Three broad streams of armed men had rolled slowly but irresistibly from
the Rhine, now meandering to the north, now to the south, dividing,
coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And
from this lake there welled out smaller streams--one to the north, one
southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German
trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep
into the waves at Dieppe.
Black and bitter were the thoughts of Frenchmen when they saw this weal
of dishonour slashed across the fair face of their country. They had
fought and they had been overborne. That swarming cavalry, those
countless footmen, the masterful guns--they had tried and tried to make
head against them. In battalions their invaders were not to be beaten,
but man to man, or ten to ten, they were their equals. A brave
Frenchman might still make a single German rue the day that he had left
his own bank of the Rhine. Thus, unchronicled amid the battles and the
sieges, there broke out another war, a war of individuals, with foul
murder upon the one side and brutal reprisal on the other.
Colonel von Gramm, of the 24th Posen Infantry, had suffered severely
during this new development. He commanded in the little Norman town of
Les Andelys, and his outposts stretched amid the hamlets and farmhouses
of the district round.
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