Numbers of our comrades and of the wounded remained behind at
Gosselies, but the larger part of the army kept on their way, and about
nine o'clock we began to see the spires of Charleroi in the distance,
when suddenly we heard shouts, cries, complaints, and shots
intermingled, half a league before us.
The whole immense column of miserable wretches halted, shouting: "The
city closes its doors against us! we are stopped here!"
Consternation and despair were stamped on every face.
But a moment after, the news came that the convoys of provisions were
coming and that they would not distribute them.
"Let us fall upon them! Kill the rascals who are starving us! We are
betrayed!"
The most fearful and the most exhausted quickened their pace, and drew
their sabres or loaded their muskets.
It was plain that there would be a veritable butchery if the guards did
not give way. Buche himself shouted:
"They ought all to be murdered, we are betrayed. Come, Joseph, let us
be revenged."
But I held him back by the collar and exclaimed:
"No, Jean, no! We have had murders enough already, and we have escaped
all, and we do not want to be killed here by Frenchmen. Come!"
He struggled still, but at last I showed him a village on the left of
the road and said:
"Look! there is the road to Harberg, and there are houses like those at
Quatre Vents; let us go there and ask for bread; I have money, and we
shall certainly find some. That will be better than to attack the
convoys like a pack of wolves."
He allowed himself to be persuaded at last, and we set off once more
through the grain. If hunger had not urged us on, we should have sat
down on the side of the path at every step. But at the end of half an
hour, thanks to God, we reached a sort of farm-house; it was abandoned,
with the windows broken out, and the door wide open, and great heaps of
black earth lying about. We went in and shouted, "Is there no one
here?"
We knocked against the furniture with the butts of our muskets, but not
a soul answered. Our fury increased, because we saw several wretches,
following the route by which we had come, and we thought, "They are
coming to eat up our bread."
Ah! those who have never suffered these privations cannot comprehend
the fury which possessed us. It was horrible--horrible!
We had already broken open the door of a cupboard filled with linen,
and were turning over everything with our bayonets, when an old woman
came out from behind a table, which hid the passage to the cellar. She
sobbed and exclaimed:
"My God, my God! have mercy upon us."
The house had been pillaged early in the morning; they had taken away
the horses, the master had disappeared and the servants had fled.
In spite of our fury the sight of the poor old woman made us ashamed of
ourselves, and I said to her:
"Do not be afraid, we are not monsters, only give us some bread, we are
starving."
She was sitting on an old chair with her withered hands crossed over
her knee, and she said:
"I no longer have any, they have taken all. My God! all! all!"
Her gray hair was hanging down over her face, and I felt like weeping
for her and for ourselves. "Well!" I said, "we must look for
ourselves, Buche." We went into all the rooms and the stables, there
was nothing to be seen, everything had been stolen and broken.
I was going out, when in the shadow behind the old door, I saw
something whitish against the wall. I stopped, and stretched out my
hand. It was a linen bag with a strap, I took it down, trembling in my
hurry. Buche looked at me--the bag was heavy--I opened it, there were
two great black radishes, half of a small loaf of bread, dry and hard
as stone, a large pair of shears for trimming hedges, and quite in the
bottom some onions and some gray salt in a paper.
On seeing these we made an exclamation of joy, but the fear of seeing
the others come in, made us run out in the rear, far into the
rye-field, skulking and hiding like thieves.
We had regained all our strength, and we went and sat down on the edge
of a little brook. Buche said:
"Look here! I must have my part."
"Yes,--half of all," I replied. "You let me drink from your bottle, I
will divide with you."
Then he was calm again. I cut the bread in two with my sabre and said:
"Choose, Jean; that is your radish, and there are half the onions, and
we will share the salt between us." We ate the bread without soaking
it in the water, we ate our radishes, our onions and the salt. We
should have kept on eating still, if we had had more to eat, but yet we
were satisfied.
We knelt down with our hands in the water and we drank.
"Now let us go," said Buche, "and leave the bag."
In spite of our weary legs, which were ready to give out, we went on
again toward the left; while on the right behind us, toward Charleroi,
the shouts and shots redoubled, and all along the road we could see
nothing but the men fighting, but they were already far away.
We looked back from time to time, and Buche said:
"Joseph, you did well to bring me away, had it not been for you, I
might have been stretched out over there by the road-side, killed by a
Frenchman. I was too hungry. But where shall we go now?"