CHAPTER XV

LUNÉVILLE

One of the immediate and most satisfactory results of the victory in front of Nancy was the hasty withdrawal of the Germans from Lunéville, after an occupation which lasted for just three weeks. For four or five days before the evacuation the Bavarian troops in front of the town had been gradually falling back on the protection of the batteries in and beyond it. Only one of these batteries, I believe, was in Lunéville itself. It was placed, in obedience to the maxim that war and what the Professors call sentimentality are poles asunder, close to one of the hospitals, under the shadow and protection of the Red Cross. During the bombardment one of the French nurses, a girl of eighteen, was unfortunately killed by a chance shell. But the battery was perfectly safe. For naturally, seeing where it was, the French gunners did not choose to fire on it. They could not play the game except as gentlemen, and the other side consequently scored, as has been known to happen in our own country in the kindred game of football, also rather apt to suffer from the disease of “Professoritis.” In any case, when the French got near enough to bring an effective fire to bear upon the town, their bombardment was bound to be half-hearted. They knew that there were German soldiers quartered in the barracks and in many of the houses. But they knew also that a large proportion of its inhabitants were still there and they naturally shrank from the chance of spilling French blood and the certainty of destroying French property, beyond what was absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, the amount of damage done by shells was surprisingly small. The chief monument to the power of the 75’s was the melancholy wreck of the official residence of M. Minier, the Sous-Préfet, which a couple of shells completely gutted. Not far off, near the station, one or two other houses were about as badly wrecked, but except for a certain kind of destruction which was due, not to French shells, but to German fire-lighters a short-sighted man might have walked through nearly all the streets a day or two after the evacuation without once noticing that there had been a bombardment. Inside some of the houses there was more to be seen. One of the inhabitants, for instance, showed me with quaint pride the mess which a 75 shrapnel shell had made of his comfortable home. It had first drilled a neat little round hole through the wall of his dressing-room, and then burst and sent bullets and jagged fragments of the case flying through the walls into his study and the kitchen and every room on the first floor. Amongst other things, it had riddled his bath-tub like a sieve. Fortunately, he was not in it at the time. He was out on one of the heights west of Lunéville talking to the commander of the very battery which broke up his happy home, and actually saw the shot fired. Like every one else who suffered at all from the bombardment (including M. Minier, who lost practically everything he had), he took it quite cheerfully because the shell which did the mischief and the cause in which it was fired were both French.

But the bombardment, which was mainly cautionary, was not yet. It came at a later stage in the occupation, when there began to be a chance of turning the enemy out. The first Germans entered the town on the evening of August 22nd, after a stiff fight which had lasted all day and resulted in the orderly retreat of the garrison, too few in numbers to hold them back indefinitely, in the direction of Gerbéviller. They marched in slowly, with marked caution, as if, the inhabitants said, they were afraid of a surprise attack. However, there was no further opposition, and on the 23rd, with drums beating and bands playing triumphal music, a much larger body of troops made a parade entry into the town and spread over it like a flock of locusts. Here, as elsewhere, they seem to have had a particularly keen appetite for wine and women’s underclothing and anything in the shape of a clock. They were not all strangers to Lunéville. As commercial travellers, and in other capacities connected with the peaceful pursuit of trade, several of them had been well known to the inhabitants for years before their arrival in the guise of warriors, and, for their own purposes, made good use of their local knowledge. But on the whole, the behaviour of the Germans, considering that they were Germans, was not particularly outrageous. A military governor was appointed and some effort was made to preserve order and even justice. The pillage was not wholesale, the incendiarism only extended to one part of the town, the Faubourg d’Einville, and one or two single buildings in other quarters, including the Jewish synagogue, and the cases of cold-blooded murder of civilians were not very numerous. Lunéville is not an obscure village, and it is not unfair to say that, as a general rule, the larger the place which the fortune of war had placed at the mercy of the German troops, the more careful they were in the way in which they treated it. Still, even in Lunéville, in spite of the restraining influence on their actions of such important witnesses as M. Minier, the Sous-Préfet, M. Mequillet, the local Député, and M. Keller, the Mayor, all of whom behaved in very trying circumstances with great judgment and courage, the German record was pretty bad. Most of the cases of shooting at sight seem to have been due not so much to wanton lust for blood as to the nervous haste of sentinels in the streets who imagined when they heard a window suddenly opened that their own lives were in danger. But the burning of the Faubourg d’Einville, a row of about forty houses which were set on fire two or three at a time for days till the whole street was destroyed, was an unwarrantable and unpardonable crime. For the Military Governor, from the moment of his entry into the town, had taken every precaution to prevent the acts of franctireurism which were usually made the excuse for this kind of outrage. In the first place rules of extraordinary severity were made and published and rigorously enforced as to what the civilian inhabitants must or must not do while the Germans were in the town. One of these _affiches_ is, I think, worth quoting as a historical document:—

“AVIS À LA POPULATION

“Le 25 Aout 1914, des habitants de Lunéville ont fait une attaque par embuscade contre des colonnes et trains allemands. Le même jour, des habitants ont tiré sur des formations sanitaires marquées pas la Croix Rouge. De plus on a tiré sur des blessés allemands et sur l’hôpital militaire contenant une ambulance allemande.

