“Thunder!” Chouteau ejaculated the following morning when he awoke,
chilled and with aching bones, under the tent, “I wouldn’t mind having
a bouillon with plenty of meat in it.”
At Boult-aux-Bois, where they were now encamped, the only ration issued
to the men the night before had been an extremely slender one of
potatoes; the commissariat was daily more and more distracted and
disorganized by the everlasting marches and countermarches, never
reaching the designated points of rendezvous in time to meet the
troops. As for the herds, no one had the faintest idea where they might
be upon the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in the face.
Loubet stretched himself and plaintively replied:
“Ah, _fichtre_, yes!—No more roast goose for us now.”
The squad was out of sorts and sulky. Men couldn’t be expected to be
lively on an empty stomach. And then there was the rain that poured
down incessantly, and the mud in which they had to make their beds.
Observing Pache make the sign of the cross after mumbling his morning
prayer, Chouteau captiously growled:
“Ask that good God of yours, if he is good for anything, to send us
down a couple of sausages and a mug of beer apiece.”
“Ah, if we only had a good big loaf of bread!” sighed Lapoulle, whose
ravenous appetite made hunger a more grievous affliction to him than to
the others.
But Lieutenant Rochas, passing by just then, made them be silent. It
was scandalous, never to think of anything but their stomachs! When
_he_ was hungry he tightened up the buckle of his trousers. Now that
things were becoming decidedly squally and the popping of rifles was to
be heard occasionally in the distance, he had recovered all his old
serene confidence: it was all plain enough, now; the Prussians were
there—well, all they had to do was, go out and lick ’em. And he gave a
significant shrug of the shoulders, standing behind Captain Beaudoin,
the _very_ young man, as he called him, with his pale face and pursed
up lips, whom the loss of his baggage had afflicted so grievously that
he had even ceased to fume and scold. A man might get along without
eating, at a pinch, but that he could not change his linen was a
circumstance productive of sorrow and anger.
Maurice awoke to a sensation of despondency and physical discomfort.
Thanks to his easy shoes the inflammation in his foot had gone down,
but the drenching he had received the day before, from the effects of
which his greatcoat seemed to weigh a ton, had left him with a distinct
and separate ache in every bone of his body. When he was sent to the
spring to get water for the coffee he took a survey of the plain on the
edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated: forests rise to the west and
north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of Belleville, while,
over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad, level expanse,
stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional shallow
depression concealing a small cluster of cottages. Was it from that
direction that they were to expect the enemy? As he was returning from
the stream with his bucket filled with water, the father of a family of
wretched peasants hailed him from the door of his hovel, and asked him
if the soldiers were this time going to stay and defend them. In the
confusion of conflicting orders the 5th corps had already traversed the
region no less than three times. The sound of cannonading had reached
them the day before from the direction of Bar; the Prussians could not
be more than a couple of leagues away. And when Maurice made answer to
the poor folks that doubtless the 7th corps would also be called away
after a time, their tears flowed afresh. Then they were to be abandoned
to the enemy, and the soldiers had not come there to fight, whom they
saw constantly vanishing and reappearing, always on the run?
“Those who like theirs sweet,” observed Loubet, as he poured the
coffee, “have only to stick their thumb in it and wait for it to melt.”
Not a man of them smiled. It was too bad, all the same, to have to
drink their coffee without sugar; and then, too, if they only had some
biscuit! Most of them had devoured what eatables they had in their
knapsacks, to the very last crumb, to while away their time of waiting,
the day before, on the plateau of Quatre-Champs. Among them, however,
the members of the squad managed to collect a dozen potatoes, which
they shared equally.
Maurice, who began to feel a twinging sensation in his stomach, uttered
a regretful cry:
“If I had known of this I would have bought some bread at Chêne.”
Jean listened in silence. He had had a dispute with Chouteau that
morning, who, on being ordered to go for firewood, had insolently
refused, alleging that it was not his turn. Now that everything was so
rapidly going to the dogs, insubordination among the men had increased
to such a point that those in authority no longer ventured to reprimand
them, and Jean, with his sober good sense and pacific disposition, saw
that if he would preserve his influence with his squad he must keep the
corporal in the background as far as possible. For this reason he was
hail-fellow-well-met with his men, who could not fail to see what a
treasure they had in a man of his experience, for if those committed to
his care did not always have all they wanted to eat, they had, at all
events, not suffered from hunger, as had been the case with so many
others. But he was touched by the sight of Maurice’s suffering. He saw
that he was losing strength, and looked at him anxiously, asking
himself how that delicate young man would ever manage to sustain the
privations of that horrible campaign.
When Jean heard Maurice bewail the lack of bread he arose quietly, went
to his knapsack, and, returning, slipped a biscuit into the other’s
hand.
“Here! don’t let the others see it; I have not enough to go round.”
“But what will you do?” asked the young man, deeply affected.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed about me—I have two left.”
It was true; he had carefully put aside three biscuits, in case there
should be a fight, knowing that men are often hungry on the
battlefield. And then, besides, he had just eaten a potato; that would
be sufficient for him. Perhaps something would turn up later on.
About ten o’clock the 7th corps made a fresh start. The marshal’s first
intention had been to direct it by way of Buzancy upon Stenay, where it
would have passed the Meuse, but the Prussians, outmarching the army of
Châlons, were already in Stenay, and were even reported to be at
Buzancy. Crowded back in this manner to the northward, the 7th corps
had received orders to move to la Besace, some twelve or fifteen miles
from Boult-aux-Bois, whence, on the next day, they would proceed to
pass the Meuse at Mouzon. The start was made in a very sulky humor; the
men, with empty stomachs and bodies unrefreshed by repose, unnerved,
mentally and physically, by the experience of the past few days, vented
their dissatisfaction by growling and grumbling, while the officers,
without a spark of their usual cheerful gayety, with a vague sense of
impending disaster awaiting them at the end of their march, taxed the
dilatoriness of their chiefs, and reproached them for not going to the
assistance of the 5th corps at Buzancy, where the sound of
artillery-firing had been heard. That corps, too, was on the retreat,
making its way toward Nonart, while the 12th was even then leaving la
Besace for Mouzon and the 1st was directing its course toward Raucourt.
