Maurice was greatly surprised when the 106th, leaving the cars at
Rheims, received orders to go into camp there. So they were not to go
to Châlons, then, and unite with the army there? And when, two hours
later, his regiment had stacked muskets a league or so from the city
over in the direction of Courcelles, in the broad plain that lies along
the canal between the Aisne and Marne, his astonishment was greater
still to learn that the entire army of Châlons had been falling back
all that morning and was about to bivouac at that place. From one
extremity of the horizon to the other, as far as Saint Thierry and
Menvillette, even beyond the Laon road, the tents were going up, and
when it should be night the fires of four army-corps would be blazing
there. It was evident that the plan now was to go and take a position
under the walls of Paris and there await the Prussians; and it was
fortunate that that plan had received the approbation of the
government, for was it not the wisest thing they could do?
Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about the camp
in search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed; discipline appeared
to have been relaxed still further, the men went and came at their own
sweet will. He found no obstacle in the way of his return to the city,
where he desired to cash a money-order for a hundred francs that his
sister Henriette had sent him. While in a café he heard a sergeant
telling of the disaffection that existed in the eighteen battalions of
the garde mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent back to Paris;
the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a day
passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, and since
Froeschwiller the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal MacMahon the
military salute. The café resounded with the sound of voices in excited
conversation; a violent dispute arose between two sedate burghers in
respect to the number of men that MacMahon would have at his disposal.
One of them made the wild assertion that there would be three hundred
thousand; the other, who seemed to be more at home upon the subject,
stated the strength of the four corps: the 12th, which had just been
made complete at the camp with great difficulty with the assistance of
provisional regiments and a division of infanterie de marine; the 1st,
which had been coming straggling in in fragments ever since the 14th of
the month and of which they were doing what they could to perfect the
organization; the 5th, defeated before it had ever fought a battle,
swept away and broken up in the general panic, and finally, the 7th,
then landing from the cars, demoralized like all the rest and minus its
1st division, of which it had just recovered the remains at Rheims; in
all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the outside, including the
cavalry, Bonnemain’s and Margueritte’s divisions. When the sergeant
took a hand in the quarrel, however, speaking of the army in terms of
the utmost contempt, characterizing it as a ruffianly rabble, with no
_esprit de corps_, with nothing to keep it together,—a pack of
greenhorns with idiots to conduct them, to the slaughter,—the two
bourgeois began to be uneasy, and fearing there might be trouble
brewing, made themselves scarce.
When outside upon the street Maurice hailed a newsboy and purchased a
copy of every paper he could lay hands on, stuffing some in his pockets
and reading others as he walked along under the stately trees that line
the pleasant avenues of the old city. Where could the German armies be?
It seemed as if obscurity had suddenly swallowed them up. Two were over
Metz way, of course: the first, the one commanded by General von
Steinmetz, observing the place; the second, that of Prince Frederick
Charles, aiming to ascend the right bank of the Moselle in order to cut
Bazaine off from Paris. But the third army, that of the Crown Prince of
Prussia, the army that had been victorious at Wissembourg and
Froeschwiller and had driven our 1st and 5th corps, where was it now,
where was it to be located amid the tangled mess of contradictory
advices? Was it still in camp at Nancy, or was it true that it had
arrived before Châlons, and was that the reason why we had abandoned
our camp there in such hot haste, burning our stores, clothing, forage,
provisions, everything—property of which the value to the nation was
beyond compute? And when the different plans with which our generals
were credited came to be taken into consideration, then there was more
confusion, a fresh set of contradictory hypotheses to be encountered.
Maurice had until now been cut off in a measure from the outside world,
and now for the first time learned what had been the course of events
in Paris; the blasting effect of defeat upon a populace that had been
confident of victory, the terrible commotions in the streets, the
convoking of the Chambers, the fall of the liberal ministry that had
effected the plebiscite, the abrogation of the Emperor’s rank as
General of the Army and the transfer of the supreme command to Marshal
Bazaine. The Emperor had been present at the camp of Châlons since the
16th, and all the newspapers were filled with a grand council that had
been held on the 17th, at which Prince Napoleon and some of the
generals were present, but none of them were agreed upon the decisions
that had been arrived at outside of the resultant facts, which were
that General Trochu had been appointed governor of Paris and Marshal
MacMahon given the command of the army of Châlons, and the inference
from this was that the Emperor was to be shorn of all his authority.
Consternation, irresolution, conflicting plans that were laid aside and
replaced by fresh ones hour by hour; these were the things that
everybody felt were in the air. And ever and always the question: Where
were the German armies? Who were in the right, those who asserted that
Bazaine had no force worth mentioning in front of him and was free to
make his retreat through the towns of the north whenever he chose to do
so, or those who declared that he was already besieged in Metz? There
was a constantly recurring rumor of a series of engagements that had
raged during an entire week, from the 14th until the 20th, but it
failed to receive confirmation.
Maurice’s legs ached with fatigue; he went and sat down upon a bench.