“A cause de ces actes d’hostilité, une contribution de guerre de 650.000 francs est imposée à la commune de Lunéville. Ordre est donné à M. le Maire de verser cette somme en or et en argent jusqu’ à 50.000 francs, le 6 septembre 1914, à 9 heures du matin, entre les mains du représentant de l’autorité allemande. Toute réclamation sera considerée comme nulle et non arrivée. On n’accordera pas de délai.

“Si la commune n’exécute pas ponctuellement l’ordre de payer la somme de 650.000 francs, on saisira tous les biens exigibles.

“En cas de non paiement, des perquisitions domiciliaires auront lieu et tous les habitants seront fouillés. Quiconque aura dissimulé sciemment de l’argent ou essayé de soustraire des biens à la saisie de l’autorité militaire, ou qui cherche a quitter la ville, sera fusillé.

“Le Maire et les otages, pris par l’autorité militaire, seront rendus responsables d’exécuter exactement les ordres sus-indiqés.

“Ordre est donné à M. le Maire de publier tout de suite ces dispositions à la commune.

“HERAMENIL le 3 septembre 1914.

“Le Général en chef, “VON FASBENDER.”

In addition to the stringent regulations and threats contained in this and other proclamations of the same kind (the statements in which were unproved and false) the German authorities in command of Lunéville took a further precaution to guard themselves against any kind of reprisal on the part of the French population. Every day six prominent residents of the town had to present themselves before the Governor and remain at his disposal for twenty-four hours as hostages responsible for the orderly behaviour of their fellow-citizens. Their position was not enviable. Exposed, like every one else in Lunéville, to the danger of being killed by the shells of their friends outside the town, they were guarded day and night by sentries with loaded rifles, knowing (because they had been warned) that at any moment they were liable to be shot if one of the inhabitants in a fit of desperation lifted a finger against the sacred body of a German soldier. The fact that they were not shot is proof positive that no acts of the kind were attempted, and that therefore there was no sort of excuse for the burning of the Faubourg d’Einville.

As the occupation continued, as the fortune of the battle between Lunéville and Nancy turned more and more against the Germans, and the French troops and the French shells came nearer and nearer, the Germans in the town day by day became more nervous and irritable and their attitude to the hostages and the rest of the townsfolk more and more harsh and capricious, and it was with something more than a sigh of relief that at last, on September 12th, M. Minier, M. Mequillet, and M. Keller realized that for the town and themselves the time of trial was at an end. M. Keller I only knew slightly; the other two I met often while I was in Lorraine. All three make light of the difficult part which they played when the Germans were in the town and while they were waiting at their posts for their coming. But I know from others that the courage and quiet dignity and practical wisdom with which they stood between their fellow-citizens and the invader were beyond all praise. They were all three fine types of the scores of Frenchmen in official positions all over the occupied provinces who stuck to their posts in the hour of danger. During those three weeks, when it was cut off from the rest of the world, life in Lunéville, under its twofold tribulation of occupation and siege, was not exactly gay for any one. The stern application of martial law, the regulations about open doors and lights, the growing shortness of food, the restrictions on personal liberty, the noise and risks of the bombardment, the glare of the burning houses, the fear for every one of possible death by a bullet fired by some drunken soldier, and, for the women, of something worse than death, and the constant presence of the hated and domineering invader, all combined to keep the inhabitants in a continual state of anxiety and alarm and general wretchedness. But it was on the shoulders of those three men that the burden of it pressed most heavily, and the debt which Lunéville owes them is real and great.

While they were doing their best inside the town to save it for France, or, at all events, to save it from being sacked and burnt, they were in a state of complete ignorance as to what was happening outside it. Rumours, of course, there were, but nothing was certain. They were surrounded on every side, left stranded on a lonely island in a German ocean of invasion. They could only guess vaguely from the nearing or receding sound of the guns and the temper of the German men and officers round them how the battle was going. Yet all the time they kept up their spirits and the spirits of all the French within the reach of their influence. At the worst they never allowed themselves to doubt—think what that meant—that the turn of the tide would come and Lunéville be joined to the mainland of France again. And they were right. Their splendid confidence in their own men and the destinies of France was justified. All the time the rush of the tide was slackening and the hour of their deliverance coming nearer.

