It was nearly ten o’clock up on the Plateau de l’Algérie, and still the
men of Beaudoin’s company were resting supine, among the cabbages, in
the field whence they had not budged since early morning. The cross
fire from the batteries on Hattoy and the peninsula of Iges was hotter
than ever; it had just killed two more of their number, and there were
no orders for them to advance. Were they to stay there and be shelled
all day, without a chance to see anything of the fighting?
They were even denied the relief of discharging their chassepots.
Captain Beaudoin had at last put his foot down and stopped the firing,
that senseless fusillade against the little wood in front of them,
which seemed entirely deserted by the Prussians. The heat was stifling;
it seemed to them that they should roast, stretched there on the ground
under the blazing sky.
Jean was alarmed, on turning to look at Maurice, to see that he had
declined his head and was lying, with closed eyes, apparently
inanimate, his cheek against the bare earth. He was very pale, there
was no sign of life in his face.
“Hallo there! what’s the matter?”
But Maurice was only sleeping. The mental strain, conjointly with his
fatigue, had been too much for him, in spite of the dangers that
menaced them at every moment. He awoke with a start and stared about
him, and the peace that slumber had left in his wide-dilated eyes was
immediately supplanted by a look of startled affright as it dawned on
him where he was. He had not the remotest idea how long he had slept;
all he knew was that the state from which he had been recalled to the
horrors of the battlefield was one of blessed oblivion and
tranquillity.
“Hallo! that’s funny; I must have been asleep!” he murmured. “Ah! it
has done me good.”
It was true that he suffered less from that pressure about his temples
and at his heart, that horrible constriction that seems as if it would
crush one’s bones. He chaffed Lapoulle, who had manifested much
uneasiness since the disappearance of Chouteau and Loubet and spoke of
going to look for them. A capital idea! so he might get away and hide
behind a tree, and smoke a pipe! Pache thought that the surgeons had
detained them at the ambulance, where there was a scarcity of
sick-bearers. That was a job that he had no great fancy for, to go
around under fire and collect the wounded! And haunted by a lingering
superstition of the country where he was born, he added that it was
unlucky to touch a corpse; it brought death.
“Shut up, confound you!” roared Lieutenant Rochas. “Who is going to
die?”
Colonel de Vineuil, sitting his tall horse, turned his head and gave a
smile, the first that had been seen on his face that morning. Then he
resumed his statue-like attitude, waiting for orders as impassively as
ever under the tumbling shells.
Maurice’s attention was attracted to the sick-bearers, whose movements
he watched with interest as they searched for wounded men among the
depressions of the ground. At the end of a sunken road, and protected
by a low ridge not far from their position, a flying ambulance of first
aid had been established, and its emissaries had begun to explore the
plateau. A tent was quickly erected, while from the hospital van the
attendants extracted the necessary supplies; compresses, bandages,
linen, and the few indispensable instruments required for the hasty
dressings they gave before dispatching the patients to Sedan, which
they did as rapidly as they could secure wagons, the supply of which
was limited. There was an assistant surgeon in charge, with two
subordinates of inferior rank under him. In all the army none showed
more gallantry and received less acknowledgment than the
litter-bearers. They could be seen all over the field in their gray
uniform, with the distinctive red badge on their cap and on their arm,
courageously risking their lives and unhurriedly pushing forward
through the thickest of the fire to the spots where men had been seen
to fall. At times they would creep on hands and knees: would always
take advantage of a hedge or ditch, or any shelter that was afforded by
the conformation of the ground, never exposing themselves unnecessarily
out of bravado. When at last they reached the fallen men their painful
task commenced, which was made more difficult and protracted by the
fact that many of the subjects had fainted, and it was hard to tell
whether they were alive or dead. Some lay face downward with their
mouths in a pool of blood, in danger of suffocating, others had bitten
the ground until their throats were choked with dry earth, others,
where a shell had fallen among a group, were a confused, intertwined
heap of mangled limbs and crushed trunks. With infinite care and
patience the bearers would go through the tangled mass, separating the
living from the dead, arranging their limbs and raising the head to
give them air, cleansing the face as well as they could with the means
at their command. Each of them carried a bucket of cool water, which he
had to use very savingly. And Maurice could see them thus engaged,
often for minutes at a time, kneeling by some man whom they were trying
to resuscitate, waiting for him to show some sign of life.
He watched one of them, some fifty yards away to the left, working over
the wound of a little soldier from the sleeve of whose tunic a thin
stream of blood was trickling, drop by drop. The man of the red cross
discovered the source of the hemorrhage and finally checked it by
compressing the artery. In urgent cases, like that of the little
soldier, they rendered these partial attentions, locating fractures,
bandaging and immobilizing the limbs so as to reduce the danger of
transportation. And the transportation, even, was an affair that called
for a great deal of judgment and ingenuity; they assisted those who
could walk, and carried others, either in their arms, like little
children, or pickaback when the nature of the hurt allowed it; at other
times they united in groups of two, three, or four, according to the
requirements of the case, and made a chair by joining their hands, or
carried the patient off by his legs and shoulders in a recumbent
posture. In addition to the stretchers provided by the medical
department there were all sorts of temporary makeshifts, such as the
stretchers improvised from knapsack straps and a couple of muskets. And
in every direction on the unsheltered, shell-swept plain they could be
seen, singly or in groups, hastening with their dismal loads to the
rear, their heads bowed and picking their steps, an admirable spectacle
of prudent heroism.
Maurice saw a pair on his right, a thin, puny little fellow lugging a
burly sergeant, with both legs broken, suspended from his neck; the
sight reminded the young man of an ant, toiling under a burden many
times larger than itself; and even as he watched them a shell burst
directly in their path and they were lost to view. When the smoke
cleared away the sergeant was seen lying on his back, having received
no further injury, while the bearer lay beside him, disemboweled. And
another came up, another toiling ant, who, when he had turned his dead
comrade on his back and examined him, took the sergeant up and made off
with his load.
It gave Maurice a chance to read Lapoulle a lesson.
“I say, if you like the business, why don’t you go and give that man a
lift!”
For some little time the batteries at Saint-Menges had been thundering
as if determined to surpass all previous efforts, and Captain Beaudoin,
who was still tramping nervously up and down before his company line,
at last stepped up to the colonel. It was a pity, he said, to waste the
men’s morale in that way and keep their minds on the stretch for hours
and hours.
