This was why we all looked at the Guard as they marched steadily up on
the road.
It was Ney who commanded them, as he had commanded the cuirassiers.
The Emperor knew that nobody could lead them like Ney, only he should
have ordered them up an hour sooner, when our cuirassiers were in the
squares; then we should have gained all.
But the Emperor looked upon his Guard as upon his own flesh and blood;
if he had had them at Paris five days later, Lafayette and the rest of
them would not have remained long in their chamber to depose him, but
he had them no longer.
This was why he waited so long before sending them; he hoped that Ney
would succeed in overwhelming the enemy with the cavalry, or that the
thirty-two thousand men under Grouchy would return, attracted by the
sound of the cannon, and then he could send them in place of his Guard;
because he could always replace thirty or forty thousand by
conscription; but to have another such Guard, he must commence at
twenty-five, and gain fifty victories, and what remained of the best,
most solid, and the toughest would be _the Guard_.
It came, and we could see it. Ney, old Friant, and several other
generals, marched in front. We could see nothing but _the Guard_--the
roaring cannon, the musketry, the cries of the wounded, all were
forgotten.
But the lull did not last long; the English perceived as well as we,
that this was to be the decisive blow, and hastened to rally all their
forces to receive it.
That part of our field at our left was nearly deserted; there was no
more firing, either because their ammunition was exhausted, or the
enemy were forming in a new order.
On the right, on the contrary, the cannonade was redoubled; the
struggle seemed to have been transferred to that side, but nobody dared
to say, "The Prussians are attacking us; another army has come to crush
us."
No! the very idea was too horrible; when suddenly a staff officer
rushed past like lightning, shouting:
"Grouchy, Marshal Grouchy is coming!"
This was just at the moment when the four battalions of the Guard took
the left of the highway in order to go up in the rear of the orchard,
and commence the attack.
How many times during the last fifty years I have seen it over again at
night, and how many times I have heard the story related by others. In
listening to these accounts you would think that only the Guard took
part in the attack, that it moved forward like ranks of palisades; and
that it was the Guard alone which received the showers of shot.
But in truth this terrible attack took place in the greatest confusion;
our whole army joined in it; all the remnant of the left wing and
centre, all that was left of the cavalry exhausted by six hours of
fighting; every one who could stand or lift an arm. The infantry of
Reille which concentrated on the left, we who remained at Haie-Sainte,
_all_ who were alive and did not wish to be massacred.
And when they say we were in a panic of terror and tried to run away
like cowards, it is not true. When the news arrived that Grouchy was
coming, even the wounded rose up and took their places in the ranks; it
seemed as if a breath had raised the dead; and all those poor fellows
in the rear of Haie-Sainte with their bandaged heads and arms and legs,
with their clothes in tatters and soaked with blood, every one who
could put one foot before the other, joined the Guard when it passed
before the breaches in the wall of the garden, and every one tore open
his last cartridge.
The attack sounded, and our cannon began again to thunder. All was
quiet on the hill-side, the rows of English cannon were deserted, and
we might have thought they were all gone, only as the bear-skin caps of
the Guard rose above the plateau, five or six volleys of shot warned us
that they were waiting for us.
Then we knew that all those Englishmen, Germans, Belgians, and
Hanoverians, whom we had been sabring and shooting since morning, had
reformed in the rear, and that we must encounter them. Many of the
wounded retired at this moment, and the Guard, upon which the heaviest
part of the enemy's fire had fallen, advanced through the showers of
shot almost alone, sweeping everything before it, but it closed up more
and more, and diminished every moment. In twenty minutes every officer
was dismounted, and the Guard halted before such a terrible fire of
musketry, that even we, two hundred paces in the rear, could not hear
our own guns; we seemed to be only exploding our priming. At last the
whole army, in front, on the right and on the left, with the cavalry on
the flanks, fell upon us.
The four battalions of the Guard, reduced from three thousand to twelve
hundred men, could not withstand the charge, they fell back slowly, and
we fell back also, defending ourselves with musket and bayonet.
We had seen other battles more terrible, but this was the last.
When we reached the edge of the plateau, all the plain below was
enveloped in darkness and in the confusion of the defeat. The
disbanded troops were flying, some on foot and some on horseback.
A single battalion of the Guard in a square near the farm-house, and
three other battalions farther on, with another square of the Guard at
the junction of the route at Planchenois, stood motionless as some firm
structure in the midst of an inundation which sweeps away everything
else.
They all went--hussars, chasseurs, cuirassiers, artillery, and
infantry--pell-mell along the road, across the fields, like an army of
savages.
Along the ravine of Planchenois the dark sky was lighted up by the
discharges of musketry; the one square of the Guard still held out
against Bulow, and prevented him from cutting off our retreat, but
nearer us the Prussian cavalry poured down into the valley like a flood
breaking over its barriers. Old Bluecher had just arrived with forty
thousand men: he doubled our right wing and dispersed it.
What can I say more! It was dissolution--we were surrounded. The
English pushed us into the valley, and it was through this valley that
Bluecher was coming. The generals and officers and even the Emperor
himself were compelled to take refuge in a square, and they say that we
poor wretches were panic-stricken! Such an injustice was never seen.
[Illustration: Combat of Hougoumont Farm.]
Buche and I with five or six of our comrades ran toward the
farm-house--the bombs were bursting all around us, we reached the road
in our wild flight just as the English cavalry passed at full gallop,
shouting, "No quarter! no quarter!"