The ebb began in earnest on September 8th. On that day the young dragoon officer in whose company we began the great battle, crossed the Mortagne at Mont by a temporary bridge erected by the engineers, and after a brush with half a dozen Uhlans on the Lunéville side of it, rode with his men along the Meurthe to Rehainviller, a village only two miles from the south-west corner of the town, and found that not a German was left in it. That news he sent back by one of his men to the general, and then walked on alone, as the sun was rising, along the wall of the cemetery on the right of the road just beyond the village. “I reached,” he says, “the corner, where I stopped dead. I found myself face to face with a German captain, like me alone and on foot. He was as thunderstruck to see me as I was to meet him. Like me he had his map-case in his hand. He had been examining the country.... We looked at each other, with our eyes wide open. He felt for his revolver. Feverishly I tried to open my case. Both of us knew that this contest of speed would decide our fate, and we looked straight into each other’s eyes. Then I smiled, my revolver came out of its case, the butt tight in my hand. My arm stretched out. Then the officer no longer felt for his weapon: he knew that he was beaten. My revolver flashed. He fell, with one bullet full in his heart. The whole thing only lasted a second. It hurt me to see him lying there; he had large blue eyes, open in death.”

To me that young French dragoon is only a name, or not even that, since he has none, but a type of all the gallant soldiers of France who fought in the gap between those blood-stained rivers. Still more, after that contest of speed, that duel to the death at sunrise by the corner of the cemetery wall, he becomes for me a symbol of France—France facing Germany, both knowing that one or the other must fall, both clutching at their weapons and staring into each others’ faces with wide open eyes. I think we will not leave him now till he in his turn rides in triumph into the streets of Lunéville.

The sound of the shot brought his men running up to him, and also drew the fire of the company of the dead German officer, who were hidden in a ravine a quarter of a mile further on. Luckily for the handful of dragoons, whom presumably they took for the advance-guard of a larger body of men, they did not, however, advance, but retired to the corner of the buildings of a big manufactory, almost in Lunéville itself.

The German position was now on the road just in front of the town, the first houses of which were within easy range of the rifles of the French, who had by this time occupied Rehainviller and were gradually closing in all round. But they still had three days of stiff fighting in front of them before the end was reached, during which they were heavily handicapped, as they had been all through the early part of the war, by the fact that even their 155’s were outranged by a large number of the German pieces, whose average effective range was at that time about six miles, while the French could barely reach four. Supported by these heavier guns from behind Lunéville the enemy advanced again in force to within a mile of Rehainviller, up to a line between Hériménil and the wood of Fréhaut, and it was not till the evening of the 11th that they were finally driven back and that the French were able to look forward with confidence to the prospect of being able to enter Lunéville on the next day.

On one of the three days our lieutenant with some of his men was riding through a village which had been occupied by the enemy a few hours before. Not a single inhabitant was left in it. All the houses were sacked. The flight of the Bavarians had been so hurried that they had not had time to burn them. The rest of his story, which it seems to me ought to be told to English readers, I give—because English readers have English ways of looking at life and talking about it—in the original French:—

“Par la fenêtre brisée, je voyais la salle à manger d’une demeure confortable. Le buffet eventré, renversé, écrasant la table. La vaisselle s’amoncelait sur le parquet, avec les bouteilles vides et cassées, jusqu’à la hauteur des chaises. Une suspension, tombée du plafond, s’était abîmée sur le buffet, et son globe vert, sans une félure, par un prodige d’équilibre, se maintenait sur ce meuble penché, comme allongé sur la table.

“Une voix m’appela par mon nom.

“C’était un officier du bataillon de chasseurs qui avait pris le village. Il était à la fenêtre, au premier étage de la maison dévastée.

“Monte un peu, me dit-il.

“Je repondis: ‘Je suis fatigué et pressé de rentrer cantonner.’

“Il reprit. ‘Cela en vaut la peine. C’est un de ces cochons qui est crevé au sein de son fumier.’

“Je descends de cheval. Sur la porte de la maison une plaque de cuivre brillante: ‘Etude de M. X. Notaire’. Je monte. Mon camarade rit aux éclats, entouré d’un groupe d’officiers. Il y a de quoi.

“La chambre est saccagée, comme le reste de la maison; le linge sorti des armoires, piétiné, les meubles démolis. Le lit est défait et sale. Un lieutenant allemand a passé là la nuit précédente, et s’est couché dans les draps sans retirer ses bottes. Une odeur écoeurante règne dans la piece. Mais pourquoi S ... m’ a-t-il fait monter?

