On returning to the hospital, after having had a good dinner and drank
a bottle of wine apiece in the inn of La Grappe in the Rue de Tilly, we
learned that we were to go, that same evening, to the barracks of
Rosenthal--a sort of depot for wounded, near Lutzen, where the roll was
called morning and evening, but where, at all other times, we were at
liberty to do as we pleased. Every three days, the surgeon made his
visit; as soon as one was well, he received his order to march to
rejoin his corps.
One may imagine the condition of from twelve to fifteen hundred poor
wretches clothed in gray great-coats with leaden buttons, shakos shaped
like flower-pots, and shoes worn out by marches and
counter-marches--pale, weak, most of them without a sou, in a rich city
like Leipzig. We did not cut much of a figure among these students,
these good citizens and smiling young women, who, despite our glory,
looked on us as vagabonds.
All the fine stories of my comrade only made me feel my situation more
bitterly.
It is true that we were formerly well received, but in those days our
men did not always act honestly by those who treated them like
brothers, and now doors were slammed in our faces. We were reduced to
the necessity of contemplating squares, churches, and the outside of
sausage-shops, which are there very handsome, from morning till night.
We tried every way of amusing ourselves; the idlers played at
_drogue_[1], the younger ones drank. We had also a game called "Cat
and Rat," which we played in front of the barracks. A stake was
planted in the ground, to which two cords were fastened; the rat held
one of these, and the cat the other. Their eyes were bandaged. The
cat was armed with a cudgel and tried to catch the rat, who kept out of
the way as much as he could, listening for the cat's approach--thus
they kept going around on tiptoe, and exhibiting their cunning to the
company.
[1] A game at cards, played among soldiers, in which the loser wears a
forked stick on his nose till he wins again.
Zimmer told me that in former times the good Germans came in crowds to
see this game, and you could hear them laugh half a league off when the
cat touched the rat with his club. But times were indeed changed;
every one passed by now without even turning their heads; we only lost
our labor when we tried to interest them in our favor.
During the six weeks we remained at Rosenthal, Zimmer and I often
wandered through the city to kill time. We went by way of the faubourg
of Randstatt and pushed as far as Lindenau, on the road to Lutzen.
There were nothing but bridges, swamps and wooded islets as far as the
eye could reach. There we would eat an omelette with bacon at the
tavern of the Carp, and wash it down with a bottle of white wine. They
no longer gave us credit, as after Jena; I believe, on the contrary,
that the innkeeper would have made us pay double and triple, for the
honor of the German Fatherland, if my comrade had not known the price
of eggs and bacon and wine as well as any Saxon among them.
In the evening, when the sun was setting behind the reeds of the Elster
and the Pleisse, we returned to the city accompanied by the mournful
notes of the frogs, which swarm in thousands in the marshes.
Sometimes we would stop with folded arms at the railing of a bridge and
gaze at the old ramparts of Leipzig, its churches, its old ruins, and
its castle of Pleissenbourg, all glowing in the red twilight. The city
runs to a point where the Pleisse and the Partha branch off, and the
rivers meet above. It is in the shape of a fan, the faubourg of Halle
at the handle and the seven other faubourgs spreading off.[2] We gazed
too at the thousand arms of the Elster and the Pleisse, winding like
threads among islands already growing dark in the twilight, although
the waters glittered like gold. All this seemed very beautiful.
[2] On the English map the river is the Rotha, not the Partha (or
Parde), and at the point here alluded to it joins the _Elster_, not the
_Pleisse_, as stated previously.--_Translator's Note_.
But if we had known that we would one day be forced to cross these
rivers under the enemy's cannon, after having lost the most fearful and
the bloodiest of battles, and that entire regiments would disappear
beneath those waters, which then gladdened our eyes, I think that the
sight would have made us sad enough.
At other times we would walk along the bank of the Pleisse as far as
Mark-Kleeberg. It was more than a league, and every field was covered
with harvests which they were hastening to garner. The people in their
great wagons seemed not to see us, and if we asked for information they
pretended not to understand us. Zimmer always grew angry. I held him
back, telling him that the beggarly wretches only sought a pretext for
falling upon us, and that we had, besides, orders to humor them.
"Very good!" he said; "but if the war comes this way, let them look
out! We have overwhelmed them with benefits and this is how they
receive us!"
But what shows better yet the ill-feeling of the people toward us was
what happened us the day after the conclusion of the armistice, when,
about eleven o'clock, we went together to bathe in the Elster. We had
already thrown off our clothes, and Zimmer seeing a peasant
approaching, cried:
"Holloa, comrade! Is there any danger here?"
"No. Go in boldly," replied the man. "It is a good place."
Zimmer, mistrusting nothing, went some fifteen feet out. He was a good
swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current
carried him away so quickly that he could not even catch the branches
of the willows which hung over him; and were it not that he was carried
to a ford, where he gained a footing, he would have been swept between
two muddy islands, and certainly lost.
The peasant stood to see the effect of his advice. I was very angry,
and dressed myself as quickly as I could, shaking my fist at him, but
he laughed, and ran, quicker than I could follow him, to the city.