At this moment the square of the Guard began to retreat, firing from
all sides in order to keep off the wretches who sought safety within
it. Only the officers and generals might save themselves.
I shall never forget, even if I should live a thousand years, the
immeasurable, unceasing cries which filled the valley for more than a
league; and in the distance the _grenadiere_ was sounding like an
alarm-bell in the midst of a conflagration. But this was much more
terrible; it was the last appeal of France, of a proud and courageous
nation; it was the voice of the country saying, "Help, my children! I
perish!"
This rolling of the drums of the Old Guard in the midst of disaster,
had in it something touching and horrible. I sobbed like a
child;--Buche hurried me along, but I cried, "Jean, leave me--we are
lost, everything is lost!"
The thought of Catherine, and Mr. Goulden, and Pfalzbourg, did not
enter my mind. What astonishes me to-day is, that we were not
massacred a hundred times on the road, where files of English and
Prussians were passing. But perhaps they mistook us for Germans, or
they were running after the Emperor, for they were all hoping to see
him.
Opposite the little farm of Rossomme, we were obliged to turn off the
road to the right, into the field; it was here that the last square of
the Guard still held out against the attack of the Prussians; they soon
gave way, for twenty minutes afterward the enemy poured over the road,
and the Prussian chasseurs separated into bands to arrest all those who
straggled or remained behind. This road was like a bridge; all who did
not keep on it fell into the abyss.
At the slope of the ravine in the rear of the inn "Passe-Avant," some
Prussian hussars rushed upon us: there were not more than five or six
of them, and they called out to us to surrender; but if we had raised
the butts of our muskets, they would have sabred us. We aimed at them,
and seeing that we were not wounded, they passed on.
This forced us to return to the road, where the uproar could be heard
for at least two leagues; cavalry, infantry, artillery, ambulances, and
baggage-wagons, were creeping along the road pell-mell, howling,
beating, neighing, and weeping. The retreat at Leipzig furnished no
such spectacle as this.
The moon rose above the wood behind Planchenois, and lighted up this
crowd of shapskas,[1] bear-skin caps, helmets, sabres, bayonets, broken
caissons, and abandoned cannon; the crowd and confusion increased every
moment, plaintive howls were heard from one end of the line to the
other, rolling up and down the hill-side and dying away in the distance
like a sigh.
[1] Polish military cap.
But the saddest of all, were the cries of the women, those unhappy
creatures who follow armies. When they were knocked down or crowded
out on to the slope with their carts, their screams could be heard
above all the uproar, but no one turned his head, not a man stretched
out a hand to help them: "Every one for himself!--I shall crush
you,--so much the worse for you,--I am the stronger--you scream, but it
is all the same to me!--take care,--take care--I am on horseback--I
shall hit you!--room--let me get away--the others do just the
same--room for the Emperor! room for the marshal!" The strong crush
the weak--the only thing in the world is strength! On! on! Let the
cannons crush everything, if we can only save them!
But the cannon can move no farther,--unhitch them, cut the traces, and
the horses will carry us off. Make them go as fast as possible, and if
they break down--then let them go? If we were not the stronger our
turn would come to be crushed--we should cry out and everybody would
mock at our complaints. Save himself who can--and "_Vive l'Empereur!_"
"But the Emperor is dead!"
Everybody thought the Emperor had died with, the Old Guard; that seemed
perfectly natural.
The Prussian cavalry passed us in files with drawn sabres, shouting,
"Hurrah!" They seemed to be escorting us, but they sabred every one
who straggled from the road, and took no prisoners, neither did they
attack the column; a few musket-shots passed over us from the right and
left.
Far in the rear we could see a red light: this was the farm-house at
Caillou.
We hastened onward, borne down with fatigue, hunger, and despair; we
were ready to die, but still the hope of escape sustained us. Buche
said to me as we went along, "Joseph, let us help each other."
"I will never abandon you," I replied. "We will die together. I can
hold out no longer, it is too terrible,--we might better lie down at
once."
"No, let us keep on," said he. "The Prussians make no prisoners.
Look! they kill without mercy, just as we did at Ligny."
We kept on in the same direction with thousands of others, sullen and
discouraged, and yet we would turn round all at once and close our
ranks and fire, when a squadron of Prussians came too near. We were
still firm, still the stronger from time to time; we found abandoned
gun-carriages, caissons, and cannons, and the ditches on either side
were full of knapsacks, cartridge-boxes, guns, and sabres, which had
been thrown away by the men to facilitate their flight.
But the most terrible thing of all was the great ambulances in the
middle of the road filled with the wounded. The drivers had cut the
traces and fled with the horses for fear of being taken prisoners. The
poor half-dead wretches, with their arms hanging down, looked at us as
we passed with despairing eyes.
When I think of all this now, it reminds me of the tufts of straw and
hay which lodge among the bushes after an inundation. We say "That is
our harvest, this is our crop, that is what the tempest has left us."
Ah! I have had many such reflections during fifty years!
What grieved me most and made my heart bleed in the midst of this rout
was that I could not discover a single man of our battalion besides
ourselves. I said to myself, "They cannot all be dead;" and I said to
Buche:
"If I could only find Zebede it would give me back my courage."
But he replied: "Let us try to save ourselves, Joseph. As for me, if I
ever see Harberg again, I will not complain because I have to eat
potatoes. No, no. God has punished me. I shall be contented to work
and go into the woods with my axe on my shoulder. If only I do not go
home maimed, and if I am not compelled to hold out my hand at the
roadside in order to live, like so many others. Let us try to get home
safe and sound."