On the 29th of September, a Prussian vaguemestre* brought me some
proclamations with orders to make them public.
* The person in command of a wagon train--also an Army letter-carrier.
These proclamations declared that we were now part of the department of
La Moselle, and that we were under a Prussian prefect, the Count Henkel
de Bonnermark, who was himself under the orders of the Governor-General
of Alsace and Lorraine, the Count Bismarck-Bohlen, provisionally
residing at Haguenau.
I cannot tell what evil spirit then laid hold of me; the Landwehr had
brought us the day before the news of the capitulation of Strasbourg; I
had been worried past all endurance by all the requisitions which I was
ordered to call for, and I boldly declared my refusal to post that
proclamation: that it was against my conscience; that I looked upon
myself as a Frenchman still, and they need not expect an honest man to
perform such an errand as that.
The vaguemestre seemed astonished to hear me. He was a stout man, with
thick brown mustaches, and prominent eyes.
"Will you be good enough to write that down, M. le Maire?" he said.
"Why not? I am tired out with all these vexatious acts. Let my place
be given to your friend, M. Placiard: I should be thankful. Let him
order these requisitions. I look upon them as mere robbery."
"Well, write that down," said he. "I obey orders: I have nothing to do
with the rest."
Then, without another thought, I opened my desk, and wrote that
Christian Weber, Mayor of Rothalp, considered it against his conscience
to proclaim Bismarck-Bohlen Governor of a French province, and that he
refused absolutely.
I signed my name to it, with the date, 29th September, 1870; and it was
the greatest folly I ever committed in my life: it has cost me dear.
The vaguemestre took the paper, put it in his pocket, and went away.
Two or three hours after, when I had thought it over a little, I began
to repent, and I wished I could have the paper back again.
That evening, after supper, I went to tell George the whole affair; he
was quite pleased.
"Very good, indeed, Christian," said he. "Now your position is clear.
I have often felt sorry that you should be obliged, for the interest of
the commune and to avoid pillage, to give bonds to the Prussians.
People are so absurd! Seeing the signature of the mayor, they make
him, in a way, responsible for everything; every one fancies he is
bearing more than his share. Now you are rid of your burden; you could
not go so far as to requisition in the name of Henkel de Bonnermark,
self-styled prefect of La Moselle; let some one else do that work; they
will have no difficulty in finding as many ill-conditioned idiots as
they want for that purpose."
My cousin's approbation gave me satisfaction, and I was going home,
when the same vaguemestre, in whose hands I had placed my resignation
in the morning, entered, followed by three or four Landwehr.
"Here is something for you," said he, handing me a note, which I read
aloud:
"The persons called Christian Weber, miller, and George Weber,
wine-merchant, in the village of Rothalp, will, to-morrow, drive to
Droulingen, four thousand kilos of hay and ten thousand kilos of straw,
without fail. By order--FLOEGEL."
"Very well," I replied. For although this requisition appeared to me
to be rather heavy, I would not betray my indignation before our
enemies; they would have been too much delighted. "Very well, I will
drive my hay and my straw to Droulingen."
"You will drive it yourself," said the vaguemestre, brutally. "All the
horses and carts in the village have been put into requisition; you
have too often forgotten your own."
"I can prove that my horses and my carts have been worked oftener than
any one's," I replied, with rising wrath. "There are your receipts; I
hope you won't deny them!"
"Well, it doesn't matter," said he. "The horses, the carts, the hay
and straw are demanded; that is plain."
"Quite plain," said Cousin George. "The strongest may always command."
"Exactly so," said the vaguemestre.
He went out with his men, and George, without anger, said, "This is
war! Let us be calm. Perhaps our turn will come now that the _honest
man_ is no longer in command of our armies. In the meantime the best
thing we can do, if we do not want to lose our horses and our carts
besides, will be to load to-night, and to start very early in the
morning. We shall return before seven o'clock to supper; and then they
won't be able to take any more of our hay and straw, because we shall
have none left."
For my part, I was near bursting with rage; but, as he set the example,
by stripping off his coat and putting on his blouse, I went to wake up
old Father Offran to help me to load.
My wife and Gredel were expecting me: for the vaguemestre and his men
had called at the mill, before coming to George's house, and they were
trembling with apprehension. I told them to be calm; that it was only
taking some hay and straw to Droulingen, where I should get a receipt
for future payment.
Whether they believed it or not, they went in again.
I lighted the lantern, Offran mounted up into the loft and threw me
down the trusses, which I caught upon a fork. About two in the
morning, the two carts being loaded, I fed the horses and rested a few
minutes.
At five o'clock, George, outside, was already calling "Christian, I am
here!"
