The Downfall
Part I
Chapter III
Maurice was greatly surprised when the 106th, leaving the cars at Rheims,
received orders to go into camp there. So they were not to go to Chalons, then,
and unite with the army there? And when, two hours later, his regiment had
stacked muskets a league or so from the city over in the direction of
Courcelles, in the broad plain that lies along the canal between the Aisne and
Marne, his astonishment was greater still to learn that the entire army of
Chalons had been falling back all that morning and was about to bivouac at that
place. From one extremity of the horizon to the other, as far as Saint Thierry
and Menvillette, even beyond the Laon road, the tents were going up, and when it
should be night the fires of four army-corps would be blazing there. It was
evident that the plan now was to go and take a position under the walls of Paris
and there await the Prussians; and it was fortunate that that plan had received
the approbation of the government, for was it not the wisest thing they could
do?
Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about the camp in
search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed; discipline appeared to have been
relaxed still further, the men went and came at their own sweet will. He found
no obstacle in the way of his return to the city, where he desired to cash a
money-order for a hundred francs that his sister Henriette had sent him. While
in a cafe he heard a sergeant telling of the disaffection that existed in the
eighteen battalions of the garde mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent
back to Paris; the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a day
passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, and since Froeschwiller
the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal MacMahon the military salute. The cafe
resounded with the sound of voices in excited conversation; a violent dispute
arose between two sedate burghers in respect to the number of men that MacMahon
would have at his disposal. One of them made the wild assertion that there would
be three hundred thousand; the other, who seemed to be more at home upon the
subject, stated the strength of the four corps: the 12th, which had just been
made complete at the camp with great difficulty with the assistance of
provisional regiments and a division of infanterie de marine; the 1st, which had
been coming straggling in in fragments ever since the 14th of the month and of
which they were doing what they could to perfect the organization; the 5th,
defeated before it had ever fought a battle, swept away and broken up in the
general panic, and finally, the 7th, then landing from the cars, demoralized
like all the rest and minus its 1st division, of which it had just recovered the
remains at Rheims; in all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the outside,
including the cavalry, Bonnemain's and Margueritte's divisions. When the
sergeant took a hand in the quarrel, however, speaking of the army in terms of
the utmost contempt, characterizing it as a ruffianly rabble, with no esprit
de corps, with nothing to keep it together,—a pack of greenhorns with idiots
to conduct them, to the slaughter,—the two bourgeois began to be uneasy, and
fearing there might be trouble brewing, made themselves scarce.
When outside upon the street Maurice hailed a newsboy and purchased a copy of
every paper he could lay hands on, stuffing some in his pockets and reading
others as he walked along under the stately trees that line the pleasant avenues
of the old city. Where could the German armies be? It seemed as if obscurity had
suddenly swallowed them up. Two were over Metz way, of course: the first, the
one commanded by General von Steinmetz, observing the place; the second, that of
Prince Frederick Charles, aiming to ascend the right bank of the Moselle in
order to cut Bazaine off from Paris. But the third army, that of the Crown
Prince of Prussia, the army that had been victorious at Wissembourg and
Froeschwiller and had driven our 1st and 5th corps, where was it now, where was
it to be located amid the tangled mess of contradictory advices? Was it still in
camp at Nancy, or was it true that it had arrived before Chalons, and was that
the reason why we had abandoned our camp there in such hot haste, burning our
stores, clothing, forage, provisions, everything—property of which the value to
the nation was beyond compute? And when the different plans with which our
generals were credited came to be taken into consideration, then there was more
confusion, a fresh set of contradictory hypotheses to be encountered. Maurice
had until now been cut off in a measure from the outside world, and now for the
first time learned what had been the course of events in Paris; the blasting
effect of defeat upon a populace that had been confident of victory, the
terrible commotions in the streets, the convoking of the Chambers, the fall of
the liberal ministry that had effected the plebiscite, the abrogation of the
Emperor's rank as General of the Army and the transfer of the supreme command to
Marshal Bazaine. The Emperor had been present at the camp of Chalons since the
16th, and all the newspapers were filled with a grand council that had been held
on the 17th, at which Prince Napoleon and some of the generals were present, but
none of them were agreed upon the decisions that had been arrived at outside of
the resultant facts, which were that General Trochu had been appointed governor
of Paris and Marshal MacMahon given the command of the army of Chalons, and the
inference from this was that the Emperor was to be shorn of all his authority.