“I can’t help it; I have no orders,” the colonel stoically replied.
They had another glimpse of General Douay as he flew by at a gallop,
followed by his staff. He had just had an interview with General de
Wimpffen, who had ridden up to entreat him to hold his ground, which he
thought he could promise to do, but only so long as the Calvary of
Illy, on his right, held out; Illy once taken, he would be responsible
for nothing; their defeat would be inevitable. General de Wimpffen
averred that the 1st corps would look out for the position at Illy, and
indeed a regiment of zouaves was presently seen to occupy the Calvary,
so that General Douay, his anxiety being relieved on that score, sent
Dumont’s division to the assistance of the 12th corps, which was then
being hard pushed. Scarcely fifteen minutes later, however, as he was
returning from the left, whither he had ridden to see how affairs were
looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it
was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had
abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the
terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing
presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as he could
to the right, when he encountered Dumont’s division, flying in
disorder, broken and tangled in inextricable confusion with the debris
of the 1st corps. The latter, which, after its retrograde movement, had
never been able to regain possession of the posts it had occupied in
the morning, leaving Daigny in the hands of the XIIth Saxon corps and
Givonne to the Prussian Guards, had been compelled to retreat in a
northerly direction across the wood of Garenne, harassed by the
batteries that the enemy had posted on every summit from one end of the
valley to the other. The terrible circle of fire and flame was
contracting; a portion of the Guards had continued their march on Illy,
moving from east to west and turning the eminences, while from west to
east, in the rear of the XIth corps, now masters of Saint-Menges, the
Vth, moving steadily onward, had passed Fleigneux and with insolent
temerity was constantly pushing its batteries more and more to the
front, and so contemptuous were they of the ignorance and impotence of
the French that they did not even wait for the infantry to come up to
support their guns. It was midday; the entire horizon was aflame,
concentrating its destructive fire on the 7th and 1st corps.
Then General Douay, while the German artillery was thus preparing the
way for the decisive movement that should make them masters of the
Calvary, resolved to make one last desperate attempt to regain
possession of the hill. He dispatched his orders, and throwing himself
in person among the fugitives of Dumont’s division, succeeded in
forming a column which he sent forward to the plateau. It held its
ground for a few minutes, but the bullets whistled so thick, the naked,
treeless fields were swept by such a tornado of shot and shell, that it
was not long before the panic broke out afresh, sweeping the men adown
the slopes, rolling them up as straws are whirled before the wind. And
the general, unwilling to abandon his project, ordered up other
regiments.
A staff officer galloped by, shouting to Colonel de Vineuil as he
passed an order that was lost in the universal uproar. Hearing, the
colonel was erect in his stirrups in an instant, his face aglow with
the gladness of battle, and pointing to the Calvary with a grand
movement of his sword:
“Our turn has come at last, boys!” he shouted. “Forward!”
A thrill of enthusiasm ran through the ranks at the brief address, and
the regiment put itself in motion. Beaudoin’s company was among the
first to get on its feet, which it did to the accompaniment of much
good-natured chaff, the men declaring they were so rusty they could not
move; the gravel must have penetrated their joints. The fire was so
hot, however, that by the time they had advanced a few feet they were
glad to avail themselves of the protection of a shelter trench that lay
in their path, along which they crept in an undignified posture, bent
almost double.
“Now, young fellow, look out for yourself!” Jean said to Maurice;
“we’re in for it. Don’t let ’em see so much as the end of your nose,
for if you do they will surely snip it off, and keep a sharp lookout
for your legs and arms unless you have more than you care to keep.
Those who come out of this with a whole skin will be lucky.”
Maurice did not hear him very distinctly; the words were lost in the
all-pervading clamor that buzzed and hummed in the young man’s ears. He
could not have told now whether he was afraid or not; he went forward
because the others did, borne along with them in their headlong rush,
without distinct volition of his own; his sole desire was to have the
affair ended as soon as possible. So true was it that he was a mere
drop in the on-pouring torrent that when the leading files came to the
end of the trench and began to waver at the prospect of climbing the
exposed slope that lay before them, he immediately felt himself seized
by a sensation of panic, and was ready to turn and fly. It was simply
an uncontrollable instinct, a revolt of the muscles, obedient to every
passing breath.
Some of the men had already faced about when the colonel came hurrying
up.
“Steady there, my children. You won’t cause me this great sorrow; you
won’t behave like cowards. Remember, the 106th has never turned its
back upon the enemy; will you be the first to disgrace our flag?”
And he spurred his charger across the path of the fugitives, addressing
them individually, speaking to them, of their country, in a voice that
trembled with emotion.
Lieutenant Rochas was so moved by his words that he gave way to an
ungovernable fit of anger, raising his sword and belaboring the men
with the flat as if it had been a club.
“You dirty loafers, I’ll see whether you will go up there or not! I’ll
kick you up! About face! and I’ll break the jaw of the first man that
refuses to obey!”
But such an extreme measure as kicking a regiment into action was
repugnant to the colonel.
“No, no, lieutenant; they will follow me. Won’t you, my children? You
won’t let your old colonel fight it out alone with the Prussians! Up
there lies the way; forward!”
He turned his horse and left the trench, and they did all follow, to a
man, for he would have been considered the lowest of the low who could
have abandoned their leader after that brave, kind speech. He was the
only one, however, who, while crossing the open fields, erect on his
tall horse, was cool and unconcerned; the men scattered, advancing in
open order and availing themselves of every shelter afforded by the
ground. The land sloped upward; there were fully five hundred yards of
stubble and beet fields between them and the Calvary, and in place of
the correctly aligned columns that the spectator sees advancing when a
charge is ordered in field maneuvers, all that was to be seen was a
loose array of men with rounded backs, singly or in small groups,
hugging the ground, now crawling warily a little way on hands and
knees, now dashing forward for the next cover, like huge insects
fighting their way upward to the crest by dint of agility and address.
The enemy’s batteries seemed to have become aware of the movement;
their fire was so rapid that the reports of the guns were blended in
one continuous roar. Five men were killed, a lieutenant was cut in two.
