by Max Hennessy
Animals reared and plunged, kicking and screaming as they fell. Sabres chopped like great knives, hacking men from the saddle in a frenzied butchery. Guns were crashing out along the fringe of the fight, filling the air with drifting blue smoke. Groups of riders broke free, turned and plunged back into the mêlée. Horses, shot through the lungs, spurted purple foam from their nostrils, plunged and fell with kicking legs to smash the brains from their riders. Dismounted men hewed and shot at each other.
Colby saw a sword carve across an officer’s arm and a flash of crimson spray as the arm, still holding a sword, whirled into the air. There was no gentility about this sort of fighting. This was face-to-face butchery on an enormous scale, with dozens of regiments involved. A horse fell backwards on to its rider even as he slashed at an opponent, crushing him. Alongside him, a German dragoon neatly parried a cut but, as his sword came down, the French trooper dodged and the blow fell across his mount’s spine just behind the saddle. The horse screamed and a cascade of yellow liquid spurted from under its tail as it sank like a dog run over by a brewery dray, dragging its haunches, its eyes rolling, its jaw loose, its tongue hanging out, its forelegs trembling.
Trumpets were going all round the fight now and there was a distinct movement to the rear by the French. Gradually the huge mass of horsemen shredded itself out and, as the German squadrons fell back in their turn, the field was left to the dead, the wounded, and the riderless horses. Some of them were cantering away through the smoke, others were quietly waiting by the bodies of their riders. One of them, its stomach opened by a lance thrust, moved slowly across the field, treading on its own entrails but still stopping occasionally to nibble at the grass as if nothing had happened. Others lay on the ground, struggling to rise, lifting their heavy heads then letting them fall back with a thump and a jingle of harness. Dismounted riders were streaming away, small knots and flecks of colour, staggering in high jackboots, their heads unhelmeted, heavy cuirasses thrown aside to allow them to scramble to their feet.
As the field cleared and the vast mêlée separated into drifting flurries of horsemen, Colby found himself in the middle of a group of German lancers. Stumbling horses and staggering men streamed past, some of them helping desperately wounded comrades, some with other riders up behind them, some dragging limping mounts. One man had been run through by a sword, another kicked in the chest as his horse had gone down, so that with every breath he took his shattered ribs collapsed. The face of a third had been carved by sabre slashes, the teeth laid bare, one bulging eye floating in a shattered socket that was filled with thick black blood. With its unkempt hair, the mutilated head looked like a crimson mop.
As Colby passed, a shouted order halted them, and as the panting horses came to a stop, steaming, their heads drooping, they were shouldered aside by a blond officer wearing the black facings of the staff. It was von Hartmann and he stared at Colby with a twisted smile.
‘So,’ he said. ‘It seems you and I are always meeting on the field of war.’
He paused, while Colby stared at him silently, still shocked by the enormous battle that had been fought around him. ‘I hope–’ von Hartmann began to speak, then he gestured at the remains of the lancer regiment with a hopeless movement of his hand. There was a wound on his face and he looked exhausted. Pointing at the blood on Colby’s jacket and smeared along his leg, he raised his eyebrows.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. I’m unharmed.’
The Prussian turned in the saddle and indicated the carnage. ‘I think cavalrymen the world over will have to think again after this day’s work, Herr Major,’ he said. ‘Rifles have made the defence too strong, and I see no future for this sort of idiocy.’
A gun spoke in the east and as the shell arced over them towards the Prussian lines, von Hartmann looked round at his men. ‘Too many good fellows have fallen today,’ he said. ‘But, then, it is always the tallest poppies that are picked.’ He lifted his sword in salute. ‘I think it’s time we left. Hals und Beinbruch, Herr Major. Perhaps we shall meet again.’
Five
The day was coming to a close as Colby rode slowly towards Gravelotte. There was a smell of smoke in the air and about him was that feeling of anti-climax and dying excitement that always followed a battle.
Dead horses made mounds on the turf, their stirrup irons catching the last of the sunshine. The whole area smelled of crushed grass and in the distance he could still see the stumbling figures of unhorsed men.
This was never the way to use cavalry, he decided. Perhaps the Americans weren’t so far wrong in their methods after all. There was no longer any place for massed charges, because rows of rifles made mincemeat of horsemen armed only with swords or lances, and the tremendous losses had achieved little. Death rides, he decided, didn’t really suit him and they were getting to be too much of a habit.
He passed through one of the batteries. A gun had burst and several soldiers were grouped round an officer who was holding his head and groaning in agony with shattered ear drums. Men, horses and wheel fragments were strewn across the grass and the blast had injured men for yards around. One corpse was hanging in a tree, its entrails showing, its clothes torn off, a few sick-looking men standing beneath it, wondering how to get it down. Stretcher bearers were moving past them into the fields, looking for those who might be saved from among the hundreds who were dead. A carriage passed, carrying the body of a general, his gold-encrusted képi over his face, his body dripping blood from the door at every step of the horses.