Around him the life of the city seemed to be going on as usual; there
were nursemaids seated in the shade of the handsome trees watching the
sports of their little charges, small property owners strolled
leisurely about the walks enjoying their daily constitutional. He had
taken up his papers again, when his eyes lighted on an article that had
escaped his notice, the “leader” in a rabid republican sheet; then
everything was made clear to him. The paper stated that at the council
of the 17th at the camp of Châlons the retreat of the army on Paris had
been fully decided on, and that General Trochu’s appointment to the
command of the city had no other object than to facilitate the
Emperor’s return; but those resolutions, the journal went on to say,
were rendered unavailing by the attitude of the Empress-regent and the
new ministry. It was the Empress’s opinion that the Emperor’s return
would certainly produce a revolution; she was reported to have said:
“He will never reach the Tuileries alive.” Starting with these premises
she insisted with the utmost urgency that the army should advance, at
every risk, whatever might be the cost of human life, and effect a
junction with the army of Metz, in which course she was supported
moreover by General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had a plan of
his own for reaching Bazaine by a rapid and victorious march. And
Maurice, letting his paper fall from his hand, his eyes bent on space,
believed that he now had the key to the entire mystery; the two
conflicting plans, MacMahon’s hesitation to undertake that dangerous
flank movement with the unreliable army at his command, the impatient
orders that came to him from Paris, each more tart and imperative than
its predecessor, urging him on to that mad, desperate enterprise. Then,
as the central figure in that tragic conflict, the vision of the
Emperor suddenly rose distinctly before his inner eyes, deprived of his
imperial authority, which he had committed to the hands of the
Empress-regent, stripped of his military command, which he had
conferred on Marshal Bazaine; a nullity, the vague and unsubstantial
shadow of an emperor, a nameless, cumbersome nonentity whom no one knew
what to do with, whom Paris rejected and who had ceased to have a
position in the army, for he had pledged himself to issue no further
orders.
The next morning, however, after a rainy night through which he slept
outside his tent on the bare ground, wrapped in his rubber blanket,
Maurice was cheered by the tidings that the retreat on Paris had
finally carried the day. Another council had been held during the
night, it was said, at which M. Rouher, the former vice-Emperor, had
been present; he had been sent by the Empress to accelerate the
movement toward Verdun, and it would seem that the marshal had
succeeded in convincing him of the rashness of such an undertaking.
Were there unfavorable tidings from Bazaine? no one could say for
certain. But the absence of news was itself a circumstance of evil
omen, and all among the most influential of the generals had cast their
vote for the march on Paris, for which they would be the relieving
army. And Maurice, happy in the conviction that the retrograde movement
would commence not later than the morrow, since the orders for it were
said to be already issued, thought he would gratify a boyish longing
that had been troubling him for some time past, to give the go-by for
one day to soldier’s fare, to wit and eat his breakfast off a cloth,
with the accompaniment of plate, knife and fork, carafe, and a bottle
of good wine, things of which it seemed to him that he had been
deprived for months and months. He had money in his pocket, so off he
started with quickened pulse, as if going out for a lark, to search for
a place of entertainment.
It was just at the entrance of the village of Courcelles, across the
canal, that he found the breakfast for which his mouth was watering. He
had been told the day before that the Emperor had taken up his quarters
in one of the houses of the village, and having gone to stroll there
out of curiosity, now remembered to have seen at the junction of the
two roads this little inn with its arbor, the trellises of which were
loaded with big clusters of ripe, golden, luscious grapes. There was an
array of green-painted tables set out in the shade of the luxuriant
vine, while through the open door of the vast kitchen he had caught
glimpses of the antique clock, the colored prints pasted on the walls,
and the comfortable landlady watching the revolving spit. It was
cheerful, smiling, hospitable; a regular type of the good old-fashioned
French hostelry.
A pretty, white-necked waitress came up and asked him with a great
display of flashing teeth:
“Will monsieur have breakfast?”
“Of course I will! Give me some eggs, a cutlet, and cheese. And a
bottle of white wine!”
She turned to go; he called her back. “Tell me, is it not in one of
those houses that the Emperor has his quarters?”
“There, monsieur, in that one right before you. Only you can’t see it,
for it is concealed by the high wall with the overhanging trees.”
He loosed his belt so as to be more at ease in his capote, and entering
the arbor, chose his table, on which the sunlight, finding its way here
and there through the green canopy above, danced in little golden
spangles. And constantly his thoughts kept returning to that high wall
behind which was the Emperor. A most mysterious house it was, indeed,
shrinking from the public gaze, even its slated roof invisible. Its
entrance was on the other side, upon the village street, a narrow
winding street between dead-walls, without a shop, without even a
window to enliven it. The small garden in the rear, among the sparse
dwellings that environed it, was like an island of dense verdure. And
across the road he noticed a spacious courtyard, surrounded by sheds
and stables, crowded with a countless train of carriages and
baggage-wagons, among which men and horses, coming and going, kept up
an unceasing bustle.
“Are those all for the service of the Emperor?” he inquired, meaning to
say something humorous to the girl, who was laying a snow-white cloth
upon the table.