Maurice and Jean had considered themselves fortunate that their way led
along a hedge behind which they could push forward unseen, but the man
immediately in front of them was shot through the temples and fell back
dead in their arms; they had to cast him down at one side. By this
time, however, the casualties had ceased to excite attention; they were
too numerous. A man went by, uttering frightful shrieks and pressing
his hands upon his protruding entrails; they beheld a horse dragging
himself along with both thighs broken, and these anguishing sights,
these horrors of the battlefield, affected them no longer. They were
suffering from the intolerable heat, the noonday sun that beat upon
their backs and burned like hot coals.
“How thirsty I am!” Maurice murmured. “My throat is like an ash barrel.
Don’t you notice that smell of something scorching, a smell like
burning woolen?”
Jean nodded. “It was just the same at Solferino; perhaps it is the
smell that always goes with war. But hold, I have a little brandy left;
we’ll have a sup.”
And they paused behind the hedge a moment and raised the flask to their
lips, but the brandy, instead of relieving their thirst, burned their
stomach. It irritated them, that nasty taste of burnt rags in their
mouths. Moreover they perceived that their strength was commencing to
fail for want of sustenance and would have liked to take a bite from
the half loaf that Maurice had in his knapsack, but it would not do to
stop and breakfast there under fire, and then they had to keep up with
their comrades. There was a steady stream of men coming up behind them
along the hedge who pressed them forward, and so, doggedly bending
their backs to the task before them, they resumed their course.
Presently they made their final rush and reached the crest. They were
on the plateau, at the very foot of the Calvary, the old weather-beaten
cross that stood between two stunted lindens.
“Good for our side!” exclaimed Jean; “here we are! But the next thing
is to remain here!”
He was right; it was not the pleasantest place in the world to be in,
as Lapoulle remarked in a doleful tone that excited the laughter of the
company. They all lay down again, in a field of stubble, and for all
that three men were killed in quick succession. It was pandemonium let
loose up there on the heights; the projectiles from Saint-Menges,
Fleigneux, and Givonne fell in such numbers that the ground fairly
seemed to smoke, as it does at times under a heavy shower of rain. It
was clear that the position could not be maintained unless artillery
was dispatched at once to the support of the troops who had been sent
on such a hopeless undertaking. General Douay, it was said, had given
instructions to bring up two batteries of the reserve artillery, and
the men were every moment turning their heads, watching anxiously for
the guns that did not come.
“It is absurd, ridiculous!” declared Beaudoin, who was again fidgeting
up and down before the company. “Who ever heard of placing a regiment
in the air like this and giving it no support!” Then, observing a
slight depression on their left, he turned to Rochas: “Don’t you think,
Lieutenant, that the company would be safer there?”
Rochas stood stock still and shrugged his shoulders. “It is six of one
and half a dozen of the other, Captain. My opinion is that we will do
better to stay where we are.”
Then the captain, whose principles were opposed to swearing, forgot
himself.
“But, good God! there won’t a man of us escape! We can’t allow the men
to be murdered like this!”
And he determined to investigate for himself the advantages of the
position he had mentioned, but had scarcely taken ten steps when he was
lost to sight in the smoke of an exploding shell; a splinter of the
projectile had fractured his right leg. He fell upon his back, emitting
a shrill cry of alarm, like a woman’s.
“He might have known as much,” Rochas muttered. “There’s no use his
making such a fuss over it; when the dose is fixed for one, he has to
take it.”
Some members of the company had risen to their feet on seeing their
captain fall, and as he continued to call lustily for assistance, Jean
finally ran to him, immediately followed by Maurice.
“Friends, friends, for Heaven’s sake do not leave me here; carry me to
the ambulance!”
“_Dame_, Captain, I don’t know that we shall be able to get so far, but
we can try.”
As they were discussing how they could best take hold to raise him they
perceived, behind the hedge that had sheltered them on their way up,
two stretcher-bearers who seemed to be waiting for something to do, and
finally, after protracted signaling, induced them to draw near. All
would be well if they could only get the wounded man to the ambulance
without accident, but the way was long and the iron hail more pitiless
than ever.
The bearers had tightly bandaged the injured limb in order to keep the
bones in position and were about to bear the captain off the field on
what children call a “chair,” formed by joining their hands and
slipping an arm of the patient over each of their necks, when Colonel
de Vineuil, who had heard of the accident, came up, spurring his horse.
He manifested much emotion, for he had known the young man ever since
his graduation from Saint-Cyr.
“Cheer up, my poor boy; have courage. You are in no danger; the doctors
will save your leg.”
The captain’s face wore an expression of resignation, as if he had
summoned up all his courage to bear his misfortune manfully.
“No, my dear Colonel; I feel it is all up with me, and I would rather
have it so. The only thing that distresses me is the waiting for the
inevitable end.”
The bearers carried him away, and were fortunate enough to reach the
hedge in safety, behind which they trotted swiftly away with their
burden. The colonel’s eyes followed them anxiously, and when he saw
them reach the clump of trees where the ambulance was stationed a look
of deep relief rose to his face.
“But you, Colonel,” Maurice suddenly exclaimed, “you are wounded too!”
He had perceived blood dripping from the colonel’s left boot. A
projectile of some description had carried away the heel of the
foot-covering and forced the steel shank into the flesh.
M. de Vineuil bent over his saddle and glanced unconcernedly at the
member, in which the sensation at that time must have been far from
pleasurable.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, “it is a little remembrance that I received a
while ago. A mere scratch, that don’t prevent me from sitting my
horse—” And he added, as he turned to resume his position to the rear
of his regiment: “As long as a man can stick on his horse he’s all
right.”
At last the two batteries of reserve artillery came up. Their arrival
was an immense relief to the anxiously expectant men, as if the guns
were to be a rampart of protection to them and at the same time
demolish the hostile batteries that were thundering against them from
every side. And then, too, it was in itself an exhilarating spectacle
to see the magnificent order they preserved as they came dashing up,
each gun followed by its caisson, the drivers seated on the near horse
and holding the off horse by the bridle, the cannoneers bolt upright on
the chests, the chiefs of detachment riding in their proper position on
the flank. Distances were preserved as accurately as if they were on
parade, and all the time they were tearing across the fields at
headlong speed, with the roar and crash of a hurricane.
Maurice, who had lain down again, arose and said to Jean in great
excitement:
“Look! over there on the left, that is Honoré’s battery. I can
recognize the men.”
