In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the bugler, sounded
reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was possessed of,
but the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the damp, heavy air,
and the men, who had not had courage even to erect their tents and had
thrown themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon the muddy ground,
did not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their ashen features set
and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion. To arouse them from their
trance-like sleep they had to be shaken, one by one, and, with ghastly
faces and haggard eyes, they rose to their feet, like beings summoned,
against their will, back from another world. It was Jean who awoke
Maurice.
“What is it? Where are we!” asked the younger man. He looked
affrightedly around him, and beheld only that gray waste, in which were
floating the unsubstantial forms of his comrades. Objects twenty yards
away were undistinguishable; his knowledge of the country availed him
not; he could not even have indicated in which direction lay Sedan.
Just then, however, the boom of cannon, somewhere in the distance, fell
upon his ear. “Ah! I remember; the battle is for to-day; they are
fighting. So much the better; there will be an end to our suspense!”
He heard other voices around him expressing the same idea. There was a
feeling of stern satisfaction that at last their long nightmare was to
be dispelled, that at last they were to have a sight of those Prussians
whom they had come out to look for, and before whom they had been
retreating so many weary days; that they were to be given a chance to
try a shot at them, and lighten the load of cartridges that had been
tugging at their belts so long, with never an opportunity to burn a
single one of them. Everyone felt that, this time, the battle would
not, could not be avoided.
But the guns began to thunder more loudly down at Bazeilles, and Jean
bent his ear to listen.
“Where is the firing?”
“Faith,” replied Maurice, “it seems to me to be over toward the Meuse;
but I’ll be hanged if I know where we are.”
“Look here, youngster,” said the corporal, “you are going to stick
close by me to-day, for unless a man has his wits about him, don’t you
see, he is likely to get in trouble. Now, I have been there before, and
can keep an eye out for both of us.”
The others of the squad, meantime, were growling angrily because they
had nothing with which to warm their stomachs. There was no possibility
of kindling fires without dry wood in such weather as prevailed then,
and so, at the very moment when they were about to go into battle, the
inner man put in his claim for recognition, and would not be denied.
Hunger is not conducive to heroism; to those poor fellows eating was
the great, the momentous question of life; how lovingly they watched
the boiling pot on those red-letter days when the soup was rich and
thick; how like children or savages they were in their wrath when
rations were not forthcoming!
“No eat, no fight!” declared Chouteau. “I’ll be blowed if I am going to
risk my skin to-day!”
The radical was cropping out again in the great hulking house-painter,
the orator of Belleville, the pothouse politician, who drowned what few
correct ideas he picked up here and there in a nauseous mixture of
ineffable folly and falsehood.
“Besides,” he went on, “what good was there in making fools of us as
they have been doing all along, telling us that the Prussians were
dying of hunger and disease, that they had not so much as a shirt to
their back, and were tramping along the highways like ragged, filthy
paupers!”
Loubet laughed the laugh of the Parisian gamin, who has experienced the
various vicissitudes of life in the Halles.
“Oh, that’s all in my eye! it is we fellows who have been catching it
right along; we are the poor devils whose leaky brogans and tattered
toggery would make folks throw us a copper. And then those great
victories about which they made such a fuss! What precious liars they
must be, to tell us that old Bismarck had been made prisoner and that a
German army had been driven over a quarry and dashed to pieces! Oh yes,
they fooled us in great shape.”
Pache and Lapoulle, who were standing near, shook their heads and
clenched their fists ominously. There were others, also, who made no
attempt to conceal their anger, for the course of the newspapers in
constantly printing bogus news had had most disastrous results; all
confidence was destroyed, men had ceased to believe anything or
anybody. And so it was that in the soldiers, children of a larger
growth, their bright dreams of other days had now been supplanted by
exaggerated anticipations of misfortune.
“_Pardi_!” continued Chouteau, “the thing is accounted for easily
enough, since our rulers have been selling us to the enemy right from
the beginning. You all know that it is so.”
Lapoulle’s rustic simplicity revolted at the idea.
“For shame! what wicked people they must be!”
“Yes, sold, as Judas sold his master,” murmured Pache, mindful of his
studies in sacred history.
It was Chouteau’s hour of triumph. “_Mon Dieu!_ it is as plain as the
nose on your face. MacMahon got three millions and each of the other
generals got a million, as the price of bringing us up here. The
bargain was made at Paris last spring, and last night they sent up a
rocket as a signal to let Bismarck know that everything was fixed and
he might come and take us.”
The story was so inanely stupid that Maurice was disgusted. There had
been a time when Chouteau, thanks to his facundity of the faubourg, had
interested and almost convinced him, but now he had come to detest that
apostle of falsehood, that snake in the grass, who calumniated honest
effort of every kind in order to sicken others of it.
“Why do you talk such nonsense?” he exclaimed. “You know very well
there is no truth in it.”
“What, not true? Do you mean to say it is not true that we are
betrayed? Ah, come, my aristocratic friend, perhaps you are one of
them, perhaps you belong to the d—d band of dirty traitors?” He came
forward threateningly. “If you are you have only to say so, my fine
gentleman, for we will attend to your case right here, and won’t wait
for your friend Bismarck, either.”
The others were also beginning to growl and show their teeth, and Jean
thought it time that he should interfere.
“Silence there! I will report the first man who says another word!”