“Yes, for the Emperor himself, and no one else!” she pleasantly
replied, glad of a chance to show her white teeth once more; and then
she went on to enumerate the suite from information that she had
probably received from the stablemen, who had been coming to the inn to
drink since the preceding day; there were the staff, comprising
twenty-five officers, the sixty cent-gardes and the half-troop of
guides for escort duty, the six gendarmes of the provost-guard; then
the household, seventy-three persons in all, chamberlains, attendants
for the table and the bedroom, cooks and scullions; then four
saddle-horses and two carriages for the Emperor’s personal use, ten
horses for the equerries, eight for the grooms and outriders, not
mentioning forty-seven post-horses; then a _char à banc_ and twelve
baggage wagons, two of which, appropriated to the cooks, had
particularly excited her admiration by reason of the number and variety
of the utensils they contained, all in the most splendid order.
“Oh, sir, you never saw such stew-pans! they shone like silver. And all
sorts of dishes, and jars and jugs, and lots of things of which it
would puzzle me to tell the use! And a cellar of wine, claret,
burgundy, and champagne—yes! enough to supply a wedding feast.”
The unusual luxury of the snowy table-cloth and the white wine
sparkling in his glass sharpened Maurice’s appetite; he devoured his
two poached eggs with a zest that made him fear he was developing
epicurean tastes. When he turned to the left and looked out through the
entrance of the leafy arbor he had before him the spacious plain,
covered with long rows of tents: a busy, populous city that had risen
like an exhalation from the stubble-fields between Rheims city and the
canal. A few clumps of stunted trees, three wind-mills lifting their
skeleton arms in the air, were all there was to relieve the monotony of
the gray waste, but above the huddled roofs of Rheims, lost in the sea
of foliage of the tall chestnut-trees, the huge bulk of the cathedral
with its slender spires was profiled against the blue sky, looming
colossal, notwithstanding the distance, beside the modest houses.
Memories of school and boyhood’s days came over him, the tasks he had
learned and recited: all about the _sacre_ of our kings, the _sainte
ampoule_, Clovis, Jeanne d’Arc, all the long list of glories of old
France.
Then Maurice’s thoughts reverted again to that unassuming bourgeoise
house, so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial occupant; and
directing his eyes upon the high, yellow wall he was surprised to read,
scrawled there in great, awkward letters, the legend: _Vive Napoléon!_
among the meaningless obscenities traced by schoolboys. Winter’s storms
and summer’s sun had half effaced the lettering; evidently the
inscription was very ancient. How strange, to see upon that wall that
old heroic battle-cry, which probably had been placed there in honor of
the uncle, not of the nephew! It brought all his childhood back to him,
and Maurice was again a boy, scarcely out of his mother’s arms, down
there in distant Chêne-Populeux, listening to the stories of his
grandfather, a veteran of the Grand Army. His mother was dead, his
father, in the inglorious days that followed the collapse of the
empire, had been compelled to accept a humble position as collector,
and there the grandfather lived, with nothing to support him save his
scanty pension, in the poor home of the small public functionary, his
sole comfort to fight his battles o’er again for the benefit of his two
little twin grandchildren, the boy and the girl, a pair of
golden-haired youngsters to whom he was in some sense a mother. He
would place Maurice on his right knee and Henriette on his left, and
then for hours on end the narrative would run on in Homeric strain.
But small attention was paid to dates; his story was of the dire shock
of conflicting nations, and was not to be hampered by the minute
exactitude of the historian. Successively or together English,
Austrians, Prussians, Russians appeared upon the scene, according to
the then prevailing condition of the ever-changing alliances, and it
was not always an easy matter to tell why one nation received a beating
in preference to another, but beaten they all were in the end,
inevitably beaten from the very commencement, in a whirlwind of genius
and heroic daring that swept great armies like chaff from off the
earth. There was Marengo, the classic battle of the plain, with the
consummate generalship of its broad plan and the faultless retreat of
the battalions by squares, silent and impassive under the enemy’s
terrible fire; the battle, famous in story, lost at three o’clock and
won at six, where the eight hundred grenadiers of the Consular Guard
withstood the onset of the entire Austrian cavalry, where Desaix
arrived to change impending defeat to glorious victory and die. There
was Austerlitz, with its sun of glory shining forth from amid the
wintry sky, Austerlitz, commencing with the capture of the plateau of
Pratzen and ending with the frightful catastrophe on the frozen lake,
where an entire Russian corps, men, guns, horses, went crashing through
the ice, while Napoleon, who in his divine omniscience had foreseen it
all, of course, directed his artillery to play upon the struggling
mass. There was Jena, where so many of Prussia’s bravest found a grave;
at first the red flames of musketry flashing through the October mists,
and Ney’s impatience, near spoiling all until Augereau comes wheeling
into line and saves him; the fierce charge that tore the enemy’s center
in twain, and finally panic, the headlong rout of their boasted
cavalry, whom our hussars mow down like ripened grain, strewing the
romantic glen with a harvest of men and horses. And Eylau, cruel Eylau,
bloodiest battle of them all, where the maimed corpses cumbered the
earth in piles; Eylau, whose new-fallen snow was stained with blood,
the burial-place of heroes; Eylau, in whose name reverberates still the
thunder of the charge of Murat’s eighty squadrons, piercing the Russian
lines in every direction, heaping the ground so thick with dead that
Napoleon himself could not refrain from tears. Then Friedland, the trap
into which the Russians again allowed themselves to be decoyed like a
flock of brainless sparrows, the masterpiece of the Emperor’s
consummate strategy; our left held back as in a leash, motionless,