Jean gave him a back-handed blow that brought him down to his recumbent
position.
“Lie down, will you! and make believe dead!”
But they were both deeply interested in watching the maneuvers of the
battery, and never once removed their eyes from it; it cheered their
heart to witness the cool and intrepid activity of those men, who, they
hoped, might yet bring victory to them.
The battery had wheeled into position on a bare summit to the left,
where it brought up all standing; then, quick as a flash, the
cannoneers leaped from the chests and unhooked the limbers, and the
drivers, leaving the gun in position, drove fifteen yards to the rear,
where they wheeled again so as to bring team and limber face to the
enemy and there remained, motionless as statues. In less time than it
takes to tell it the guns were in place, with the proper intervals
between them, distributed into three sections of two guns each, each
section commanded by a lieutenant, and over the whole a captain, a long
maypole of a man, who made a terribly conspicuous landmark on the
plateau. And this captain, having first made a brief calculation, was
heard to shout:
“Sight for sixteen hundred yards!”
Their fire was to be directed upon a Prussian battery, screened by some
bushes, to the left of Fleigneux, the shells from which were rendering
the position of the Calvary untenable.
“Honoré’s piece, you see,” Maurice began again, whose excitement was
such that he could not keep still, “Honoré’s piece is in the center
section. There he is now, bending over to speak to the gunner; you
remember Louis, the gunner, don’t you? the little fellow with whom we
had a drink at Vouziers? And that fellow in the rear, who sits so
straight on his handsome chestnut, is Adolphe, the driver—”
First came the gun with its chief and six cannoneers, then the limber
with its four horses ridden by two men, beyond that the caisson with
its six horses and three drivers, still further to the rear were the
_prolonge_, forge, and battery wagon; and this array of men, horses and
_matériel_ extended to the rear in a straight unbroken line of more
than a hundred yards in length; to say nothing of the spare caisson and
the men and beasts who were to fill the places of those removed by
casualties, who were stationed at one side, as much as possible out of
the enemy’s line of fire.
And now Honoré was attending to the loading of his gun. The two men
whose duty it was to fetch the cartridge and the projectile returned
from the caisson, where the corporal and the artificer were stationed;
two other cannoneers, standing at the muzzle of the piece, slipped into
the bore the cartridge, a charge of powder in an envelope of serge, and
gently drove it home with the rammer, then in like manner introduced
the shell, the studs of which creaked faintly in the spirals of the
rifling. When the primer was inserted in the vent and all was in
readiness, Honoré thought he would like to point the gun himself for
the first shot, and throwing himself in a semi-recumbent posture on the
trail, working with one hand the screw that regulated the elevation,
with the other he signaled continually to the gunner, who, standing
behind him, moved the piece by imperceptible degrees to right or left
with the assistance of the lever.
“That ought to be about right,” he said as he arose.
The captain came up, and stooping until his long body was bent almost
double, verified the elevation. At each gun stood the assistant gunner,
waiting to pull the lanyard that should ignite the fulminate by means
of a serrated wire. And the orders were given in succession,
deliberately, by number:
“Number one, Fire! Number two, Fire!”
Six reports were heard, the guns recoiled, and while they were being
brought back to position the chiefs of detachment observed the effect
of the shots and found that the range was short. They made the
necessary correction and the evolution was repeated, in exactly the
same manner as before; and it was that cool precision, that mechanical
routine of duty, without agitation and without haste, that did so much
to maintain the _morale_ of the men. They were a little family, united
by the tie of a common occupation, grouped around the gun, which they
loved and reverenced as if it had been a living thing; it was the
object of all their care and attention, to it all else was subservient,
men, horses, caisson, everything. Thence also arose the spirit of unity
and cohesion that animated the battery at large, making all its members
work together for the common glory and the common good, like a
well-regulated household.
The 106th had cheered lustily at the completion of the first round;
they were going to make those bloody Prussian guns shut their mouths at
last! but their elation was succeeded by dismay when it was seen that
the projectiles fell short, many of them bursting in the air and never
reaching the bushes that served to mask the enemy’s artillery.
“Honoré,” Maurice continued, “says that all the other pieces are
popguns and that his old girl is the only one that is good for
anything. Ah, his old girl! He talks as if she were his wife and there
were not another like her in the world! Just notice how jealously he
watches her and makes the men clean her off! I suppose he is afraid she
will overheat herself and take cold!”
He continued rattling on in this pleasant vein to Jean, both of them
cheered and encouraged by the cool bravery with which the artillerymen
served their guns; but the Prussian batteries, after firing three
rounds, had now got the range, which, too long at the beginning, they
had at last ciphered down to such a fine point that their shells were
landed invariably among the French pieces, while the latter,
notwithstanding the efforts that were made to increase their range,
still continued to place their projectiles short of the enemy’s
position. One of Honoré’s cannoneers was killed while loading the
piece; the others pushed the body out of their way, and the service
went on with the same methodical precision, with neither more nor less
haste. In the midst of the projectiles that fell and burst continually
the same unvarying rhythmical movements went on uninterruptedly about
the gun; the cartridge and shell were introduced, the gun was pointed,
the lanyard pulled, the carriage brought back to place; and all with
such undeviating regularity that the men might have been taken for
automatons, devoid of sight and hearing.
What impressed Maurice, however, more than anything else, was the
attitude of the drivers, sitting straight and stiff in their saddles
fifteen yards to the rear, face to the enemy. There was Adolphe, the
broad-chested, with his big blond mustache across his rubicund face;
and who shall tell the amount of courage a man must have to enable him
to sit without winking and watch the shells coming toward him, and he
not allowed even to twirl his thumbs by way of diversion! The men who
served the guns had something to occupy their minds, while the drivers,
condemned to immobility, had death constantly before their eyes, and
plenty of leisure to speculate on probabilities. They were made to face
the battlefield because, had they turned their backs to it, the coward
that so often lurks at the bottom of man’s nature might have got the
better of them and swept away man and beast. It is the unseen danger
that makes dastards of us; that which we can see we brave. The army has
no more gallant set of men in its ranks than the drivers in their
obscure position.