I got up, put on my hat and my blouse, opened the stable from the
inside, put the horses in, and we started in the fresh and early
morning, supposing we should return at night.
In all the villages that we passed through, troops of Landwehr were
sitting before their huts, ragged, with patched knees and filthy
beards, like the description of the Cossacks of former days, smoking
their pipes; and the cavalry and infantry were coming and going.
Those who remained in garrison in the villages were obliged by their
orders to give up their good walking-boots to the others, and to wear
their old shoes.
Mounted officers, with their low, flat caps pulled down upon their
noses, were skimming along the paths by the road-side like the wind.
In the old wayside inns, in the corners of the yards the dung-hills
were heaped up with entrails and skins of beasts: hides, stuffed with
straw, were hanging also from the banisters of the old galleries, where
we used to see washed linen hanging out to dry. Misery, unspeakable
misery, and gnawing anxiety were marked upon the countenances of the
people. The Germans alone looked fat and sleek in their broken boots;
they had good white bread, good red wine, good meat, and smoked good
tobacco or cigars: they were living like fighting-cocks.
At a certain former time, these people had complained bitterly of our
invasion of their country, without remembering that they had begun by
invading ourselves. And yet they were right. At the close of the
First Empire, the French were only fighting for one man; but the
Germans had since had their revenge twice, in 1814 and 1815, and for
fifty years they had always been coming to us as friends, and were
received like brothers: we bore no malice against them, and they seemed
to bear none against us; peace had softened us. We only wished for
their prosperity, as well as for our own; for nations are really happy
only when their neighbors are prospering: then business and industry
all move hand in hand together. That was our position! We said
nothing more of our victories; we talked of our defeats, so as to do
full justice to their courage and their patriotism; we acknowledged our
faults; they pretended to acknowledge theirs, and talked of fraternity.
We believed in their uprightness, in their candor and frankness: we
were really fond of them.
Now hatred has arisen between us.
Whose the fault?
First, our stupidity, our ignorance. We all believed that the
Plebiscite was for peace; the Ministers, the prefets, the sous-prefets,
the magistrates, the commissioners of police, everybody in authority
confirmed this. A villain has used it to declare war! But the Germans
were glad of the war; they were full of hatred, and malice, and envy,
without betraying it: they had long watched us and studied us; they
endured everlasting drill and perpetual fatigue to become the
strongest, and sought with pains for an opportunity to get war declared
against themselves, and so set themselves right in the eyes of Europe.
The Spanish complication was but a trap laid by Bismarck for Bonaparte.
The Germans said to one another: "We have twelve hundred thousand men
under arms; we are four to one. Let us seize the opportunity! If the
French Government take it into their heads to organize and discipline
the Garde Mobile, all might be lost.... Quick, quick!"
This is the uprightness, frankness, and fraternity of the Germans!
Our idiot fell into the trap. The Germans overwhelmed us with their
multitudes. They are our masters; they hold our country; we are paying
them milliards! and now they are coming back, just as before, into our
towns and cities in troops, smiling upon us, extending the right hand:
"Ha! ha! how are you now? Have you been pretty well all this long
while? What! don't you know me? You look angry! Ah! but you really
shouldn't. Such friends, such good old friends! Come, now! give me a
small order, only a small one; and don't let us think of that unhappy
war!"
Faugh! Let us look another way; it is too horrible.
To excuse them, I say (for one must always seek excuses for everything)
man is not by nature so debased; there must be causes to explain, so
great a want of natural pride; and I say to myself--that these are poor
creatures trained to submission, and that these unfortunate beings do
as the birds do that the birdcatcher holds captives in his net; they
sing, they chirp, to decoy others.
"Ah! how jolly it is here! how delightful here in Old Germany, with an
Emperor, kings, princes, German dukes, grand-dukes, counts, and barons!
What an honor to fight and die for the German Fatherland! The German
is the foremost man in the world."
Yes. Yes. Poor devils! We know all about that. That is the song
your masters taught you at school! For the King of Prussia and his
nobility you work, you spy, you have your bones broken on the
battle-field! They pay you with hollow phrases about the noble German,
the German Fatherland, the German sky, the German Rhine; and when you
sing false, with rough German slaps upon your German faces.
No; no! it is of no use; the Alsacians and the Lorrainers will never
whistle like you: they have learned another tune.
Well! all this did not save us from being nipped, George and me, and
from being made aware that at the least resistance they would wring our
necks like chickens. So we put a good face upon a bad game, observing
the desolation of all this country, where the cattle plague had just
broken out. At Lohre, at Ottviller, in a score of places, this
terrible disease, the most ruinous for the peasantry, was already
beginning its ravages; and the Prussians, who eat more than four times
the quantity of meat that we do--when it belongs to other people--were
afraid of coming short.