without a sign of life, while Ney was carrying the city, street by
street, and destroying the bridges, then the left hurled like a
thunderbolt on the enemy’s right, driving it into the river and
annihilating it in that _cul-de-sac_; the slaughter so great that at
ten o’clock at night the bloody work was not completed, most wonderful
of all the successes of the great imperial epic. And Wagram, where it
was the aim of the Austrians to cut us off from the Danube; they keep
strengthening their left in order to overwhelm Masséna, who is wounded
and issues his orders from an open carriage, and Napoleon, like a
malicious Titan, lets them go on unchecked; then all at once a hundred
guns vomit their terrible fire upon their weakened center, driving it
backward more than a league, and their left, terror-stricken to find
itself unsupported, gives way before the again victorious Masséna,
sweeping away before it the remainder of the army, as when a broken
dike lets loose its torrents upon the fields. And finally the Moskowa,
where the bright sun of Austerlitz shone for the last time; where the
contending hosts were mingled in confused _mêlée_ amid deeds of the
most desperate daring: mamelons carried under an unceasing fire of
musketry, redoubts stormed with the naked steel, every inch of ground
fought over again and again; such determined resistance on the part of
the Russian Guards that our final victory was only assured by Murat’s
mad charges, the concentrated fire of our three hundred pieces of
artillery, and the valor of Ney, who was the hero of that most
obstinate of conflicts. And be the battle what it might, ever our flags
floated proudly on the evening air, and as the bivouac fires were
lighted on the conquered field out rang the old battle-cry: _Vive
Napoléon!_ France, carrying her invincible Eagles from end to end of
Europe, seemed everywhere at home, having but to raise her finger to
make her will respected by the nations, mistress of a world that in
vain conspired to crush her and upon which she set her foot.
Maurice was contentedly finishing his cutlet, cheered not so much by
the wine that sparkled in his glass as by the glorious memories that
were teeming in his brain, when his glance encountered two ragged,
dust-stained soldiers, less like soldiers than weary tramps just off
the road; they were asking the attendant for information as to the
position of the regiments that were encamped along the canal. He hailed
them.
“Hallo there, comrades, this way! You are 7th corps men, aren’t you?”
“Right you are, sir; 1st division—at least I am, more by token that I
was at Froeschwiller, where it was warm enough, I can tell you. The
comrade, here, belongs in the 1st corps; he was at Wissembourg, another
beastly hole.”
They told their story, how they had been swept away in the general
panic, had crawled into a ditch half-dead with fatigue and hunger, each
of them slightly wounded, and since then had been dragging themselves
along in the rear of the army, compelled to lie over in towns when the
fever-fits came on, until at last they had reached the camp and were on
the lookout to find their regiments.
Maurice, who had a piece of Gruyère before him, noticed the hungry eyes
fixed on his plate.
“Hi there, mademoiselle! bring some more cheese, will you—and bread and
wine. You will join me, won’t you, comrades? It is my treat. Here’s to
your good health!”
They drew their chairs up to the table, only too delighted with the
invitation. Their entertainer watched them as they attacked the food,
and a thrill of pity ran through him as he beheld their sorry plight,
dirty, ragged, arms gone, their sole attire a pair of red trousers and
the capote, kept in place by bits of twine and so patched and pieced
with shreds of vari-colored cloth that one would have taken them for
men who had been looting some battle-field and were wearing the spoil
they had gathered there.
“Ah! _foutre_, yes!” continued the taller of the two as he plied his
jaws, “it was no laughing matter there! You ought to have seen it,—tell
him how it was, Coutard.”
And the little man told his story with many gestures, describing
figures on the air with his bread.
“I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest of them were making
soup. Just try and picture to yourself a miserable hole, a regular
trap, all surrounded by dense woods that gave those Prussian pigs a
chance to crawl up to us before we ever suspected they were there. So,
then, about seven o’clock the shells begin to come tumbling about our
ears. _Nom de Dieu!_ but it was lively work! we jumped for our
shooting-irons, and up to eleven o’clock it looked as if we were going
to polish ’em off in fine style. But you must know that there were only
five thousand of us, and the beggars kept coming, coming as if there
was no end to them. I was posted on a little hill, behind a bush, and I
could see them debouching in front, to right, to left, like rows of
black ants swarming from their hill, and when you thought there were
none left there were always plenty more. There’s no use mincing
matters, we all thought that our leaders must be first-class
nincompoops to thrust us into such a hornet’s nest, with no support at
hand, and leave us to be crushed there without coming to our
assistance. And then our General, Douay,[2] poor devil! neither a fool
nor a coward, that man,—a bullet comes along and lays him on his back.
That ended it; no one left to command us! No matter, though, we kept on
fighting all the same; but they were too many for us, we had to fall
back at last. We held the railway station for a long time, and then we
fought behind a wall, and the uproar was enough to wake the dead. And
then, when the city was taken, I don’t exactly remember how it came
about, but we were upon a mountain, the Geissberg, I think they call
it, and there we intrenched ourselves in a sort of castle, and how we
did give it to the pigs! they jumped about the rocks like kids, and it
was fun to pick ’em off and see ’em tumble on their nose. But what
would you have? they kept coming, coming, all the time, ten men to our
one, and all the artillery they could wish for. Courage is a very good
thing in its place, but sometimes it gets a man into difficulties, and
so, at last, when it got too hot to stand it any longer, we cut and
run. But regarded as nincompoops, our officers were a decided success;
don’t you think so, Picot?”