It was like nothing so much as the passage of a drove of panic-stricken
cattle, with the dogs worrying them and snapping at their heels—a wild
stampede toward the Meuse.
When, in the outstreaming torrent of the three divisions that striped
the plain with columns of marching men, the 106th left Boult-aux-Bois
in the rear of the cavalry and artillery, the sky was again overspread
with a pall of dull leaden clouds that further lowered the spirits of
the soldiers. Its route was along the Buzancy highway, planted on
either side with rows of magnificent poplars. When they reached
Germond, a village where there was a steaming manure-heap before every
one of the doors that lined the two sides of the straggling street, the
sobbing women came to their thresholds with their little children in
their arms, and held them out to the passing troops, as if begging the
men to take them with them. There was not a mouthful of bread to be had
in all the hamlet, nor even a potato, After that, the regiment, instead
of keeping straight on toward Buzancy, turned to the left and made for
Authe, and when the men turned their eyes across the plain and beheld
upon the hilltop Belleville, through which they had passed the day
before, the fact that they were retracing their steps was impressed
more vividly on their consciousness.
“Heavens and earth!” growled Chouteau, “do they take us for tops?”
And Loubet chimed in:
“Those cheap-John generals of ours are all at sea again! They must
think that men’s legs are cheap.”
The anger and disgust were general. It was not right to make men suffer
like that, just for the fun of walking them up and down the country.
They were advancing in column across the naked plain in two files
occupying the sides of the road, leaving a free central space in which
the officers could move to and fro and keep an eye on their men, but it
was not the same now as it had been in Champagne after they left
Rheims, a march of song and jollity, when they tramped along gayly and
the knapsack was like a feather to their shoulders, in the belief that
soon they would come up with the Prussians and give them a sound
drubbing; now they were dragging themselves wearily forward in angry
silence, cursing the musket that galled their shoulder and the
equipments that seemed to weigh them to the ground, their faith in
their leaders gone, and possessed by such bitterness of despair that
they only went forward as does a file of manacled galley-slaves, in
terror of the lash. The wretched army had begun to ascend its Calvary.
Maurice, however, within the last few minutes had made a discovery that
interested him greatly. To their left was a range of hills that rose
one above another as they receded from the road, and from the skirt of
a little wood, far up on the mountain-side, he had seen a horseman
emerge. Then another appeared, and then still another. There they
stood, all three of them, without sign of life, apparently no larger
than a man’s hand and looking like delicately fashioned toys. He
thought they were probably part of a detachment of our hussars out on a
reconnoissance, when all at once he was surprised to behold little
points of light flashing from their shoulders, doubtless the reflection
of the sunlight from epaulets of brass.
“Look there!” he said, nudging Jean, who was marching at his side.
“Uhlans!”
The corporal stared with all his eyes. “They, uhlans!”
They were indeed uhlans, the first Prussians that the 106th had set
eyes on. They had been in the field nearly six weeks now, and in all
that time not only had they never smelt powder, but had never even seen
an enemy. The news spread through the ranks, and every head was turned
to look at them. Not such bad-looking fellows, those uhlans, after all.
“One of them looks like a jolly little fat fellow,” Loubet remarked.
But presently an entire squadron came out and showed itself on a
plateau to the left of the little wood, and at sight of the threatening
demonstration the column halted. An officer came riding up with orders,
and the 106th moved off a little and took position on the bank of a
small stream behind a clump of trees. The artillery had come hurrying
back from the front on a gallop and taken possession of a low, rounded
hill. For near two hours they remained there thus in line of battle
without the occurrence of anything further; the body of hostile cavalry
remained motionless in the distance, and finally, concluding that they
were only wasting time that was valuable, the officers set the column
moving again.
“Ah well,” Jean murmured regretfully, “we are not booked for it this
time.”
Maurice, too, had felt his finger-tips tingling with the desire to have
just one shot. He kept harping on the theme of the mistake they had
made the day before in not going to the support of the 5th corps. If
the Prussians had not made their attack yet, it must be because their
infantry had not got up in sufficient strength, whence it was evident
that their display of cavalry in the distance was made with no other
end than to harass us and check the advance of our corps. We had again
fallen into the trap set for us, and thenceforth the regiment was
constantly greeted with the sight of uhlans popping up on its left
flank wherever the ground was favorable for them, tracking it like
sleuthhounds, disappearing behind a farmhouse only to reappear at the
corner of a wood.
It eventually produced a disheartening effect on the troops to see that
cordon closing in on them in the distance and enveloping them as in the
meshes of some gigantic, invisible net. Even Pache and Lapoulle had an
opinion on the subject.
“It is beginning to be tiresome!” they said. “It would be a comfort to
send them our compliments in the shape of a musket-ball!”
But they kept toiling wearily onward on their tired feet, that seemed
to them as if they were of lead. In the distress and suffering of that
day’s march there was ever present to all the undefined sensation of
the proximity of the enemy, drawing in on them from every quarter, just
as we are conscious of the coming storm before we have seen a cloud on
the horizon. Instructions were given the rear-guard to use severe
measures, if necessary, to keep the column well closed up; but there
was not much straggling, aware as everyone was that the Prussians were
close in our rear, and ready to snap up every unfortunate that they
could lay hands on. Their infantry was coming up with the rapidity of
the whirlwind, making its twenty-five miles a day, while the French
regiments, in their demoralized condition, seemed in comparison to be
marking time.