But Chouteau sneered and jeered at him; what did he care whether he
reported him or not! He was not going to fight unless he chose, and
they need not try to ride him rough-shod, because he had cartridges in
his box for other people beside the Prussians. They were going into
action now, and what discipline had been maintained by fear would be at
an end: what could they do to him, anyway? he would just skip as soon
as he thought he had enough of it. And he was profane and obscene,
egging the men on against the corporal, who had been allowing them to
starve. Yes, it was his fault that the squad had had nothing to eat in
the last three days, while their neighbors had soup and fresh meat in
plenty, but “monsieur” had to go off to town with the “aristo” and
enjoy himself with the girls. People had spotted ’em, over in Sedan.
“You stole the money belonging to the squad; deny it if you dare, you
_bougre_ of a belly-god!”
Things were beginning to assume an ugly complexion; Lapoulle was
doubling his big fists in a way that looked like business, and Pache,
with the pangs of hunger gnawing at his vitals, laid aside his natural
douceness and insisted on an explanation. The only reasonable one among
them was Loubet, who gave one of his pawky laughs and suggested that,
being Frenchmen, they might as well dine off the Prussians as eat one
another. For his part, he took no stock in fighting, either with fists
or firearms, and alluding to the few hundred francs that he had earned
as substitute, added:
“And so, that was all they thought my hide was worth! Well, I am not
going to give them more than their money’s worth.”
Maurice and Jean were in a towering rage at the idotic onslaught,
talking loudly and repelling Chouteau’s insinuations, when out from the
fog came a stentorian voice, bellowing:
“What’s this? what’s this? Show me the rascals who dare quarrel in the
company street!”
And Lieutenant Rochas appeared upon the scene, in his old _kepi_,
whence the rain had washed all the color, and his great coat, minus
many of its buttons, evincing in all his lean, shambling person the
extreme of poverty and distress. Notwithstanding his forlorn aspect,
however, his sparkling eye and bristling mustache showed that his old
time confidence had suffered no impairment.
Jean spoke up, scarce able to restrain himself. “Lieutenant, it is
these men, who persist in saying that we are betrayed. Yes, they dare
to assert that our generals have sold us—”
The idea of treason did not appear so extremely unnatural to Rochas’s
thick understanding, for it served to explain those reverses that he
could not account for otherwise.
“Well, suppose they are sold, is it any of their business? What concern
is it of theirs? The Prussians are there all the same, aren’t they? and
we are going to give them one of the old-fashioned hidings, such as
they won’t forget in one while.” Down below them in the thick sea of
fog the guns at Bazeilles were still pounding away, and he extended his
arms with a broad, sweeping gesture: “_Hein_! this is the time that
we’ve got them! We’ll see them back home, and kick them every step of
the way!”
All the trials and troubles of the past were to him as if they had not
been, now that his ears were gladdened by the roar of the guns: the
delays and conflicting orders of the chiefs, the demoralization of the
troops, the stampede at Beaumont, the distress of the recent forced
retreat on Sedan—all were forgotten. Now that they were about to fight
at last, was not victory certain? He had learned nothing and forgotten
nothing; his blustering, boastful contempt of the enemy, his entire
ignorance of the new arts and appliances of war, his rooted conviction
that an old soldier of Africa, Italy, and the Crimea could by no
possibility be beaten, had suffered no change. It was really a little
too comical that a man at his age should take the back track and begin
at the beginning again!
All at once his lantern jaws parted and gave utterance to a loud laugh.
He was visited by one of those impulses of good-fellowship that made
his men swear by him, despite the roughness of the jobations that he
frequently bestowed on them.
“Look here, my children, in place of quarreling it will be a great deal
better to take a good nip all around. Come, I’m going to treat, and you
shall drink my health.”
From the capacious pocket of his capote he extracted a bottle of
brandy, adding, with his all-conquering air, that it was the gift of a
lady. (He had been seen the day before, seated at the table of a tavern
in Floing and holding the waitress on his lap, evidently on the best of
terms with her.) The soldiers laughed and winked at one another,
holding out their porringers, into which he gayly poured the golden
liquor.
“Drink to your sweethearts, my children, if you have any and don’t
forget to drink to the glory of France. Them’s my sentiments, so _vive
la joie_!”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. Here’s to your health, and everybody
else’s!”
They all drank, and their hearts were warmed and peace reigned once
more. The “nip” had much of comfort in it, in the chill morning, just
as they were going into action, and Maurice felt it tingling in his
veins, giving him cheer and a sort of what is known colloquially as
“Dutch courage.” Why should they not whip the Prussians? Have not
battles their surprises? has not history embalmed many an instance of
the fickleness of fortune? That mighty man of war, the lieutenant,
added that Bazaine was on the way to join them, would be with them
before the day was over: oh, the information was positive; he had it
from an aid to one of the generals; and although, in speaking of the
route the marshal was to come by, he pointed to the frontier of
Belgium, Maurice yielded to one of those spasmodic attacks of
hopefulness of his, without which life to him would not have been worth
living. Might it not be that the day of reckoning was at hand?
“Why don’t we move, Lieutenant?” he made bold to ask. “What are we
waiting for?”
Rochas made a gesture, which the other interpreted to mean that no
orders had been received. Presently he asked:
“Has anybody seen the captain?”
No one answered. Jean remembered perfectly having seen him making for
Sedan the night before, but to the soldier who knows what is good for
himself, his officers are always invisible when they are not on duty.
He held his tongue, therefore, until happening to turn his head, he
caught sight of a shadowy form flitting along the hedge.
“Here he is,” said he.