“Regarde, dit-il.

“Je n’avais pas vu! Un lieutenant bavarois est assis, mort, entouré d’ordures, d’excréments humains, dans le tiroir ouvert d’une commode ancienne. Ses culottes sont abaissées sur ses bottes. Sa tête et ses épaules penchées tombent sur la poitrine vers les jambes. Il est dans une posture ignoble, grotesque, malgré la mort.

“‘Nous sommes entrés brusquement dans le village,—me fit S..., sans crier gare. De cette maison on nous tire un coup de feu. Je monte. C’était un soldat qui nous visait de cette fenêtre. Je l’abats. Je me retourne; et je vois ce cochon de gaillard en train de faire ses insanités dans le tiroir de ce beau meuble, sur les dentelles de famille! Il était si ahuri de me voir qu’il ne s’est même pas levé, restant dans sa position ignoble et relevant sa chemise à deux mains. Je lui ai tiré un coup de revolver. Il s’est abattu sur son fumier....’

“Et je pense à la fiancée allemande, dans ce village de Bavière, qui apprendra la mort de ce lieutenant et se représentera cette mort héroique et chevaleresque ...”

It is not a very pleasant story, as we say in England, but then the seamy side of the war is not pleasant, especially war as it is made in France by some Germans. And the more people in England realize that fact the better for the cause and hopes of us and our Allies.

On the night of the 11th, or rather at two o’clock in the morning of the 12th, the lieutenant assisted at a rather different scene, as dramatic and glorious for all the sons of France as the other was vile and ignoble for all Germans. He was roused from his sleep by an orderly with the news that the General wished to see all the officers at once. With all the others he hurried to the General’s quarters, and there—it was in the police station—the brigadier handed them the famous telegram of General Joffre, announcing that the Germans were retreating, the Battle of the Marne won, Paris freed from the menace of the enemy, and France saved.

There was no more sleep for those men that night. They embraced each other, as Frenchmen do, they cried, as all men may sometimes in hours of great joy after times of exhausting strain and anxiety, they congratulated each other as though each man was the victorious Commander-in-Chief himself, and at four o’clock the order was given “To horse! To Lunéville!” On the Marne the enemy were beaten and in full retreat. From the Grand Couronné they had been driven back to the Seille. Only one thing remained to be done here, on de Castelnau’s right—to hunt them out of Lunéville and chase them back to the frontier without a moment’s delay.

The way was across the Meurthe, through the forest of Vitrimont, out past the ruined Faisanderie with its loop-holed crumbling walls, over the shell-pitted slope below it and the shell-pitted dip beyond, and up the slope again and down to the Nancy road to the right of the ruins of the farm of Léomont, ragged and blackened against the sky, always past rows of deserted German trenches, littered with rifles and ammunition and haversacks and empty bottles—especially bottles—and then right-handed along the broad road to the Faubourg of Nancy, the north-west entrance to the town. Till they reached the road not a sign of the enemy. Only near the ruined farm-buildings of St. Epvre on the ridge of Frescati beyond it, covering the retreat, a company of Bavarian Chasseurs, dislodged with some difficulty, for they fought bravely, and then the road to Lunéville, clear at last. They entered it, these dragoons of the advance-guard, at a gallop, galloping over the cobbles and pavements of the streets in an ecstasy of triumph, dashing across the river somehow (for the Germans had blown up the bridges), active little Chasseurs-à-pied running beside them and easily keeping up with their thundering chargers, women scattering flowers on them, waving handkerchiefs from the doors and windows, and cheering and crying, and every one shouting “La France! Vive la France! La France!” up to the wide square in front of the grave old Palace of Stanislas, up to the line of sweating horses of another squadron of dragoons which had galloped into the town just as madly by the shorter road from the south. It was Mulhouse over again, without the Mulhouse mistakes. It was utterly different from the measured entry of the Germans three weeks before, with their massed bands and formal triumph. If the men were a trifle excited they had excuse enough. For that frenzied headlong entry into Lunéville put the finishing touch to the victory of the Grand Couronné, and set the seal on all the sacrifice and all the heroism of those splendid three weeks. That night Lunéville was free and French once more; not a German was left within some miles of it. That night, for the first time for more than a month, our lieutenant of dragoons was able to take a bath and sleep between sheets. And on that night, September 12th, 1914, thousands and thousands of French men and women all over France slept more soundly and more calmly than on any night since the war began because from Paris and Nancy and little Lunéville the abominable menace of German occupation was gone, never to return again.