On reaching the other bank of the river, we stacked our arms in an
orchard, and lighted our pipes and took breath as we watched the
hussars, the chasseurs, the artillery, and the infantry, file over the
bridge hour after hour, and take their positions on the plain. In our
front was a beech forest, about three leagues in length, which extended
toward Fleurus. We could see great yellow spots, here and there in
this wood; these were stubble, and great patches of grain, instead of
being covered with bramble or heath and furze as in our country. About
twenty old decrepit houses were on that side the bridge. Chatelet is a
very large village, larger than the city of Saverne.
Between the battalions and squadrons, which were constantly moving
onward, the men, women, and children would come out with jugs of sour
beer, bread, and strong white brandy which they sold to the soldiers
for a few sous. Buche and I broke a crust as we looked on and laughed
with the girls, who are blonde and very pretty in that country.
Very near us was the little village Catelineau, and in the distance on
our left, between the wood and the river, lay the village of Gilly.
The sound of musketry, cannon, and platoon firing, was heard constantly
in that direction. The news soon came that the Emperor had driven the
Prussians out of Charleroi, and that they had re-formed in squares at
the corner of the wood.
We expected every moment to be ordered to cut off their retreat, but
between seven and eight o'clock, the sound of musketry ceased, the
Prussians retired to Fleurus, after having lost one of their squares;
and the others escaped into the wood. We saw two regiments of dragoons
arrive and take up their position at our right, along the bank of the
Sambre. There was a rumor a few minutes afterward that General Le Tort
had been killed by a ball in the abdomen, very near the place where in
his youth he had watched and tended the cattle of a farmer. What
strange things happen in life! The general had fought all over Europe,
since he was twenty years old, but death waited for him here!
It was about eight o'clock in the evening, and we were expecting to
remain at Chatelet until our three divisions had crossed. An old bald
peasant, in a blue blouse and a cotton cap and as lean as a goat, came
into camp and told Captain Gregoire that on the side of the beech wood
in a hollow, lay the village of Fleurus, and to the right of this, the
little village of Lambusart; that the Prussians had been stationed in
these towns more than three weeks, and that more of them had arrived
the night before, and the night before that. He told us also that
there was a broad road, bordered with trees, running two good leagues
along our left; that the Belgians and Hanoverians had posts at
Gosselies and at Quatre-Bras; that it was the high-road to Brussels,
where the English and Hanoverians and Belgians had all their forces;
while the Prussians, four or five leagues at our right, occupied the
route to Namur, and that between them and the English, there was a good
road running from the plateau of Quatre-Bras to the plateau of Ligny in
the rear of Fleurus, over which their couriers went and came from
morning till night, so that the Prussians and English were in perfect
communication, and could support each other with men, guns, and
supplies when necessary.
Naturally enough I thought at once, that the first thing to be done was
to get possession of this road and so cut off their communication; and
I was not the only one who thought so; but we said nothing for fear of
interrupting the old man. In five minutes half the battalion had
gathered round him in a circle. He was smoking a clay pipe and
pointing out all the positions with the stem. He was a sort of
commissioner between Chatelet, Fleurus, and Namur and knew every foot
of the country and all that happened every day.
He complained greatly of the Prussians, said they were proud and
insolent, that they corrupted the women and were never satisfied, and
that the officers boasted of having driven us from Dresden to Paris,
that they had made us run like hares.
I was indignant at that, for I knew they were two to one at Leipzig,
and that the Russians, Austrians, Saxons, Bavarians, Wurtemburgers,
Swedes, in fact all Europe had overwhelmed us, while three-quarters of
our army were sick with typhus, cold, and famine, marching and
countermarching; but that even all this had not prevented us from
beating them at Hanau, and fifty other times when they were three to
one, in Champagne, Alsace, in the Vosges, and everywhere.
Their boasting disgusted me, I had a horror of the whole race, and I
thought, "those are the rascals who sour your blood." The old man said
too, that the Prussians constantly declared that they would soon be
enjoying themselves in Paris, drinking good French wines; and that the
French army was only a band of brigands. When I heard that, I said to
myself, "Joseph, that is too much! now you will show no more mercy,
there is nothing but extermination."
The clocks of Chatelet struck nine and a half, and the hussars sounded
the retreat, and each one was about to dispose himself behind a hedge
or a bee-house or in a furrow for the night, when the general of the
brigade, Schoeffer, ordered the battalion to take up their position on
the other side of the wood, as the vanguard. I saw at once that our
unlucky battalion was always to be in the van, just as it was in 1813.