Their veterinary doctors knew but one remedy; when a beast fell ill,
refused its fodder, and became low-spirited, they slaughtered it, and
buried it with hide and horns, six feet under ground. This was not
much cleverer than the bombardment of towns to force them to surrender,
or the firing of villages to compel people to pay their requisitions.
But then it answered the purpose!
The Germans in this campaign have taught us their best inventions!
They had thought them over for years, whilst our school-masters and our
gazettes were telling us that they were passing away their time in
dreaming of philosophy, and other things of so extraordinary a kind
that the French could not understand the thing at all.
About eleven we were at Droulingen, where was a Silesian battalion
ready to march to Metz. It seems that some cavalry were to follow us,
and that the requisitions had exhausted the fodder in the country, for
our hay and straw were immediately housed in a barn at the end of the
village, and the major gave us a receipt. He was a gray-bearded
Prussian, and he examined us with wrinkled eyes, just like an old
gendarme who is about to take your description.
This business concluded, George and I thought we might return at once;
when, looking through the window, we saw them loading our carts with
the baggage of the battalion. Then I came out, exclaiming: "Hallo!
those carts are ours! We only came to make a delivery of hay and
straw!"
The Silesian commander, a tall, stiff, and uncompromising-looking
fellow, who was standing at the door, just turned his head, and, as the
soldiers were stopping, quietly said: "Go on!"
"But, captain," said I, "here is my receipt from the major!"
"Nothing to me," said he, walking into the mess-room, where the table
was laid for the officers.
We stood outside in a state of indignation, as you may believe. The
soldiers were enjoying the joke. I was very near giving them a rap
with my whip-handle; but a couple of sentinels marching up and down
with arms shouldered, would certainly have passed their bayonets
through me. I turned pale, and went into Finck's public-house, where
George had turned in before me. The small parlor was full of soldiers,
who were eating and drinking as none but Prussians can eat and drink;
almost putting it into their noses.
The sight and the smell drove us out, and George, standing at the door,
said to me: "Our wives will be anxious; had we not better find somebody
to tell them what has happened to us?"
But it was no use wishing or looking; there was nobody.
The officers' horses along the wall, their bridles loose, were quietly
munching their feed, and ours, which were already tired, got nothing.
"Hey!" said I to the _feld-weibel_, who was overlooking the loading of
the carts; "I hope you will not think of starting without giving a
handful to our horses?"
"If you have got any money, you clown," said he, grinning, "you can
give them hay, and even oats, as much as you like. There, look at the
sign-board before you: 'Hay and oats sold here.'"
That moment I heaped up more hatred against the Prussians than I shall
be able to satiate in all my life.
"Come on," cried George, pulling me by the arm; for he saw my
indignation.
And we went into the "Bay Horse," which was as full of people as the
other, but larger and higher. We fed our horses; then, sitting alone
in a corner we ate a crust of bread and took a glass of wine, watching
the movements of the troops outside. I went out to give my horses a
couple of buckets of water, for I knew that the Germans would never
take that trouble.
George called to him the little pedler Friedel, who was passing by with
his pack, to tell him to inform our wives that we should not be home
till to-morrow morning, being obliged to go on to Sarreguemines.
Friedel promised, and went on his way.
Almost immediately, the word of command and the rattle of arms warned
us that the battalion was about to march. We only had the time to pay
and to lay hold of the horses' bridles.
It was pleasant weather for walking--neither too much sun nor too much
shade; fine autumn weather.
And since, in comparing the Germans with our own soldiers as to their
marching powers, I have often thought that they never would have
reached Paris but for our railroads. Their infantry are just as
conspicuous for their slowness and their heaviness as their cavalry are
for their swiftness and activity. These people are splay-footed, and
they cannot keep up long. When they are running, their clumsy boots
make a terrible clatter; which is perhaps the reason why they wear
them: they encourage each other by this means, and imagine they dismay
the enemy. A single company of theirs makes more noise than one of our
regiments. But they soon break out in a perspiration, and their great
delight is to get up and have a ride.
Toward evening, by five o'clock, we had only gone about three leagues
from Droulingen, when, instead of continuing on their way, the
commander gave the battalion orders to turn out of it into a parish
road on the left. Whether it was to avoid the lodgings by the way,
which were all exhausted, or for some other reason, I cannot say.
Seeing this, I ran to the commanding officer in the greatest distress.
"But in the name of heaven, captain," said I, "are you not going on to
Sarreguemines? We are fathers of families; we have wives and children!
You promised that at Sarreguemines we might unload and return home."
