About one o'clock in the morning of the sixth of January, the day of
the feast of the Kings, the enemy arrived on the hill of Saverne.
It was terribly cold, our windows under the persiennes were white with
frost. I woke as the clock struck one; they were beating the call at
the infantry barracks.
You can have no idea how it sounded in the silence of the night.
"Dost thou hear, Moses?" whispered Sorle.
"Yes, I hear," said I, almost without breathing.
After a minute some windows were opened in our street, and we knew that
others too were listening; then we heard running, and suddenly the cry,
"To arms! to arms!"
It made one's hair stand on end.
I had just risen, and was lighting a lamp, when we heard two knocks at
our door.
"Come in!" said Sorle, trembling.
The sergeant opened the door. He was in marching equipments, with his
gaiters on his legs, his large gray cap turned up at the sides, his
musket on his shoulder, and his sabre and cartridge-box on his back.
"Father Moses," said he, "go back to bed and be quiet: it is the
battalion call at the barracks, and has nothing to do with you."
And we saw at once that he was right, for the drums did not come up the
street two by two, as when the National Guard was called in.
"Thank you, sergeant," I said.
"Go to sleep!" said he, and he went down the stairs.
The door of the alley below slammed to. Then the children, who had
waked up, began to cry. Zeffen came in, very pale, with her baby in
her arms, exclaiming, "Mercy! What is the matter?"
"It is nothing, Zeffen," said Sorle. "It is nothing, my child: they
are beating the call for the soldiers."
At the same moment the battalion came down the main street. We heard
them march as far as to the Place d'Armes, and beyond it toward the
German gate.
We shut the windows, Zeffen went back to her room, and I lay down again.
But how could I sleep after such a start? My head was full of a
thousand thoughts: I fancied the arrival of the Russians on the hill
this cold night, and our soldiers marching to meet them, or manning the
ramparts. I thought of all the blindages and block-houses, and
batteries inside the bastions, and that all these great works had been
made to guard against bombs and shells, and I exclaimed inwardly:
"Before the enemy has demolished all these works, our houses will be
crushed, and we shall be exterminated to the last man."
I took on in this way for about half an hour, thinking of all the
calamities which threatened us, when I heard outside the city, toward
Quatre-Vents, a kind of heavy rolling, rising and falling like the
murmur of running water. This was repeated every second. I raised
myself on my elbow to listen, and I knew that it was a fight far more
terrible than that at Mittelbronn, for the rolling did not stop, but
seemed rather to increase.
"How they are fighting, Sorle, how they are fighting!" I exclaimed, as
I pictured to myself the fury of those men murdering each other at the
dead of night, not knowing what they were doing. "Listen! Sorle,
listen! If that does not make one shudder!"
"Yes," said she. "I hope our sergeant will not be wounded; I hope he
will come back safe!"
"May the Lord watch over him!" I replied, jumping from my bed, and
lighting a candle.
I could not control myself. I dressed myself as quickly as if I were
going to run away; and afterward I listened to that terrible rolling,
which came nearer or died away with every gust of wind.
When once dressed, I opened a window, to try to see something. The
street was still black; but toward the ramparts, above the dark line of
the arsenal bastions, was stretched a line of red.
The smoke of powder is red on account of the musket shots which light
it up. It looked like a great fire. All the windows in the street
were open: nothing could be seen, but I heard our neighbor the armorer
say to his wife, "It is growing warm down there! It is the beginning
of the dance, Annette; but they have not got the big drum yet; that
will come, by and by!"
The woman did not answer, and I thought, "Is it possible to jest about
such things! It is against nature."
The cold was so severe that after five or six minutes I shut the
window. Sorle got up and made a fire in the stove.
The whole city was in commotion; men were shouting and dogs barking.
Safel, who had been wakened by all these noises, went to dress himself
in the warm room. I looked very tenderly on this poor little one, his
eyes still heavy with sleep; and as I thought that we were to be fired
upon, that we must hide ourselves in cellars, and all of us be in
danger of being killed for matters which did not concern us, and about
which nobody had asked our opinion, I was full of indignation. But
what distressed me most was to hear Zeffen sob and say that it would
have been better for her and her children to stay with Baruch at
Saverne and all die together.