Another man had been killed, two horses of a caisson had been
disemboweled, and the enemy kept up such a murderous fire that there
was a prospect of the entire battery being knocked to pieces should
they persist in holding that position longer. It was time to take some
step to baffle that tremendous fire, notwithstanding the danger there
was in moving, and the captain unhesitatingly gave orders to bring up
the limbers.
The risky maneuver was executed with lightning speed; the drivers came
up at a gallop, wheeled their limber into position in rear of the gun,
when the cannoneers raised the trail of the piece and hooked on. The
movement, however, collecting as it did, momentarily, men and horses on
the battery front in something of a huddle, created a certain degree of
confusion, of which the enemy took advantage by increasing the rapidity
of their fire; three more men dropped. The teams darted away at
breakneck speed, describing an arc of a circle among the fields, and
the battery took up its new position some fifty or sixty yards more to
the right, on a gentle eminence that was situated on the other flank of
the 106th. The pieces were unlimbered, the drivers resumed their
station at the rear, face to the enemy, and the firing was reopened;
and so little time was lost between leaving their old post and taking
up the new that the earth had barely ceased to tremble under the
concussion.
Maurice uttered a cry of dismay, when, after three attempts, the
Prussians had again got their range; the first shell landed squarely on
Honoré’s gun. The artilleryman rushed forward, and with a trembling
hand felt to ascertain what damage had been done his pet; a great wedge
had been chipped from the bronze muzzle. But it was not disabled, and
the work went on as before, after they had removed from beneath the
wheels the body of another cannoneer, with whose blood the entire
carriage was besplashed.
“It was not little Louis; I am glad of that,” said Maurice, continuing
to think aloud. “There he is now, pointing his gun; he must be wounded,
though, for he is only using his left arm. Ah, he is a brave lad, is
little Louis; and how well he and Adolphe get on together, in spite of
their little tiffs, only provided the gunner, the man who serves on
foot, shows a proper amount of respect for the driver, the man who
rides a horse, notwithstanding that the latter is by far the more
ignorant of the two. Now that they are under fire, though, Louis is as
good a man as Adolphe—”
Jean, who had been watching events in silence, gave utterance to a
distressful cry:
“They will have to give it up! No troops in the world could stand such
a fire.”
Within the space of five minutes the second position had become as
untenable as was the first; the projectiles kept falling with the same
persistency, the same deadly precision. A shell dismounted a gun,
fracturing the chase, killing a lieutenant and two men. Not one of the
enemy’s shots failed to reach, and at each discharge they secured a
still greater accuracy of range, so that if the battery should remain
there another five minutes they would not have a gun or a man left. The
crushing fire threatened to wipe them all out of existence.
Again the captain’s ringing voice was heard ordering up the limbers.
The drivers dashed up at a gallop and wheeled their teams into place to
allow the cannoneers to hook on the guns, but before Adolphe had time
to get up Louis was struck by a fragment of shell that tore open his
throat and broke his jaw; he fell across the trail of the carriage just
as he was on the point of raising it. Adolphe was there instantly, and
beholding his prostrate comrade weltering in his blood, jumped from his
horse and was about to raise him to his saddle and bear him away. And
at that moment, just as the battery was exposed flank to the enemy in
the act of wheeling, offering a fair target, a crashing discharge came,
and Adolphe reeled and fell to the ground, his chest crushed in, with
arms wide extended. In his supreme convulsion he seized his comrade
about the body, and thus they lay, locked in each other’s arms in a
last embrace, “married” even in death.
Notwithstanding the slaughtered horses and the confusion that that
death-dealing discharge had caused among the men, the battery had
rattled up the slope of a hillock and taken post a few yards from the
spot where Jean and Maurice were lying. For the third time the guns
were unlimbered, the drivers retired to the rear and faced the enemy,
and the cannoneers, with a gallantry that nothing could daunt, at once
reopened fire.
“It is as if the end of all things were at hand!” said Maurice, the
sound of whose voice was lost in the uproar.
It seemed indeed as if heaven and earth were confounded in that hideous
din. Great rocks were cleft asunder, the sun was hid from sight at
times in clouds of sulphurous vapor. When the cataclysm was at its
height the horses stood with drooping heads, trembling, dazed with
terror. The captain’s tall form was everywhere upon the eminence;
suddenly he was seen no more; a shell had cut him clean in two, and he
sank, as a ship’s mast that is snapped off at the base.
But it was about Honoré’s gun, even more than the others, that the
conflict raged, with cool efficiency and obstinate determination. The
non-commissioned officer found it necessary to forget his chevrons for
the time being and lend a hand in working the piece, for he had now but
three cannoneers left; he pointed the gun and pulled the lanyard, while
the others brought ammunition from the caisson, loaded, and handled the
rammer and the sponge. He had sent for men and horses from the battery
reserves that were kept to supply the places of those removed by
casualties, but they were slow in coming, and in the meantime the
survivors must do the work of the dead. It was a great discouragement
to all that their projectiles ranged short and burst almost without
exception in the air, inflicting no injury on the powerful batteries of
the foe, the fire of which was so efficient. And suddenly Honoré let
slip an oath that was heard above the thunder of the battle; ill-luck,
ill-luck, nothing but ill-luck! the right wheel of his piece was
smashed! _Tonnerre de Dieu!_ what a state she was in, the poor darling!
stretched on her side with a broken paw, her nose buried in the ground,
crippled and good for nothing! The sight brought big tears to his eyes,
he laid his trembling hand upon the breech, as if the ardor of his love
might avail to warm his dear mistress back to life. And the best gun of
them all, the only one that had been able to drop a few shells among
the enemy! Then suddenly he conceived a daring project, nothing less
than to repair the injury there and then, under that terrible fire.
Assisted by one of his men he ran back to the caisson and secured the
spare wheel that was attached to the rear axle, and then commenced the
most dangerous operation that can be executed on a battlefield.
Fortunately the extra men and horses that he had sent for came up just
then, and he had two cannoneers to lend him a hand.
For the third time, however, the strength of the battery was so reduced
as practically to disable it. To push their heroic daring further would
be madness; the order was given to abandon the position definitely.
“Make haste, comrades!” Honoré exclaimed. “Even if she is fit for no
further service we’ll carry her off; those fellows shan’t have her!”
