The day following this declaration, Cousin George, who could never look
upon anything cheerfully, started for Belfort. He had ordered some
wine at Dijon, and he wished to stop it from coming. It was the 22d
July. George only returned five days later, on the 27th, having had
the greatest difficulty in getting there in time.
During these five days I had a hard time. Orders were coming every
hour to hurry on the reserves and the Gardes Mobiles, and to cancel
renewable furloughs; the gendarmerie had no rest. The Government
gazette was telling us of the enthusiasm of the nation for the war. It
was pitiable; can you imagine young men sitting quietly at home,
thinking: "In five or six months I shall be exempt from service, I may
marry, settle, earn money," all at once, without either rhyme or
reason, becoming enthusiastic to go and knock over men they know
nothing of, and to risk their own bones against them. Is there a
shadow of good sense in such notions?
And the Germans! Will any one persuade us that they were coming for
their own pleasure--all these thousands of workmen, tradesmen,
manufacturers, good citizens, who were living in peace in their towns
and their villages? Will any one maintain that they came and drew up
in lines facing our guns for their private satisfaction, with an
officer behind them, pistol in hand, to shoot them in the back if they
gave way? Do you suppose they found any amusement in that? Come now,
was not his excellency Monsieur Ollivier the only man who went into
war, as he himself said, "with a light heart?" He was safe to come
back, he was: he had not much to fear; he is quite well; he made a
fortune in a very short time! But the lads of our neighborhood,
Mathias Heitz, Jean Baptiste Werner, my son Jacob, and hundreds of
others, were in no such hurry: they would much rather have stayed in
their villages.
Later on it was another matter, when you were fighting for your
country; then, of course, many went off as a matter of duty, without
being summoned, whilst Monsieur Ollivier and his friends were hiding,
God knows where! But at that particular moment when all our
misfortunes might have been averted, it is a falsehood to say that we
went enthusiastically to have ourselves cut to pieces for a pack of
intriguers and stage-players, whom we were just beginning to find out.
When we saw our son Jacob, in his blouse, his bundle under his arm,
come into the mill, saying, "Now, father, I am going; you must not
forget to pull up the dam in half an hour, for the water will be up:"
when he said this to me, I tell you my heart trembled; the cries of his
mother in the room behind made my hair stand on end. I could have
wished to say a few words, to cheer up the lad, but my tongue refused
to move; and if I had held his excellency, M. Ollivier, or his
respected master, by the throat in a corner, they would have made a
queer figure: I should have strangled them in a moment! At last Jacob
went.
All the young men of Sarrebourg, of Chateau Salins, and our
neighborhood, fifteen or sixteen hundred in number, were at Phalsbourg
to relieve the 84th, who at any moment might expect to be called away,
and who were complaining of their colonel for not claiming the foremost
rank for his regiment. The officers were afraid of arriving too late;
they wanted promotion, crosses, medals: fighting was their trade.
What I have said about enthusiasm is true; it is equally true of the
Germans and the French; they had no desire to exterminate one another.
Bismarck and our _honest man_ alone are responsible: at their door lies
all the blood that has been shed.
Cousin George returned from Belfort on the 27th, in the evening. I
fancy I still see him entering our room at nightfall; Gredel had
returned to us the day before, and we were at supper, with the tin lamp
upon the table; from my place, on the right, near the window, I was
able to watch the mill-dam. George arrived.
"Ah! cousin, here you are back again! Did you get on all right?"
"Yes, I have nothing to complain of," said he, taking a chair. "I
arrived just in time to countermand my order; but it was only by good
luck. What confusion all the way from Belfort to Strasbourg! the
troops, the recruits, the guns, the horses, the munitions of war, the
barrels of biscuits, all are arriving at the railway in heaps. You
would not know the country. Orders are asked for everywhere. The
telegraph-wires are no longer for private use. The commissaries don't
know where to find their stores, colonels are looking for their
regiments, generals for their brigades and divisions. They are seeking
for salt, sugar, coffee, bacon, meat, saddles and bridles--and they are
getting charts of the Baltic for a campaign in the Vosges! Oh!" cried
my cousin, uplifting his hands, "is it possible? Have we come to
that---we! we! Now it will be seen how expensive a thing is a
government of thieves! I warn you, Christian, it will be a failure!
Perhaps there will not even be found rifles in the arsenals, after the
hundreds of millions voted to get rifles. You will see; you will see!"
