The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (96 page)

At the slope of the ravine in the rear of the inn “Passe-Avant,” some Prussian hussars rushed upon us: there were not more than five or six of them, and they called out to us to surrender; but if we had raised the butts of our muskets, they would have sabred us. We aimed at them, and seeing that we were not wounded, they passed on.

This forced us to return to the road, where the uproar could be heard for at least two leagues; cavalry, infantry, artillery, ambulances, and baggage-wagons, were creeping along the road pell-mell, howling, beating, neighing, and weeping. The retreat at Leipzig furnished no such spectacle as this.

The moon rose above the wood behind Planchenois, and lighted up this crowd of shapskas,
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bear-skin caps, helmets, sabres, bayonets, broken caissons, and abandoned cannon; the crowd and confusion increased every moment, plaintive howls were heard from one end of the line to the other, rolling up and down the hill-side and dying away in the distance like a sigh.

But the saddest of all, were the cries of the women, those unhappy creatures who follow armies. When they were knocked down or crowded out on to the slope with their carts, their screams could be heard above all the uproar, but no one turned his head, not a man stretched out a hand to help them: “Every one for himself!—I shall crush you,—so much the worse for you,—I am the stronger—you scream, but it is all the same to me!—take care,—take care—I am on horseback—I shall hit you!—room—let me get away—the others do just the same—room for the Emperor! room for the marshal!” The strong crush the weak—the only thing in the world is strength! On! on! Let the cannons crush everything, if we can only save them!

But the cannon can move no farther,—unhitch them, cut the traces, and the horses will carry us off. Make them go as fast as possible, and if they break down—then let them go? If we were not the stronger our turn would come to be crushed—we should cry out and everybody would mock at our complaints. Save himself who can—and “
Vive l’Empereur!
”

“But the Emperor is dead!”

Everybody thought the Emperor had died with, the Old Guard; that seemed perfectly natural.

The Prussian cavalry passed us in files with drawn sabres, shouting, “Hurrah!” They seemed to be escorting us, but they sabred every one who straggled from the road, and took no prisoners, neither did they attack the column; a few musket-shots passed over us from the right and left.

Far in the rear we could see a red light: this was the farm-house at Caillou.

We hastened onward, borne down with fatigue, hunger, and despair; we were ready to die, but still the hope of escape sustained us. Buche said to me as we went along, “Joseph, let us help each other.”

“I will never abandon you,” I replied. “We will die together. I can hold out no longer, it is too terrible,—we might better lie down at once.”

“No, let us keep on,” said he. “The Prussians make no prisoners. Look! they kill without mercy, just as we did at Ligny.”

We kept on in the same direction with thousands of others, sullen and discouraged, and yet we would turn round all at once and close our ranks and fire, when a squadron of Prussians came too near. We were still firm, still the stronger from time to time; we found abandoned gun-carriages, caissons, and cannons, and the ditches on either side were full of knapsacks, cartridge-boxes, guns, and sabres, which had been thrown away by the men to facilitate their flight.

But the most terrible thing of all was the great ambulances in the middle of the road filled with the wounded. The drivers had cut the traces and fled with the horses for fear of being taken prisoners. The poor half-dead wretches, with their arms hanging down, looked at us as we passed with despairing eyes.

When I think of all this now, it reminds me of the tufts of straw and hay which lodge among the bushes after an inundation. We say “That is our harvest, this is our crop, that is what the tempest has left us.”

Ah! I have had many such reflections during fifty years!

What grieved me most and made my heart bleed in the midst of this rout was that I could not discover a single man of our battalion besides ourselves. I said to myself, “They cannot all be dead;” and I said to Buche:

“If I could only find Zébédé it would give me back my courage.”

But he replied: “Let us try to save ourselves, Joseph. As for me, if I ever see Harberg again, I will not complain because I have to eat potatoes. No, no. God has punished me. I shall be contented to work and go into the woods with my axe on my shoulder. If only I do not go home maimed, and if I am not compelled to hold out my hand at the roadside in order to live, like so many others. Let us try to get home safe and sound.”

I thought he showed great good sense.

At about half-past ten, as we reached the environs of Genappe, terrible cries were heard in the distance. Fires of straw had been lighted in the middle of the principal street to give light to the multitude, and we could see from where we were, that the houses were full of people and the streets so full of horses and baggage that they could not move a step. We knew that the Prussians might come at any moment, and that they would have cannon; and that it would be better for us if we went round the village than to be taken prisoners altogether. This was why we turned to the left across the grain fields with a great many others. We crossed the Thy in water up to our waists, and toward midnight we reached Quatre-Bras.

We had done well not to stop at Genappe, for we already heard the roar of the Prussian cannon and musketry near the village. Great numbers of fugitives came along the road, cuirassiers, lancers, and chasseurs. Not one of them stopped.

We began to be terribly hungry. We knew very well that everything in these houses must have been eaten long ago, but still we went into the one on the left. The floor was covered with straw, on which the wounded were lying. We had hardly opened the door when they all began to cry out at once; to tell the truth, the stench was so horrible that we left immediately and took the road to Charleroi. The moon shone beautifully, and we could see on the right amongst the grain a quantity of dead men, who had not yet been buried.

Buche followed a furrow about twenty-five paces, to where three or four Englishmen were lying one on the top of the other. I asked him what he was going to do amongst the dead.

He came back with a tin bottle, and shaking it at his ear, he said, “Joseph, it is full.”

He dipped it in the water of the ditch before opening it, and then took out the cork and drank, saying, “It is brandy!”