It was Captain Beaudoin in the flesh. They were all surprised by the
nattiness of his appearance, his resplendent shoes, his well-brushed
uniform, affording such a striking contrast to the lieutenant’s pitiful
state. And there was a finicking completeness, moreover, about his
toilet, greater than the male being is accustomed to bestow upon
himself, in his scrupulously white hands and his carefully curled
mustache, and a faint perfume of Persian lilac, which had the effect of
reminding one in some mysterious way of the dressing room of a young
and pretty woman.
“Hallo!” said Loubet, with a sneer, “the captain has recovered his
baggage!”
But no one laughed, for they all knew him to be a man with whom it was
not well to joke. He was stiff and consequential with his men, and was
detested accordingly; a _pète-sec_, to use Rochas’s expression. He had
seemed to regard the early reverses of the campaign as personal
affronts, and the disaster that all had prognosticated was to him an
unpardonable crime. He was a strong Bonapartist by conviction; his
prospects for promotion were of the brightest; he had several important
salons looking after his interests; naturally, he did not take kindly
to the changed condition of affairs that promised to make his cake
dough. He was said to have a remarkably fine tenor voice, which had
helped him no little in his advancement. He was not devoid of
intelligence, though perfectly ignorant as regarded everything
connected with his profession; eager to please, and very brave, when
there was occasion for being so, without superfluous rashness.
“What a nasty fog!” was all he said, pleased to have found his company
at last, for which he had been searching for more than half an hour.
At the same time their orders came, and the battalion moved forward.
They had to proceed with caution, feeling their way, for the
exhalations continued to rise from the stream and were now so dense
that they were precipitated in a fine, drizzling rain. A vision rose
before Maurice’s eyes that impressed him deeply; it was Colonel de
Vineuil, who loomed suddenly from out the mist, sitting his horse,
erect and motionless, at the intersection of two roads—the man
appearing of preternatural size, and so pale and rigid that he might
have served a sculptor as a study for a statue of despair; the steed
shivering in the raw, chill air of morning, his dilated nostrils turned
in the direction of the distant firing. Some ten paces to their rear
were the regimental colors, which the sous-lieutenant whose duty it was
to bear them had thus early taken from their case and proudly raised
aloft, and as the driving, vaporous rack eddied and swirled about them,
they shone like a radiant vision of glory emblazoned on the heavens,
soon to fade and vanish from the sight. Water was dripping from the
gilded eagle, and the tattered, shot-riddled tri-color, on which were
embroidered the names of former victories, was stained and its bright
hues dimmed by the smoke of many a battlefield; the sole bit of
brilliant color in all the faded splendor was the enameled cross of
honor that was attached to the _cravate_.
Another billow of vapor came scurrying up from the river, enshrouding
in its fleecy depths colonel, standard, and all, and the battalion
passed on, whitherward no one could tell. First their route had
conducted them over descending ground, now they were climbing a hill.
On reaching the summit the command, halt! started at the front and ran
down the column; the men were cautioned not to leave the ranks, arms
were ordered, and there they remained, the heavy knapsacks forming a
grievous burden to weary shoulders. It was evident that they were on a
plateau, but to discern localities was out of the question; twenty
paces was the extreme range of vision. It was now seven o’clock; the
sound of firing reached them more distinctly, other batteries were
apparently opening on Sedan from the opposite bank.
“Oh! I,” said Sergeant Sapin with a start, addressing Jean and Maurice,
“I shall be killed to-day.”
It was the first time he had opened his lips that morning; an
expression of dreamy melancholy had rested on his thin face, with its
big, handsome eyes and thin, pinched nose.
“What an idea!” Jean exclaimed; “who can tell what is going to happen
him? Every bullet has its billet, they say, but you stand no worse
chance than the rest of us.”
“Oh, but me—I am as good as dead now. I tell you I shall be killed
to-day.”
The near files turned and looked at him curiously, asking him if he had
had a dream. No, he had dreamed nothing, but he felt it; it was there.
“And it is a pity, all the same, because I was to be married when I got
my discharge.”
A vague expression came into his eyes again; his past life rose before
him. He was the son of a small retail grocer at Lyons, and had been
petted and spoiled by his mother up to the time of her death; then
rejecting the proffer of his father, with whom he did not hit it off
well, to assist in purchasing his discharge, he had remained with the
army, weary and disgusted with life and with his surroundings. Coming
home on furlough, however, he fell in love with a cousin and they
became engaged; their intention was to open a little shop on the small
capital which she would bring him, and then existence once more became
desirable. He had received an elementary education; could read, write,
and cipher. For the past year he had lived only in anticipation of this
happy future.
He shivered, and gave himself a shake to dispel his revery, repeating
with his tranquil air:
“Yes, it is too bad; I shall be killed to-day.”
No one spoke; the uncertainty and suspense continued. They knew not
whether the enemy was on their front or in their rear. Strange sounds
came to their ears from time to time from out the depths of the
mysterious fog: the rumble of wheels, the deadened tramp of moving
masses, the distant clatter of horses’ hoofs; it was the evolutions of
troops, hidden from view behind the misty curtain, the batteries,
battalions, and squadrons of the 7th corps taking up their positions in
line of battle. Now, however, it began to look as if the fog was about
to lift; it parted here and there and fragments floated lightly off,
like strips of gauze torn from a veil, and bits of sky appeared, not
transparently blue, as on a bright summer’s day, but opaque and of the
hue of burnished steel, like the cheerless bosom of some deep, sullen
mountain tarn. It was in one of those brighter moments when the sun was
endeavoring to struggle forth that the regiments of chasseurs
d’Afrique, constituting part of Margueritte’s division, came riding by,
giving the impression of a band of spectral horsemen. They sat very
stiff and erect in the saddle, with their short cavalry jackets, broad
red sashes and smart little _kepis_, accurate in distance and alignment
and managing admirably their lean, wiry mounts, which were almost
invisible under the heterogeneous collection of tools and camp equipage
that they had to carry. Squadron after squadron they swept by in long
array, to be swallowed in the gloom from which they had just emerged,
vanishing as if dissolved by the fine rain. The truth was, probably,
that they were in the way, and their leaders, not knowing what use to
put them to, had packed them off the field, as had often been the case
since the opening of the campaign. They had scarcely ever been employed
on scouting or reconnoitering duty, and as soon as there was prospect
of a fight were trotted about for shelter from valley to valley,
useless objects, but too costly to be endangered.
