In the morning I set out again with the quartermaster Poitevin, and
three other soldiers of Souham's division. Our route lay along the
bank of the Elbe; the weather was wet and the wind swept fiercely over
the river, throwing the spray far on the land.
We hastened on for an hour, when suddenly the quartermaster cried:
"Attention!"
He had halted suddenly, and stood listening. We could hear nothing but
the sighing of the wind through the trees, and the splash of the waves;
but his ear was finer than ours.
"They are skirmishing yonder," said he, pointing to a wood on our
right. "The enemy may be near us, and the best thing we can do is to
enter the wood and pursue our way cautiously. We can see at the other
end of it what is going on; and if the Prussians or Russians are there,
we can beat a retreat without their perceiving us. If they are French,
we will go on."
We all thought the quartermaster was right; and, in my heart, I admired
the shrewdness of the old drunkard. We kept on toward the wood,
Poitevin leading, and the others following, with our pieces cocked. We
marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew
nearer; they were fired at intervals, and the quartermaster said:
"They are sharp-shooters reconnoitring a body of cavalry, for the
firing is all on one side."
It was true. In a few moments we perceived, through the trees, a
battalion of French infantry about to make their soup, and in the
distance, on the plain beyond, platoons of Cossacks defiling from one
village to another. A few skirmishers along the edge of the wood were
firing on them, but they were almost beyond musket-range.
"There are your people, young man," said Poitevin. "You are at home."
He had good eyes to read the number of a regiment at such a distance.
I could only see ragged soldiers with their cheeks and
famine-glistening eyes. Their great-coats were twice too large for
them, and fell in folds along their bodies like cloaks. I say nothing
of the mud; it was everywhere. No wonder the Germans were exultant,
even after our victory at Dresden.
We went toward a couple of little tents, before which three or four
horses were nibbling the scanty grass. I saw Colonel Lorain, who now
commanded the Third battalion--a tall, thin man, with brown mustaches
and a fierce air. He looked at me frowningly, and when I showed my
papers, only said:
"Go and rejoin your company."
I started off, thinking that I would recognize some of the Fourth; but,
since Lutzen, companies had been so mingled with companies, regiments
with regiments, and divisions with divisions, that, on arriving at the
camp of the grenadiers, I knew no one. The men seeing me approach,
looked distrustfully at me, as if to say:
"Does _he_ want some of our beef? Let us see what he brings to the
pot!"
I was almost ashamed to ask for my company, when a bony veteran, with a
nose long and pointed like an eagle's beak, and a worn-out coat hanging
from his shoulders, lifting his head, and gazing at me, said quietly:
"Hold! It is Joseph. I thought he was buried four months ago."
Then I recognized my poor Zebede. My appearance seemed to affect him,
for, without rising, he squeezed my hand, crying:
"Klipfel! here is Joseph!"
Another soldier, seated near a pot, turned his head, saying:
"It is you, Joseph, is it? Then you were not killed."
This was all my welcome. Misery had made them so selfish that they
thought only of themselves. But Zebede was always good-hearted; he
made me sit near him, throwing a glance at the others that commanded
respect, and offered me his spoon, which he had fastened to the
button-hole of his coat. I thanked him, and produced from my knapsack
a dozen sausages, a good loaf of bread, and a flask of brandy, which I
had the foresight to purchase at Risa. I handed a couple of the
sausages to Zebede, who took them with tears in his eyes. I was also
going to offer some to the others; but he put his hand on my arm,
saying:
"What is good to eat is good to keep."
We retired from the circle and ate, drinking at the same time; the rest
of the soldiers said nothing, but looked wistfully at us. Klipfel,
smelling the sausages, turned and said:
"Holloa! Joseph! Come and eat with us. Comrades are always comrades,
you know."
"That is all very well," said Zebede; "but I find meat and drink the
best comrades."
He shut up my knapsack himself, saying:
"Keep that, Joseph. I have not been so well regaled for more than a
month. You shall not lose by it."
A half-hour after, the recall was beaten; the skirmishers came in, and
Sergeant Pinto, who was among the number, recognized me, and said:
"Well; so you have escaped! But you came back in an evil moment!
Things go wrong--wrong!"
The colonel and commandants mounted, and we began moving. The Cossacks
withdrew. We marched with arms at will; Zebede was at my side and
related all that passed since Lutzen; the great victories of Bautzen
and Wurtschen; the forced marches to overtake the retreating enemy; the
march on Berlin; then the armistice, during which we were encamped in
the little towns; then the arrival of the veterans of Spain--men
accustomed to pillaging and living on the peasantry.