To save the gun, even as men risk their life to save the flag; that was
his idea. And he had not ceased to speak when he was stricken down as
by a thunderbolt, his right arm torn from its socket, his left flank
laid open. He had fallen upon his gun he loved so well, and lay there
as if stretched on a bed of honor, with head erect, his unmutilated
face turned toward the enemy, and bearing an expression of proud
defiance that made him beautiful in death. From his torn jacket a
letter had fallen to the ground and lay in the pool of blood that
dribbled slowly from above.
The only lieutenant left alive shouted the order: “Bring up the
limbers!”
A caisson had exploded with a roar that rent the skies. They were
obliged to take the horses from another caisson in order to save a gun
of which the team had been killed. And when, for the last time, the
drivers had brought up their smoking horses and the guns had been
limbered up, the whole battery flew away at a gallop and never stopped
until they reached the edge of the wood of la Garenne, nearly twelve
hundred yards away.
Maurice had seen the whole. He shivered with horror, and murmured
mechanically, in a faint voice:
“Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!”
In addition to this feeling of mental distress he had a horrible
sensation of physical suffering, as if something was gnawing at his
vitals. It was the animal portion of his nature asserting itself; he
was at the end of his endurance, was ready to sink with hunger. His
perceptions were dimmed, he was not even conscious of the dangerous
position the regiment was in now it no longer was protected by the
battery. It was more than likely that the enemy would not long delay to
attack the plateau in force.
“Look here,” he said to Jean, “I _must_ eat—if I am to be killed for it
the next minute, I must eat.”
He opened his knapsack and, taking out the bread with shaking hands,
set his teeth in it voraciously. The bullets were whistling above their
heads, two shells exploded only a few yards away, but all was as naught
to him in comparison with his craving hunger.
“Will you have some, Jean?”
The corporal was watching him with hungry eyes and a stupid expression
on his face; his stomach was also twinging him.
“Yes, I don’t care if I do; this suffering is more than I can stand.”
They divided the loaf between them and each devoured his portion
gluttonously, unmindful of what was going on about them so long as a
crumb remained. And it was at that time that they saw their colonel for
the last time, sitting his big horse, with his blood-stained boot. The
regiment was surrounded on every side; already some of the companies
had left the field. Then, unable longer to restrain their flight, with
tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above his head:
“My children,” cried M. de Vineuil, “I commend you to the protection of
God, who thus far has spared us all!”
He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugitives, and
vanished from their sight.
Then, they knew not how, Maurice and Jean found themselves once more
behind the hedge, with the remnant of their company. Some forty men at
the outside were all that remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their
commander, and the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern who
carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to save
it. They made their way along the hedge, as far as it extended, to a
cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas made them halt and
reopen fire. The men, dispersed in skirmishing order and sufficiently
protected, could hold their ground, the more that an important cavalry
movement was in preparation on their right and regiments of infantry
were being brought up to support it.
It was at that moment that Maurice comprehended the full scope of that
mighty, irresistible turning movement that was now drawing near
completion. That morning he had watched the Prussians debouching by the
Saint-Albert pass and had seen their advanced guard pushed forward,
first to Saint-Menges, then to Fleigneux, and now, behind the wood of
la Garenne, he could hear the thunder of the artillery of the Guard,
could behold other German uniforms arriving on the scene over the hills
of Givonne. Yet a few moments, it might be, and the circle would be
complete; the Guard would join hands with the Vth corps, surrounding
the French army with a living wall, girdling them about with a belt of
flaming artillery. It was with the resolve to make one supreme,
desperate effort, to try to hew a passage through that advancing wall,
that General Margueritte’s division of the reserve cavalry was massing
behind a protecting crest preparatory to charging. They were about to
charge into the jaws of death, with no possibility of achieving any
useful result, solely for the glory of France and the French army. And
Maurice, whose thoughts turned to Prosper, was a witness of the
terrible spectacle.
What between the messages that were given him to carry and their
answers, Prosper had been kept busy since daybreak spurring up and down
the plateau of Illy. The cavalrymen had been awakened at peep of dawn,
man by man, without sound of trumpet, and to make their morning coffee
had devised the ingenious expedient of screening their fires with a
greatcoat so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. Then there
came a period when they were left entirely to themselves, with nothing
to occupy them; they seemed to be forgotten by their commanders. They
could hear the sound of the cannonading, could descry the puffs of
smoke, could see the distant movements of the infantry, but were
utterly ignorant of the battle, its importance, and its results.
Prosper, as far as he was concerned, was suffering from want of sleep.
The cumulative fatigue induced by many nights of broken rest, the
invincible somnolency caused by the easy gait of his mount, made life a
burden. He dreamed dreams and saw visions; now he was sleeping
comfortably in a bed between clean sheets, now snoring on the bare
ground among sharpened flints. For minutes at a time he would actually
be sound asleep in his saddle, a lifeless clod, his steed’s
intelligence answering for both. Under such circumstances comrades had
often tumbled from their seats upon the road. They were so fagged that
when they slept the trumpets no longer awakened them; the only way to
rouse them from their lethargy and get them on their feet was to kick
them soundly.
“But what are they going to do, what are they going to do with us?”
Prosper kept saying to himself. It was the only thing he could think of
to keep himself awake.
For six hours the cannon had been thundering. As they climbed a hill
two comrades, riding at his side, had been struck down by a shell, and
as they rode onward seven or eight others had bit the dust, pierced by
rifle-balls that came no one could say whence. It was becoming
tiresome, that slow parade, as useless as it was dangerous, up and down
the battlefield. At last—it was about one o’clock—he learned that it
had been decided they were to be killed off in a somewhat more decent
manner. Margueritte’s entire division, comprising three regiments of
chasseurs d’Afrique, one of chasseurs de France, and one of hussars,
had been drawn in and posted in a shallow valley a little to the south
of the Calvary of Illy. The trumpets had sounded: “Dismount!” and then
the officers’ command ran down the line to tighten girths and look to
packs.
Prosper alighted, stretched his cramped limbs, and gave Zephyr a
friendly pat upon the neck. Poor Zephyr! he felt the degradation of the
ignominious, heartbreaking service they were subjected to almost as
keenly as his master; and not only that, but he had to carry a small
arsenal of stores and implements of various kinds: the holsters stuffed
with his master’s linen and underclothing and the greatcoat rolled
above, the stable suit, blouse, and overalls, and the sack containing
brushes, currycomb, and other articles of equine toilet behind the
saddle, the haversack with rations slung at his side, to say nothing of
such trifles as side-lines and picket-pins, the watering bucket and the
wooden basin. The cavalryman’s tender heart was stirred by a feeling of
compassion, as he tightened up the girth and looked to see that
everything was secure in its place.