Maurice thought of Prosper as he watched them. “That fellow, yonder,
looks like him,” he said, under his breath. “I wonder if it is he?”
“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Jean.
“Of that young man of Remilly, whose brother we met at Osches, you
remember.”
Behind the chasseurs, when they had all passed, came a general officer
and his staff dashing down the descending road, and Maurice recognized
the general of their brigade, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, shouting and
gesticulating wildly. He had torn himself reluctantly from his
comfortable quarters at the Hotel of the Golden Cross, and it was
evident from the horrible temper he was in that the condition of
affairs that morning was not satisfactory to him. In a tone of voice so
loud that everyone could hear he roared:
“In the devil’s name, what stream is that off yonder, the Meuse or the
Moselle?”
The fog dispersed at last, this time in earnest. As at Bazeilles the
effect was theatrical; the curtain rolled slowly upward to the flies,
disclosing the setting of the stage. From a sky of transparent blue the
sun poured down a flood of bright, golden light, and Maurice was no
longer at a loss to recognize their position.
“Ah!” he said to Jean, “we are on the plateau de l’Algérie. That
village that you see across the valley, directly in our front, is
Floing, and that more distant one is Saint-Menges, and that one, more
distant still, a little to the right, is Fleigneux. Then those scrubby
trees on the horizon, away in the background, are the forest of the
Ardennes, and there lies the frontier—”
He went on to explain their position, naming each locality and pointing
to it with outstretched hand. The plateau de l’Algérie was a belt of
reddish ground, something less than two miles in length, sloping gently
downward from the wood of la Garenne toward the Meuse, from which it
was separated by the meadows. On it the line of the 7th corps had been
established by General Douay, who felt that his numbers were not
sufficient to defend so extended a position and properly maintain his
touch with the 1st corps, which was posted at right angles with his
line, occupying the valley of la Givonne, from the wood of la Garenne
to Daigny.
“Oh, isn’t it grand, isn’t it magnificent!”
And Maurice, revolving on his heel, made with his hand a sweeping
gesture that embraced the entire horizon. From their position on the
plateau the whole wide field of battle lay stretched before them to the
south and west: Sedan, almost at their feet, whose citadel they could
see overtopping the roofs, then Balan and Bazeilles, dimly seen through
the dun smoke-clouds that hung heavily in the motionless air, and
further in the distance the hills of the left bank, Liry, la Marfée, la
Croix-Piau. It was away toward the west, however, in the direction of
Donchery, that the prospect was most extensive. There the Meuse curved
horseshoe-wise, encircling the peninsula of Iges with a ribbon of pale
silver, and at the northern extremity of the loop was distinctly
visible the narrow road of the Saint-Albert pass, winding between the
river bank and a beetling, overhanging hill that was crowned with the
little wood of Seugnon, an offshoot of the forest of la Falizette. At
the summit of the hill, at the _carrefour_ of la Maison-Rouge, the road
from Donchery to Vrigne-aux-Bois debouched into the Mézières pike.
“See, that is the road by which we might retreat on Mézières.”
Even as he spoke the first gun was fired from Saint-Menges. The fog
still hung over the bottom-lands in shreds and patches, and through it
they dimly descried a shadowy body of men moving through the
Saint-Albert defile.
“Ah, they are there,” continued Maurice, instinctively lowering his
voice. “Too late, too late; they have intercepted us!”
It was not eight o’clock. The guns, which were thundering more fiercely
than ever in the direction of Bazeilles, now also began to make
themselves heard at the eastward, in the valley of la Givonne, which
was hid from view; it was the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony,
debouching from the Chevalier wood and attacking the 1st corps, in
front of Daigny village; and now that the XIth Prussian corps, moving
on Floing, had opened fire on General Douay’s troops, the investment
was complete at every point of the great periphery of several leagues’
extent, and the action was general all along the line.
Maurice suddenly perceived the enormity of their blunder in not
retreating on Mézières during the night; but as yet the consequences
were not clear to him; he could not foresee all the disaster that was
to result from that fatal error of judgment. Moved by some indefinable
instinct of danger, he looked with apprehension on the adjacent heights
that commanded the plateau de l’Algérie. If time had not been allowed
them to make good their retreat, why had they not backed up against the
frontier and occupied those heights of Illy and Saint-Menges, whence,
if they could not maintain their position, they would at least have
been free to cross over into Belgium? There were two points that
appeared to him especially threatening, the _mamelon_ of Hattoy, to the
north of Floing on the left, and the Calvary of Illy, a stone cross
with a linden tree on either side, the highest bit of ground in the
surrounding country, to the right. General Douay was keenly alive to
the importance of these eminences, and the day before had sent two
battalions to occupy Hattoy; but the men, feeling that they were “in
the air” and too remote from support, had fallen back early that
morning. It was understood that the left wing of the 1st corps was to
take care of the Calvary of Illy. The wide expanse of naked country
between Sedan and the Ardennes forest was intersected by deep ravines,
and the key of the position was manifestly there, in the shadow of that
cross and the two lindens, whence their guns might sweep the fields in
every direction for a long distance.