Unfortunately, at the close of the armistice all were against us. The
country people looked on us with horror; they cut the bridges down, and
kept the Russians and Prussians informed of all our movements, and
whenever any misfortune happened us, instead of helping us, they tried
to force us deeper in the mire. The great rains came to finish us, and
the day of the battle of Dresden it fell so heavily that the Emperor's
hat hung down upon his shoulders. But when victorious, we only laughed
at these things; we felt warm just the same, and we could change our
clothes. But the worst of all was when we were beaten, and flying
through the mud--hussars, dragoons, and such gentry on our tracks,--we
not knowing when we saw a light in the night whether to advance or to
perish in the falling deluge.
Zebede told me all this in detail; how, after the victory of Dresden,
General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had
penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and how those whom we had beaten the
day before fell upon him on all sides, front, flank, and rear, and
captured him and several other generals, utterly destroying his _corps
d'armee_. Two days before, on the 26th of August, a similar misfortune
happened to our division, as well as to the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh
corps on the heights of Lowenberg. We should have crushed the
Prussians there, but by a false movement of Marshal Macdonald, the
enemy surprised us in a ravine with our artillery in confusion, our
cavalry disordered, and our infantry unable to fire owing to the
pelting rain; we defended ourselves with the bayonet, and the Third
battalion made its way, in spite of the Prussian charges, to the river
Katzbach. There Zebede received two blows on his head from the butt of
a grenadier's musket, and was thrown into the river. The current bore
him along, while he held Captain Arnauld by the arm; and both would
have been lost, if by good luck the captain in the darkness of the
night had not seized the overhanging branch of a tree on the other
side, and thus managed to regain the bank. He told me how all that
night, despite the blood that flowed from his nose and ears, he had
marched to the village of Goldberg, almost dead with hunger, fatigue,
and his wounds, and how a joiner had taken pity upon him and given him
bread, onions, and water. He told me how, on the day following, the
whole division, followed by the other corps, had marched across the
fields, each one taking his own course, without orders, because the
marshals, generals, and all mounted officers had fled as far as
possible, in the fear of being captured. He assured me that fifty
hussars could have captured them, one after another; but that by good
fortune, Bluecher could not cross the flooded river, so that they
finally rallied at Wolda, where the drummers of every corps beat the
march for their regiments at all the corners of the village. By this
means every man extricated himself and followed his own drum.
But the happiest thing in this rout was, that a little farther on, at
Buntzlau, their officers met them, surprised at yet having troops to
lead. This was what my comrade told me, to say nothing of the distrust
which we were obliged to have of our allies, who at any moment might
fall on us unprepared to receive them. He told me how Marshal Oudinot
and Marshal Ney had been beaten: the first at Gross-Beeren, and the
other at Dennewitz. This was sad indeed, for in these retreats the
conscripts died from exhaustion, sickness and every kind of hardship.
The veterans of Spain and Germany, hardened by bad weather, could alone
resist such fatigue.
"In a word," said Zebede, "we had everything against us--the country,
the continual rains, and our own generals, who were weary of all this.
Some of them are dukes and princes, and grow tired of being forever in
the mud instead of being seated in comfortable arm-chairs; and others,
like Vandamme, are impatient to become marshals, by performing some
grand stroke. We poor wretches, who have nothing to gain but being
crippled the rest of our days, and who are the sons of peasants and
workingmen who fought to get rid of one nobility, must perish to create
a new one!"
I saw then that the poorest, the most miserable are not always the most
foolish, and that through suffering they come at last to see the
sorrowful truth. But I said nothing, and I prayed God to give me
strength and courage to support the hardships the coming of which these
faults and this injustice foretold.
We were between three armies, who were uniting to crush us; that of the
north, commanded by Bernadotte; that of Silesia, commanded by Bluecher;
and the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg. We believed at
one time we were going to cross the Elbe, to fall on the Prussians and
Swedes; at another, that we were about attacking the Austrians toward
the mountains as we had done fifty times in Italy and other places.
But they ended by understanding our movements, and when we seemed to
approach, they retired. They feared the Emperor especially, but he
could not be at once in Bohemia and Silesia, and so we were forced to
make horrible marches and countermarches.
All that the soldiers asked, was to fight, for through marching and
sleeping in the mud, half rations and vermin had made their lives a
misery. Each one prayed that all this might end one way or the other.
It was too much for human endurance; it could not last.
I, myself, at the end of a few days, was weary of such a life; my legs
could scarcely support me, and I grew leaner and leaner.
Every night we were disturbed by a beggar named Thielmann, who raised
the peasantry against us; he followed us like a shadow; watched us from
village to village, on the heights, on the roads, in the valleys; his
army were all who bore us a grudge, and he had always men enough.