At Authe the weather cleared, and Maurice, taking his bearings by the
position of the sun, noticed that instead of bearing off toward Chêne,
which lay three good leagues from where they were, they had turned and
were moving directly eastward. It was two o’clock; the men, after
shivering in the rain for two days, were now suffering from the intense
heat. The road ascended, with long sweeping curves, through a region of
utter desolation: not a house, not a living being, the only relief to
the dreariness of the waste lands an occasional little somber wood; and
the oppressive silence communicated itself to the men, who toiled
onward with drooping heads, bathed in perspiration. At last
Saint-Pierremont appeared before them, a few empty houses on a small
elevation. They did not pass through the village. Maurice observed that
here they made a sudden wheel to the left, resuming their northern
course, toward la Besace. He now understood the route that had been
adopted in their attempt to reach Mouzon ahead of the Prussians; but
would they succeed, with such weary, demoralized troops? At
Saint-Pierremont the three uhlans had shown themselves again, at a turn
in the road leading to Buzancy, and just as the rear-guard was leaving
the village a battery was unmasked and a few shells came tumbling among
them, without doing any injury, however. No response was attempted, and
the march was continued with constantly increasing effort.
From Saint-Pierremont to la Besace the distance is three good leagues,
and when Maurice imparted that information to Jean the latter made a
gesture of discouragement: the men would never be able to accomplish
it; they showed it by their shortness of breath, by their haggard
faces. The road continued to ascend, between gently sloping hills on
either side that were gradually drawing closer together. The condition
of the men necessitated a halt, but the only effect of their brief
repose was to increase the stiffness of their benumbed limbs, and when
the order was given to march the state of affairs was worse than it had
been before; the regiments made no progress, men were everywhere
falling in the ranks. Jean, noticing Maurice’s pallid face and glassy
eyes, infringed on what was his usual custom and conversed, endeavoring
by his volubility to divert the other’s attention and keep him awake as
he moved automatically forward, unconscious of his actions.
“Your sister lives in Sedan, you say; perhaps we shall be there before
long.”
“What, at Sedan? Never! You must be crazy; it don’t lie in our way.”
“Is your sister young?”
“Just my age; you know I told you we are twins.”
“Is she like you?”
“Yes, she is fair-haired, too; and oh! such pretty curling hair! She is
a mite of a woman, with a little thin face, not one of your noisy,
flashy hoydens, ah, no!—Dear Henriette!”
“You love her very dearly!”
“Yes, yes—”
There was silence between them after that, and Jean, glancing at
Maurice, saw that his eyes were closing and he was about to fall.
“Hallo there, old fellow! Come, confound it all, brace up! Let me take
your gun a moment; that will give you a chance to rest. They can’t have
the cruelty to make us march any further to-day! we shall leave half
our men by the roadside.”
At that moment he caught sight of Osches lying straight ahead of them,
its few poor hovels climbing in straggling fashion up the hillside, and
the yellow church, embowered in trees, looking down on them from its
perch upon the summit.
“There’s where we shall rest, for certain.”
He had guessed aright; General Douay saw the exhausted condition of the
troops, and was convinced that it would be useless to attempt to reach
la Besace that day. What particularly influenced his determination,
however, was the arrival of the train, that ill-starred train that had
been trailing in his rear since they left Rheims, and of which the nine
long miles of vehicles and animals had so terribly impeded his
movements. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs to direct it
straight on Saint-Pierremont, and it was not until Osches that the
teams came up with the corps, in such a state of exhaustion that the
horses refused to stir. It was now five o’clock; the general, not
liking the prospect of attempting the pass of Stonne at that late hour,
determined to take the responsibility of abridging the task assigned
them by the marshal. The corps was halted and proceeded to encamp; the
train below in the meadows, guarded by a division, while the artillery
took position on the hills to the rear, and the brigade detailed to act
as rear-guard on the morrow rested on a height facing Saint-Pierremont.
The other division, which included Bourgain-Desfeuilles’ brigade,
bivouacked on a wide plateau, bordered by an oak wood, behind the
church. There was such confusion in locating the bodies of troops that
it was dark before the 106th could move into its position at the edge
of the wood.
“_Zut_!” said Chouteau in a furious rage, “no eating for me; I want to
sleep!”
And that was the cry of all; they were overcome with fatigue. Many of
them lacked strength and courage to erect their tents, but dropping
where they stood, at once fell fast asleep on the bare ground. In order
to eat, moreover, rations would have been necessary, and the commissary
wagons, which were waiting for the 7th corps to come to them at la
Besace, could not well be at Osches at the same time. In the universal
relaxation of order and system even the customary corporal’s call was
omitted: it was everyone for himself. There were to be no more issues
of rations from that time forth; the soldiers were to subsist on the
provisions they were supposed to carry in their knapsacks, and that
evening the sacks were empty; few indeed were those who could muster a
crust of bread or some crumbs of the abundance in which they had been
living at Vouziers of late. There was coffee, and those who were not
too tired made and drank it without sugar.
When Jean thought to make a division of his wealth by eating one of his
biscuits himself and giving the other to Maurice, he discovered that
the latter was sound asleep. He thought at first he would awake him,
but changed his mind and stoically replaced the biscuits in his sack,
concealing them with as much caution as if they had been bags of gold;
he could get along with coffee, like the rest of the boys. He had
insisted on having the tent put up, and they were all stretched on the
ground beneath its shelter when Loubet returned from a foraging
expedition, bringing in some carrots that he had found in a neighboring
field. As there was no fire to cook them by they munched them raw, but
the vegetables only served to aggravate their hunger, and they made
Pache ill.