It was a trying moment. Prosper was no more a coward than the next man,
but his mouth was intolerably dry and hot; he lit a cigarette in the
hope that it would relieve the unpleasant sensation. When about to
charge no man can assert with any degree of certainty that he will ride
back again. The suspense lasted some five or six minutes; it was said
that General Margueritte had ridden forward to reconnoiter the ground
over which they were to charge; they were awaiting his return. The five
regiments had been formed in three columns, each column having a depth
of seven squadrons; enough to afford an ample meal to the hostile guns.
Presently the trumpets rang out: “To horse!” and this was succeeded
almost immediately by the shrill summons: “Draw sabers!”
The colonel of each regiment had previously ridden out and taken his
proper position, twenty-five yards to the front, the captains were all
at their posts at the head of their squadrons. Then there was another
period of anxious waiting, amid a silence heavy as that of death. Not a
sound, not a breath, there, beneath the blazing sun; nothing, save the
beating of those brave hearts. One order more, the supreme, the
decisive one, and that mass, now so inert and motionless, would become
a resistless tornado, sweeping all before it.
At that juncture, however, an officer appeared coming over the crest of
the hill in front, wounded, and preserving his seat in the saddle only
by the assistance of a man on either side. No one recognized him at
first, but presently a deep, ominous murmur began to run from squadron
to squadron, which quickly swelled into a furious uproar. It was
General Margueritte, who had received a wound from which he died a few
days later; a musket-ball had passed through both cheeks, carrying away
a portion of the tongue and palate. He was incapable of speech, but
waved his arm in the direction of the enemy. The fury of his men knew
no bounds; their cries rose louder still upon the air.
“It is our general! Avenge him, avenge him!”
Then the colonel of the first regiment, raising aloft his saber,
shouted in a voice of thunder:
“Charge!”
The trumpets sounded, the column broke into a trot and was away.
Prosper was in the leading squadron, but almost at the extreme right of
the right wing, a position of less danger than the center, upon which
the enemy always naturally concentrate their hottest fire. When they
had topped the summit of the Calvary and began to descend the slope
beyond that led downward into the broad plain he had a distinct view,
some two-thirds of a mile away, of the Prussian squares that were to be
the object of their attack. Beside that vision all the rest was dim and
confused before his eyes; he moved onward as one in a dream, with a
strange ringing in his ears, a sensation of voidness in his mind that
left him incapable of framing an idea. He was a part of the great
engine that tore along, controlled by a superior will. The command ran
along the line: “Keep touch of knees! Keep touch of knees!” in order to
keep the men closed up and give their ranks the resistance and rigidity
of a wall of granite, and as their trot became swifter and swifter and
finally broke into a mad gallop, the chasseurs d’Afrique gave their
wild Arab cry that excited their wiry steeds to the verge of frenzy.
Onward they tore, faster and faster still, until their gallop was a
race of unchained demons, their shouts the shrieks of souls in mortal
agony; onward they plunged amid a storm of bullets that rattled on
casque and breastplate, on buckle and scabbard, with a sound like hail;
into the bosom of that hailstorm flashed that thunderbolt beneath which
the earth shook and trembled, leaving behind it, as it passed, an odor
of burned woolen and the exhalations of wild beasts.
At five hundred yards the line wavered an instant, then swirled and
broke in a frightful eddy that brought Prosper to the ground. He
clutched Zephyr by the mane and succeeded in recovering his seat. The
center had given way, riddled, almost annihilated as it was by the
musketry fire, while the two wings had wheeled and ridden back a little
way to renew their formation. It was the foreseen, foredoomed
destruction of the leading squadron. Disabled horses covered the
ground, some quiet in death, but many struggling violently in their
strong agony; and everywhere dismounted riders could be seen, running
as fast as their short legs would let them, to capture themselves
another mount. Many horses that had lost their master came galloping
back to the squadron and took their place in line of their own accord,
to rush with their comrades back into the fire again, as if there was
some strange attraction for them in the smell of gunpowder. The charge
was resumed; the second squadron went forward, like the first, at a
constantly accelerated rate of speed, the men bending upon their
horses’ neck, holding the saber along the thigh, ready for use upon the
enemy. Two hundred yards more were gained this time, amid the
thunderous, deafening uproar, but again the center broke under the
storm of bullets; men and horses went down in heaps, and the piled
corpses made an insurmountable barrier for those who followed. Thus was
the second squadron in its turn mown down, annihilated, leaving its
task to be accomplished by those who came after.
When for the third time the men were called upon to charge and
responded with invincible heroism, Prosper found that his companions
were principally hussars and chasseurs de France. Regiments and
squadrons, as organizations, had ceased to exist; their constituent
elements were drops in the mighty wave that alternately broke and
reared its crest again, to swallow up all that lay in its destructive
path. He had long since lost distinct consciousness of what was going
on around him, and suffered his movements to be guided by his mount,
faithful Zephyr, who had received a wound in the ear that seemed to
madden him. He was now in the center, where all about him horses were
rearing, pawing the air, and falling backward; men were dismounted as
if torn from their saddle by the blast of a tornado, while others, shot
through some vital part, retained their seat and rode onward in the
ranks with vacant, sightless eyes. And looking back over the additional
two hundred yards that this effort had won for them, they could see the
field of yellow stubble strewn thick with dead and dying. Some there
were who had fallen headlong from their saddle and buried their face in
the soft earth. Others had alighted on their back and were staring up
into the sun with terror-stricken eyes that seemed bursting from their
sockets. There was a handsome black horse, an officer’s charger, that
had been disemboweled, and was making frantic efforts to rise, his fore
feet entangled in his entrails. Beneath the fire, that became
constantly more murderous as they drew nearer, the survivors in the
wings wheeled their horses and fell back to concentrate their strength
for a fresh onset.