Two more cannon shots rang out, quickly succeeded by a salvo; they
detected the bluish smoke rising from the underbrush of a low hill to
the left of Saint-Menges.
“Our turn is coming now,” said Jean.
Nothing more startling occurred just then, however. The men, still
preserving their formation and standing at ordered arms, found
something to occupy their attention in the fine appearance made by the
2d division, posted in front of Floing, with their left refused and
facing the Meuse, so as to guard against a possible attack from that
quarter. The ground to the east, as far as the wood of la Garenne,
beneath Illy village, was held by the 3d division, while the 1st, which
had lost heavily at Beaumont, formed a second line. All night long the
engineers had been busy with pick and shovel, and even after the
Prussians had opened fire they were still digging away at their shelter
trenches and throwing up epaulments.
Then a sharp rattle of musketry, quickly silenced, however, was heard
proceeding from a point beneath Floing, and Captain Beaudoin received
orders to move his company three hundred yards to the rear. Their new
position was in a great field of cabbages, upon reaching which the
captain made his men lie down. The sun had not yet drunk up the
moisture that had descended on the vegetables in the darkness, and
every fold and crease of the thick, golden-green leaves was filled with
trembling drops, as pellucid and luminous as brilliants of the fairest
water.
“Sight for four hundred yards,” the captain ordered.
Maurice rested the barrel of his musket on a cabbage that reared its
head conveniently before him, but it was impossible to see anything in
his recumbent position: only the blurred surface of the fields
traversed by his level glance, diversified by an occasional tree or
shrub. Giving Jean, who was beside him, a nudge with his elbow, he
asked what they were to do there. The corporal, whose experience in
such matters was greater, pointed to an elevation not far away, where a
battery was just taking its position; it was evident that they had been
placed there to support that battery, should there be need of their
services. Maurice, wondering whether Honoré and his guns were not of
the party, raised his head to look, but the reserve artillery was at
the rear, in the shelter of a little grove of trees.
“_Nom de Dieu!_” yelled Rochas, “will you lie down!”
And Maurice had barely more than complied with this intimation when a
shell passed screaming over him. From that time forth there seemed to
be no end to them. The enemy’s gunners were slow in obtaining the
range, their first projectiles passing over and landing well to the
rear of the battery, which was now opening in reply. Many of their
shells, too, fell upon the soft ground, in which they buried themselves
without exploding, and for a time there was a great display of rather
heavy wit at the expense of those bloody sauerkraut eaters.
“Well, well!” said Loubet, “their fireworks are a fizzle!”
“They ought to take them in out of the rain,” sneered Chouteau.
Even Rochas thought it necessary to say something. “Didn’t I tell you
that the dunderheads don’t know enough even to point a gun?”
But they were less inclined to laugh when a shell burst only ten yards
from them and sent a shower of earth flying over the company; Loubet
affected to make light of it by ordering his comrades to get out their
brushes from the knapsacks, but Chouteau suddenly became very pale and
had not a word to say. He had never been under fire, nor had Pache and
Lapoulle, nor any member of the squad, in fact, except Jean. Over eyes
that had suddenly lost their brightness lids flickered tremulously;
voices had an unnatural, muffled sound, as if arrested by some
obstruction in the throat. Maurice, who was sufficiently master of
himself as yet, endeavored to diagnose his symptoms; he could not be
afraid, for he was not conscious that he was in danger; he only felt a
slight sensation of discomfort in the epigastric region, and his head
seemed strangely light and empty; ideas and images came and went
independent of his will. His recollection of the brave show made by the
troops of the 2d division made him hopeful, almost to buoyancy; victory
appeared certain to him if only they might be allowed to go at the
enemy with the bayonet.
“Listen!” he murmured, “how the flies buzz; the place is full of them.”
Thrice he had heard something that sounded like the humming of a swarm
of bees.
“That was not a fly,” Jean said, with a laugh. “It was a bullet.”
Again and again the hum of those invisible wings made itself heard. The
men craned their necks and looked about them with eager interest; their
curiosity was uncontrollable—would not allow them to remain quiet.
“See here,” Loubet said mysteriously to Lapoulle, with a view to raise
a laugh at the expense of his simple-minded comrade, “when you see a
bullet coming toward you you must raise your forefinger before your
nose—like that; it divides the air, and the bullet will go by to the
right or left.”
“But I can’t see them,” said Lapoulle.
A loud guffaw burst from those near.
“Oh, crickey! he says he can’t see them! Open your garret windows,
stupid! See! there’s one—see! there’s another. Didn’t you see that one?
It was of the most beautiful green.”
And Lapoulle rolled his eyes and stared, placing his finger before his
nose, while Pache fingered the scapular he wore and wished it was large
enough to shield his entire person.
Rochas, who had remained on his feet, spoke up and said jocosely:
“Children, there is no objection to your ducking to the shells when you
see them coming. As for the bullets, it is useless; they are too
numerous!”
At that very instant a soldier in the front rank was struck on the head
by a fragment of an exploding shell. There was no outcry; simply a
spurt of blood and brain, and all was over.
“Poor devil!” tranquilly said Sergeant Sapin, who was quite cool and
exceedingly pale. “Next!”