“No, no; let him sleep,” said Jean to Chouteau, who was shaking Maurice
to wake him and give him his share.
“Ah,” Lapoulle broke in, “we shall be at Angouleme to-morrow, and then
we’ll have some bread. I had a cousin in the army once, who was
stationed at Angouleme. Nice garrison, that.”
They all looked surprised, and Chouteau exclaimed:
“Angouleme—what are you talking about! Just listen to the bloody fool,
saying he is at Angouleme!”
It was impossible to extract any explanation from Lapoulle. He had
insisted that morning that the uhlans that they sighted were some of
Bazaine’s troops.
Then darkness descended on the camp, black as ink, silent as death.
Notwithstanding the coolness of the night air the men had not been
permitted to make fires; the Prussians were known to be only a few
miles away, and it would not do to put them on the alert; orders even
were transmitted in a hushed voice. The officers had notified their men
before retiring that the start would be made at about four in the
morning, in order that they might have all the rest possible, and all
had hastened to turn in and were sleeping greedily, forgetful of their
troubles. Above the scattered camps the deep respiration of all those
slumbering crowds, rising upon the stillness of the night, was like the
long-drawn breathing of old Mother Earth.
Suddenly a shot rang out in the darkness and aroused the sleepers. It
was about three o’clock, and the obscurity was profound. Immediately
everyone was on foot, the alarm spread through the camp; it was
supposed the Prussians were attacking. It was only Loubet who, unable
to sleep longer, had taken it in his head to make a foray into the
oak-wood, which he thought gave promise of rabbits: what a jolly good
lark it would be if he could bring in a pair of nice rabbits for the
comrades’ breakfast! But as he was looking about for a favorable place
in which to conceal himself, he heard the sound of voices and the
snapping of dry branches under heavy footsteps; men were coming toward
him; he took alarm and discharged his piece, believing the Prussians
were at hand. Maurice, Jean, and others came running up in haste, when
a hoarse voice made itself heard:
“For God’s sake, don’t shoot!”
And there at the edge of the wood stood a tall, lanky man, whose thick,
bristling beard they could just distinguish in the darkness. He wore a
gray blouse, confined at the waist by a red belt, and carried a musket
slung by a strap over his shoulder. He hurriedly explained that he was
French, a sergeant of francs-tireurs, and had come with two of his men
from the wood of Dieulet, bringing important information for the
general.
“Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!” he shouted, turning his head, “hallo!
you infernal poltroons, come here!”
The men were evidently badly scared, but they came forward. Ducat,
short and fat, with a pale face and scanty hair; Cabasse short and
lean, with a black face and a long nose not much thicker than a
knife-blade.
Meantime Maurice had stepped up and taken a closer look at the
sergeant; he finally asked him:
“Tell me, are you not Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly?”
And when the man hesitatingly answered in the affirmative Maurice
recoiled a step or two, for this Sambuc had the reputation of being a
particularly hard case, the worthy son of a family of woodcutters who
had all gone to the bad, the drunken father being found one night lying
by the roadside with his throat cut, the mother and daughter, who lived
by begging and stealing, having disappeared, most likely, in the
seclusion of some penitentiary. He, Guillaume, did a little in the
poaching and smuggling lines, and only one of that litter of wolves’
whelps had grown up to be an honest man, and that was Prosper, the
hussar, who had gone to work on a farm before he was conscripted,
because he hated the life of the forest.
“I saw your brother at Vouziers,” Maurice continued; “he is well.”
Sambuc made no reply. To end the situation he said:
“Take me to the general. Tell him that the francs-tireurs of the wood
of Dieulet have something important to say to him.”
On the way back to the camp Maurice reflected on those free companies
that had excited such great expectations at the time of their
formation, and had since been the object of such bitter denunciation
throughout the country. Their professed purpose was to wage a sort of
guerilla warfare, lying in ambush behind hedges, harassing the enemy,
picking off his sentinels, holding the woods, from which not a Prussian
was to emerge alive; while the truth of the matter was that they had
made themselves the terror of the peasantry, whom they failed utterly
to protect and whose fields they devastated. Every ne’er-do-well who
hated the restraints of the regular service made haste to join their
ranks, well pleased with the chance that exempted him from discipline
and enabled him to lead the life of a tramp, tippling in pothouses and
sleeping by the roadside at his own sweet will. Some of the companies
were recruited from the very worst material imaginable.
“Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!” Sambuc was constantly repeating, turning
to his henchmen at every step he took, “Come along, will you, you
snails!”
Maurice was as little charmed with the two men as with their leader.
Cabasse, the little lean fellow, was a native of Toulon, had served as
waiter in a café at Marseilles, had failed at Sedan as a broker in
southern produce, and finally had brought up in a police-court, where
it came near going hard with him, in connection with a robbery of which
the details were suppressed. Ducat, the little fat man, quondam
_huissier_ at Blainville, where he had been forced to sell out his
business on account of a malodorous woman scrape, had recently been
brought face to face with the court of assizes for an indiscretion of a
similar nature at Raucourt, where he was accountant in a factory. The
latter quoted Latin in his conversation, while the other could scarcely
read, but the two were well mated, as unprepossessing a pair as one
could expect to meet in a summer’s day.
The camp was already astir; Jean and Maurice took the francs-tireurs to
Captain Beaudoin, who conducted them to the quarters of Colonel
Vineuil. The colonel attempted to question them, but Sambuc,
intrenching himself in his dignity, refused to speak to anyone except
the general. Now Bourgain-Desfeuilles had taken up his quarters that
night with the curé of Osches, and just then appeared, rubbing his
eyes, in the doorway of the parsonage; he was in a horribly bad humor
at his slumbers having been thus prematurely cut short, and the
prospect that he saw before him of another day of famine and fatigue;
hence his reception of the men who were brought before him was not
exactly lamblike. Who were they? Whence did they come? What did they
want? Ah, some of those francs-tireurs gentlemen—eh! Same thing as
skulkers and riff-raff!
