Fritz and Eric | Page 9

my child, you do not know what a campaign is, yet! The matter will not be settled so easily as you think. War is a terrible thing, and the Prussians may not be able to crush the whole power of the French nation in the same way in which they conquered Austria and Saxony, and subdued our own little state four years ago."
"But, mother recollect, that now we shall be fighting all together for the Fatherland," said Fritz, who like most young Germans was well read in his country's history, and to him the remembrance of the old war time, when Buonaparte trampled over central Europe, was as fresh as if it were only yesterday. "We've long been waiting for this day, and it has come at last! Besides, dear mutterchen, you forget that the Landwehr, to which I belong, will only act as a reserve, and will not probably take any part in the fighting--worse luck!" He added the latter words under his breath, for it was not so long since he had abandoned his barrack-room life for him to have lost the soldierly instincts there implanted into him; and, truth to say, he longed for the strife, the summons to arms making him "sniff the battle from afar like a young war-horse!" The French declaration of war and the proclamation of the German emperor had roused the people throughout the country into a state of patriotic frenzy; so that, from the North Sea to the Danube, from the Rhine to the Niemen, the summons to meet the ancient foe was responded to with an alacrity and devotion which none who witnessed the stirring scenes of that period can ever forget.
Fritz was no less eager than his comrades; and, considerably within the interval allowed him for preparation, he and the others of his corps living in the same vicinity were on their way to Hanover.
This second parting with another of her children almost wrung poor Madame Dort's heart in twain; but, like the majority of German mothers at the time, she sent off her son, with a blessing, "to fight for his country, his Fatherland"; for, noble and peasant alike, every wife and mother throughout the length and breadth of the land seemed to be infected with the patriotism of a Roman matron. Madame Dort would be second to none.
"Good-bye, my son," she said, "be brave, although I need hardly tell your father's son that, and do your duty to God and your country!"
"I will, mother; I will," said Fritz, giving her a last kiss, as the train rolled away with him out of the station to the martial strains of "Der Deutsche Vaterland," which a band was playing on the platform in honour of the young recruits going to the war.
The widow had to-day no son left to support her steps homeward to the desolate house in the Gulden Strasse, now bereaved of her twin hopes, Fritz and Eric both; only old Lorischen was by her side, and she felt sadly alone.
"Both gone, both gone!" she murmured to herself as she ascended the outside stairway that led to her apartments in the upper part of the house. "It will be soon time for me to go, too!"
"Ach nein, dear mistress," said the faithful servant and friend who was now the sole companion left to share the deserted home. "What would become of me in that case, eh? We will wait and watch for the truants in patience and hope. They'll come back to us again in God's good time; and they will be all the more precious to us by their being taken from us now. Himmel! mistress, why we've lots of things to do to get ready for their return!"
CHAPTER THREE.
GRAVELOTTE.
The actual declaration of war by France against Germany was not made until the 15th of July, 1870, reaching Berlin some four days later; but, for some weeks prior to that date, there is not the slightest doubt that both sides were busily engaged in mobilising their respective armies and making extensive preparations for a struggle that promised at the outset to be "a war to the knife"--the cut-and-dried official announcement of hostilities only precipitating the crisis and bringing matters to a head, so to speak.
On the general order being given throughout the states of the Empire to place the national army on a war footing, in a very few days the marvellous system by which the German people can be marshalled for battle, "each tribe and family according to its place, and not in an aggregate of mere armed men," was in full operation throughout the land; and, under the influence of fervid zeal, of well-tested discipline, and of skilful arrangement, the Teuton hosts became truly formidable. From the recruiting ground allotted to it, each separate