The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (85 page)

CHAPTER XVI

We passed the Meuse on the 12th, and during the 13th and 14th we marched along the wretched roads, bordered with grain fields, barley, oats, and hemp, without end. The heat was extraordinary, the sweat ran down to our hips from under our knapsacks and cartridge-boxes. What a misfortune to be poor, and unable to buy a man to march and take the musket-shots in our place! After having gone through the rain, wind, and snow, and mud, in Germany, the turn of the sun and dust had come. And I saw too, that the destruction was approaching, you could hear the sound of the drum and the bugle in every direction, and whenever the battalion passed over an elevation long lines of helmets and lances and bayonets were seen as far as the eye could reach.

Zébédé, with his musket on his shoulder, would exclaim cheerfully, “Well, Joseph! we are going to see the whites of the Prussians’ eyes again;” and I would force myself to reply, “Oh! yes, the weddings will soon begin again.” As if I wanted to risk my life and leave Catherine a young widow for the sake of something which did not in the least concern me.

That same day at seven o’clock we reached Roly. The hussars occupied the town already, and we were obliged to bivouac in a deep road along the side of the hill. We had hardly stacked our arms when several general officers arrived. The Commandant Gémeau, who had just dismounted, sprang upon his horse and hurried to meet them. They conversed a moment together and came down into our road. Everybody looked on and said, “Something has happened.” One of the officers, General Pechaux, whom we knew afterward, ordered the drums to beat, and shouted, “Form a circle.” The road was too narrow, and some of the soldiers went up on the slope each side of the road, while the others remained on the road. All the battalion looked on while the general unrolled a paper, and said, “Proclamation from the Emperor.”

When he had said that, the silence was so profound that you would have thought yourself alone in the midst of these great fields. Every one, from the last conscript to the Commandant Gémeau, listened, and, even to-day, when I think of it, after fifty years, it moves my heart; it was grand and terrible. This is what the general read:

“Soldiers! To-day is the anniversary of Marengo and of Friedland, which twice decided the fate of Europe! Then, as after Austerlitz and after Wagram, we were too generous, we believed the protestations and the oaths of princes, whom we left on their thrones. They have combined to attack the independence and even the most sacred rights of France. They have commenced the most unjust aggressions, let us meet them! They and we,—are we no longer of the same race?”

The whole battalion shouted, “
Vive l’Empereur
.” The general raised his hand, and all were silent.

“Soldiers! at Jena, we were as one to three against these Prussians who are so arrogant to-day; at Montmirail we were as one against six! Let those among you who have been prisoners of the English tell the tale of their frightful sufferings in their prison ships. The Saxons, the Belgians, the Hanoverians, the soldiers of the Confederation of the Rhine, complain that they are compelled to lend their arms to princes who are enemies of justice and of the rights of all nations. They know that this coalition is insatiable. After having devoured twelve millions of Poles, twelve millions of Italians, one million of Saxons, six millions of Belgians, it will devour all the states of the second order in Germany. Madmen! a moment of prosperity has blinded them; the oppression and humiliation of the French people is beyond their power. If they enter France they will find their graves there. Soldiers, we have forced marches to make, battles to wage, and perils to encounter, but, if we are constant, victory will be ours. The rights of man and the happiness of our country will be reconquered. For all Frenchmen, who have hearts, the time has come to conquer or to perish.—NAPOLEON.”

The shouts which arose were like thunder, it was as if the Emperor had breathed his war spirit into our hearts, and moved us as one man to destroy our enemies. The shouts continued long after the general had gone, and even I was satisfied. I saw that it was the truth, that the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, who had talked so much of the deliverance of the people, had profited by the first opportunity to grasp everything, that those grand words about liberty, which had served to excite their young men against us in 1813, and all the promises of constitutions which they had made, had been set aside and broken. I looked upon them as beggars, as men who had not kept their word, who despised the people, and whose ideas were very narrow and limited, and consisted in always keeping the best place for themselves and their children and descendants whether they were good or bad, just or unjust, without any reference to God’s law. That was the way I looked at it; the proclamation seemed to me very beautiful. I thought too, that Father Goulden would be pleased with it, because the Emperor had not forgotten the rights of man, which are liberty, equality, and justice, and all those grand ideas which distinguish men from brutes, causing them to respect themselves and the rights of their neighbors also. Our courage was greatly strengthened by these strong and just words. The old soldiers laughed and said, “We shall not be kept waiting this time. On the first march we shall fall upon the Prussians.”