It was about this time, too, that the Bavarians, the Badeners, and the
Wurtembergers declared against us, so that all Europe was upon us.
At length we had the consolation of seeing that the army was collecting
as for a great battle; instead of meeting Platow's Cossacks and
Thielmann's partisans in the neighborhood of villages, we found
hussars, chasseurs, dragoons from Spain, artillery, pontoon trains on
the march. The rain still fell in floods; those who could no longer
drag themselves along sat down in the mud at the foot of a tree and
abandoned themselves to their unhappy fate.
The eleventh of October we bivouacked near the village of Lousig; the
twelfth near Graffenheinichen; the thirteenth we crossed the Mulda, and
saw the Old Guard defile across the bridge, and La-Tour-Maubourg. It
was announced that the Emperor crossed too, but we departed with
Dombrowski's division and Souham's corps.
At moments the rain would cease falling and a ray of autumn sun shine
out from between the clouds, and then we could see the whole army
marching; cavalry and infantry advancing from all sides, on Leipzig.
On the other side of the Mulda glittered the bayonets of the Prussians;
but we yet saw no Austrians and Russians: they doubtless came from
other directions.
On the fourteenth of October, our battalion was detached to reconnoitre
the village of Aaken. The enemy were in force there, and received us
with a scattering artillery fire, and we remained all night without
being able to light a fire, on account of the pouring rain. The next
day we set out to rejoin our division by forced marches. Every one
said, I know not why:
"The battle is approaching! the fight is coming on!"
Sergeant Pinto declared that he felt the Emperor in the air. I felt
nothing, but I knew that we were marching on Leipzig, and I thought to
myself, "If we have a battle, God grant that you do not get an ugly
hurt as at Lutzen, and that you may see Catharine again!" The night
following the weather cleared up a little, thousands of stars shone
out, and we still kept on. The next day, about ten o'clock, near a
village whose name I cannot recollect, we were ordered to halt, and
then we felt a trembling in the air. The colonel and Sergeant Pinto
said:
"The battle has begun!" and at the same moment, the colonel, waving his
sword, cried: "Forward!"
We started at a run; knapsacks, cartouche-boxes, muskets, mud, all
drove on; we cared for nothing. Half an hour after we saw, a few
thousand paces ahead, a long column, in which followed artillery,
cavalry, and infantry, one after the other; behind us, on the road to
Duben, we saw another, all pushing forward at their utmost speed.
Regiments even advancing at the double quick across the fields.
At the end of the road we could see the two spires of the churches of
Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipzig, piercing the sky, while to
the right and left, on both sides of the city, rose great clouds of
smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased;
we were yet more than a league from the city, but we were forced to
almost shout to hear each other, and men gazed around, pale as death,
seeming by their looks to say:
"This is indeed a battle?"
Sergeant Pinto cried that it was worse than Eylau. He laughed no more,
nor did Zebede; but on, on we rushed, officers incessantly urging us
forward. We seemed to grow delirious; the love of country was indeed
striving within us, but still greater was the furious eagerness for the
fight.
At eleven o'clock we descried the battle-field about a league in front
of Leipzig. We saw the steeples and roofs crowded with people, and the
old ramparts on which I had walked so often, thinking of Catharine.
Opposite us, twelve or fifteen hundred yards distant, two regiments of
red lancers were drawn up, and a little to the left, two or three
regiments of mounted chasseurs in the fields along the Partha, and
between them filed the long column from Duben. Farther on, along the
slope, were the divisions Ricard, Dombrowski, Souham, and several
others, with their rear to the city; cannons limbered, with their
caissons--the cannoneers and artillerymen on horseback--stood ready to
start off; and far behind, on a hill, around one of those old
farmhouses with flat roofs and immense outlying sheds, so often seen in
that country, glittered the brilliant uniforms of the staff.
It was the army of reserve, commanded by Ney. His left wing
communicated with Marmont, who was posted on the road to Halle, and his
right with the grand army, commanded by the Emperor in person. In this
manner our troops formed an immense circle around Leipzig; and the
enemy, arriving from all points, sought to join their divisions so as
to form a yet larger circle around us, and to inclose us in Leipzig as
in a trap.
While we waited thus, three fearful battles were going on at once: one
against the Austrians and Russians at Wachau; another against the
Prussians at Mockern on the road to Halle; and the third on the road to
Lutzen, to defend the bridge of Lindenau, attacked by General Giulay.
These things I learned afterward; but every one ought to tell what he
saw himself: in this way the world will know the truth.