[2] This was Abel Douay—not to be confounded with his brother, Félix,
who commanded the 7th corps.—TR.
There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a glass of the
white wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Of course,” said he. “It was just the same at Froeschwiller; the
general who would give battle under such circumstances is a fit subject
for a lunatic asylum. That’s what my captain said, and he’s a little
man who knows what he is talking about. The truth of the matter is that
no one knew anything; we were only forty thousand strong, and we were
surprised by a whole army of those pigs. And no one was expecting to
fight that day; battle was joined by degrees, one portion after another
of our troops became engaged, against the wishes of our commanders, as
it seems. Of course, I didn’t see the whole of the affair, but what I
do know is that the dance lasted by fits and starts all day long; a
body would think it was ended; not a bit of it! away would go the music
more furiously than ever. The commencement was at Woerth, a pretty
little village with a funny clock-tower that looks like a big stove,
owing to the earthenware tiles they have stuck all over it. I’ll be
hanged if I know why we let go our hold of it that morning, for we
broke all our teeth and nails trying to get it back again in the
afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my children, if I were to tell you
of the slaughter there, the throats that were cut and the brains
knocked out, you would refuse to believe me! The next place where we
had trouble was around a village with the jaw-breaking name of
Elsasshausen. We got a peppering from a lot of guns that banged away at
us at their ease from the top of a blasted hill that we had also
abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever been able to tell. And
there it was that with these very eyes of mine I saw the famous charge
of the cuirassiers. Ah, how gallantly they rode to their death, poor
fellows! A shame it was, I say, to let men and horses charge over
ground like that, covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And
on top of it all, _nom de Dieu!_ what good could they accomplish? But
it was very _chic_ all the same; it was a beautiful sight to see. The
next thing for us to do, shouldn’t you suppose so? was to go and sit
down somewhere and try to get our wind again. They had set fire to the
village and it was burning like tinder, and the whole gang of Bavarian,
Wurtemburgian and Prussian pigs, more than a hundred and twenty
thousand of them there were, as we found out afterward, had got around
into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest for us
then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a livelier
tune than ever around Froeschwiller. For there’s no use talking,
fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead but he is a brave man; you ought
to have seen him on his big horse, with the shells bursting all about
him! The best thing to do would have been to give leg-bail at the
beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to fight an
army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see
the thing through to the end. And see it through he did! why, I tell
you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer human beings;
they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For near two hours the
gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however, we had to knuckle
under in the end. And to think that after it was all over they should
come and tell us that we had whipped the Bavarians over on our left! By
the piper that played before Moses, if we had only had a hundred and
twenty thousand men, if _we_ had had guns, and leaders with a little
pluck!”
Loud and angry were the denunciations of Coutard and Picot in their
ragged, dusty uniforms as they cut themselves huge slices of bread and
bolted bits of cheese, evoking their bitter memories there in the shade
of the pretty trellis, where the sun played hide and seek among the
purple and gold of the clusters of ripening grapes. They had come now
to the horrible flight that succeeded the defeat; the broken,
demoralized, famishing regiments flying through the fields, the
highroads blocked with men, horses, wagons, guns, in inextricable
confusion; all the wreck and ruin of a beaten army that pressed on, on,
on, with the chill breath of panic on their backs. As they had not had
wit enough to fall back while there was time and take post among the
passes of the Vosges, where ten thousand men would have sufficed to
hold in check a hundred thousand, they should at least have blown up
the bridges and destroyed the tunnels; but the generals had lost their
heads, and both sides were so dazed, each was so ignorant of the
other’s movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to
ascertain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off toward
Luneville, while the Crown Prince of Prussia was looking for him in the
direction of the Vosges. On the 7th the remnant of the 1st corps passed
through Saverne, like a swollen stream that carries away upon its muddy
bosom all with which it comes in contact. On the 8th, at Sarrebourg,
the 5th corps came tumbling in upon the 1st, like one mad mountain
torrent pouring its waters into another. The 5th was also flying,
defeated without having fought a battle, sweeping away with it its
commander, poor General de Failly, almost crazy with the thought that
to his inactivity was imputed the responsibility of the defeat, when
the fault all rested in the Marshal’s having failed to send him orders.
The mad flight continued on the 9th and 10th, a stampede in which no
one turned to look behind him. On the 11th, in order to turn Nancy,
which a mistaken rumor had reported to be occupied by the enemy, they
made their way in a pouring rainstorm to Bayon; the 12th they camped at
Haroue, the 13th at Vicherey, and on the 14th were at Neufchâteau,
where at last they struck the railroad, and for three days the work
went on of loading the weary men into the cars that were to take them
to Châlons. Twenty-four hours after the last train rolled out of the
station the Prussians entered the town. “Ah, the cursed luck!” said
Picot in conclusion; “how we had to ply our legs! And we who should by
rights have been in hospital!”
Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own and his
comrade’s glass. “Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, and are running
yet. Bah! it is the best thing for us, after all, since it gives us a
chance to drink the health of those who were not knocked over.”
Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of Froeschwiller,
following so close on the heels of the idiotic surprise at Wissembourg,
was the lightning flash whose baleful light disclosed to him the entire
naked, terrible truth. We were taken unprepared; we had neither guns,
nor men, nor generals, while our despised foe was an innumerable host,
provided with all modern appliances and faultless in discipline and
leadership. The three German armies had burst apart the weak line of
our seven corps, scattered between Metz and Strasbourg, like three
powerful wedges. We were doomed to fight our battle out unaided;
nothing could be hoped for now from Austria and Italy, for all the
Emperor’s plans were disconcerted by the tardiness of our operations
and the incapacity of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to be working
against us, heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed accidents in
our path and favoring the secret plan of the Prussians, which was to
divide our armies, throwing one portion back on Metz, where it would be
cut off from France, while they, having first destroyed the other
fragment, should be marching on Paris. It was as plain now as a problem
in mathematics that our defeat would be owing to causes that were
patent to everyone; it was bravery without intelligent guidance pitted
against numbers and cold science. Men might discuss the question as
they would in after days; happen what might, defeat was certain in
spite of everything, as certain and inexorable as the laws of nature
that rule our planet.
In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice’s eyes suddenly lighted
on the legend scrawled on the wall before him—_Vive Napoléon!_ and a
sensation of intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a red
hot iron. Could it be true, then, that France, whose victories were the
theme of song and story everywhere, the great nation whose drums had
sounded throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had been thrown in
the dust at the first onset by an insignificant race, despised of
everyone? Fifty years had sufficed to compass it; the world had
changed, and defeat most fearful had overtaken those who had been
deemed invincible. He remembered the words that had been uttered by
Weiss his brother-in-law, during that evening of anxiety when they were
at Mülhausen. Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had
penetrated the hidden causes that had long been slowly sapping our
strength, had felt the freshening gale of youth and progress under the
impulse of which Germany was being wafted onward to prosperity and
power. Was not the old warlike age dying and a new one coming to the
front? Woe to that one among the nations which halted in its onward
march! the victory is to those who are with the advance-guard, to those
who are clear of head and strong of body, to the most powerful.
But just then there came from the smoke-blackened kitchen, where the
walls were bright with the colored prints of Epinal, a sound of voices
and the squalling of a girl who submits, not unwillingly, to be
tousled. It was Lieutenant Rochas, availing himself of his privilege as
a conquering hero, to catch and kiss the pretty waitress. He came out
into the arbor, where he ordered a cup of coffee to be served him, and
as he had heard the concluding words of Picot’s narrative, proceeded to
take a hand in the conversation:
“Bah! my children, those things that you are speaking of don’t amount
to anything. It is only the beginning of the dance; you will see the
fun commence in earnest presently. _Pardi_! up to the present time they
have been five to our one, but things are going to take a change now;
just put that in your pipe and smoke it. We are three hundred thousand
strong here, and every move we make, which nobody can see through, is
made with the intention of bringing the Prussians down on us, while
Bazaine, who has got his eye on them, will take them in their rear. And
then we’ll smash ’em, _crac_! just as I smash this fly!”
Bringing his hands together with a sounding clap he caught and crushed
a fly on the wing, and he laughed loud and cheerily, believing with all
his simple soul in the feasibility of a plan that seemed so simple,
steadfast in his faith in the invincibility of French courage. He
good-naturedly informed the two soldiers of the exact position of their
regiments, then lit a cigar and seated himself contentedly before his
_demitasse_.
“The pleasure was all mine, comrades!” Maurice replied to Coutard and
Picot, who, as they were leaving, thanked him for the cheese and wine.
He had also called for a cup of coffee and sat watching the Lieutenant,
whose hopefulness had communicated itself to him, a little surprised,
however, to hear him enumerate their strength at three hundred thousand
men, when it was not more than a hundred thousand, and at his
happy-go-lucky way of crushing the Prussians between the two armies of
Châlons and Metz. But then he, too, felt such need of some comforting
illusion! Why should he not continue to hope when all those glorious
memories of the past that he had evoked were still ringing in his ears?
The old inn was so bright and cheerful, with its trellis hung with the
purple grapes of France, ripening in the golden sunlight! And again his
confidence gained a momentary ascendancy over the gloomy despair that
the late events had engendered in him.
Maurice’s eyes had rested for a moment on an officer of chasseurs
d’Afrique who, with his orderly, had disappeared at a sharp trot around
the corner of the silent house where the Emperor was quartered, and
when the orderly came back alone and stopped with his two horses before
the inn door he gave utterance to an exclamation of surprise:
“Prosper! Why, I supposed you were at Metz!”
It was a young man of Remilly, a simple farm-laborer, whom he had known
as a boy in the days when he used to go and spend his vacations with
his uncle Fouchard. He had been drawn, and when the war broke out had
been three years in Africa; he cut quite a dashing figure in his
sky-blue jacket, his wide red trousers with blue stripes and red woolen
belt, with his sun-dried face and strong, sinewy limbs that indicated
great strength and activity.
“Hallo! it’s Monsieur Maurice! I’m glad to see you!”