Rezonville was full of wounded. Many of them had been laid on the soft surface of dunghills and the huge forms of dead cuirassiers stared at the sky with sightless eyes, flies gathering on the blood on their jutting imperials and moustaches. A vivandière with a torn skirt hanging in loops over soil-stained breeches, her spurs twisted, her eyes streaming with tears, moved among them with her barrel of spirit.
A colonel shot in the foot, his leg propped up on a cushion, moved to the rear in a landau, driven by a civilian wearing a Red Cross brassard. ‘Five times,’ he was saying. ‘Five times they charged us and five times we sent them back.’
The Prussian attacks seemed to have been fought to a standstill but both armies were worn down and the cavalry on both sides had been shattered. The French artillery was still holding Vionville, though, and, even if the army could not move forward, it could at least move back towards Metz.
Supply had broken down completely, however, and the long undisciplined convoy of wagons, carts and carriages had dissolved into confusion. Some of the civilian drivers had already turned back, others had cut the traces and bolted. Yet others had unloaded their wagons of supplies and filled them with wounded, so that the whole road was littered with abandoned boxes and tins and crates, and biscuits were being ground to dust by feet, hooves and wheels. The confusion in the French Intendance was equalled only by the confusion in the army itself. Nine infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions and a vast amount of artillery were crammed into the two-mile stretch between Rezonville and Gravelotte and, with no hope of sorting out the chaos, the tail of the army had been turned round. To their bewilderment and fury, men who thought they had won were now marching back towards Metz, looting the convoys of supplies for food as they went.
As Colby moved along with them, thirsty, dusty and grimed with smoke, Bazaine and his staff rode by. Bazaine’s expression was as opaque as ever but it was clear from the faces of the men around him that they entertained little hope of pushing forward through Mars-la-Tour.
Night came with no orders and no attempt at organisation. Flames showed where Vionville still burned and, as Colby headed north of the village in the late dusk, he came on the scattered corpses of Prussian cuirassiers in white tunics and polished breast plates, the remains of the first charge against the French guns in the early afternoon. Past him along the road dragged a procession of ghosts, French soldiers shuffling and straggling in groups. Through the darkness he could hear the soft
trample of hooves on the grass and the clink of bits and scabbards as a long line of French dragoons in scarlet cloaks rode back on their tracks. There was no singing and a crestfallen droop to shoulders, while the mournful thump of a single drum gave time to a regiment of voltigeurs, their officer riding behind, slashing angrily at the bushes with his whip.
Battery after battery clanked and jolted after them, the drivers arguing and disputing the way. In the fields, more horsemen passed with the same lifeless look, slumped in the saddles. The air was full of the smell of burning stores and the sulphurous fumes of artillery smoke that still seemed to hang about. Behind them the death-wreath of burning houses and trees lifted into the air.
Colby’s mood was thoughtful. He had seen what was probably the greatest cavalry battle in the world since the days of Murat. Thousands of horsemen had been involved on the slopes and valleys round Mars-la-Tour, regiment upon regiment, brigade upon brigade, division upon division, all caught up in the most appalling slaughter. The day had brought over ten thousand dead, and a large proportion were cavalry. Lifeless horses lay everywhere, scattered over the fields where they had been brought down by shells; among the smashed hedges and fences, in farmyards and gardens, blocking the road; hundreds of them, both French and German, in such numbers as would take weeks to clear.
The wind died, shrivelled to nothing, as he reached Gravelotte. Every house had become a hospital and the lights of feeble lamps glowed in the windows. Discouraged men crouched round fires or under the trees, watching as the wounded were laid on straw which had been spread in yards and gardens and fields. Men and women stumbled about with pails of water while a surgeon from an American ambulance worked over an oilcloth-covered table dripping blood.
The wounded were packed into every space available. Those who had died lay in corners and under a blanket was a pile of amputated limbs. Other men had succumbed to their weariness and simply stumbled to a halt, laying down to sleep among the dead and the dying. The street was littered with abandoned rifles, knapsacks and greatcoats, while those still on the move licked around the abandoned vehicles and the halted gun limbers like a flood from a burst dam. It was like the vast charnel house of Waterloo all over again, the desolation of a battle that had been equally splendid and just as out-dated.
As Colby reached the inn, Ackroyd appeared. He looked worried and his expression showed his relief as he recognised Colby.
‘What ’appened?’ he said. ‘Nobody ’ere seems to know ’oo’s won.’
He had a letter for Colby from Germaine. Thrown on her own devices, she had shown more sense of self-preservation than Colby had credited her with. The letter was written on one of the scented sheets she carried in her toilet box. It smelled faintly of musk and the scrawl was hurried, but it made it quite clear where she was going.
‘As far as possible,’ she wrote. ‘To the Mediterranean. To Marseilles or Perpignan or Toulouse. I shall probably even leave France for Corsica.’
There seemed no alternative but to follow her to Metz. In the Avenue Serpenoise, Sisters of Charity, like great moths in their wide winged caps, were carrying food and drink and binding wounds with strips torn from sheets and curtains, and even as they reached the centre of the city in the growing daylight they heard the guns start again and learned that yet another battle, greater even than Mars-la-Tour, had started at Gravelotte.
