached 35,000 men, followed in reserve. An army corps was marching against a couple of battalions.

Despite the disproportion, the Prussian defence was obstinate. It was only after a brisk combat that the weak detachment were driven from St. Arnual, the Winterberg, and the Reppertsberg. On the latter height a Prussian half-company met the French skirmishers with the bayonet, and then held them for a time at bay by a fire from behind the hedges.

The final withdrawal was conducted slowly, in excellent order. Baron von Rosen held his company to the last on the exercise-ground. His steadfast soldiers, lying down between the trees, waited until Pouget’s skirmishers were within 300 yards, and then poured in a fire so heavy that the French assailants were compelled to halt and lie down for a time.

It was just as Rosen had received a peremptory order to retire that the few spectators who waited to accompany that movement witnessed the descent from the Spicheren height of a great cortège of mounted officers. The glittering procession rode forward at a slow trot, crossed the intervening level, and then ascended the slope of the Folster height, around which was massed the regiments of Valazé’s brigade.

The cortège halted on the low crest of the Folster height; and through the telescope one saw the group open out and leave isolated two personages on horseback, one of whom was clearly discerned to be Napoleon III. The boyish figure on the smaller horse, whose gestures were so animated, was presumed to be the young Prince Imperial; and the cheers which rose above the din of the musketry-fire were taken to indicate the congratulations of the soldiers at the Prince’s receiving his “baptism of fire”—which, indeed, it has been supposed, was the object of the otherwise pointless demonstration. Not on the Folster Höhe, but nearer to Saarbrück, under the trees of the exercise-ground, is now a stone with a somewhat brusque inscription, which being translated reads:—“Lulu’s Début, 2nd August, 1870. Erected by H. H. Baumann, Veteran of 1814–1815.”

It was just as Rosen was withdrawing his company from the immediate front of Pouget’s advance that a curious and characteristic incident occurred. Among the few civilians who remained on the exercise-ground to the bitter end was a gallant British officer, Wigram Battye of the famous “Guides,” who died fighting in Afghanistan in the campaign of 1878. A soldier was shot down close to him, whereupon Battye, who had been rebelling against the retirement, snatched up the dead man’s needle-gun and pouch-belt, ran out into the open, dropped on one knee, and opened fire on Pouget’s brigade. Pouget’s brigade replied with alacrity, and presently Battye was bowled over with a chassepot bullet in the ribs. A German professor and a brother Briton ran out and brought him in, conveyed him later to a village in the rear, plastered successive layers of brown paper over the damaged ribs, and started him off in a waggon to the Kreuznach hospital.

The French did not press upon the orderly Prussian retirement, and, indeed, both of the bridges across the Saar remained in the possession of the Prussians. The firing had almost died out when, soon after noon, the French began to bombard the lower bridge and the railway station from three batteries which they had brought up on to the heights overhanging Saarbrück. One of these was a mitrailleuse, the storm of bullets from which swept the bridge so that nothing could live on it, and an unfortunate burgher, who did not believe in the mitrailleuse, had to alter his views on this subject when the lower part of his person was riddled by the bullets it poured forth. The Prussian artillery about Malstatt tried with four guns to make head against the French batteries, but had to give up the attempt and retire. The final detachment of Prussians remained under the shelter of Hagen’s Hotel while the French were shelling the railway station, but ultimately ran the gauntlet and found refuge in the Köllerthal. The casualties of the day were trivial. The Prussians had eight men killed, four officers and seventy-one men wounded. The French loss amounted to six officers and eighty men.

During their short stay in and about Saarbrück the French behaved with great moderation. General Frossard, on the evening of the attack, sent for the Mayor of Saarbrück, and told him that his orders were very strict against marauding, and that if any cases occurred the townspeople were to take the numbers on the caps of the evil-doers, when the fellows would be severely punished. But there was little occasion for complaint: the French soldiers paid their way honestly. They did, to be sure, drink a brewery dry, but the brewer refrained from reporting them. A corporal attempted to kiss pretty Fräulein Sophie—the dame du comptoir of the Rhinescher Hof; but a captain caught him in the act, ran him off the premises, and himself kissed the winsome lass. On the morning of the 6th the Prussian troops were back again in Saarbrück: the French had gone back to the Spicheren position on the previous night.