He took things very easily, however, conducting the steaming horses to
the stable, and to his own, more particularly, giving a paternal
attention. It was no doubt his affection for the noble animal,
contracted when he was a boy and rode him to the plow, that had made
him select the cavalry arm of the service.
“We’ve just come in from Monthois, more than ten leagues at a stretch,”
he said when he came back, “and Poulet will be wanting his breakfast.”
Poulet was the horse. He declined to eat anything himself; would only
accept a cup of coffee. He had to wait for his officer, who had to wait
for the Emperor; he might be five minutes, and then again he might be
two hours, so his officer had told him to put the horses in the stable.
And as Maurice, whose curiosity was aroused, showed some disposition to
pump him, his face became as vacant as a blank page.
“Can’t say. An errand of some sort—papers to be delivered.”
But Rochas looked at the chasseur with an eye of tenderness, for the
uniform awakened old memories of Africa.
“Eh! my lad, where were you stationed out there?”
“At Medeah, Lieutenant.”
Ah, Medeah! And drawing their chairs closer together they started a
conversation, regardless of difference in rank. The life of the desert
had become a second nature, for Prosper, where the trumpet was
continually calling them to arms, where a large portion of their time
was spent on horseback, riding out to battle as they would to the
chase, to some grand battue of Arabs. There was just one soup-basin for
every six men, or tribe, as it was called, and each tribe was a family
by itself, one of its members attending to the cooking, another washing
their linen, the others pitching the tent, caring for the horses, and
cleaning the arms. By day they scoured the country beneath a sun like a
ball of blazing copper, loaded down with the burden of their arms and
utensils; at night they built great fires to drive away the mosquitoes
and sat around them, singing the songs of France. Often it happened
that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set with stars, they
had to rise and restore peace among their four-footed friends, who, in
the balmy softness of the air, had set to biting and kicking one
another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and snorting furiously.
Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed their only,
luxury, which they ground by the primitive appliances of a carbine-butt
and a porringer, and afterward strained through a red woolen sash. But
their life was not one of unalloyed enjoyment; there were dark days,
also, when they were far from the abodes of civilized man with the
enemy before them. No more fires, then; no singing, no good times.
There were times when hunger, thirst and want of sleep caused them
horrible suffering, but no matter; they loved that daring, adventurous
life, that war of skirmishes, so propitious for the display of personal
bravery and as interesting as a fairy tale, enlivened by the _razzias_,
which were only public plundering on a larger scale, and by marauding,
or the private peculations of the chicken-thieves, which afforded many
an amusing story that made even the generals laugh.
“Ah!” said Prosper, with a more serious face, “it’s different here; the
fighting is done in quite another way.”
And in reply to a question asked by Maurice, he told the story of their
landing at Toulon and the long and wearisome march to Luneville. It was
there that they first received news of Wissembourg and Froeschwiller.
After that his account was less clear, for he got the names of towns
mixed, Nancy and Saint-Mihiel, Saint-Mihiel and Metz. There must have
been heavy fighting on the 14th, for the sky was all on fire, but all
he saw of it was four uhlans behind a hedge. On the 16th there was
another engagement; they could hear the artillery going as early as six
o’clock in the morning, and he had been told that on the 18th they
started the dance again, more lively than ever. But the chasseurs were
not in it that time, for at Gravelotte on the 16th, as they were
standing drawn up along a road waiting to wheel into column, the
Emperor, who passed that way in a victoria, took them to act as his
escort to Verdun. And a pretty little jaunt it was, twenty-six miles at
a hard gallop, with the fear of being cut off by the Prussians at any
moment!
“And what of Bazaine?” asked Rochas.
“Bazaine? they say that he is mightily well pleased that the Emperor
lets him alone.”
But the Lieutenant wanted to know if Bazaine was coming to join them,
whereon Prosper made a gesture expressive of uncertainty; what did any
one know? Ever since the 16th their time had been spent in marching and
countermarching in the rain, out on reconnoissance and grand-guard
duty, and they had not seen a sign of an enemy. Now they were part of
the army of Châlons. His regiment, together with two regiments of
chasseurs de France and one of hussars, formed one of the divisions of
the cavalry of reserve, the first division, commanded by General
Margueritte, of whom he spoke with most enthusiastic warmth.
“Ah, the _bougre_! the enemy will catch a Tartar in him! But what’s the
good talking? the only use they can find for us is to send us pottering
about in the mud.”
There was silence for a moment, then Maurice gave some brief news of
Remilly and uncle Fouchard, and Prosper expressed his regret that he
could not go and shake hands with Honoré, the quartermaster-sergeant,
whose battery was stationed more than a league away, on the other side
of the Laon road. But the chasseur pricked up his ears at hearing the
whinnying of a horse and rose and went out to make sure that Poulet was
not in want of anything. It was the hour sacred to coffee and
_pousse-café_, and it was not long before the little hostelry was full
to overflowing with officers and men of every arm of the service. There
was not a vacant table, and the bright uniforms shone resplendent
against the green background of leaves checkered with spots of
sunshine. Major Bouroche had just come in and taken a seat beside
Rochas, when Jean presented himself with an order.
“Lieutenant, the captain desires me to say that he wishes to see you at
three o’clock on company business.”