“General,” Sambuc replied, without allowing himself to be disconcerted,
“we and our comrades are stationed in the woods of Dieulet—”
“The woods of Dieulet—where’s that?”
“Between Stenay and Mouzon, General.”
“What do I know of your Stenay and Mouzon? Do you expect me to be
familiar with all these strange names?”
The colonel was distressed by his chief’s display of ignorance; he
hastily interfered to remind him that Stenay and Mouzon were on the
Meuse, and that, as the Germans had occupied the former of those towns,
the army was about to attempt the passage of the river at the other,
which was situated more to the northward.
“So you see, General,” Sambuc continued, “we’ve come to tell you that
the woods of Dieulet are alive with Prussians. There was an engagement
yesterday as the 5th corps was leaving Bois-les-Dames, somewhere about
Nonart—”
“What, yesterday? There was fighting yesterday?”
“Yes, General, the 5th corps was engaged as it was falling back; it
must have been at Beaumont last night. So, while some of us hurried off
to report to it the movements of the enemy, we thought it best to come
and let you know how matters stood, so that you might go to its
assistance, for it will certainly have sixty thousand men to deal with
in the morning.”
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles gave a contemptuous shrug of his
shoulders.
“Sixty thousand men! Why the devil don’t you call it a hundred thousand
at once? You were dreaming, young man; your fright has made you see
double. It is impossible there should be sixty thousand Germans so near
us without our knowing it.”
And so he went on. It was to no purpose that Sambuc appealed to Ducat
and Cabasse to confirm his statement.
“We saw the guns,” the Provençal declared; “and those chaps must be
crazy to take them through the forest, where the rains of the past few
days have left the roads in such a state that they sink in the mud up
to the hubs.”
“They have someone to guide them, for certain,” said the ex-bailiff.
Since leaving Vouziers the general had stoutly refused to attach any
further credit to reports of the junction of the two German armies
which, as he said, they had been trying to stuff down his throat. He
did not even consider it worth his while to send the francs-tireurs
before his corps commander, to whom the partisans supposed, all along,
that they were talking; if they should attempt to listen to all the
yarns that were brought them by tramps and peasants, they would have
their hands full and be driven from pillar to post without ever
advancing a step. He directed the three men to remain with the column,
however, since they were acquainted with the country.
“They are good fellows, all the same,” Jean said to Maurice, as they
were returning to fold the tent, “to have tramped three leagues across
lots to let us know.”
The young man agreed with him and commended their action, knowing as he
did the country, and deeply alarmed to hear that the Prussians were in
Dieulet forest and moving on Sommanthe and Beaumont. He had flung
himself down by the roadside, exhausted before the march had commenced,
with a sorrowing heart and an empty stomach, at the dawning of that day
which he felt was to be so disastrous for them all. Distressed to see
him looking so pale, the corporal affectionately asked him:
“Are you feeling so badly still? What is it? Does your foot pain you?”
Maurice shook his head. His foot had ceased to trouble him, thanks to
the big shoes.
“Then you are hungry.” And Jean, seeing that he did not answer, took
from his knapsack one of the two remaining biscuits, and with a
falsehood for which he may be forgiven: “Here, take it; I kept your
share for you. I ate mine a while ago.”
Day was breaking when the 7th corps marched out of Osches en route for
Mouzon by way of la Besace, where they should have bivouacked. The
train, cause of so many woes, had been sent on ahead, guarded by the
first division, and if its own wagons, well horsed as for the most part
they were, got over the ground at a satisfactory pace, the
requisitioned vehicles, most of them empty, delayed the troops and
produced sad confusion among the hills of the defile of Stonne. After
leaving the hamlet of la Berlière the road rises more sharply between
wooded hills on either side. Finally, about eight o’clock, the two
remaining divisions got under way, when Marshal MacMahon came galloping
up, vexed to find there those troops that he supposed had left la
Besace that morning, with only a short march between them and Mouzon;
his comment to General Douay on the subject was expressed in warm
language. It was determined that the first division and the train
should be allowed to proceed on their way to Mouzon, but that the two
other divisions, that they might not be further retarded by this
cumbrous advance-guard, should move by the way of Raucourt and
Autrecourt so as to pass the Meuse at Villers. The movement to the
north was dictated by the marshal’s intense anxiety to place the river
between his army and the enemy; cost what it might, they must be on the
right bank that night. The rear-guard had not yet left Osches when a
Prussian battery, recommencing the performance of the previous day,
began to play on them from a distant eminence, over in the direction of
Saint-Pierremont. They made the mistake of firing a few shots in reply;
then the last of the troops filed out of the town.
Until nearly eleven o’clock the 106th slowly pursued its way along the
road which zigzags through the pass of Stonne between high hills. On
the left hand the precipitous summits rear their heads, devoid of
vegetation, while to the right the gentler slopes are clad with woods
down to the roadside. The sun had come out again, and the heat was
intense down in the inclosed valley, where an oppressive solitude
prevailed. After leaving la Berlière, which lies at the foot of a lofty
and desolate mountain surmounted by a Calvary, there is not a house to
be seen, not a human being, not an animal grazing in the meadows. And
the men, the day before so faint with hunger, so spent with fatigue,
who since that time had had no food to restore, no slumber, to speak
of, to refresh them, were now dragging themselves listlessly along,
disheartened, filled with sullen anger.