George was coming, too, to complain; but he had not yet reached us,
when the commander, from on horseback, roared at us with a voice of
rage: "Will you return to your carts, or I will have you beaten till
all is blue? Will you make haste back?"
Then we returned to take hold of our bridles, with our heads hanging
down. Three hours after, at nightfall, we came into a miserable
village, full of small crosses along the road, and where the people had
nothing to give us; for famine had overtaken them.
We had scarcely halted, when a convoy of bread, meat, and wine arrived,
escorted by a few hussars. No doubt it came from Alberstoff. Every
soldier received his ration, but we got not so much as an onion: not a
crust of bread--nothing--nor our horses either.
That night George and I alone rested under the shelter of a deserted
smithy, while the Prussians were asleep in every hut and in the barns,
and the sentinels paced their rounds about our carts, with their
muskets shouldered; we began to deliberate what we ought to do.
George, who already foreboded the miseries which were awaiting us,
would have started that moment, leaving both horses and carts; but I
could not entertain such an idea as that. Give up my pair of beautiful
dappled gray horses, which I had bred and reared in my own orchard at
the back of the mill! It was impossible.
"Listen to me," said George. "Remember the Alsacians who have been
passing by us the last fortnight: they look as if they had come out of
their graves; they had never received the smallest ration: they would
have been carried even to Paris if they had not run away. You see that
these Germans have no bowels. They are possessed with a bitter hatred
against the French, which makes them as hard as iron; they have been
incited against us at their schools; they would like to exterminate us
to the last man. Let us expect nothing of them; that will be the
safest. I have only six francs in my pocket; what have you?"
"Eight livres and ten sous."
"With that, Christian, we cannot go far. The nearer we get to Metz,
the worse ruin we shall find the country in. If we were but able to
write home, and ask for a little money! but you see they have sentinels
on every road, at all the lane ends: they allow neither
foot-passengers, nor letters, nor news to pass. Believe me, let us try
to escape."
All these good arguments were useless. I thought that, with a little
patience, perhaps at the next village, other horses and other carriages
might be found to requisition, and that we might be allowed quietly to
return home. That would have been natural and proper; and so in any
country in the world they would have done.
George, seeing that he was unable to shake my resolution, lay down upon
a bench and went to sleep. I could not shut my eyes.
Next day, at six o'clock, we had to resume the march; the Silesians
well-refreshed, we with empty stomachs.
We were moving in the direction of Gros Tenquin. The farther we
advanced, the less I knew of the country. It was the country around
Metz, le pays Messin, an old French district, and our misery increased
at every stage. The Prussians continued to receive whatever they
required, and took no further trouble with us than merely preventing us
from leaving their company: they treated us like beasts of burden; and,
in spite of all our economy, our money was wasting away.
Never was so sad a position as ours; for, on the fourth or fifth day,
the officer, guessing from our appearance that we were meditating
flight, quite unceremoniously said in our presence to the sentinels:
"If those people stir out of the road, fire upon them."
We met many others in a similar position to ours, in the midst of these
squadrons and these regiments, which were continually crossing each
other and were covering the roads. At the sight of each other, we felt
as if we could burst into tears.
George always kept up his spirits, and even from time to time he
assumed an air of gayety, asking a light of the soldiers to light his
pipe, and singing sea-songs, which made the Prussian officers laugh.
They said: "This fellow is a real Frenchman: he sees things in a bright
light."
I could not understand that at all: no, indeed! I said to myself that
my cousin was losing his senses.
What grieved me still more was to see my fine horses perishing--my poor
horses, so sleek, so spirited, so steady; the best horses in the
commune, and which I had reared with so much satisfaction. Oh, how
deplorable! ... Passing along the hedges, by the roadside, I pulled
here and there handfuls of grass, to give them a taste of something
green, and in a moment they would stare at it, toss up their heads, and
devour this poor stuff. The poor brutes could be seen wasting away,
and this pained me more than anything.
Then the thoughts of my wife and Gredel, and their uneasiness, what
they were doing, what was becoming of the mill and our village--what
the people would say when they knew that their mayor was gone, and then
the town, and Jacob--everything overwhelmed me, and made my heart sink
within me.
But the worst of all, and what I shall never forget, was in the
neighborhood of Metz.
For a fortnight or three weeks there had been no more fighting; the
city and Bazaine's army were surrounded by huge earthworks, which the
Prussians had armed with guns. We could see that afar off, following
the road on our right. We could see many places, too, where the soil
had been recently turned over; and George said they were pits, in which
hundreds of dead lay buried. A few burnt and bombarded villages,
farms, and castles in ruins, were also seen in the neighborhood. There
was no more fighting; but there was a talk of francs-tireurs, and the
Silesians looked uncomfortable.