But the conscripts, who had never yet heard the bullets whistle, were the most excited of all. Buche’s eyes sparkled like those of a cat, as he sat on the road-side, with his knapsack opened on the slope, slowly sharpening his sabre, and trying the edge on the toe of his shoe. Others were setting their bayonets and adjusting their flints, as they always do when on the eve of a battle. At those times their heads are full of thought, which makes them knit their brows, and compress their lips; giving them anything but pleasant faces.

The sun sank lower and lower behind the grain fields, several detachments of men went to the village for wood, and they brought back onions and leeks and salt, and even several quarters of beef were hung on long sticks over their shoulders. But it was when the men were around the fires, watching their kettles as they commenced to boil, and the smoke went curling up into the air, that their faces were happiest, one would talk of Lutzen, another of Wagram, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Friedland, of Spain, of Portugal, and of all the countries in the world. They all talked at once, but only the old soldiers whose arms were covered with chevrons, were listened to. They were most interesting, as they marked the positions on the ground with their fingers, and explained them by a line on the right, and a line on the left. You seemed to see it all while listening to them. Each one had his pewter spoon at his button-hole, and kept thinking, “The soup will be capital, the meat is good and fat.”

When we were stationed for the night, the order was given to extinguish the fires and not to beat the retreat, which indicated that the enemy was near, and that they feared to alarm them.

The moon was shining, and Buche and I were eating at the same mess; when we had finished, he talked to me more than two hours about his life at Harberg, how they were obliged to drag two or three cords of wood on great sleds at the risk of being run over and crushed, especially when the snow was melting. Compared with that, the life of a soldier, with his pleasant mess and good bread, regular rations, the neat warm uniform, the stout linen shirts, seemed to him delightful. He had never dreamed that he could be so comfortable, and his strongest desire was to let his two younger brothers, Gaspard and Jacob, know how delighted he was, in order that they might enlist as soon as they were old enough.

“Yes,” said I, “that is all very well,—but the English and Prussians,—you do not think of that.”

“I despise them,” said he, “my sabre cuts like a butcher’s knife, and my bayonet is sharp as a needle. It is they who should be afraid to encounter me.”

We were the best friends in the world, and I liked him almost as well as my old comrades Klipfel, Furst, and Zébédé. And he liked me too. I believe he would have let himself be cut to pieces to save me from danger. Old comrades and bed-fellows never forget each other. In my time, old Harwig whom I knew in Pfalzbourg, always received a pension from his old comrade Bernadotte, King of Sweden. If I had been a king, Jean Buche should have had a pension, for if he had not a great mind he had a good heart, which is better still.

While we were talking, Zébédé came and tapped me on the shoulder.

“You do not smoke, Joseph?”

“I have no tobacco.”

Then he gave me half of a package which he had and I saw that he loved me still, in spite of the difference in our rank, and that touched me. He was beside himself with delight at the thought of attacking the Prussians.

“We’ll be revenged!” he cried. “No quarter! they shall pay for all, from Katzbach even to Soissons.”

You would have thought that those English and Prussians were not going to defend themselves, and that we ran no risk of catching bullets and canister as at Lutzen and at Gross-Beren, at Leipzig and everywhere else. But what could you say to a man who remembered nothing and who always looked on the bright side?

I smoked my pipe quietly and replied, “Yes! yes! we’ll settle the rascals, we’ll push them! They’ll see enough of us!”