‘Three battles in five days,’ Ackroyd said wonderingly. ‘Where in God’s name will they put the wounded?’
By evening the first of them were arriving in Metz with the last from Mars-la-Tour. The scene was nightmarish as the stream became a flood and finally a stampede. Every courtyard and open space was full of men too tired or too weak to walk any further, and the air was filled with a high ullulation of complaint and sorrow. Ambulance men were struggling to remove the wounded towards the Place Royale where marquees had been erected in the gardens of the Esplanade, and, as more long convoys appeared from the west, a priest waited by the roadside to give them a blessing as they passed. There were so many it was clear nobody knew what to do with them. The Palais de Justice had a Red Cross flag at each corner and other public buildings overflowed with them until they were pushed into convents, barracks, hotels and even private houses. The hundreds of tricolours flapping in the gusty air left wet smears on windows and walls, the waiting rooms of the station were occupied by the medical staff and the floor was packed with stretchers. In the dim glow of the gaslight the red cross on its white background glowed like blood.
‘It’s time we were leaving, Tyas,’ Colby said. ‘This place is going to be besieged. The Prussians are already moving round it and the French staff haven’t the foggiest idea what to do.’
‘Where are we goin’?’ Ackroyd asked.
Colby gestured. The sky looked tortured, with green and gold thunderheads building up in the east. The wind coming from the north made the telegraph wires hum with what sounded like ominous messages of war. On the gusts, they could hear the muttering of guns.
Colby sighed. ‘Belgium,’ he said. ‘Then home.’
‘They had them in tents,’ Colby said. ‘And in marquees on the Esplanade. They dragged railway wagons off the rails into the Place Royale and slung hammocks inside for them. But the weather changed and they started to die in hundreds. The North African troops didn’t even seem to wish to live, and the stink of pyaemia and gangrene from the Coislin had to be smelled to be believed.’
Wolseley’s rooms were full of the same books and plans, and on the wall hung a map of France that was better than anything Colby had seen in the hands of the French staff. Wolseley sat in a leather chair, watching as Colby’s hands moved across it. There was a strange reserve of vitality about him that indicated a firm will and a strong sense of knowing what he wanted.
‘Bazaine had no plan and nobody knew what to do,’ Colby continued. ‘The troops wandered about and nobody attempted to do anything with them. The army had split into factions – Imperialist, Republican and Monarchist – and they were all blaming each other for the defeats and doing nothing about breaking out, although the Prussians were already erecting long-range batteries on the hills. We got out without any trouble at all towards Plappeville and there were hundreds of troops up there, pushed north by the fighting at Gravelotte. The whole army could have got clear and fallen on the southern flank of the Prussians at Sedan, but they didn’t even try.’
As Colby became silent, Wolseley shifted in the chair. ‘And Sedan?’ he said. ‘Tell me about Sedan.’
Colby’s hand moved. ‘It stuck out a mile that the Prussians would try to stop MacMahon and the Emperor joining up to rescue Bazaine. But the French made no attempt at a feint or any effort to draw them away from their path. As they were forced further and further north, they found themselves pushed into the angle of the frontier near the Belgian border where they hadn’t room to manoeuvre.’
‘Then?’
‘Mixture as before, sir. There was little wrong with the ordinary soldier or even with his weapons. The confusion was all at the top. The disaster was colossal. The Prussian army’s now heading for Paris.’
‘Will Paris come to an arrangement?’
‘Not yet, sir. But I think eventually. When I passed through on the way to Calais, they were preparing for a seige but there was no plan and no order.’
Wolseley was silent for a moment then he lifted his head. ‘What’s your view of the Prussians?’ he asked.
‘They made a lot of mistakes, sir, but they had one quality that saved them again and again. They marched to the sound of the guns. The French seemed to march away and seemed only to think of using their cavalry when in trouble – as if it were the effort of despair. To me there seemed no place on a battlefield dominated by breech-loading rifles for masses of horsemen.’
Wolseley’s eyebrows lifted and he gave a thin smile. ‘If that’s your view, how do you propose to handle it if ever you succeed to the command of your regiment?’
‘I intend to give it a
great deal of thought, sir. There’s still a need for horsemen, but not used in that way.’
‘That’s a crafty retort if ever there were one,’ Wolseley said. ‘So what’s the answer?’
‘Train ’em to use their carbines, sir.’
Wolseley permitted himself another slow smile. ‘I think you’ll be highly unpopular with some of our mounted regiments,’ he said. ‘Go on. Tell me more about the Germans. What makes ’em so able?’
‘Their army’s a machine, sir. By the use of railways and telegraphs they manage numbers not known up to now. I think we shall have trouble from them in Europe before long. I suspect that they like war. But it’s not the old kind of war, sir. The French provided that. Their doctrine was always that they wouldn’t win by defence. They never went anywhere but forward. I think their success lies in the fact that their staff is trained. Bravery isn’t enough. A staff officer needs to be more clear-headed than brave, methodical rather than dashing.’
‘Are you suggesting we recruit scholars?’