The room in the turret was now swimming in smoke and lime dust; I
could scarcely see the gray figure of the Countess through the
powder-mist which drifted in through shutters and loop-hole, dimming
the fading daylight.
In the street a dense pall of pungent vapor hung over roof and
pavement, motionless in the calm August air; two houses were burning
slowly, smothered in smoke; through a ruddy fog I saw the dead lying
in mounds, the wounded moving feebly, the Prussian soldiery tossing
straw into the hay-carts that had served their deadly purpose.
But oh, the dreadful murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous,
ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures,
tenacious of life, who are dying and who die hard.
Helmeted figures swarmed through the smoke; wagon after wagon, loaded
deep with dead cavalrymen, was drawn away by heavy teams of horses now
arriving from the regimental transport train, which had come up and
halted just at the entrance to the village.
And now wagon-loads of French wounded began to pass, jolting over
crushed helmets, rifles, cuirasses, and the carcasses of dead horses.
A covey of Uhlans entered the shambles, picking their way across the
wreckage of the battle, a slim, wiry, fastidious company, dainty as
spurred gamecocks, with their helmet-cords swinging like wattles and
their schapskas tilted rakishly.
Then the sad cortège of prisoners formed in the smoke, the wounded
leaning on their silent comrades, bandaged heads hanging, the others
erect, defiant, supporting the crippled or standing with arms folded
and helmeted heads held high.
And at last they started, between two files of mounted Uhlans--Turcos,
line infantrymen, gendarmes, lancers, and, towering head and shoulders
above the others, the superb cuirassiers.
A German general and his smartly uniformed staff came clattering up
the slippery street and halted to watch the prisoners defile. And, as
the first of the captive cuirassiers came abreast of the staff, the
general stiffened in his saddle and raised his hand to his helmet,
saying to his officers, loud enough for me to hear:
"Salute the brave, gentlemen!"
And the silent, calm-eyed cuirassiers passed on, heads erect, uniforms
in shreds, their battered armor foul with smoke and mud, spurs broken,
scabbards empty.
Troops of captured horses, conducted by Uhlans, followed the
prisoners, then wagons piled high with rifles, sabres, and saddles,
then a company of Uhlans cantering away with the shot-torn guidons of
the cuirassiers.
Last of all came the wounded in their straw-wadded wagons, escorted by
infantry; I heard them coming before I saw them, and, sickened, I
closed my ears with my hands; yet even then the deep, monotonous
groaning seemed to fill the room and vibrate through the falling
shadows long after the last cart had creaked out of sight and hearing
into the gathering haze of evening.
The deadened booming of cannon still came steadily from the west, and
it needed no messenger to tell me that the First Corps had been hurled
back into Alsace, and that MacMahon's army was in full retreat; that
now the Rhine was open and the passage of the Vosges was clear, and
Strasbourg must stand siege and Belfort and Toul must man their
battlements for a struggle that meant victory, or an Alsace doomed and
a Lorraine lost to France forever.
The room had grown very dark, the loop-hole admitting but little of
the smoky evening sunset. Some soldiers in the hallway outside finally
lighted torches; red reflections danced over the torn ceiling and
plaster-covered floor, illuminating a corner where the Countess was
sitting by the bedside, her head lying on the covers. How long she had
been there I did not know, but when I spoke she raised her head and
answered quietly.
In the torch-light her face was ghastly, her eyes red and dim as she
came over to me and looked out into the darkness.
The woman was shaken terribly, shaken to the very soul. She had not
seen all that I had seen; she had flinched before the spectacle of a
butchery too awful to look upon, but she had seen enough, and she had
heard enough to support or to confound theories formed through a young
girl's brief, passionless, eventless life.
Under the window soldiers began shooting the crippled horses; the
heavy flash and bang of rifles set her trembling again.
Until the firing ceased she stood as though stupefied, scarcely
breathing, her splendid hair glistening like molten copper in the red
torches' glare.
A soldier came into the room and dragged the bedclothes from the bed,
trailing them across the floor behind him as he departed. An officer
holding a lantern peered through the door, his eye-glasses shining,
his boots in his hand.
He evidently had intended to get into the bed, but when his gaze fell
upon us he withdrew in his stockinged feet.
On the stairs soldiers were eating hunches of stale bread and knocking
the necks from wine bottles with their bayonets. One lumpish fellow
came to the door and offered me part of a sausage which he was
devouring, a kindly act that touched me, and I wondered whether the
other prisoners might find among their Uhlan guards the same humanity
that moved this half-famished yokel to offer me the food he was
gnawing.
Soldiers began to come and go in the room; some carried off chairs for
officers below some took the pillows from the bed, one bore away a
desk on his broad shoulders.
The Countess never moved or spoke.
The evening had grown chilly; I was cold to my knees.
A soldier offered to build me a fire in the great stone fireplace
behind me, and when I assented he calmly smashed a chair to
kindling-wood, wrenched off the heavy posts of the bed, and started a
fire which lit up the wrecked room with its crimson glare.
The Countess rose and looked around. The soldier pushed my long chair
to the blaze, tore down the canopy over the bed and flung it over me,
stolidly ignoring my protests. Then he clumped out with his muddy
boots and shut the door behind him.
For a long while I lay there, full in the heat of the fire, half
dozing, then sleeping, then suddenly alert, only to look about me to
see the Countess with eyes closed, motionless in her arm-chair, only
to hear the muffled thunder of the guns in the dark.
Once again, having slept, I roused, listening. The crackle of the
flames was all I heard; the cannon were silent. A few moments later a
clock in the hallway struck nine times. At the same instant a deadened
cannon-shot echoed the clamor of the clock. It was the last shot of
the battle. And when the dull reverberations had died away Alsace was
a lost province, MacMahon's army was in full retreat, leaving on the
three battle-fields of Wörth, Reichshoffen, and Fröschweiler sixteen
thousand dead, wounded, and missing soldiers of France.
All night long I heard cavalry traversing Morsbronn in an unbroken
column, the steady trample of their horses never ceasing for an
instant. At moments, from the outskirts of the village, the sinister
sound of cheering came from the vanguard of the German Sixth Corps,
just arriving to learn of the awful disaster to France. Too late to
take any part in the battle, these tired soldiers stood cheering by
regiments as the cavalry rode past in pursuit of the shattered army,
and their cheering swelled to a terrific roar toward morning, when the
Prince Royal of Prussia appeared with his staff, and the soldiers in
Morsbronn rushed out into the street bellowing, "Hoch soll er leben!
Er soll leben--Hoch!"
About seven o'clock that morning a gaunt, leather-faced Prussian
officer, immaculate in his sombre uniform, entered the room without
knocking. The young Countess turned in the depths of her chair; he
bowed to her slightly, unfolded a printed sheet of paper which bore
the arms of Prussia, hesitated, then said, looking directly at me:
"Morsbronn is now German territory and will continue to be governed
by military law, proclaimed under the state of siege, until the
country is properly pacified.
"Honest inhabitants will not be disturbed. Citizens are invited to
return to their homes and peacefully continue their legitimate
avocations, subject to and under the guarantee of the Prussian
military government.
"Monsieur, I have the honor to hand you a copy of regulations. I am
the provost marshal; all complaints should be brought to me."