But the uproar had by this time become so deafening that the men could
no longer hear one another’s voice; Maurice’s nerves, in particular,
suffered from the infernal _charivari_. The neighboring battery was
banging away as fast as the gunners could load the pieces; the
continuous roar seemed to shake the ground, and the mitrailleuses were
even more intolerable with their rasping, grating, grunting noise. Were
they to remain forever reclining there among the cabbages? There was
nothing to be seen, nothing to be learned; no one had any idea how the
battle was going. And _was_ it a battle, after all—a genuine affair?
All that Maurice could make out, projecting his eyes along the level
surface of the fields, was the rounded, wood-clad summit of Hattoy in
the remote distance, and still unoccupied. Neither was there a Prussian
to be seen anywhere on the horizon; the only evidence of life were the
faint, blue smoke-wreaths that rose and floated an instant in the
sunlight. Chancing to turn his head, he was greatly surprised to behold
at the bottom of a deep, sheltered valley, surrounded by precipitous
heights, a peasant calmly tilling his little field, driving the plow
through the furrow with the assistance of a big white horse. Why should
he lose a day? The corn would keep growing, let them fight as they
would, and folks must live.
Unable longer to control his impatience, the young man jumped to his
feet. He had a fleeting vision of the batteries of Saint-Menges,
crowned with tawny vapors and spewing shot and shell upon them; he had
also time to see, what he had seen before and had not forgotten, the
road from Saint-Albert’s pass black with minute moving objects—the
swarming hordes of the invader. Then Jean seized him by the legs and
pulled him violently to his place again.
“Are you crazy? Do you want to leave your bones here?”
And Rochas chimed in:
“Lie down, will you! What am I to do with such d——d rascals, who get
themselves killed without orders!”
“But you don’t lie down, lieutenant,” said Maurice.
“That’s a different thing. I have to know what is going on.”
Captain Beaudoin, too, kept his legs like a man, but never opened his
lips to say an encouraging word to his men, having nothing in common
with them. He appeared nervous and unable to remain long in one place,
striding up and down the field, impatiently awaiting orders.
No orders came, nothing occurred to relieve their suspense. Maurice’s
knapsack was causing him horrible suffering; it seemed to be crushing
his back and chest in that recumbent position, so painful when
maintained for any length of time. The men had been cautioned against
throwing away their sacks unless in case of actual necessity, and he
kept turning over, first on his right side, then on the left, to ease
himself a moment of his burden by resting it on the ground. The shells
continued to fall around them, but the German gunners did not succeed
in getting the exact range; no one was killed after the poor fellow who
lay there on his stomach with his skull fractured.
“Say, is this thing to last all day?” Maurice finally asked Jean, in
sheer desperation.
“Like enough. At Solferino they put us in a field of carrots, and there
we stayed five mortal hours with our noses to the ground.” Then he
added, like the sensible fellow he was: “Why do you grumble? we are not
so badly off here. You will have an opportunity to distinguish yourself
before the day is over. Let everyone have his chance, don’t you see; if
we should all be killed at the beginning there would be none left for
the end.”
“Look,” Maurice abruptly broke in, “look at that smoke over Hattoy.
They have taken Hattoy; we shall have plenty of music to dance to now!”
For a moment his burning curiosity, which he was conscious was now for
the first time beginning to be dashed with personal fear, had
sufficient to occupy it; his gaze was riveted on the rounded summit of
the _mamelon_, the only elevation that was within his range of vision,
dominating the broad expanse of plain that lay level with his eye.
Hattoy was too far distant to permit him to distinguish the gunners of
the batteries that the Prussians had posted there; he could see nothing
at all, in fact, save the smoke that at each discharge rose above a
thin belt of woods that served to mask the guns. The enemy’s occupation
of the position, of which General Douay had been forced to abandon the
defense, was, as Maurice had instinctively felt, an event of the
gravest importance and destined to result in the most disastrous
consequences; its possessors would have entire command of all the
surrounding plateau. This was quickly seen to be the case, for the
batteries that opened on the second division of the 7th corps did
fearful execution. They had now perfected their range, and the French
battery, near which Beaudoin’s company was stationed, had two men
killed in quick succession. A quartermaster’s man in the company had
his left heel carried away by a splinter and began to howl most
dismally, as if visited by a sudden attack of madness.
“Shut up, you great calf!” said Rochas. “What do you mean by yelling
like that for a little scratch!”
The man suddenly ceased his outcries and subsided into a stupid
silence, nursing his foot in his hand.
And still the tremendous artillery duel raged, and the death-dealing
missiles went screaming over the recumbent ranks of the regiments that
lay there on the sullen, sweltering plain, where no thing of life was
to be seen beneath the blazing sun. The crashing thunder, the
destroying hurricane, were masters in that solitude, and many long
hours would pass before the end. But even thus early in the day the
Germans had demonstrated the superiority of their artillery; their
percussion shells had an enormous range, and exploded, with hardly an
exception, on reaching their destination, while the French time-fuse
shells, with a much shorter range, burst for the most part in the air
and were wasted. And there was nothing left for the poor fellows
exposed to that murderous fire save to hug the ground and make
themselves as small as possible; they were even denied the privilege of
firing in reply, which would have kept their mind occupied and given
them a measure of relief; but upon whom or what were they to direct
their rifles? since there was not a living soul to be seen upon the
entire horizon!
“Are we never to have a shot at them? I would give a dollar for just
one chance!” said Maurice, in a frenzy of impatience. “It is disgusting
to have them blazing away at us like this and not be allowed to
answer.”