At last, on the tenth day since our departure, after having crossed and
recrossed the country in all directions, we arrived about three o'clock
at a large village on the Moselle, when the battalion came to a halt.
Several detachments from our battalion had filled up the gaps in other
battalions, so that there remained with us only the third part of the
men who had come from Droulingen.
After the distribution of provender, seeing that the officers' horses
had been fed, and that they were putting their bridles on, I just went
and picked up a few handfuls of hay and straw which were lying on the
ground, to give to mine. I had collected a small bundle, when a
corporal on guard in the neighborhood, having noticed what I was doing,
came and seized me by the whiskers, shaking me, and striking me on the
face.
"Ah! you greedy old miser! Is that the way you feed your beasts?"
I was beside myself with rage, and had already lifted my whip-handle to
send the rascal sprawling on the earth, when Cousin George precipitated
himself between us, crying: "Christian! what are you dreaming of?"
He wrested the whip from me, and whilst I was quivering in every limb,
he began to excuse me to the dirty Prussian; saying that I had acted
hastily, that I had thought the hay was to be left, that it ought to be
considered that our horses too followed the battalion, etc.
The fellow listened, drawn up like a gendarme, and said: "Well, then, I
will pass it over this time; but if he begins his tricks again, it will
be quite another thing."
Then I went into the stable and stretched myself in the empty rack, my
hat drawn over my face, without stirring for a couple of hours.
The battalion was going to march again. George was looking for me
everywhere. At last he found me. I rose, came out, and the sight of
all these soldiers dressed in line, with their rifles and their
helmets, made my blood run cold: I wished for death.
George spoke not a word, and we moved forward; but from that moment I
had resolved upon flight, at any price, abandoning everything.
The same evening, an extraordinary event happened; we received a little
straw! We lay in the open air, under our carts, because the village at
which we had just arrived was full of troops. I had only twelve sous
left, and George but twenty or thirty. He went to buy a little bread
and eau-de-vie in a public-house; we dipped our bread in it, and in
this way we were just able to sustain life.
Every time the corporal passed, who had laid his hand upon me, my knife
moved of its own accord in my pocket, and I said to myself: "Shall an
Alsacian, an old Alsacian, endure this affront without revenge? Shall
it be said that Alsacians allow themselves to be knocked about by such
spawn as these fellows, whom we have thrashed a hundred times in days
gone by, and who used to run away from us like hares?"
George, who could see by my countenance what I was thinking of, said:
"Christian! Listen to me. Don't get angry. Set down these blows to
the account of the Plebiscite, like the bonds for bread, flour, hay,
meat, and the rest. It was you who voted all that: the Germans are not
the causes! They are brute beasts, so used to have their faces
slapped, that they catch every opportunity to give others the like,
when there is no danger, and when they are ten to one. These slaps
don't produce the same effect on them as on us; they are felt only on
the surface, no farther! So comfort yourself; this monstrous beast
never thought he was inflicting any disgrace upon you: he took you for
one of his own sort."
But, instead of pacifying me, George only made me the more indignant;
especially when he told me that the Germans, talking together, had told
how Queen Augusta of Prussia had just sent her own cook to the Emperor
Napoleon to cook nice little dishes for him, and her own band to play
agreeable music under his balcony!
I had had enough! I lay under our cart, and all that night I had none
but bad dreams.
We had always hoped that, on coming near a railway, the remains of the
battalion would get in, and that we should be sent home; unhappily our
men were intended to fill up gaps in other battalions: companies were
detached right and left, but there were always enough left to want our
conveyances, and to prevent us from setting off home.
We had not had clean shirts for a fortnight; we had not once taken off
our shoes, knowing that we should have too much difficulty in getting
them on again; we had been wetted through with rain and dried by the
sun five and twenty times; we had suffered all the misery and
wretchedness of hunger, we were reduced to scarecrows by weariness and
suffering; but neither cousin nor I suffered from dysentery like those
Germans; the poorest nourishment still sustained us; but the bacon, the
fresh meat, the fruits, the raw vegetables, devoured by these creatures
without the least discretion, worked upon them dreadfully: no
experience could teach them wisdom; their natural voracity made them
devoid of all prudence.
As a climax to our miseries, the officers of our battalion were talking
of marching on Paris.
The Prussians knew a month beforehand that Bazaine would never come out
of his camp, and that he would finally surrender after he had consumed
all the provisions in Metz; they said this openly, and looked upon
Marshal Bazaine as our best general: they praised and exalted him for
his splendid campaign. The only fault they could find was, that he had
not shut himself up sooner; because then things would have been settled
much earlier. They complained, too, of our Emperor, and affirmed that
the best thing we could do would be to set him on his throne again.