Zimmer was wild with wrath, and wished to pursue him to Connewitz; but
how could we find him among three or four hundred houses, and if we did
find him, what could we do?
Finally we went into the water where there was footing, and its
coolness calmed us.
I remember how, as we returned to Leipzig, Zimmer talked of nothing but
vengeance.
"The whole country is against us!" cried he; "the citizens look black
at us, the women turn their backs, the peasants try to drown us, and
the innkeepers refuse us credit, as if we had not conquered them three
or four times; and all this comes of our extraordinary goodness; we
should have declared that we were their masters! We have granted to
the Germans kings and princes; we have even made dukes, counts and
barons with the names of their villages; we have loaded them with
honors, and see their gratitude!
"Instead of having ordered us to respect the people, we should be given
full power over them; then the thieves would change faces and treat us
well, as they did in 1806. Force is everything. In the first place,
conscripts are made by force, for if they were not forced to come, they
would all stay at home. Of the conscripts soldiers are made by
force--by discipline being taught them; with soldiers battles are
gained by force, and then people are forced to give you everything:
they prepare triumphal arches for you and call you heroes because they
are afraid of you; that is how it is!
"But the Emperor is too good. If he were not so good I would not have
been in danger of drowning to-day;--the sight of my uniform would have
made that peasant tremble at the idea of telling me a lie."
So spoke Zimmer, and all this yet remains in my memory. It happened
August 12, 1813.
Returning to Leipzig, we saw joy painted on the countenances of the
inhabitants. It did not display itself openly; but the citizens,
meeting, would shake hands with an air of huge satisfaction, and the
general rejoicing glistened even in the eyes of servants and the
poorest workmen.
Zimmer said: "These Germans seem to be merry about something, they all
look so good-natured."
"Yes," I replied; "their good humor comes from the fine weather and
good harvest."
It was true the weather was very fine, but when we reached the
barracks, we found some of our officers at the gate, talking eagerly
together, while those who were going by came up to listen, and then we
learned the cause of so much joy. The conference at Prague was broken
off, and Austria, too, was about to declare war against us, which gave
us two hundred thousand more men to take care of. I have learned since
that we then stood three hundred thousand men against five hundred and
twenty thousand, and that among our enemies were two old French
generals, Moreau and Bernadotte. Every one can read that in books, but
we did not yet know it, and we were sure of victory, for we had never
lost a battle. The ill-feeling of the people did not trouble us: in
time of war peasants and citizens are in a manner reckoned as nothing;
they are only asked for money and provisions, which they always give,
for they know that if they made the least resistance they would be
stripped to the last farthing.
The day after we got this important news there was a general
inspection, and twelve hundred of the wounded of Lutzen were ordered to
rejoin their corps. They went by companies with arms and baggage, some
following the road to Altenbourg, which runs along the Elster, and some
the road to Wurtzen, farther to the left.
Zimmer was of the number, having himself asked leave to go. I went
with him just beyond the gate, and there we embraced with emotion. I
stayed behind, as my arm was still weak.
We were now not more than five or six hundred, among whom were a number
of masters of arms, of teachers of dancing and French elegance--fellows
to be found at all depots of wounded. I did not care to become
acquainted with them, and my only consolation was in thinking of
Catharine, and sometimes of my old comrades Klipfel and Zebede, of whom
I received no tidings.
It was a sad enough life; the people looked upon us with an evil eye;
they dared say nothing, knowing that the French army was only four
days' march away, and Bluecher and Schwartzenberg much farther.
Otherwise, how soon they would have fallen upon us!
One evening the rumor prevailed that we had just won a great victory at
Dresden. There was general consternation; the inhabitants remained
shut up in their houses. I went to read the newspaper at the "Bunch of
Grapes," in the Rue de Tilly. The French papers were there always on
the table; no one opened them but me.
But the following week, at the beginning of September, I saw the same
change in people's faces as I observed the day the Austrians declared
against us. I guessed we had met some misfortune, and we had, as I
learned afterward, for the Paris papers said nothing of it.
Bad weather set in at the end of August, and the rain fell in torrents.
I no longer left the barracks. Often, as seated upon my bed, I gazed
at the Elster boiling beneath the falling floods, and the trees, and
the little islands swaying in the wind, I thought: "Poor soldiers! poor
comrades! What are you doing now? Where are you? On the high road
perhaps, or in the open fields!"
And despite my sadness at living where I was, I remembered that I was
less to be pitied than they. But one day the old Surgeon Tardieu made
his round and said to me:
"Your arm is strong again--let us see--raise it for me. All right! all
right!"
The next day at roll-call, they passed me into a hall where there were
clothing, knapsacks, cartridge-boxes and shoes in abundance. I
received a musket, two packets of cartridges, and marching papers for
the Sixth at Gauernitz, on the Elbe. This was the first of October.
Twelve or fifteen of us set out together, under charge of a
quartermaster of the Twenty-seventh named Poitevin.
On the road, one after another left us to take the way to his corps;
but Poitevin, four infantry men and I, kept on to the village of
Gauernitz.