I left Jean Buche with his pipe, and as we were on guard, Zébédé went about nine o’clock to relieve the sentinels at the head of the picket. I stepped a little out of the circle and stretched myself in a furrow a few steps in the rear with my knapsack under my head. The weather was warm, and we heard the crickets long after the sun went down. A few stars shone in the heavens. There was not a breath of air stirring over the plain, the ears of grain stood erect and motionless, and in the distance the village clocks struck nine, ten, and eleven, but at last I dropped asleep. This was the night of the 14th and 15th of June, 1815. Between two and three in the morning Zébédé came and shook me. “Up!” said he, “come!” Buche had stretched himself beside me also, and we rose at once. It was our turn to relieve the guard. It was still dark, but there was a line of light along the horizon at the edge of the grain fields. Thirty paces farther on, Lieutenant Bretonville was waiting for us, surrounded by the picket. It is hard to get up out of a sound sleep after a march of ten hours. But we buckled on our knapsacks as we went, and I relieved the sentinel behind the hedge opposite Roly. The countersign was “Jemmapes and Fleurus,” this struck me at once, I had not heard this countersign since 1813. How memory sleeps sometimes for years! I seem to see the picket now as they turn into the road, while I renew the priming of my gun by the light of the stars, and I hear the other sentinels marching slowly back and forth, while the footsteps of the picket grew faint and fainter in the distance. I marched up and down the hedge with my gun on my arm. There was nothing to be seen but the village with its thatched roofs and the slated church spire a little farther on; and a mounted sentinel stationed in the road with his blunderbuss resting on his thigh looking out into the night. I walked up and down thinking and listening. Everything slept. The white line along the horizon grew broader. Another half hour and the distant country began to appear in the gray light of morning. Two or three quails called and answered each other across the plain. As I heard these sounds I stopped and thought sadly of Quatre Vents, Danne, the Baraques-du-bois-de-chênes, and of our grain fields, where the quails were calling from the edge of the forest of Bonne Fontaine. “Is Catherine asleep? and Aunt Grédel and Father Goulden and all the town? The national guard from Nancy has taken our place.” I saw the sentinels of the two magazines and the guard at the two gates; in short, thoughts without number came and went, when I heard a horse galloping in the distance, but I could see nothing.

In a few minutes he entered the village, and all was still except a sort of confused tumult. In an instant after, the horseman came from Roly into our road at full gallop. I advanced to the edge of the hedge and presented my musket, and cried, “Who goes there?”

“France!”

“What regiment?”

“Twelfth chasseurs! Staff.”

“Pass on!”

He went on his way faster than before. I heard him stop in the midst of our encampment, and call “Commandant.” I advanced to the top of the hill to see what was going on. There was a great excitement; the officers came running up, and the soldiers gathered round. The chasseur was speaking to Gémeau, I listened, but was too far away to hear. The courier went on again up the hill, and everything was in an uproar. They shouted and gesticulated. Suddenly the drums beat to mount guard, and the relief turned a corner in the road.

I saw Zébédé in the distance looking pale as death; as he passed me he said, “Come!” the two other sentinels were in their places a little to the left. Talking is not allowed when under arms, but, notwithstanding, Zébédé said, “Joseph, we are betrayed. Bourmont, general of the division in advance, and five other brigands of the same sort, have just gone over to the enemy.” His voice trembled.

My blood boiled, and looking at the other men on the picket, two old soldiers with chevrons, I saw their lips quiver under their gray mustaches, their eyes rolled fiercely as if they were meditating vengeance, but they said nothing. We hurried on to relieve the other two sentinels. Some minutes afterward, on returning to our bivouac, we found the battalion already under arms and ready to move. Fury and indignation were stamped on every face, the drums beat and we formed ranks, the commandant and the adjutant waited on horseback at the head of the battalion, pale as ashes.

I remember that the commandant suddenly drew his sword as a signal to stop the drums, and tried to speak, but the words would not come, and he began to shout like a madman: “Ah! the wretches! miserable villains!
Vive l’Empereur
! No quarter!” He stammered and did not know what he said, but the battalion thought he was eloquent, and began to shout as one man, “Forward! forward! to the enemy! no quarter!” We went through the village at quick step, and the meanest soldier was furious at not finding the Prussians.