“Be patient; the time will come,” Jean imperturbably replied.
Their attention was attracted by the sound of mounted men approaching
on their left, and turning their heads they beheld General Douay, who,
accompanied by his staff, had come galloping up to see how his troops
were behaving under the terrible fire from Hattoy. He appeared well
pleased with what he saw and was in the act of making some suggestions
to the officers grouped around him, when, emerging from a sunken road,
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles also rode up. This officer, though he owed
his advancement to “influence” was wedded to the antiquated African
routine and had learned nothing by experience, sat his horse with great
composure under the storm of projectiles. He was shouting to the men
and gesticulating wildly, after the manner of Rochas: “They are coming,
they will be here right away, and then we’ll let them have the
bayonet!” when he caught sight of General Douay and drew up to his
side.
“Is it true that the marshal is wounded, general?” he asked.
“It is but too true, unfortunately. I received a note from Ducrot only
a few minutes ago, in which he advises me of the fact, and also
notifies me that, by the marshal’s appointment, he is in command of the
army.”
“Ah! so it is Ducrot who is to have his place! And what are the orders
now?”
The general shook his head sorrowfully. He had felt that the army was
doomed, and for the last twenty-four hours had been strenuously
recommending the occupation of Illy and Saint-Menges in order to keep a
way of retreat open on Mézières.
“Ducrot will carry out the plan we talked of yesterday: the whole army
is to be concentrated on the plateau of Illy.”
And he repeated his previous gesture, as if to say it was too late.
His words were partly inaudible in the roar of the artillery, but
Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it left him
dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded
since early that morning, General Ducrot commanding in his place for
the last two hours, the entire army retreating to the northward of
Sedan—and all these important events kept from the poor devils of
soldiers who were squandering their life’s blood! and all their
destinies, dependent on the life of a single man, were to be intrusted
to the direction of fresh and untried hands! He had a distinct
consciousness of the fate that was in reserve for the army of Châlons,
deprived of its commander, destitute of any guiding principle of
action, dragged purposelessly in this direction and in that, while the
Germans went straight and swift to their preconcerted end with
mechanical precision and directness.
Bourgain-Desfeuilles had wheeled his horse and was moving away, when
General Douay, to whom a grimy, dust-stained hussar had galloped up
with another dispatch, excitedly summoned him back.
“General! General!”
His voice rang out so loud and clear, with such an accent of surprise,
that it drowned the uproar of the guns.
“General, Ducrot is no longer in command; de Wimpffen is chief. You
know he reached here yesterday, just in the very thick of the disaster
at Beaumont, to relieve de Failly at the head of the 5th corps—and he
writes me that he has written instructions from the Minister of War
assigning him to the command of the army in case the post should become
vacant. And there is to be no more retreating; the orders now are to
reoccupy our old positions, and defend them to the last.”
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles drank in the tidings, his eyes bulging
with astonishment. “_Nom de Dieu!_” he at last succeeded in
ejaculating, “one would like to know—But it is no business of mine,
anyhow.” And off he galloped, not allowing himself to be greatly
agitated by this unexpected turn of affairs, for he had gone into the
war solely in the hope of seeing his name raised a grade higher in the
army list, and it was his great desire to behold the end of the beastly
campaign as soon as possible, since it was productive of so little
satisfaction to anyone.
Then there was an explosion of derision and contempt among the men of
Beaudoin’s company. Maurice said nothing, but he shared the opinion of
Chouteau and Loubet, who chaffed and blackguarded everyone without
mercy. “See-saw, up and down, move as I pull the string! A fine gang
they were, those generals! they understood one another; they were not
going to pull all the blankets off the bed! What was a poor devil of a
soldier to do when he had such leaders put over him? Three commanders
in two hours’ time, three great numskulls, none of whom knew what was
the right thing to do, and all of them giving different orders!
Demoralized, were they? Good Heavens, it was enough to demoralize God
Almighty himself, and all His angels!” And the inevitable accusation of
treason was again made to do duty; Ducrot and de Wimpffen wanted to get
three millions apiece out of Bismarck, as MacMahon had done.
Alone in advance of his staff General Douay sat on his horse a long
time, his gaze bent on the distant positions of the enemy and in his
eyes an expression of infinite melancholy. He made a minute and
protracted observation of Hattoy, the shells from which came tumbling
almost at his very feet; then, giving a glance at the plateau of Illy,
called up an officer to carry an order to the brigade of the 5th corps
that he had borrowed the day previous from General de Wimpffen, and
which served to connect his right with the left of General Ducrot. He
was distinctly heard to say these words:
“If the Prussians should once get possession of the Calvary it would be
impossible for us to hold this position an hour; we should be driven
into Sedan.”
He rode off and was lost to view, together with his escort, at the
entrance of the sunken road, and the German fire became hotter than
before. They had doubtless observed the presence of the group of
mounted officers; but now the shells, which hitherto had come from the
front, began to fall upon them laterally, from the left; the batteries
at Frenois, together with one which the enemy had carried across the
river and posted on the peninsula of Iges, had established, in
connection with the guns on Hattoy, an enfilading fire which swept the
plateau de l’Algérie in its entire length and breadth. The position of
the company now became most lamentable; the men, with death in front of
them and on their flank, knew not which way to turn or which of the
menacing perils to guard themselves against. In rapid succession three
men were killed outright and two severely wounded.
It was then that Sergeant Sapin met the death that he had predicted for
himself. He had turned his head, and caught sight of the approaching
missile when it was too late for him to avoid it.