Soon after that, just as the men had been halted for a short rest along
the roadside, the roar of artillery was heard away at their right;
judging from the distinctness of the detonations the firing could not
be more than two leagues distant. Upon the troops, weary with waiting,
tired of retreating, the effect was magical; in the twinkling of an eye
everyone was on his feet, eager, in a quiver of excitement, no longer
mindful of his hunger and fatigue: why did they not advance? They
preferred to fight, to die, rather than keep on flying thus, no one
knew why or whither.
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, accompanied by Colonel de Vineuil, had
climbed a hill on the right to reconnoiter the country. They were
visible up there in a little clearing between two belts of wood,
scanning the surrounding hills with their field-glasses, when all at
once they dispatched an aide-de-camp to the column, with instructions
to send up to them the francs-tireurs if they were still there. A few
men, Jean and Maurice among them, accompanied the latter, in case there
should be need of messengers.
“A beastly country this, with its everlasting hills and woods!” the
general shouted, as soon as he caught sight of Sambuc. “You hear the
music—where is it? where is the fighting going on?”
Sambuc, with Ducat and Cabasse close at his heels, listened a moment
before he answered, casting his eye over the wide horizon, and Maurice,
standing beside him and gazing out over the panorama of valley and
forest that lay beneath him, was struck with admiration. It was like a
boundless sea, whose gigantic waves had been arrested by some mighty
force. In the foreground the somber verdure of the woods made splashes
of sober color on the yellow of the fields, while in the brilliant
sunlight the distant hills were bathed in purplish vapors. And while
nothing was to be seen, not even the tiniest smoke-wreath floating on
the cloudless sky, the cannon were thundering away in the distance,
like the muttering of a rising storm.
“Here is Sommanthe, to the right,” Sambuc said at last, pointing to a
high hill crowned by a wood. “Yoncq lies off yonder to the left. The
fighting is at Beaumont, General.”
“Either at Varniforet or Beaumont,” Ducat observed.
The general muttered below his breath: “Beaumont, Beaumont—a man can
never tell where he is in this d——d country.” Then raising his voice:
“And how far may this Beaumont be from here?”
“A little more than six miles, if you take the road from Chêne to
Stenay, which runs up the valley yonder.”
There was no cessation of the firing, which seemed to be advancing from
west to east with a continuous succession of reports like peals of
thunder. Sambuc added:
“_Bigre_! it’s getting warm. It is just what I expected; you know what
I told you this morning, General; it is certainly the batteries that we
saw in the wood of Dieulet. By this time the whole army that came up
through Buzancy and Beauclair is at work mauling the 5th corps.”
There was silence among them, while the battle raging in the distance
growled more furiously than ever, and Maurice had to set tight his
teeth to keep himself from speaking his mind aloud. Why did they not
hasten whither the guns were calling them, without such waste of words?
He had never known what it was to be excited thus; every discharge
found an echo in his bosom and inspired him with a fierce longing to be
present at the conflict, to put an end to it. Were they to pass by that
battle, so near almost that they could stretch forth their arm and
touch it with their hand, and never expend a cartridge? It must be to
decide a wager that some one had made, that since the beginning of the
campaign they were dragged about the country thus, always flying before
the enemy! At Vouziers they had heard the musketry of the rear-guard,
at Osches the German guns had played a moment on their retreating
backs; and now they were to run for it again, they were not to be
allowed to advance at double-quick to the succor of comrades in
distress! Maurice looked at Jean, who was also very pale, his eyes
shining with a bright, feverish light. Every heart leaped in every
bosom at the loud summons of the artillery.
While they were waiting a general, attended by his staff, was seen
ascending the narrow path that wound up the hill. It was Douay, their
corps-commander, who came hastening up, with anxiety depicted on his
countenance, and when he had questioned the francs-tireurs he gave
utterance to an exclamation of despair. But what could he have done,
even had he learned their tidings that morning? The marshal’s orders
were explicit: they must be across the Meuse that night, cost what it
might. And then again, how was he to collect his scattered troops,
strung out along the road to Raucourt, and direct then on Beaumont?
Could they arrive in time to be of use? The 5th corps must be in full
retreat on Mouzon by that time, as was indicated by the sound of the
firing, which was receding more and more to the eastward, as a deadly
hurricane moves off after having accomplished its disastrous work. With
a fierce gesture, expressive of his sense of impotency, General Douay
outstretched his arms toward the wide horizon of hill and dale, of
woods and fields, and the order went forth to proceed with the march to
Raucourt.
Ah, what a march was that through that dismal pass of Stonne, with the
lofty summits o’erhanging them on either side, while through the woods
on their right came the incessant volleying of the artillery. Colonel
de Vineuil rode at the head of his regiment, bracing himself firmly in
his saddle, his face set and very pale, his eyes winking like those of
one trying not to weep. Captain Beaudoin strode along in silence,
gnawing his mustache, while Lieutenant Rochas let slip an occasional
imprecation, invoking ruin and destruction on himself and everyone
besides. Even the most cowardly among the men, those who had the least
stomach for fighting, were shamed and angered by their continuous
retreat; they felt the bitter humiliation of turning their backs while
those beasts of Prussians were murdering their comrades over yonder.