He had begun to stride to and fro excitedly, and we, sitting on our
chairs, were looking at him open-mouthed, staring first right and then
left. His anger rose higher and higher, and he said, "Such is the
genius of our honest man, he conducts everything: he is our
commander-in-chief! A retired artillery captain, with whom I travelled
from Schlestadt to Strasbourg, told me that in consequence of the bad
organization of our forces, we should be unable to place more than two
hundred and fifty thousand men in line along our frontier from
Luxembourg to Switzerland; and that the Germans, with their superior
and long-prepared organization, could oppose to us, in eight days, a
force of five to six hundred thousand men; so that they will be more
than two to one at the outset, and they will crush us in spite of the
valor of our soldiers. This old officer, full of good sense, and who
has travelled in Germany, told me, besides, that the artillery of the
Prussians carries farther and is worked more rapidly than ours; which
would enable the Germans to dismount our batteries and our
mitrailleuses without getting any harm themselves. It seems that our
great man never thought of that."
Then George began to laugh, and, as we said nothing, he went on: "And
the enemy--the Prussians, Bavarians, Badeners, Wurtembergers, the
_Courrier du Bas-Rhin_ declares that they are coming by regiments and
divisions from Frankfort and Munich to Rastadt, with guns, munitions,
and provisions in abundance; that all the country swarms with them,
from Karlsruhe to Baden; that they have blown up the bridge of Kehl, to
prevent us from outflanking them; that we have not troops enough at
Wissembourg. But what is the use of complaining? Our
commander-in-chief knows better than the _Courrier du Bas-Rhin_; he is
an iron-clad fellow, who takes no advice: a man must have some courage
to offer him advice!"
And all at once, stopping short, "Christian," he said, "I have come to
give you a little advice."
"What?"
"Hide all the money you have got; for, from what I have seen down
there, in a few days the enemy will be in Alsace."
Imagine my astonishment at hearing these words. George was not the man
to joke about serious matters, nor was he a timid man: on the contrary,
you would have to go far to find a braver man. Therefore, fancy my
wife's and Gredel's alarm.
"What, George," said I, "do you think that possible?"
"Listen to me," said he. "When on the one side you see nothing but
empty beings, without education, without judgment, prudence, or method;
and on the other, men who for fifty years have been preparing a mortal
blow--anything is possible. Yes, I believe it; in a fortnight the
Germans will be in Alsace. Our mountains will check them; the
fortresses of Bitche, of Petite Pierre, of Phalsbourg and Lichtenberg;
the abatis, and the intrenchments which will be formed in the passes;
the ambuscades of every kind which will be set, the bridges and the
railway tunnels that they will blow up--all this will prevent them from
going farther for three or four months until winter; but, in the
meantime, they will send this way reconnoitring parties--Uhlans,
hussars, brigands of every kind--who will snap up everything, pillage
everywhere--wheat, flour, hay, straw, bacon, cattle, and principally
money. War will be made upon our backs. We Alsacians and Lorrainers,
we shall have to pay the bill. I know all about it. I have been all
over the country-side; believe me. Hide everything; that is what I
mean to do; and, if anything happens, at least it will not be our
fault. I would not go to bed without giving you this warning; so
good-night, Christian; good-night, everybody!"
He left us, and we sat a few moments gazing stupidly at each other. My
wife and Gredel wanted to hide everything that very night. Gredel,
ever since she had got Jean Baptiste Werner into her head, was thinking
of nothing but her marriage-portion. She knew that we had about a
hundred louis in cent-sous pieces in a basket at the bottom of the
cupboard; she said to herself, "That's my marriage-portion!" And this
troubled her more than anything: she even grew bolder, and wanted to
keep the keys herself. But her mother is not a woman to be led: every
minute she cried: "Take care, Gredel! mind what you are about!"
She looked daggers at her; and I was continually obliged to come to
preserve peace between them; for Catherine is not gifted with patience.
And so all our troubles came together.
But, in spite of what George had just been saying, I was not afraid.
The Germans were less than sixteen leagues from us, it is true, but
they would have first to cross the Rhine; then we knew that at
Mederbronn the people were complaining of the troops cantoned in the
villages: this was a proof that there was no lack of soldiers; and then
MacMahon was at Strasbourg; the Turcos, the Zouaves, and the Chasseurs
d'Afrique were coming up.
So I said to my wife that there was no hurry yet; that Cousin George
had long detested the Emperor; but that all that did not mean much, and
it was better to see things for one's self; that I should go to Saverne
market, and if things looked bad, then I would sell all our corn and
flour, which would come to a hundred louis, and which we would bury
directly with the rest.
My wife took courage; and if I had not had a great deal to grind for
the bakers in our village, I should have gone next day to Saverne and
should have seen what was going on. Unfortunately, ever since Frantz
and Jacob had left, the mill was on my hands, and I scarcely had time
to turn round.
Jacob was a great trouble to me besides, asking for money by the
postman Michel. This man told me that the Mobiles had not yet been
called out, and that they were lounging from one public-house to
another in gangs to kill time; that they had received no rifles; that
they were not chartered in the barracks; and that they did not get a
farthing for their food.