Finally it was the fourth squadron, which, on the fourth attempt,
reached the Prussian lines. Prosper made play with his saber, hacking
away at helmets and dark uniforms as well as he could distinguish them,
for all was dim before him, as in a dense mist. Blood flowed in
torrents; Zephyr’s mouth was smeared with it, and to account for it he
said to himself that the good horse must have been using his teeth on
the Prussians. The clamor around him became so great that he could not
hear his own voice, although his throat seemed splitting from the yells
that issued from it. But behind the first Prussian line there was
another, and then another, and then another still. Their gallant
efforts went for nothing; those dense masses of men were like a tangled
jungle that closed around the horses and riders who entered it and
buried them in its rank growths. They might hew down those who were
within reach of their sabers; others stood ready to take their place,
the last squadrons were lost and swallowed up in their vast numbers.
The firing, at point-blank range, was so furious that the men’s
clothing was ignited. Nothing could stand before it, all went down; and
the work that it left unfinished was completed by bayonet and musket
butt. Of the brave men who rode into action that day two-thirds
remained upon the battlefield, and the sole end achieved by that mad
charge was to add another glorious page to history. And then Zephyr,
struck by a musket-ball full in the chest, dropped in a heap, crushing
beneath him Prosper’s right thigh; and the pain was so acute that the
young man fainted.
Maurice and Jean, who had watched the gallant effort with burning
interest, uttered an exclamation of rage.
“_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ what bravery wasted!”
And they resumed their firing from among the trees of the low hill
where they were deployed in skirmishing order. Rochas himself had
picked up an abandoned musket and was blazing away with the rest. But
the plateau of Illy was lost to them by this time beyond hope of
recovery; the Prussians were pouring in upon it from every quarter. It
was somewhere in the neighborhood of two o’clock, and their great
movement was accomplished; the Vth corps and the Guards had effected
their junction, the investment of the French army was complete.
Jean was suddenly brought to the ground.
“I am done for,” he murmured.
He had received what seemed to him like a smart blow of a hammer on the
crown of his head, and his _kepi_ lay behind him with a great furrow
plowed through its top. At first he thought that the bullet had
certainly penetrated the skull and laid bare the brain; his dread of
finding a yawning orifice there was so great that for some seconds he
dared not raise his hand to ascertain the truth. When finally he
ventured, his fingers, on withdrawing them, were red with an abundant
flow of blood, and the pain was so intense that he fainted.
Just then Rochas gave the order to fall back. The Prussians had crept
up on them and were only two or three hundred yards away; they were in
danger of being captured.
“Be cool, don’t hurry; face about and give ’em another shot. Rally
behind that low wall that you see down there.”
Maurice was in despair; he knew not what to do.
“We are not going to leave our corporal behind, are we, lieutenant?”
“What are we to do? he has turned up his toes.”
“No, no! he is breathing still. Take him along!”
Rochas shrugged his shoulders as if to say they could not bother
themselves for every man that dropped. A wounded man is esteemed of
little value on the battlefield. Then Maurice addressed his
supplications to Lapoulle and Pache.
“Come, give me a helping hand. I am not strong enough to carry him
unassisted.”
They were deaf to his entreaties; all they could hear was the voice
that urged them to seek safety for themselves. The Prussians were now
not more than a hundred yards from them; already they were on their
hands and knees, crawling as fast as they could go toward the wall.
And Maurice, weeping tears of rage, thus left alone with his
unconscious companion, raised him in his arms and endeavored to lug him
away, but he found his puny strength unequal to the task, exhausted as
he was by fatigue and the emotions of the day. At the first step he
took he reeled and fell with his burden. If only he could catch sight
of a stretcher-bearer! He strained his eyes, thought he had discovered
one among the crowd of fugitives, and made frantic gestures of appeal;
no one came, they were left behind, alone. Summoning up his strength
with a determined effort of the will he seized Jean once more and
succeeded in advancing some thirty paces, when a shell burst near them
and he thought that all was ended, that he, too, was to die on the body
of his comrade.
Slowly, cautiously, Maurice picked himself up. He felt his body, arms,
and legs; nothing, not a scratch. Why should he not look out for
himself and fly, alone? There was time left still; a few bounds would
take him to the wall and he would be saved. His horrible sensation of
fear returned and made him frantic. He was collecting his energies to
break away and run, when a feeling stronger than death intervened and
vanquished the base impulse. What, abandon Jean! he could not do it. It
would be like mutilating his own being; the brotherly affection that
had bourgeoned and grown between him and that rustic had struck its
roots down into his life, too deep to be slain like that. The feeling
went back to the earliest days, was perhaps as old as the world itself;
it was as if there were but they two upon earth, of whom one could not
forsake the other without forsaking himself, and being doomed
thenceforth to an eternity of solitude. Molded of the same clay,
quickened by the same spirit, duty imperiously commanded to save
himself in saving his brother.
Had it not been for the crust of bread he ate an hour before under the
Prussian shells Maurice could never have done what he did; _how_ he did
it he could never in subsequent days remember. He must have hoisted
Jean upon his shoulders and crawled through the brush and brambles,
falling a dozen times only to pick himself up and go on again,
stumbling at every rut, at every pebble. His indomitable will sustained
him, his dogged resolution would have enabled him to bear a mountain on
his back. Behind the low wall he found Rochas and the few men that were
left of the squad, firing away as stoutly as ever and defending the
flag, which the subaltern held beneath his arm. It had not occurred to
anyone to designate lines of retreat for the several army corps in case
the day should go against them; owing to this want of foresight every
general was at liberty to act as seemed to him best, and at this stage
of the conflict they all found themselves being crowded back upon Sedan
under the steady, unrelaxing pressure of the German armies. The second
division of the 7th corps fell back in comparatively good order, while
the remnants of the other divisions, mingled with the debris of the 1st
corps, were already streaming into the city in terrible disorder, a
roaring torrent of rage and fright that bore all, men and beasts,
before it.
But to Maurice, at that moment, was granted the satisfaction of seeing
Jean unclose his eyes, and as he was running to a stream that flowed
near by, for water with which to bathe his friend’s face, he was
surprised, looking down on his right into a sheltered valley that lay
between rugged slopes, to behold the same peasant whom he had seen that
morning, still leisurely driving the plow through the furrow with the
assistance of his big white horse. Why should he lose a day? Men might
fight, but none the less the corn would keep on growing; and folks must
live.