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قراءة كتاب Fritz and Eric The Brother Crusoes

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‏اللغة: English
Fritz and Eric
The Brother Crusoes

Fritz and Eric The Brother Crusoes

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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event of fresh levies being required for garrisoning the fortresses with this militia force, so as to enable the trained soldiery to move onward and fill up the casualties of the campaign—forming a third line of defence.

These gigantic masses were organised with the celerity and precision of clockwork, and then sent forward westward, perfectly equipped—in the highest sense a national army, being over four hundred thousand strong!

Day after day, up to the end of July, the different railway lines of Germany bore the mighty host onward to the banks of the Rhine in endless succession of train-loads. Mass after mass of armed men, duly supplied with all the material of war, advanced rapidly, yet in due pre-arranged order, to the points selected for their gathering; while, in the meantime, the fortresses along the line of the river, where the first French attack was expected to be made, were put in a proper state of defence, and now, with strong garrisons, repaired works, ditches filled, and ramparts crowned with Krupp cannon, were prepared to defy the invader. By the first week of August three great armies had taken possession of the strip of territory, lying between the lower stream of the Moselle and the Rhine, which had for centuries been a battlefield between the German and French races, and which was now to witness fighting on a scale which put every previous campaign into the shade. The first army, under the veteran General Steinmetz, who had won his spurs at Waterloo, had been moved from the north down the valley of the Moselle and along the railway from Bingen, with its headquarters at the strongly fortified town of Coblentz. The second, or “central army,” under Prince Frederick Charles, “the Red Prince,” as his enthusiastic soldiers styled him, occupied Mannheim and Mayence, guarding the Vosges, through which was the principal avenue to the heart of the coveted Rhineland provinces; while the third army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, who, as is well-known, is married to our own “Princess Royal,” had its headquarters at Landau, where also the Baden and Wurtemberg contingents had to rendezvous.

“The ball was opened”—to use the light-hearted expression of a French journalist in describing the commencement of the murderous struggle for supremacy between the two nations—at Saarbruck on the 2nd of August, 1870, when the late ill-fated Prince Imperial of France received his “baptism of fire”; but the first real engagement of the war did not occur till two days later, at Weissembourg, this being succeeded by the terrible battle of Woerth on the 6th of the month, when the German army under the Crown Prince of Prussia crumpled up the forces of Mcmahon, and thus effectually disposed of the previously much-vaunted superiority of the French military system, with its chassepot rifle and mitrailleuse.

With these initial victories of Germany we have not much to do, however; for Fritz belonged to the Hanoverian division, which formed one of the units of the Tenth Army Corps, under the command of Steinmetz, which did not come into action until later on.

On joining his regiment at headquarters, our young recruit from Lubeck, hastily summoned to exchange the pen and desk of a Dutch merchant’s counting-house for the needle-gun and camp of the soldier, discovered to his great joy, that, instead of having to go through the tedious routine of garrison duty—which he had expected would have mainly composed his experiences of the war—the French invasion of Rhineland had so suddenly collapsed, that the Teuton forces, which had been assembled for the original purpose of defending the native soil, were now able to take the offensive and in their turn invade the territory of the foe; and, thus, he would be able to see active service on the field. This was a consummation dearly desired on his part, for he was young and ardent; although, perhaps, the order to go forwards was not quite so much relished by some of his comrades, who were married men and preferred the quiet of their home fireside to the many risks and discomforts of a campaign, which, at the beginning, they did not look upon so hopefully as their leaders.

“Hurrah!” he exclaimed one morning at Coblentz, when the division in which he served was paraded on the Platz in heavy marching order, the men hurriedly falling into the ranks. “No more sentry rounds now and guard-mounting; we’re off to Paris!”

“Don’t you crow too loudly, my young bantam,” said a veteran near him; “we’ll have a long march first, and then perhaps one of those confounded chassepot bullets we’ve heard so much of will put you feet foremost, in a way you won’t like!”

“Bah!” replied Fritz; “I’ll run the chance of that. Anything is better than stopping here kicking our heels in this old town, while our brothers are gaining laurels in the battlefield!”

“Ach, mein lieber,” said the other; “wait till you’ve seen a little of the reality of war, the same as I did four years ago at Sadowa; you’ll then think differently. It all looks very well now, with your smart new uniform and bright helmet; but, when the one is ragged with bayonet cuts and bloody and dirty, and the other doesn’t preserve you from a leaden headache, you will prefer, like me, barrack life—aye, even in Coblentz!”

“Hush there! order in the ranks!” sang out an officer at this moment, stopping Fritz’s answer; and, the word of command being presently given to march, the conversation was not renewed.

After the fearful loss they had suffered at Woerth, which battle was followed up by the sanguinary defeat of Frossard at Forbach, to the left of their line, on the same day, the French fell back on Metz as their rallying point, hoping by means of the vast entrenched camp there and its facilities of communication with Chalons and Verdun, to be able to make a stand against the enemy, now pressing them so sore. Military critics say that this was the greatest mistake made by the Emperor Napoleon’s advisers; and that, had the forces under Bazaine retreated farther to the west—after throwing a sufficient garrison into Metz—they might have been able to effect a junction with the defeated army of Mcmahon, which that general was withdrawing into the interior and from which they were now completely cut off.

Be that as it may, however, during this interval of inactivity, when the shattered fragments of the magnificent French army—which had so proudly assumed the offensive but a bare fortnight before along the frontiers of the Rhine—were idling away precious moments that were fraught with peril and disaster to the Gallic race, the huge German masses, animated by a sense of victory and the consciousness of a superiority in arms as well as in numbers, were sweeping forward like a whirlwind of destruction. The Crown Prince, who had routed Mcmahon at Woerth and driven the wedge in that separated him from Bazaine, continued his onward march on the left of the German line through the passes of the Vosges into the fertile plains of Champagne. At the same time, Prince Frederick Charles, with the main portion of the second army, had crossed the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson; and, moving northwards, was already in a position to threaten the line of the French retreat on Verdun, while the remainder of the Red Prince’s forces were advancing to the eastward of Metz. The columns, too, of Steinmetz, moving with mathematical regularity at an equal rate of progression, were also being echelonned along the northern face of the fortress, just within striking distance.

To put it concisely, some two hundred and fifty thousand unbeaten German soldiers, with an artillery numbering over eight hundred guns, almost surrounded the stronghold of Lorraine and the far weaker and partly demoralised force which the French had gathered together beneath its walls, only, as it turned out subsequently, to court defeat and annihilation.

It was not until the 14th of August that the series of battles that were to rage round Metz, began.

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