Then the words of the prophet came to me: "Is not this thy fear, thy
confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?
"Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent, or where were
the righteous cut off.
"No, they that plough iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same.
"By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are
they consumed.
"But thee, his servant, he shall redeem from death.
"Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn
cometh in his season."
In this way I strengthened my heart, while I heard the great tumult of
the panic-stricken crowd, running and trying to save their property.
About seven o'clock it was announced that the casemates were open, and
that everybody might take their mattresses there, and that there must
be tubs full of water in every house, and the wells left open in case
of fire.
Think, Fritz, what ideas these orders suggested.
Some of our neighbors, Lisbeth Dubourg, Bevel Ruppert, Camus's
daughters, and some others, came up to us exclaiming, "We are all lost!"
Their husbands had gone out, right and left, to see what they could
see, and these women hung on Zeffen and Sorle's necks, repeating again
and again, "Oh, dear! oh, dear! what misery!"
I could have wished them all to the devil, for instead of comforting us
they only increased our fears; but at such times women will get
together and cry out all at once; you can't talk reason to them; they
like these loud cryings and groanings.
Just as the clock struck eight, Bailly the armorer came to find his
wife: he had come from the ramparts. "The Russians," he said, "have
come down in a mass from Quatre-Vents to the very gate, filling the
whole plain--Cossacks, Baskirs, and rabble! Why don't they fire down
upon them from the ramparts? The governor is betraying us."
"Where are our soldiers?" I asked.
"Retreating!" exclaimed he. "The wounded came back two hours ago, and
our men stay yonder, with folded arms."
His bony face shook with rage. He led away his wife; then others came
crying out, "The enemy has advanced to the lower part of the gardens,
upon the glacis." I was astonished at these things.
The women had gone away to cry somewhere else, and just then a great
noise of wheels was heard from the direction of the rampart. I looked
out of the window, and saw a wagon from the arsenal, some citizen
gunners; old Goulden, Holender, Jacob Cloutier, and Barrier galloped at
its sides; Captain Jovis ran in front. They stopped at our door.
"Call the iron-merchant!" cried the captain. "Tell him to come down."
Baker Chanoine, the brigadier of the second battery, came up. I opened
the door.
"What do you want of me?" I asked in the stairway.
"Come down, Moses," said Chanoine. And I went down.
Captain Jovis, a tall old man, with his face covered with sweat, in
spite of the cold, said to me, "You are Moses, the iron-merchant?"
"Yes, sir."
"Open your storehouse. Your iron is required for the defence of the
city."
So I had to lead all these people into my court, under the shed. The
captain on looking round, saw some cast-iron bars, which were used at
that time for closing up the backs of fireplaces. They weighed from
thirty to forty pounds each, and I sold a good many in the vicinity of
the city. There was no lack of old nails, rusty bolts, and old iron of
all sorts.
"This is what we want," said he. "Break up these bars, and take away
the old iron, quick!"
The others, with the help of our two axes, began at once to break up
everything. Some of them filled a basket with the pieces of cast-iron,
and ran with it to the wagon.
The captain looked at his watch, and said, "Make haste! We have just
ten minutes!"
I thought to myself, "They have no need of credit; they take what they
please; it is more convenient."
All my bars and old iron were broken in pieces--more than fifteen
hundred pounds of iron.
As they were starting to run to the ramparts, Chanoine laughed, and
said to me, "Capital grape-shot, Moses! Thou canst get ready thy
pennies. We'll come and take them to-morrow."
The wagon started through the crowd which ran behind it, and I followed
too.
As we came nearer the ramparts the firing became more and more
frequent. As we turned from the curate's house two sentinels stopped
everybody, but they let me pass on account of my iron, which they were
going to fire.
