(_L'enlèvement de la redoute_.)
A military friend of mine, who died of fever in Greece some years ago,
related to me one day the story of the first engagement in which he had
taken part. His narrative was so striking that I wrote it down from
memory as soon as I had an opportunity. It is as follows:--
On the evening of the 4th September I rejoined my regiment. I found the
colonel in bivouac. At first he received me rather coolly, but, after
having read General B----'s letter of recommendation, his manner
changed, and he said a few kind words.
He introduced me to my captain, who had just returned from a
reconnoitring expedition. This captain, whose acquaintance I had
scarcely the time to make, was a tall, dark man, with a severe and
forbidding expression. He had been a common soldier, and had won his
commission and the cross on the battlefield. His voice was weak and
hoarse, and contrasted strangely with his almost gigantic height. I was
told that this strange voice was due to a ball which had pierced him
through at the Battle of Jéna.
On hearing that I came from the school at Fontainebleau he shrugged his
shoulders and said, "My lieutenant died yesterday." I understood that he
meant to imply, "You are intended to take his place, and you are not up
to it." A cutting reply rose to my lips, but I restrained myself.
Behind Fort Cheverino, which stood about two gunshots off our bivouac,
rose the moon. It was large and red as it usually is when rising. But
this evening it seemed to me to have an unusual splendour. For an
instant the fort stood outlined in black against the shining orb, which
looked like the cone of a volcano during eruption. An old soldier, near
whom I was standing, remarked on the moon's colour.
"How very red it is!" he said; "it is a sign that it will cost much to
take this precious fort."
I was always superstitious, and this omen, above all at such a moment,
impressed me greatly. I laid myself down, but could not sleep. I got up
and walked about for some time, watching the long lines of fire
scattered over the heights beyond the village of Cheverino.
When I thought the fresh, sharp night air had sufficiently quickened my
blood, I returned to the fire. I wrapped myself carefully in my cloak
and closed my eyes, thinking not to open them before the morning. But
sleep obstinately evaded me. Gradually my thoughts took a melancholy
hue. I told myself I had not one friend amongst the hundred thousand men
who covered that plain. If I were wounded I should go to the hospital,
there to be treated without consideration by ignorant surgeons. All I
had heard of surgical operations returned to my memory. My heart beat
fast, and instinctively I arranged my handkerchief and pocket-book over
my breast as a kind of cuirass. I was overcome with weariness, and I
became more drowsy each moment, but at each moment some dark thought
sprang up with greater force and woke me into a start.
Nevertheless weariness overcame me, and, when the reveille sounded, I
was fast asleep. We fell into our ranks; the roll was called; then we
piled arms again, and everything suggested that we were going to pass a
quiet day.
About three o'clock an aide-de-camp arrived, bearing a despatch, and we
were ordered to shoulder arms. Our skirmishers scattered themselves over
the plain; we followed them slowly, and in about twenty minutes' time we
saw all the outposts of the Russians fall back and re-enter the fort.
One battery of artillery was on our right, another on our left, but both
were well in advance of us. They opened a sharp fire on the enemy, who
answered briskly; and very soon the fort of Cheverino was hidden under
thick clouds of smoke.
Our regiment was almost protected from the Russian fire by a ridge of
earth. Since they aimed rather at our artillery than at us, their balls
passed over our heads, or at the most cast earth and small stone at us.
The moment the order to advance was given us my captain looked at me so
closely that I felt impelled to stroke my budding moustache two or three
times with as nonchalant an air as possible. In fact, I had no fear; my
only dread was that people might think me afraid. Furthermore, these
inoffensive shots contributed to keep me in a calm state of mind. My
vanity told me that I was really in danger, being at last under battery
fire. I was delighted to find myself so cool, and I dreamed of the
pleasure of relating in the drawing-room of Madame B----, Rue de
Provence, the story of the taking of the fort of Cheverino.
The colonel rode past our company and said to me, "Well, you are going
to get it hot at your first battle."
I smiled with a truly military air, at the same time brushing from my
sleeve some dust which a ball thirty paces off had thrown up.
It was evident that the Russians had noticed the miscarriage of their
balls, for they replaced them by shells which could more easily reach us
in the hollow where we were posted. One that burst near by knocked off
my cap and killed a man close to me.
"I congratulate you," said the captain to me, as I picked up my cap.
"Now you are safe for the day."
I was acquainted with the soldier's superstition that the axiom _non bis
in idem_ holds good as much on the battlefield as in the court of
justice. I replaced my cap jauntily.
"That's a free and easy kind of greeting," I replied as jovially as
possible. This poor joke seemed excellent under the circumstances.
"You are lucky," said the captain; "you need not fear anything more, and
you will command a company to-night. I know very well that a bullet for
me will find its billet to-day. Each time I have been wounded the
officer next to me has been grazed by a spent bullet, and," he added in
a lower and half-ashamed tone, "their names always began with a P."
I took courage; most people would have done the same; most people would
have been equally struck with such prophetic words. Conscript as I was,
I did not think I could confide my feelings to anybody. I thought I
ought always to appear cool and brave.
About half an hour after, the fire of the Russians slackened
considerably: then we sallied out of our cover to storm the fort.
Our regiment was composed of three battalions. The second was ordered to
outflank the fort from the side of the gorge; the other two were to make
the assault. I was in the third battalion.
Coming out from behind the buttress which had protected us, we were
greeted by several rounds of fire, which did but little harm in our
ranks. The whistling of the balls startled me: I kept looking round,
thus bringing upon myself joking remarks from my more seasoned comrades.
"Upon the whole," I said, "a battle is not so very dreadful."
We advanced at the double, preceded by our sharpshooters; suddenly the
Russians gave three cheers, three distinct hurrahs, then they stopped
firing and became silent.
"I do not like that silence," said my captain; "it bodes no good to
us."
I thought our men were a little too noisy, and I could not help inwardly
contrasting their tumultuous clamour with the impressive silence of the
enemy.
We quickly reached the outskirts of the fort, where the palisades had
been broken and the earth thrown up by our balls. The soldiers leapt
upon this newly-broken ground with shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" more
loudly than one could have thought possible from men who had already
shouted so much.
I raised my eyes, and never shall I forget the spectacle before me. Most
of the smoke had risen, and was hanging like a canopy about twenty feet
above the fort. Through the blue haze I could see the Russian
Grenadiers, with arms fixed, like motionless statues, behind their
half-destroyed parapet. I can see now each soldier, his left eye fixed
on us, his right hidden by his raised gun. In an embrasure a few feet
from us a man was holding a lighted fuse to a cannon.