After emerging from the pass the road, from a tortuous path among the
hills, increased in width and led through a broad stretch of level
country, dotted here and there with small woods. The 106th was now a
portion of the rear-guard, and at every moment since leaving Osches had
been expecting to feel the enemy’s attack, for the Prussians were
following the column step by step, never letting it escape their
vigilant eyes, waiting, doubtless, for a favorable opportunity to fall
on its rear. Their cavalry were on the alert to take advantage of any
bit of ground that promised them an opportunity of getting in on our
flank; several squadrons of Prussian Guards were seen advancing from
behind a wood, but they gave up their purpose upon a demonstration made
by a regiment of our hussars, who came up at a gallop, sweeping the
road. Thanks to the breathing-spell afforded them by this circumstance
the retreat went on in sufficiently good order, and Raucourt was not
far away, when a spectacle greeted their eyes that filled them with
consternation and completely demoralized the troops. Upon coming to a
cross-road they suddenly caught sight of a hurrying, straggling, flying
throng, wounded officers, soldiers without arms and without
organization, runaway teams from the train, all—men and animals—mingled
in wildest confusion, wild with panic. It was the wreck of one of the
brigades of the 1st division, which had been sent that morning to
escort the train to Mouzon; there had been an unfortunate misconception
of orders, and this brigade and a portion of the wagons had taken a
wrong road and reached Varniforet, near Beaumont, at the very time when
the 5th corps was being driven back in disorder. Taken unawares,
overborne by the flank attack of an enemy superior in numbers, they had
fled; and bleeding, with haggard faces, crazed with fear, were now
returning to spread consternation among their comrades; it was as if
they had been wafted thither on the breath of the battle that had been
raging incessantly since noon.
Alarm and anxiety possessed everyone, from highest to lowest, as the
column poured through Raucourt in wild stampede. Should they turn to
the left, toward Autrecourt, and attempt to pass the Meuse at Villers,
as had been previously decided? The general hesitated, fearing to
encounter difficulties in crossing there, even if the bridge were not
already in possession of the Prussians; he finally decided to keep
straight on through the defile of Harancourt and thus reach Remilly
before nightfall. First Mouzon, then Villers, and last Remilly; they
were still pressing on northward, with the tramp of the uhlans on the
road behind them. There remained scant four miles for them to
accomplish, but it was five o’clock, and the men were sinking with
fatigue. They had been under arms since daybreak, twelve hours had been
consumed in advancing three short leagues; they were harassed and
fatigued as much by their constant halts and the stress of their
emotions as by the actual toil of the march. For the last two nights
they had had scarce any sleep; their hunger had been unappeased since
they left Vouziers. In Raucourt the distress was terrible; men fell in
the ranks from sheer inanition.
The little town is rich, with its numerous factories, its handsome
thoroughfare lined with two rows of well-built houses, and its pretty
church and _mairie_; but the night before Marshal MacMahon and the
Emperor had passed that way with their respective staffs and all the
imperial household, and during the whole of the present morning the
entire 1st corps had been streaming like a torrent through the main
street. The resources of the place had not been adequate to meet the
requirements of these hosts; the shelves of the bakers and grocers were
empty, and even the houses of the bourgeois had been swept clean of
provisions; there was no bread, no wine, no sugar, nothing capable of
allaying hunger or thirst. Ladies had been seen to station themselves
before their doors and deal out glasses of wine and cups of bouillon
until cask and kettle alike were drained of their last drop. And so
there was an end, and when, about three o’clock, the first regiments of
the 7th corps began to appear the scene was a pitiful one; the broad
street was filled from curb to curb with weary, dust-stained men, dying
with hunger, and there was not a mouthful of food to give them. Many of
them stopped, knocking at doors and extending their hands beseechingly
toward windows, begging for a morsel of bread, and women were seen to
cry and sob as they motioned that they could not help them, that they
had nothing left.
At the corner of the Rue Dix-Potiers Maurice had an attack of dizziness
and reeled as if about to fall. To Jean, who came hastening up, he
said:
“No, leave me; it is all up with me. I may as well die here!”
He had sunk down upon a door-step. The corporal spoke in a rough tone
of displeasure assumed for the occasion:
“_Nom de Dieu!_ why don’t you try to behave like a soldier! Do you want
the Prussians to catch you? Come, get up!”
Then, as the young man, lividly pale, his eyes tight-closed, almost
unconscious, made no reply, he let slip another oath, but in another
key this time, in a tone of infinite gentleness and pity:
“_Nom de Dieu!_ _Nom de Dieu!_”
And running to a drinking-fountain near by, he filled his basin with
water and hurried back to bathe his friend’s face. Then, without
further attempt at concealment, he took from his sack the last
remaining biscuit that he had guarded with such jealous caution, and
commenced crumbling it into small bits that he introduced between the
other’s teeth. The famishing man opened his eyes and ate greedily.
“But you,” he asked, suddenly recollecting himself, “how comes it that
you did not eat it?”
“Oh, I!” said Jean. “I’m tough, I can wait. A good drink of Adam’s ale,
and I shall be all right.”
He went and filled his basin again at the fountain, emptied it at a
single draught, and came back smacking his lips in token of
satisfaction with his feast. He, too, was cadaverously pale, and so
faint with hunger that his hands were trembling like a leaf.
“Come, get up, and let’s be going. We must be getting back to the
comrades, little one.”
Maurice leaned on his arm and suffered himself to be helped along as if
he had been a child; never had woman’s arm about him so warmed his
heart. In that extremity of distress, with death staring him in the
face, it afforded him a deliciously cheering sense of comfort to know
that someone loved and cared for him, and the reflection that that
heart, which was so entirely his, was the heart of a simple-minded
peasant, whose aspirations scarcely rose above the satisfaction of his
daily wants, for whom he had recently experienced a feeling of
repugnance, served to add to his gratitude a sensation of ineffable
joy. Was it not the brotherhood that had prevailed in the world in its
earlier days, the friendship that had existed before caste and culture
were; that friendship which unites two men and makes them one in their
common need of assistance, in the presence of Nature, the common enemy?
He felt the tie of humanity uniting him and Jean, and was proud to know
that the latter, his comforter and savior, was stronger than he; while
to Jean, who did not analyze his sensations, it afforded unalloyed
pleasure to be the instrument of protecting, in his friend, that
cultivation and intelligence which, in himself, were only rudimentary.