You can never imagine that mass of people, the noise around the
bastion, the smoke which covered it, the orders of the infantry
officers whom we heard going up the glacis, the gunners, the lighted
match, caissons with the piles of bullets behind! No, in all these
thirty years I have not forgotten those men with their levers, running
back the cannon to load them to their mouths; those firings in file, at
the bottom of the ramparts; those volleys of balls hissing in the air;
the orders of the gun-captains, "Load! Ram! Prime!"
What crowds upon those gun-carriages, seven feet high, where the
gunners were obliged to stand and stretch their arms to fire the
cannon! And what a frightful smoke!
Men invent such machines to destroy each other, and they would think
that they did a great deal if they sacrificed a quarter as much to
assist their fellow-men, to instruct them in infancy, and to give them
a little bread in their old age.
Ah! those who make an outcry against war, and demand a different state
of things, are not in the wrong.
I was in the corner, at the left of the bastion, where the stairs go
down to the postern behind the college, among three or four willow
baskets as high as chimneys, and filled with clay. I ought to have
stayed there quietly, and made use of the right moment to get away, but
the thought seized me that I would go and see what was going on below
the ramparts, and while they were loading the cannon, I climbed to the
level of the glacis, and lay down flat between two enormous baskets,
where there was scarcely a chance that balls could reach me.
If hundreds of others who were killed in the bastions had done as I
did, how many of them might be still living, respectable fathers of
families in their villages!
Lying in this place, and raising my nose, I could see over the whole
plain. I saw the cordon of the rampart below, and the line of our
skirmishers behind the palankas, on the other side of the moat; they
did nothing but tear off their cartridges, prime, charge, and fire.
There one could appreciate the beauty of drilling; there were only two
companies of them, and their firing by file kept up an incessant roll.
Farther on, directly to the right, stretched the road to Quatre-Vents.
The Ozillo farm, the cemetery, the horse-post-station, and George
Mouton's farm at the right; the inn of La Roulette and the great
poplar-walk at the left, all were full of Cossacks, and such-like
rascals, who were galloping into the very gardens, to reconnoitre the
environs of the place. This is what I suppose, for it is against
nature to run without an object, and to risk being struck by a ball.
These people, mounted on small horses, with large gray cloaks, soft
boots, fox-skin caps, like those of the Baden peasants, long beards,
lances in rest, great pistols in their belts, came whirling on like
birds.
They had not been fired upon as yet, because they kept themselves
scattered, so that bullets would have no effect; but their trumpets
sounded the rally from La Roulette, and they began to collect behind
the buildings of the inn.
About thirty of our veterans, who had been kept back in the cemetery
lane, were making a slow retreat; they made a few paces, at the same
time hastily reloading, then turned, shouldered, fired, and began
marching again among the hedges and bushes, which there had not been
time to cut down in this locality.
Our sergeant was one of these; I recognized him at once, and trembled
for him.
Every time these veterans gave fire, five or six Cossacks came on like
the wind, with their lances lowered; but it did not frighten them: they
leaned against a tree and levelled their bayonets. Other veterans came
up, and then some loaded, while others parried the blows. Scarcely had
they torn open their cartridges when the Cossacks fled right and left,
their lances in the air. Some of them turned for a moment and fired
their large pistols behind like regular bandits. At length our men
began to march toward the city.
Those old soldiers, with their great shakos set square on their heads,
their large capes hanging to the back of their calves, their sabres and
cartridge-boxes on their backs, calm in the midst of these savages,
reloading, trimming, and parrying as quietly as if they were smoking
their pipes in the guard-house, were something to be admired. At last,
after seeing them come out of the whirlwind two or three times, it
seemed almost an easy thing to do.
Our sergeant commanded them. I understood then why he was such a
favorite with the officers, and why they always took his part against
the citizens: there were not many such. I wanted to call out, "Make
haste, sergeant; let us make haste!" but neither he nor his men hurried
in the least.
As they reached the foot of the glacis, suddenly a large mass of
Cossacks, seeing that they were escaping, galloped up in two files, to
cut off their retreat. It was a dangerous moment, and they formed in a
square instantly.