He passed it to me, and I drank also. I felt my life returning, and I gave him back the bottle half full, thanking God for the good idea that he had given us.

We looked on all sides to see if we could not find some bread in the haversacks of the dead, but the uproar increased, and as we could not resist the Prussians if they should surround us, we set off again full of strength and courage. The brandy made us look at everything on the bright side already, and I said to Buche:

“Jean, now the worst is over and we shall see Pfalzbourg and Harberg again. We are on a good road which will take us back to France. If we had gained the battle, we should have been forced to go still farther into Germany, and we should have been obliged to fight the Austrians and the Russians, and if we had had the good fortune to escape with our lives, we should have returned old gray-haired veterans, and should have been compelled to keep garrison at ‘Petite Pierre,’ or somewhere else.”

These miserable thoughts ran through my head, but I marched on with more courage, and Buche said:

“The English are right in having their bottles made of tin, for if I had not seen this shining in the moonlight, I should never have thought of going to look for it.”

Every moment while we were talking in this way men were riding by, their horses almost ready to drop, but by beating and spurring, they kept them trotting just the same.

The noise of the retreating army began to reach our ears again in the distance, but fortunately we had the advance.

It might have been about one o’clock in the morning, and we thought ourselves safe, when suddenly Buche said to me:

“Joseph, here are the Prussians!”

And looking behind us, I saw in the moonlight five bronzed hussars from the same regiment as those who, the year before, had cut poor Klipfel to pieces. I thought this was a bad sign.

“Is your gun loaded?” I asked Buche.

“Yes.”

“Well! let us wait, we must defend ourselves, I will not surrender.”

“Nor I either,” said he, “I had rather die than to be taken prisoner.”

At the same moment the Prussian officer shouted arrogantly, “Lay down your arms.”

Instead of waiting, as I did, Buche discharged the contents of his musket full in the officer’s breast. Then the other four fell upon us. Buche received a blow from a sabre which cut his shako down to the visor, but with one thrust with his bayonet he killed his antagonist. Three of them still remained. My musket was loaded. Buche planted himself with his back against a nut-tree, and every time the Prussians, who had fallen back, approached us, I took aim. Neither of them wanted to be the first to die! As we waited, Buche with his bayonet fixed and I with my musket at my shoulder, we heard a galloping on the road. This frightened us, for we thought more Prussians were coming, but they were our lancers. The hussars then turned off into the grain, and Buche hastened to re-load his gun.

Our lancers passed and we followed them on the run.

An officer who joined us, said that the Emperor had set out for Paris, and that King Jerome had just taken command of the army.

Buche’s scalp was laid completely open, but the bone was not injured, and the blood ran down his cheeks. He bound up his head with his handkerchief.

After that we saw no more Prussians.

About two o’clock in the morning, we were so weary we could hardly take another step. About two hundred paces to the left of the road there was a little beech grove. Buche said: “Look, Joseph, let us go in there and lie down and sleep.”

It was just what I wanted.

We went down across the oat-field to the wood, and entered a close thicket of young trees.

We had both kept our guns and knapsacks and cartridge-boxes. We laid our knapsacks on the ground for a pillow, and it had long been broad daylight, and the retreating crowd had been passing for hours, when we awoke and quietly pursued our journey.

CHAPTER XXII

Numbers of our comrades and of the wounded remained behind at Gosselies, but the larger part of the army kept on their way, and about nine o’clock we began to see the spires of Charleroi in the distance, when suddenly we heard shouts, cries, complaints, and shots intermingled, half a league before us.

The whole immense column of miserable wretches halted, shouting: “The city closes its doors against us! we are stopped here!”

Consternation and despair were stamped on every face.

But a moment after, the news came that the convoys of provisions were coming and that they would not distribute them.

“Let us fall upon them! Kill the rascals who are starving us! We are betrayed!”

The most fearful and the most exhausted quickened their pace, and drew their sabres or loaded their muskets.

It was plain that there would be a veritable butchery if the guards did not give way. Buche himself shouted:

“They ought all to be murdered, we are betrayed. Come, Joseph, let us be revenged.”

But I held him back by the collar and exclaimed:

“No, Jean, no! We have had murders enough already, and we have escaped all, and we do not want to be killed here by Frenchmen. Come!”

He struggled still, but at last I showed him a village on the left of the road and said:

“Look! there is the road to Harberg, and there are houses like those at Quatre Vents; let us go there and ask for bread; I have money, and we shall certainly find some. That will be better than to attack the convoys like a pack of wolves.”

He allowed himself to be persuaded at last, and we set off once more through the grain. If hunger had not urged us on, we should have sat down on the side of the path at every step. But at the end of half an hour, thanks to God, we reached a sort of farm-house; it was abandoned, with the windows broken out, and the door wide open, and great heaps of black earth lying about. We went in and shouted, “Is there no one here?”

We knocked against the furniture with the butts of our muskets, but not a soul answered. Our fury increased, because we saw several wretches, following the route by which we had come, and we thought, “They are coming to eat up our bread.”

Ah! those who have never suffered these privations cannot comprehend the fury which possessed us. It was horrible—horrible!

We had already broken open the door of a cupboard filled with linen, and were turning over everything with our bayonets, when an old woman came out from behind a table, which hid the passage to the cellar. She sobbed and exclaimed:

“My God, my God! have mercy upon us.”

The house had been pillaged early in the morning; they had taken away the horses, the master had disappeared and the servants had fled.