It is a sad thing for a regiment to have a reputation; the men change,
but the number remains the same. The Sixth light infantry had always
been a distinguished number, and I knew what it cost. Those of us who
were inclined to sleep, were wide awake now, for when you know that the
enemy is at hand, and you say to yourself, "The Prussians are in
ambush, perhaps in that wood, waiting for you," it makes you open your
eyes.
Several hussars deployed as scouts on our right and left, in front of
the column. We marched at the route step, with the captains between
the companies, and the Commandant Gemeau, on his little gray mare, in
the middle of the battalion. Before starting each man had received
three pounds of bread and two pounds of rice, and this was the way in
which the campaign opened for us.
The sky was without a cloud, and all the country and even the forest,
which lay three-quarters of a league before us, shone in the moonlight
like silver. I thought involuntarily of the wood at Leipzig, where I
had slipped into a clay-pit with two Prussian hussars, when poor
Klipfel was cut into a thousand pieces at a little distance from me.
All this made me very watchful. No one spoke, even Buche raised his
head and shut his teeth, and Zebede, who was at the left of the
company, did not look toward me, but right ahead into the shadow of the
trees, like everybody else.
It took us nearly an hour to reach the forest, and when within two
hundred paces the order came to "halt."
The hussars fell back on the flanks of the battalion, and one company
deployed as scouts. We waited about five minutes, and as not the
slightest noise or sound of any kind reached our ears, we resumed our
march. The road which we followed through the wood was quite a wide
cart-path. The column marked step in the shadows. At every moment
great openings in the forest gave us light and air, and we could see
the white piles of newly cut wood between their stakes, shining in the
distance from time to time.
Besides this, nothing could be heard or seen. Buche said to me in a
low voice, "I like the smell of the wood, it is like Harberg."
"I despise the smell of the wood," I thought; "and if we do not get a
musket-shot, I shall be satisfied."
At the end of two hours the light appeared again through the underwood,
and we reached the other side, fortunately without encountering either
enemy or obstacle. The hussars who had accompanied us returned
immediately, and the battalion stacked arms.
We were in a grain country, the like of which I had never seen. Some
of the grain was in flower, a little green still, though the barley was
almost ripe. The fields extended as far as the eye could reach. We
looked around in perfect silence, and I saw that the old man had not
deceived us. Two thousand paces in front of us, in a hollow, we saw
the top of an old church spire and some slated gables, lighted up by
the moon. That was Fleurus. Nearer to us on our right were some
thatched cottages, and a few houses; this was without doubt Lambusart.
At the end of the plain, more than a league distant and in the rear of
Fleurus, the surface of the country was broken into little hills, and
on these hills innumerable fires were burning. Three large villages
were easily recognized extending over the heights from left to right.
The one nearest to us, we afterward found, was St. Amand, Ligny in the
middle, and two leagues beyond, was Sombref. We could see them more
distinctly, even, than in the day-time, on account of the fires of the
enemy. The Prussians were in the houses and the orchards and the
fields; and beyond these three villages in a line, was another, lying
still higher and farther away, where fires were burning also. This was
Bry, where the rascals had their reserves.
As we looked at this grand spectacle, I understood the disposition and
the plan, and saw too that it would be very difficult to take the
position. On the plain at our left there were fires also, but it was
the camp of the Third corps, which had turned the corner of the forest
after having repulsed the Prussians, and had halted in some village
this side of Fleurus. There were a few fires along the edge of the
forest, on a line with us; these were the fires of our own soldiers. I
believe there were some on both sides of us, but the great mass were at
the left.
We posted our sentinels immediately, and without lighting our fires
laid down at the border of the wood to wait for further orders.
General Schoeffer came again during the night with several hussar
officers, and talked a long time with our commandant, Gemeau, who was
watching under arms. Their conversation was quite distinct at twenty
paces from us. The general said that our army corps continued to
arrive, but that they were very late, and would not all reach here the
next day. I saw at once that he was right; for our fourth battalion,
which should have joined us at Chatelet, did not come till the day
after the battle, when we were almost exterminated by those rascals at
Ligny, having only four hundred men left. If they had been there they
would have had their share of the combat and of the glory.
As I had been on guard the night before, I quietly stretched myself at
the foot of a tree by the side of Buche, with my comrades. It was
about one o'clock in the morning of the day of the terrible battle of
Ligny. Nearly half of those men who were sleeping around me left their
bodies on the plain and in the villages which we saw, to be food for
the grain, such as was growing so beautifully around us, for the oats
and the barley for ages to come. If they had known that, there was
more than one of them who would not have slept so well, for men cling
to life, and it is a sad thing to think, "to-day I draw my last breath!"