This disorder disgusted me; and I reflected that an Emperor who sends
for all the young men in harvest-time, ought at least to feed them, and
not leave them to be an expense to their parents. For all that I sent
money to Jacob: I could not allow him to suffer hunger. But it was a
trouble to my mind to keep him down there with my money, sauntering
about with his hands in his pockets, whilst I, at my age, was obliged
to carry sacks up into the loft, to fetch them down again, to load the
carts alone, and, besides, to watch the mill; for no one could be met
with now, and the old day-laborer, Donadieu, quite a cripple, was all
the help I had. After that, only imagine our anxiety, our fatigue, and
our embarrassment to know what to do.
The other people in the village were in no better spirits than
ourselves. The old men and women thought of their sons shut up in the
town, and the great drought continuing: we could rely upon nothing.
The smallpox had broken out, too. Nothing would sell, nothing could be
sent by railway: planks, beams, felled timber, building-stone, all lay
at the saw-pits or the stone-quarry. The sous-prefet kept on troubling
me to search and find out three or four scamps who had not reported
themselves, and the consequence of all this was that I did not get to
Saverne that week.
Then it was announced that at last the Emperor had just quitted Paris,
to place himself at the head of his armies; and five or six days after
came the news of his great victory at Sarrebrueck, where the
mitrailleuses had mown down the Prussians; where the little Prince had
picked up bullets, "which made old soldiers shed tears of emotion."
On learning this the people became crazy with joy. On all sides were
heard cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" and Monsieur le Cure preached the
extermination of the heretic Prussians. Never had the like been seen.
That very day, toward evening, just after stopping the mill, all at
once I heard in the distance, toward the road, cries of "_Aux armes,
citoyens! formez vos bataillons!_"
The dust from the road rose up into the clouds. It was the 84th
departing from Phalsbourg; they were going to Metz, and the people who
were working in the fields near the road, said, on returning at night,
that the poor soldiers, with their knapsacks on their shoulders, could
scarcely march for the heat; that the people were treating them with
eau-de-vie and wine at all the doors in Metting, and they said,
"Good-by! long life to you!" that the officers, too, were shaking hands
with everybody, whilst the people shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Yes, this victory of Sarrebrueck had changed the face of things in our
villages; the love of war was returning. War is always popular when it
is successful, and there is a prospect of extending our own territory
into other peoples' countries.
That night about nine o'clock I went to caution my cousin to hold his
tongue; for after this great victory one word against the dynasty might
send him a very long way off. He was alone with his wife, and said to
me, "Thank you, Christian, I have seen the despatch. A few brave
fellows have been killed, and they have shown the young Prince to the
army. That poor little weakly creature has picked up a few bullets on
the battle-field. He is the heir of his uncle, the terrible captain of
Jena and Austerlitz! Only one officer has been killed; it is not much;
but if the heir of the dynasty had had but a scratch, the gazettes
would have shed tears, and it would have been our duty to fall
fainting."
"Do try to be quiet," said I, looking to see if the windows were all
close. "Do take care, George. Don't commit yourself to Placiard and
the gendarmes."
"Yes," said he, "the enemies of the dynasty are at this moment in worse
danger than the little Prince. If victories go on, they will run the
risk of being plucked pretty bare. I am quite aware of that, my
cousin; and so I thank you for having come to warn me."
This is all that he said to me, and I returned home full of thoughts.
Next day, Thursday, market-day, I drove my first two wagon-loads of
flour to Saverne, and sold them at a good figure. That day I observed
the tremendous movement along the railroads, of which Cousin George had
spoken; the carriage of mitrailleuses, guns, chests of biscuits, and
the enthusiasm of the people, who were pouring out wine for the
soldiers.
It was just like a fair in the principal street, from the chateau to
the station--a fair of little white loaves and sausages; but the
Turcos, with their blue jackets, their linen trousers, and their
scarlet caps, took the place of honor: everybody wanted to treat them.
I had never before seen any of these men; their yellow skins, their
thick lips, the conspicuous whites of their eyes, surprised me; and I
said to myself, seeing the long strides they took with their thin legs,
that the Germans would find them unpleasant neighbors. Their officers,
too, with their swords at their sides, and their pointed beards, looked
splendid soldiers. At every public-house door, a few Chasseurs
d'Afrique had tied their small light horses, all alike and beautifully
formed like deer. No one refused them anything; and in all directions,
in the inns, the talk was of ambulances and collections for the
wounded. Well, seeing all this, George's ideas seemed to me more and
more opposed to sound sense, and I felt sure that we were going to
crush all resistance.