“Ah, here it is!” was all he said.
There was no terror in the thin face, with its big handsome eyes; it
was only pale; very pale and inexpressibly mournful. The wound was in
the abdomen.
“Oh! do not leave me here,” he pleaded; “take me to the ambulance, I
beseech you. Take me to the rear.”
Rochas endeavored to silence him, and it was on his brutal lips to say
that it was useless to imperil two comrades’ lives for one whose wound
was so evidently mortal, when his better nature made its influence felt
and he murmured:
“Be patient for a little, my poor boy, and the litter-bearers will come
and get you.”
But the wretched man, whose tears were now flowing, kept crying, as one
distraught that his dream of happiness was vanishing with his trickling
life-blood:
“Take me away, take me away—”
Finally Captain Beaudoin, whose already unstrung nerves were further
irritated by his pitiful cries, called for two volunteers to carry him
to a little piece of woods a short way off where a flying ambulance had
been established. Chouteau and Loubet jumped to their feet
simultaneously, anticipating the others, seized the sergeant, one of
them by the shoulders, the other by the legs, and bore him away on a
run. They had gone but a little way, however, when they felt the body
becoming rigid in the final convulsion; he was dying.
“I say, he’s dead,” exclaimed Loubet. “Let’s leave him here.”
But Chouteau, without relaxing his speed, angrily replied:
“Go ahead, you booby, will you! Do you take me for a fool, to leave him
here and have them call us back!”
They pursued their course with the corpse until they came to the little
wood, threw it down at the foot of a tree, and went their way. That was
the last that was seen of them until nightfall.
The battery beside them had been strengthened by three additional guns;
the cannonade on either side went on with increased fury, and in the
hideous uproar terror—a wild, unreasoning terror—filled Maurice’s soul.
It was his first experience of the sensation; he had not until now felt
that cold sweat trickling down his back, that terrible sinking at the
pit of the stomach, that unconquerable desire to get on his feet and
run, yelling and screaming, from the field. It was nothing more than
the strain from which his nervous, high-strung temperament was
suffering from reflex action; but Jean, who was observing him narrowly,
detected the incipient crisis in the wandering, vacant eyes, and
seizing him with his strong hand, held him down firmly at his side. The
corporal lectured him paternally in a whisper, not mincing his words,
but employing good, vigorous language to restore him to a sense of
self-respect, for he knew by experience that a man in panic is not to
be coaxed out of his cowardice. There were others also who were showing
the white feather, among them Pache, who was whimpering involuntarily,
in the low, soft voice of a little baby, his eyes suffused with tears.
Lapoulle’s stomach betrayed him and he was very ill; and there were
many others who also found relief in vomiting, amid their comrade’s
loud jeers and laughter, which helped to restore their courage to them
all.
“My God!” ejaculated Maurice, ghastly pale, his teeth chattering. “My
God!”
Jean shook him roughly. “You infernal coward, are you going to be sick
like those fellows over yonder? Behave yourself, or I’ll box your
ears.”
He was trying to put heart into his friend by gruff but friendly
speeches like the above, when they suddenly beheld a dozen dark forms
emerging from a little wood upon their front and about four hundred
yards away. Their spiked helmets announced them to be Prussians; the
first Prussians they had had within reach of their rifles since the
opening of the campaign. This first squad was succeeded by others, and
in front of their position the little dust clouds that rose where the
French shells struck were distinctly visible. It was all very vivid and
clear-cut in the transparent air of morning; the Germans, outlined
against the dark forest, presented the toy-like appearance of those
miniature soldiers of lead that are the delight of children; then, as
the enemy’s shells began to drop in their vicinity with uncomfortable
frequency, they withdrew and were lost to sight within the wood whence
they had come.
But Beaudoin’s company had seen them there once, and to their eyes they
were there still; the chassepots seemed to go off of their own accord.
Maurice was the first man to discharge his piece; Jean, Pache, Lapoulle
and the others all followed suit. There had been no order given to
commence firing, and the captain made an attempt to check it, but
desisted upon Rochas’s representation that it was absolutely necessary
as a measure of relief for the men’s pent-up feelings. So, then, they
were at liberty to shoot at last, they could use up those cartridges
that they had been lugging around with them for the last month, without
ever burning a single one! The effect on Maurice in particular was
electrical; the noise he made had the effect of dispelling his fear and
blunting the keenness of his sensations. The little wood had resumed
its former deserted aspect; not a leaf stirred, no more Prussians
showed themselves; and still they kept on blazing away as madly as ever
at the immovable trees.
Raising his eyes presently Maurice was startled to see Colonel de
Vineuil sitting his big horse at no great distance, man and steed
impassive and motionless as if carved from stone, patient were they
under the leaden hail, with face turned toward the enemy. The entire
regiment was now collected in that vicinity, the other companies being
posted in the adjacent fields; the musketry fire seemed to be drawing
nearer. The young man also beheld the regimental colors a little to the
rear, borne aloft by the sturdy arm of the standard-bearer, but it was
no longer the phantom flag that he had seen that morning, shrouded in
mist and fog; the golden eagle flashed and blazed in the fierce
sunlight, and the tri-colored silk, despite the rents and stains of
many a battle, flaunted its bright hues defiantly to the breeze. Waving
in the breath of the cannon, floating proudly against the blue of
heaven, it shone like an emblem of victory.
And why, now that the day of battle had arrived, should not victory
perch upon that banner? With that reflection Maurice and his companions
kept on industriously wasting their powder on the distant wood,
producing havoc there among the leaves and twigs.