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Page 57
He saw the Prussian captain spring from his horse and rush to a little
group composed of the general, the prince and several others of high
rank who had drawn closely together at his coming.
Von Boehlen was wounded slightly, but he stood erect as he saluted the
commander and talked with him briefly and rapidly. John's busy and
imaginative mind was at work at once with surmises, and he settled upon
one which he was sure must be the truth. The French advance in the
center was coming, and this German army also must soon go into action.
He was confirmed in his belief by a hurried order to the guards to go
eastward with the prisoners. As the captives, the wounded and the
unwounded, marched off through the forest of S�nouart they heard at a
distance, but behind them, the opening of a huge artillery fire. It was
so tremendous that they could feel the shaking of the earth as they
walked, and despite the hurrying of their guards they stopped at the
crest of a low ridge to look back.
They gazed across a wide valley toward high green hills, along which
they saw rapid and many flashes. John longed now for the glasses which
had been taken from him when he was captured, but he was quite sure that
the flashes were made by French guns. From a point perhaps a mile in
front of the prisoners masked German batteries were replying. Fleury
with his extraordinary power of judging sound was able to locate these
guns with some degree of approximation.
"Look! the aeroplanes!" said John, pointing toward the hills which he
now called to himself the French line.
Numerous dark shapes, forty or fifty at least, appeared in the sky and
hovered over the western edge of the wide, shallow basin. John was sure
that they were the French scouts of the blue, appearing almost in line
like troops on the ground, and his heart gave a great throb. No doubt
could be left now, that this German army was being attacked in force
and with the greatest violence. It followed then that the entire German
line was being assailed, and that the French victory was continuing its
advance. The Republic had rallied grandly and was hurling back the
Empire in the most magnificent manner.
All those emotions of joy and exultation that he had felt the day before
returned with increased force. In daily contact he liked Germans as well
as Frenchmen, but he thought that no punishment could ever be adequate
for the gigantic crimes of kings. Napoleon himself had been the champion
of democracy and freedom, until he became an emperor and his head
swelled so much with success that he thought of God and himself
together, just as the Kaiser was now thinking. It was a curious
inversion that the French who were fighting then to dominate Europe were
fighting now to prevent such a domination. But it was now a great French
republican nation remade and reinvigorated, as any one could see.
The guards hurried them on again. Another mile and they stopped once
more on the crest of a low hill, where it seemed that they would remain
some time, as the Germans were too busy with a vast battle to think much
about a few prisoners. It was evident that the whole army was engaged.
The old general, the other generals, the princes and perhaps dukes and
barons too, were in the thick of it. John's heart was filled with an
intense hatred of the very name of royalty. Kings and princes could be
good men personally, but as he saw its work upon the huge battle fields
of Europe he felt that the institution itself was the curse of the
earth.
"We shall win again today," said Fleury, rousing him from his
absorption. "Look across the fields, Scott, my friend, and see how those
great masses of infantry charging our army have been repulsed."
It was a far look, and at the distance the German brigades seemed to be
blended together, but the great gray mass was coming back slowly. He
forgot all about himself and his own fate in his desire to see every act
of the gigantic drama as it passed before him. He took no thought of
escape at present, nor did Fleury, who stood beside him. The fire of the
guns great and small had now blended into the usual steady thunder,
beneath which human voices could be heard.
"We don't have the forty-two centimeters, nor the great siege guns,"
said Fleury, "but the French field artillery is the best in the world.
It's undoubtedly holding back the German hosts and covering the French
advance."
"That's my opinion, too," said John. "I saw its wonderful work in the
retreat toward Paris. I think it saved the early French armies from
destruction."
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