About two o'clock, having dined at the Boeuf, I took the way to the
village through Phalsbourg, to see Jacob in passing. As I went up the
hill, something glittered from time to time on the slope through the
woods, when all at once hundreds of cuirassiers came out upon the road
by the Alsace fountain. They were advancing at a slow pace by twos,
their helmets and their cuirasses threw back flashes of light upon all
the trees, and the trampling of their hoofs rolled like the rush of a
mighty river.
Then I drew my wagon to one side to see all these men march past me,
sitting immovable in their saddles as if they were sleeping, the head
inclined forward, and the mustache hanging, riding strong, square-built
horses, the canvas bag suspended from the side, and the sabre ringing
against the boot. Thus they filed past me for half an hour. They
extended their long lines, and stretched on yet to the Schlittenbach.
I thought there would be no end to them. Yet these were only two
regiments; two others were encamped upon the glacis of Phalsbourg,
where I arrived about five in the afternoon. They were driving the
pickets into the turf with axes; they were lighting fires for cooking;
the horses were neighing, and the townspeople--men, women, and
children--were standing gazing at them.
I passed on my way, reflecting upon the strength of such an army, and
pitying, by anticipation, the ill-fated Germans whom they were going to
encounter. Entering through the gate of Germany, I saw the officers
looking for lodgings, the Gardes Mobiles, in blouses, mounting guard.
They had received their rifles that morning; and the evening before,
Monsieur le Sous-prefet of Sarrebourg had come himself to appoint the
officers of the National Guard. This is what I had learned at the
Vacheron brewery, where I had stopped, leaving my cart outside at the
corner of the "Trois Pigeons."
Everybody was talking about our victory at Sarrebrueck, especially those
cuirassiers, who were emptying bottles by the hundred, to allay the
dust of the road. They looked quite pleased, and were saying that war
on a large scale was beginning again, and that the heavy cavalry would
be in demand. It was quite a pleasure to look on them, with their red
ears, and to hear them rejoicing at the prospect of meeting the enemy
soon.
In the midst of all these swarms of people, of servants running,
citizens coming and going, I could have wished to see Jacob; but where
was I to look for him? At last I recognized a lad of our
village--Nicolas Maisse--the son of the wood-turner, our neighbor, who
immediately undertook to find him. He went out, and in a quarter of an
hour Jacob appeared.
The poor fellow embraced me. The tears came into my eyes.
"Well now," said I, "sit down. Are you pretty well?"
"I had rather be at home," said he.
"Yes, but that is impossible now; you must have patience."
I also invited young Maisse to take a glass with us, and both
complained bitterly that Mathias Heitz, junior, had been made a
lieutenant, who knew no more of the science of war than they did, and
who now had ordered of Kuhn, the tailor, an officer's uniform,
gold-laced up to the shoulders. Yet Mathias was a friend of Jacob's.
But justice is justice.
This piece of news filled me with indignation: what should Mathias
Heitz be made an officer for? He had never learned anything at
college; he would never have been able to earn a couple of
_liards_--whilst our Jacob was a good miller's apprentice.
It was abominable. However, I made no remark; I only asked if Jean
Baptiste Werner, who had a few days before joined the artillery of the
National Guard, was an officer too?
Then they replied angrily that Jean Baptiste Werner, in spite of his
African and Mexican campaigns, was only a gunner in the Mariet battery,
behind the powder magazines. Those who knew nothing became officers;
those who knew something of war, like Mariet and Werner, were privates,
or at the most sergeants. All this showed me that Cousin George was
right in saying that we should be driven like beasts, and that our
chiefs were void of common-sense.
Looking at all these people coming and going, the time passed away.
About eight o'clock, as we were hungry, and I wished to keep my boy
with me as long as I could, I sent for a good salad and sausages, and
we were eating together, with full hearts, to be sure, but with a good
appetite. But a few moments after the retreat, just when the
cuirassiers were going to camp out, and their officers, heavy and
weary, were going to rest in their lodgings, a few bugle notes were
sounded in the _place d'armes_, and we heard a cry--"To horse! to
horse!"
Immediately all was excitement. A despatch had arrived; the officers
put on their helmets, fastened on their swords, and came running out
through the gate of Germany. Countenances changed; every one asked,
"What is the meaning of this?"
At the same time the police inspector came up; he had seen my cart, and
cried, "Strangers must leave the place--the gates are going to be
closed."
Then I had only just time to embrace my son, to press Nicolas's hand,
and to start at a sharp gallop for the gate of France. The drawbridge
was just on the rise as I passed it; five minutes after I was galloping
along the white high-road by moonlight, on the way to Metting. Outside
on the glacis, there was not a sound; the pickets had been drawn, and
the two regiments of cavalry were on the road to Saverne.
I arrived home late: everybody was asleep in our village. Nobody
suspected what was about to happen within a week.