George and I heard these things repeated a hundred times at the inns
and public-houses where we halted. The French innkeepers made us sit
behind the stove, and for pity, passed us sometimes the leavings of the
soup; but for this, we should have perished of hunger. They asked us
in whispers what the Germans were saying, and when we repeated their
sayings, the poor people said to us: "Really, how fond the Prussians
are of us! Certainly they do owe some comfort to the men who have
surrendered! Every brave deed deserves to be rewarded."
One of the Lorraine innkeepers said this to us; he was also the first
to tell us that Gambetta, having escaped from Paris in a balloon, was
now at Tours with Glais-Bizoin and several others, to raise a powerful
army behind the Loire. In these parts they got the Belgian papers, and
whenever we heard a bit of good news it screwed up our courage a little.
Quantities of provisions and stores were passing: immense flocks of
sheep and herds of oxen, cases of sausages, barrels of bread, wine, and
flour; sometimes regiments also. The trains for the East were carrying
wounded in heaps, stretched one over another in the carriages upon
mattresses, their pale faces seeking fresh air and coolness at all the
windows. German doctors with the red cross upon their arms were
accompanying them, and in every village there were ambulances.
The heavy rains and the first frosts had come. A thousand rumors were
afloat of great battles under the walls of Paris. The Prussians were
especially wroth with Gambetta: "that Gambetta! the bandit!" as they
called him, who was preventing them from having peace and bringing back
Napoleon. Never have I seen men so enraged with an enemy because he
would not surrender. The officers and soldiers talked of nothing else.
"That Gambetta," said they, "is the cause of all our trouble. His
francs-tireurs deserve to be strung up. But for him, peace would be
made. We should already have got Alsace and Lorraine; and the Emperor
Napoleon, at the head of the army of Metz, would have been on his way
to restore order at Paris."
At every convoy of wounded their indignation mounted higher. They
thought it perfectly natural and proper that _they_ should set fire to
us, devastate our country, plunder and shoot us; but for us to defend
ourselves, was infamous!
Is it possible to imagine a baser hypocrisy? For they did not think
what they were saying; they wanted to make us believe that our cause
was a bad one; yet how could there be a holier and a more glorious one?
Of course every Frenchman, from the oldest to the youngest--and
principally the women--prayed for Gambetta's success, and more than
once tears of emotion dropped at the thought that, perhaps, he might
save us. Crowds of young men left the country to join him, and then
the Prussians burdened their parents with a war contribution of fifty
francs a day. They were ruining them; and yet this did not prevent
others from following in numerous bands.
The Prussians threatened with the galleys whosoever should connive at
the flight, as they called it, of these volunteers, whether by giving
them money, or supplying them with guides, or by any other means.
Violence, cruelty, falsehood--all sorts of means seemed good to the
Germans to reduce us to submission; but arms were the least resorted to
of all these means, because they did not wish to lose men, and in
fighting they might have done so.
We had stopped three days at the village of Jametz, in the direction of
Montmedy. It was in the latter part of October; the rain was pouring;
George and I had been received by an old Lorraine woman, tall and
spare, Mother Marie-Jeanne, whose son was serving in Metz. She had a
small cottage by the roadside, with a little loft above which you
reached by a ladder, and a small garden behind, entirely ravaged. A
few ropes of onions, a few peas and beans in a basket, were all her
provisions. She concealed nothing; and whenever a Prussian came in to
ask for anything she feigned deafness and answered nothing. Her
misery, her broken windows, her dilapidated walls and the little
cupboard left wide open, soon induced these greedy gluttons to go
somewhere else, supposing there was nothing for them there.
This poor woman had observed our wretched plight; she had invited us
in, asking us where we were from, and we had told her of our
misfortunes. She herself had told us that there remained a few bundles
of hay in the loft and that we might take them, as she had no need for
them; the Germans having eaten her cow.
We climbed up there to sleep by night and drew up the ladder after us,
listening to the rain plashing on the roof and running off the tiles.
George had but ten sous left and I had nothing, when, on the third day,
as we were lying in the hayloft, about two in the morning, the bugle
sounded. Something had happened: an order had come--I don't know what.
We listened attentively. There were hurrying footsteps; the butts of
the muskets were rattling on the pavement: they were assembling,
falling in, and in all directions were cries:
"The drivers! the drivers! where are they?"
The commander was swearing: he shouted furiously,
"Fetch them here! find them! shoot the vagabonds."
We did not stir a finger.