Rochas signified by a nod of the head that he had heard, and Jean did
not go away at once, but stood smiling at Maurice, who was lighting a
cigarette. Ever since the occurrence in the railway car there had been
a sort of tacit truce between the two men; they seemed to be
reciprocally studying each other, with an increasing interest and
attraction. But just then Prosper came back, a little out of temper.
“I mean to have something to eat unless my officer comes out of that
shanty pretty quick. The Emperor is just as likely as not to stay away
until dark, confound it all.”
“Tell me,” said Maurice, his curiosity again getting the better of him,
“isn’t it possible that the news you are bringing may be from Bazaine?”
“Perhaps so. There was a good deal of talk about him down there at
Monthois.”
At that moment there was a stir outside in the street, and Jean, who
was standing by one of the doors of the arbor, turned and said:
“The Emperor!”
Immediately everyone was on his feet. Along the broad, white road, with
its rows of poplars on either side, came a troop of cent-gardes, spick
and span in their brilliant uniforms, their cuirasses blazing in the
sunlight, and immediately behind them rode the Emperor, accompanied by
his staff, in a wide open space, followed by a second troop of
cent-gardes.
There was a general uncovering of heads, and here and there a hurrah
was heard; and the Emperor raised his head as he passed; his face
looked drawn, the eyes were dim and watery. He had the dazed appearance
of one suddenly aroused from slumber, smiled faintly at sight of the
cheerful inn, and saluted. From behind them Maurice and Jean distinctly
heard old Bouroche growl, having first surveyed the sovereign with his
practiced eye:
“There’s no mistake about it, that man is in a bad way.” Then he
succinctly completed his diagnosis: “His jig is up!”
Jean shook his head and thought in his limited, common sense way: “It
is a confounded shame to let a man like that have command of the army!”
And ten minutes later, when Maurice, comforted by his good breakfast,
shook hands with Prosper and strolled away to smoke more cigarettes, he
carried with him the picture of the Emperor, seated on his easy-gaited
horse, so pale, so gentle, the man of thought, the dreamer, wanting in
energy when the moment for action came. He was reputed to be
good-hearted, capable, swayed by generous and noble thoughts, a silent
man of strong and tenacious will; he was very brave, too, scorning
danger with the scorn of the fatalist for whom destiny has no fears;
but in critical moments a fatal lethargy seemed to overcome him; he
appeared to become paralyzed in presence of results, and powerless
thereafter to struggle against Fortune should she prove adverse. And
Maurice asked himself if his were not a special physiological
condition, aggravated by suffering; if the indecision and increasing
incapacity that the Emperor had displayed ever since the opening of the
campaign were not to be attributed to his manifest illness. That would
explain everything: a minute bit of foreign substance in a man’s
system, and empires totter.
The camp that evening was all astir with activity; officers were
bustling about with orders and arranging for the start the following
morning at five o’clock. Maurice experienced a shock of surprise and
alarm to learn that once again all their plans were changed, that they
were not to fall back on Paris, but proceed to Verdun and effect a
junction with Bazaine. There was a report that dispatches had come in
during the day from the marshal announcing that he was retreating, and
the young man’s thoughts reverted to the officer of chasseurs and his
rapid ride from Monthois; perhaps he had been the bearer of a copy of
the dispatch. So, then, the opinions of the Empress-regent and the
Council of Ministers had prevailed with the vacillating MacMahon, in
their dread to see the Emperor return to Paris and their inflexible
determination to push the army forward in one supreme attempt to save
the dynasty; and the poor Emperor, that wretched man for whom there was
no place in all his vast empire, was to be bundled to and fro among the
baggage of his army like some worthless, worn-out piece of furniture,
condemned to the irony of dragging behind him in his suite his imperial
household, cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver stew-pans and
cases of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle, embroidered with the
Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of the highways of his
retreat.
At midnight Maurice was not asleep; he was feverishly wakeful, and his
gloomy reflections kept him tossing and tumbling on his pallet. He
finally arose and went outside, where he found comfort and refreshment
in the cool night air. The sky was overspread with clouds, the darkness
was intense; along the front of the line the expiring watch-fires
gleamed with a red and sullen light at distant intervals, and in the
deathlike, boding silence could be heard the long-drawn breathing of
the hundred thousand men who slumbered there. Then Maurice became more
tranquil, and there descended on him a sentiment of brotherhood, full
of compassionate kindness for all those slumbering fellow-creatures, of
whom thousands would soon be sleeping the sleep of death. Brave
fellows! True, many of them were thieves and drunkards, but think of
what they had suffered and the excuse there was for them in the
universal demoralization! The glorious veterans of Solferino and
Sebastopol were but a handful, incorporated in the ranks of the newly
raised troops, too few in number to make their example felt. The four
corps that had been got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid of
every element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the expiatory band
that their rulers were sending to the sacrifice in the endeavor to
avert the wrath of destiny. They would bear their cross to the bitter
end, atoning with their life’s blood for the faults of others, glorious
amid disaster and defeat.
And then it was that Maurice, there in the darkness that was instinct
with life, became conscious that a great duty lay before him. He ceased
to beguile himself with the illusive prospect of great victories to be
gained; the march to Verdun was a march to death, and he so accepted
it, since it was their lot to die, with brave and cheerful resignation.