Now modern warfare, gentlemen, is a curious and inconsistent thing. It
is vast, and yet it is minute.
This battered regiment, added to the French armies at that moment, would
have been of small account. A burst of shrapnel, a mine, an unimportant
counter thrust might have accounted for them all. Their weight in an
attack would have been inconsiderable.
But this regiment which did not know how to surrender, and which was at
large behind the German lines, was another matter, my friends. It was
worth well nigh a division to France. For an army is as vulnerable as it
is vast, gentlemen; and it can do only one thing at a time.
The Emperor discovered this truth, long ago, in Spain. When he scattered
his army to overcome the guerillas, he exposed himself to the blows of
the Iron Duke; and when he effected a concentration to attack
Wellington, the Spanish peasants sliced off every straggler. He was
incessantly harassed, and he lost that campaign; and that was his first
defeat.
The warfare of today--or, let us say, the warfare of yesterday, which we
hope will never be the warfare of tomorrow--the warfare of yesterday was
like that. The army’s front is like the front of a dam, vast and
impregnable; but behind, that front is bolstered and strengthened and
buttressed by many little lines of communication and supply, just as a
dam may be buttressed on the lower side. A division may shatter itself
in vain against the army’s front; a hundred men may cut one of those
little lines behind.
This was the fact which aided Jacques Fontaine and his men, the
regiment.
You must understand, also, gentlemen, that in the heat of open battle, a
fighting line is an unstable thing. It sways, and bends, and yields, and
rebounds; and fragments are broken off from it. They return to their
places, or they do not return. At times, the line itself is shattered,
when it grows too thin. And when the line is shattered, its component
parts are thrown to every side. In open country, these component
parts--men, gentlemen--may be run down and sabred by the cavalry, or
they may surrender.
In wooded land, however, it is hard to exterminate men who will yield to
nothing less than extermination. Cavalry can work through the forest
only in small patrols, and along defined paths and roads. And for
infantry, the currying of a wood is slow and painful work.
Therefore, when an army makes a considerable advance, it leaves in its
rear many small and scattered parties of the enemy. It was so when the
Germans thrust down into France, gentlemen. There were many Frenchmen
left behind to wander and hide in the forest, to starve, or yield, or
die.... Or, perhaps, to survive.
This will explain to you, my friends, the growth of the regiment under
Jacques Fontaine’s command. When they scattered, after dispersing the
German force which had been set to hold them, there were scarce a
hundred of them without wounds. When they gathered at the Ravine of the
Cold Tooth, straggling parties had swelled that number so that Jacques
Fontaine, counting, with his big forefinger pointing in turn toward each
man and his lips mumbling as he counted, found that he had a force of
two hundred and seven hardy and energetic men.
And he was pleased.
The first thing this man did, gentlemen, was to reconstitute the
regiment. A regiment, you understand, is an immortal thing. It cannot
die. When every man of it is dead, the regiment still lives; because a
regiment is an idea, and ideas are eternal. Jacques Fontaine was a slow
man, my friends; and you would have considered him a dull man.
Nevertheless, this conception of the immortality of the regiment was a
part of his heart and his soul. If you had told him the regiment was
destroyed, he would have been very sorry for you.
They had saved their regimental colors, you understand; the banner with
its honorable decorations. They had saved this, and Jacques Fontaine’s
first act was to assign six men to guard this banner. He explained to
them, carefully, that they were to seclude themselves. They were to
engage in no enterprise involving hazard; and they were to keep the
standard immaculate and unstained. They were to fight only to defend it;
and they were to save it by evasion and flight when they could, and
fight only when they must.
Jacques Fontaine understood, gentlemen, that the banner is the regiment.
When he had made this arrangement, he called Lupec, and they found a man
skilled in writing, and they prepared a regimental roll. Those
stragglers from other regiments who had joined them were mustered in
after a formula which Jacques Fontaine devised. In the end, the two
hundred and seven men were one body and one soul, and Jacques Fontaine
was satisfied with the arrangement.
Having counted his men, he began, thriftily, to consider their
equipment.
He found that these two hundred and seven men had two hundred and
fifty-four rifles. A hundred or so of these rifles were German; and for
these weapons there was a plentiful supply of German ammunition. But
there were very few cartridges for the French rifles; there were only
the long, needle-like bayonets.
Jacques Fontaine was vexed with this discovery. He was one of those
penurious peasants whom De Maupassant knew how to paint, my friends. He
could not bear poverty, or waste. He derived a solid satisfaction from
the mere possession of wealth; and his conception of wealth was
strictly in accord with academic economic principles. Any useful article
was wealth to him.
He perceived that while his command was wealthy in rifles and bayonets,
it was very badly off indeed for cartridges.
He sat down on a big rock at the head of the ravine, while the men with
little fires cooked supper in the deeps below him; and he took off his
hat and scratched his head and considered what to do. Another man might
have chosen his course more swiftly; it required some hours for Jacques
Fontaine to make up his mind.
But when he rose from the rock, this man had laid out before his feet
the path they were to follow through the four interminable and glorious
years which were to come.
Any other man would have been wise enough to know that the plan he had
chosen was impossible. Jacques Fontaine was valorously stupid. He did
not know he could not do that which he planned to do, gentlemen.
Therefore, he did the impossible.