Suddenly the door burst open. The Prussians demanded in German and in
French: "Where are the drivers--those Alsacian drivers?"
The aged dame answered not a word; she shook her head, and looked as
deaf as a post, just as usual. At last, out they rushed again. The
rascals had indeed seen the trap-door in the ceiling, but it seems they
were in a hurry and could not find a ladder without losing time. At
last, whether they saw it or not, presently we heard the tramping of
the men in the mud, the cracking of the whips, the rolling of the
carts, and then all was silent.
The battalion had disappeared.
Then only, after they had left half an hour, the kind old woman below
began to call us. "You can come down," she said; "they are gone now."
And we came down.
The poor woman said, laughing heartily, "Now you are safe! Only you
must lose no time; there might come an order to catch you. There, eat
that."
She took out of the cupboard a large basin full of soup made of
beans--for she used to cook enough for three or four days at a
time--and warmed it over the fire.
"Eat it all; never mind me! I have got more beans left."
There was no need for pressing, and in a couple of minutes the basin
was empty.
The good woman looked on with pleasure, and George said to her: "We
have not had such a meal for a week."
"So much the better! I am glad to have done you any service! And now
go. I wish I could give you some money; but I have none."
"You have saved our lives," I said. "God grant you may see your son
again. But I have another request to make before we go."
"What is it, then?"
"Leave to give you a kiss."
"Ah, gladly, my poor Alsacians, with all my heart! I am not pretty as
I used to be; but it is all the same."
And we kissed her as we would a mother.
When we went to the door, the daylight was breaking.
"Before you lies the road to Dun-sur-Meuse," she said, "don't take
that; that is the road the Prussians have taken: no doubt the commander
has given a description of you in the next village. But here is the
road to Metz by Damvillers and Etain; follow that. If you are stopped
say that your horses were worked to death, and you were released."
This poor old woman was full of good sense. We pressed her hand again,
with tears in our eyes, and then we set off, following the road she had
pointed out to us.
I should be very much puzzled now to tell you all the villages we
passed between Jametz and Rothalp. All that country between Metz,
Montmedy and Verdun was swarming with cavalry and infantry, living at
the expense of the people, and keeping them, as it were, in a net, to
eat them as they were wanted. The troops of the line, and especially
the gunners, kept around the fortresses; the rest, the Landwehr in
masses, occupied even the smallest hamlets and made requisitions
everywhere.
In one little village between Jametz and Damvillers, we heard on our
right a sharp rattle of musketry along a road, and George said to me:
"Behind there our battalion is engaged. All I hope is that the brave
commander who talked of shooting us may get a ball through him, and
your corporal too."
The village people standing at their doors said, "It is the
francs-tireurs!"
And joy broke out in every countenance, especially when an old man ran
up from the path by the cemetery, crying: "Two carriages, full of
wounded, are coming--two large Alsacian wagons; they are escorted by
hussars."
We had just stopped at a grocer's shop in the market square, and were
asking the woman who kept this little shop if there was no watchmaker
in the place--for my cousin wished to sell his watch, which he had
hidden beneath his shirt, since we had left Droulingen--and the woman
was coming down the steps to point out the spot, when the old man began
to cry, "Here come the Alsacian carts!"
Immediately, without waiting for more, we set off at a run to the other
end of the village; but near to a little river, whose name I cannot
remember, just over a clump of pollard willows, we caught the glitter
of a couple of helmets, and this made us take a path along the
river-side, which was then running over in consequence of the heavy
rains. We went on thus a considerable distance, having sometimes the
water up to our knees.
In about half an hour we were getting out of these reed beds, and had
just caught sight, above the hill on our left, of the steeple of
another village, when a cry of "Wer da!"* stopped us short, near a
deserted hut two or three hundred paces from the first house. At the
same moment a Landwehr started out of the empty house, his rifle
pointed at us; and his finger on the trigger.
* "Who goes there?"
George seeing no means of escape, answered, "Guter freund!"*
* "A friend."
"Stand there," cried the German: "don't stir, or I fire."
We were, of course, obliged to stop, and only ten minutes afterward, a
picket coming out of the village to relieve the sentinel, carried us
off like vagrants to the mayoralty-house. There the captain of the
Landwehr questioned us at great length as to who we were, whence we
came, the cause of our departure, and why we had no passes.
We repeated that our horses were dead of overwork, and that we had been
told to return home; but he refused to believe us. At last, however,
as George was asking him for money to pursue our journey, he began to
exclaim: "To the ---- with you, scoundrels! Am I to furnish you with
provisions and rations! Go; and mind you don't come this way again, or
it will be worse for you!"
We went out very well satisfied.