Since the death of his wife, who had been snatched away from him by a
frightful catastrophe, he had believed that his heart was dead, he had
sworn to have nothing more to do with those creatures, who, even when
they are not wicked and depraved, are cause of so much suffering to
man. And thus, to both of them their friendship was a comfort and
relief. There was no need of any demonstrative display of affection;
they understood each other; there was close community of sympathy
between them, and, notwithstanding their apparent external
dissimilarity, the bond of pity and common suffering made them as one
during their terrible march that day to Remilly.
As the French rear-guard left Raucourt by one end of the town the
Germans came in at the other, and forthwith two of their batteries
commenced firing from the position they had taken on the heights to the
left; the 106th, retreating along the road that follows the course of
the Emmane, was directly in the line of fire. A shell cut down a poplar
on the bank of the stream; another came and buried itself in the soft
ground close to Captain Beaudoin, but did not burst. From there on to
Harancourt, however, the walls of the pass kept approaching nearer and
nearer, and the troops were crowded together in a narrow gorge
commanded on either side by hills covered with trees. A handful of
Prussians in ambush on those heights might have caused incalculable
disaster. With the cannon thundering in their rear and the menace of a
possible attack on either flank, the men’s uneasiness increased with
every step they took, and they were in haste to get out of such a
dangerous neighborhood; hence they summoned up their reserved strength,
and those soldiers who, but now in Raucourt, had scarce been able to
drag themselves along, now, with the peril that lay behind them as an
incentive, struck out at a good round pace. The very horses seemed to
be conscious that the loss of a minute might cost them dear. And the
impetus thus given continued; all was going well, the head of the
column must have reached Remilly, when, all at once, their progress was
arrested.
“Heavens and earth!” said Chouteau, “are they going to leave us here in
the road?”
The regiment had not yet reached Harancourt, and the shells were still
tumbling about them; while the men were marking time, awaiting the word
to go ahead again, one burst, on the right of the column, without
injuring anyone, fortunately. Five minutes passed, that seemed to them
long as an eternity, and still they did not move; there was some
obstacle on ahead that barred their way as effectually as if a strong
wall had been built across the road. The colonel, standing up in his
stirrups, peered nervously to the front, for he saw that it would
require but little to create a panic among his men.
“We are betrayed; everybody can see it,” shouted Chouteau.
Murmurs of reproach arose on every side, the sullen muttering of their
discontent exasperated by their fears. Yes, yes! they had been brought
there to be sold, to be delivered over to the Prussians. In the baleful
fatality that pursued them, and among all the blunders of their
leaders, those dense intelligences were unable to account for such an
uninterrupted succession of disasters on any other ground than that of
treachery.
“We are betrayed! we are betrayed!” the men wildly repeated.
Then Loubet’s fertile intellect evolved an idea: “It is like enough
that that pig of an Emperor has sat himself down in the road, with his
baggage, on purpose to keep us here.”
The idle fancy was received as true, and immediately spread up and down
the line; everyone declared that the imperial household had blocked the
road and was responsible for the stoppage. There was a universal chorus
of execration, of opprobrious epithets, an unchaining of the hatred and
hostility that were inspired by the insolence of the Emperor’s
attendants, who took possession of the towns where they stopped at
night as if they owned them, unpacking their luxuries, their costly
wines and plate of gold and silver, before the eyes of the poor
soldiers who were destitute of everything, filling the kitchens with
the steam of savory viands while they, poor devils, had nothing for it
but to tighten the belt of their trousers. Ah! that wretched Emperor,
that miserable man, deposed from his throne and stripped of his
command, a stranger in his own empire; whom they were conveying up and
down the country along with the other baggage, like some piece of
useless furniture, whose doom it was ever to drag behind him the irony
of his imperial state: cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, and vans,
sweeping, as it were, the blood and mire from the roads of his defeat
with the magnificence of his court mantle, embroidered with the
heraldic bees!
In rapid succession, one after the other, two more shells fell;
Lieutenant Rochas had his _kepi_ carried away by a fragment. The men
huddled closer together and began to crowd forward, the movement
gathering strength as it ran from rear to front. Inarticulate cries
were heard, Lapoulle shouted furiously to go ahead. A minute longer and
there would have been a horrible catastrophe, and many men must have
been crushed to death in the mad struggle to escape from the
funnel-like gorge.
The colonel—he was very pale—turned and spoke to the soldiers:
“My children, my children, be a little patient. I have sent to see what
is the matter—it will only be a moment—”
But they did not advance, and the seconds seemed like centuries. Jean,
quite cool and collected, resumed his hold of Maurice’s hand, and
whispered to him that, in case their comrades began to shove, they two
could leave the road, climb the hill on the left, and make their way to
the stream. He looked about to see where the francs-tireurs were,
thinking he might gain some information from them regarding the roads,
but was told they had vanished while the column was passing through
Raucourt. Just then the march was resumed, and almost immediately a
bend in the road took them out of range of the German batteries. Later
in the day it was ascertained that it was four cuirassier regiments of
Bonnemain’s division who, in the disorder of that ill-starred retreat,
had thus blocked the road of the 7th corps and delayed the march.
It was nearly dark when the 106th passed through Angecourt. The wooded
hills continued on the right, but to the left the country was more
level, and a valley was visible in the distance, veiled in bluish
mists. At last, just as the shades of night were descending, they stood
on the heights of Remilly and beheld a ribbon of pale silver unrolling
its length upon a broad expanse of verdant plain. It was the Meuse,
that Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as if victory
awaited them.
Pointing to some lights in the distance that were beginning to twinkle
cheerily among the trees, down in that fertile valley that lay there so
peaceful in the mellow twilight, Maurice said to Jean, with the glad
content of a man revisiting a country that he knows and loves:
“Look! over that way—that is Sedan!”