At the bottom of the stairs, George was thinking of going up again to
ask for a pass; but I was so alarmed lest this captain should change
his mind, that I obliged my cousin to put a good distance between that
fellow and ourselves with all possible speed; which we did, without any
other misadventure until we came to Etain. There George sold his gold
watch and chain for sixty-five francs; making, however, the watchmaker
promise that if he remitted to him seventy-five francs before the end
of the month, the watch and chain should be returned to him.
The watchmaker promised, and cousin then taking me by the arm, said:
"Now, Christian, come on; we have fasted long enough, let us have a
banquet."
And a hundred paces farther on, at the street corner, we went into one
of those little inns where YOU may have a bed for a few sous.
The men there, in a little dark room, were not gentlemen; they were
taking their bottles of wine, with their caps over one ear, and shirt
collars loose and open; but seeing us at the door, ragged as we were,
with three-weeks' shirts, and beards and hats saturated and out of all
shape and discolored with rain and sun, they took us at first for
bear-leaders, or dromedary drivers.
The hostess, a fat woman, came forward to ask what we wanted.
"Your best strong soup, a good piece of beef, a bottle of good wine,
and as much bread as we can eat," said George.
The fat woman gazed at us with winking eyes, and without moving, as if
to ask: "All very fine! but who is going to pay me?"
George displayed a five-franc piece, and at once she replied, smiling:
"Gentlemen, we will attend to you immediately."
Around us were murmurings: "They are Alsacians! they are Germans! they
are this, they are that!"
But we heeded nothing, we spread our elbows upon the table; and the
soup having appeared in a huge basin, it was evident that our appetites
were good; as for the beef, a regular Prussian morsel, it was gone in a
twinkling, although it weighed two pounds, and was flanked with
potatoes and other vegetables. Then, the first bottle having
disappeared, George had called for a second; and our eyes were
beginning to be opened; we regarded the people in another light; and
one of the bystanders having ventured to repeat that we were Germans,
George turned sharply round and cried: "Who says we are Germans? Come
let us see! If he has any spirit, let him rise. We Germans!"
Then he took up the bottle and shattered it upon the table in a
thousand fragments. I saw that he was losing his head, and cried to
him: "George, for Heaven's sake don't: you will get us taken up!"
But all the spectators agreed with him.
"It is abominable!" cried George. "Let the man who said we are Germans
stand out and speak; let him come out with me; let him choose sabre, or
sword, whatever he likes, it is all the same to me."
The speaker thus called upon, a youth rose and said: "Pardon me, I
apologize; I thought----"
"You had no right to think," said George; "such things never should be
said. We are Alsacians, true Frenchmen, men of mature age; my
companion's son is at Phalsbourg in the Mobiles, and I have served in
the Marines. We have been carried away, dragged off by the Germans; we
have lost our horses and our carriages, and now on arriving here, our
own fellow-countrymen insult us in this way because we have said a few
words in Alsacian, just as Bretons would speak in Breton and Provencals
in Provencal."
"I ask your pardon," repeated the young man. "I was in the wrong--I
acknowledge it. You are good Frenchmen."
"I forgive you," said George, scrutinizing him; "but how old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Well, go where you ought to be, and show that you, too, are as good a
Frenchman as we are. There are no young men left in Alsace. You
understand my meaning."
Everybody was listening. The young man went out, and as cousin was
asking for another bottle, the landlady whispered to him over his
shoulder: "You are good Frenchmen; but you have spoken before a great
many people--strangers, that I know nothing of. You had better go."
Immediately, George recovered his senses; he laid a cent-sous piece on
the table, the woman gave him two francs fifty centimes change, and we
went out.
Once out, George said to me: "Let us step out: anger makes a fool of a
man."
And we set off down one little street, then up another, till we came
out into the open fields. Night was approaching; if we had been taken
again, it would have been a worse business than the first; and we knew
that so well, that that night and the next day we dared not even enter
the villages, for fear of being seized and brought back to our
battalion.
At last, fatigue obliged us to enter an enclosure. It was very cold
for the season; but we had become accustomed to our wretchedness, and
we slept against a wall, upon a bit of straw matting, just as in our
own beds. Rising in the morning at the dawn of day, we found ourselves
covered with hoar-frost, and George, straining his eyes in the
distance, asked: "Do you know that place down there, Christian?"
I looked.
"Why, it is Chateau-Salins!"
Ah! now all was well. At Chateau-Salins lived an old cousin,
Desjardins, the first dyer in the country: Desjardins's grandfather and
ours had married sisters before the Revolution. He was a Lutheran, and
even a Calvinist; we were Catholics; but nevertheless, we knew each
other, and were fond of each other, as very near relations.