Consternation, irresolution, conflicting plans that were laid aside and replaced
by fresh ones hour by hour; these were the things that everybody felt were in
the air. And ever and always the question: Where were the German armies? Who
were in the right, those who asserted that Bazaine had no force worth mentioning
in front of him and was free to make his retreat through the towns of the north
whenever he chose to do so, or those who declared that he was already besieged
in Metz? There was a constantly recurring rumor of a series of engagements that
had raged during an entire week, from the 14th until the 20th, but it failed to
receive confirmation.
Maurice's legs ached with fatigue; he went and sat down upon a bench. Around
him the life of the city seemed to be going on as usual; there were nursemaids
seated in the shade of the handsome trees watching the sports of their little
charges, small property owners strolled leisurely about the walks enjoying their
daily constitutional. He had taken up his papers again, when his eyes lighted on
an article that had escaped his notice, the "leader" in a rabid republican
sheet; then everything was made clear to him. The paper stated that at the
council of the 17th at the camp of Chalons the retreat of the army on Paris had
been fully decided on, and that General Trochu's appointment to the command of
the city had no other object than to facilitate the Emperor's return; but those
resolutions, the journal went on to say, were rendered unavailing by the
attitude of the Empress-regent and the new ministry. It was the Empress's
opinion that the Emperor's return would certainly produce a revolution; she was
reported to have said: "He will never reach the Tuileries alive." Starting with
these premises she insisted with the utmost urgency that the army should
advance, at every risk, whatever might be the cost of human life, and effect a
junction with the army of Metz, in which course she was supported moreover by
General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had a plan of his own for reaching
Bazaine by a rapid and victorious march. And Maurice, letting his paper fall
from his hand, his eyes bent on space, believed that he now had the key to the
entire mystery; the two conflicting plans, MacMahon's hesitation to undertake
that dangerous flank movement with the unreliable army at his command, the
impatient orders that came to him from Paris, each more tart and imperative than
its predecessor, urging him on to that mad, desperate enterprise. Then, as the
central figure in that tragic conflict, the vision of the Emperor suddenly rose
distinctly before his inner eyes, deprived of his imperial authority, which he
had committed to the hands of the Empress-regent, stripped of his military
command, which he had conferred on Marshal Bazaine; a nullity, the vague and
unsubstantial shadow of an emperor, a nameless, cumbersome nonentity whom no one
knew what to do with, whom Paris rejected and who had ceased to have a position
in the army, for he had pledged himself to issue no further orders.
The next morning, however, after a rainy night through which he slept outside
his tent on the bare ground, wrapped in his rubber blanket, Maurice was cheered
by the tidings that the retreat on Paris had finally carried the day. Another
council had been held during the night, it was said, at which M. Rouher, the
former vice-Emperor, had been present; he had been sent by the Empress to
accelerate the movement toward Verdun, and it would seem that the marshal had
succeeded in convincing him of the rashness of such an undertaking. Were there
unfavorable tidings from Bazaine? no one could say for certain. But the absence
of news was itself a circumstance of evil omen, and all among the most
influential of the generals had cast their vote for the march on Paris, for
which they would be the relieving army. And Maurice, happy in the conviction
that the retrograde movement would commence not later than the morrow, since the
orders for it were said to be already issued, thought he would gratify a boyish
longing that had been troubling him for some time past, to give the go-by for
one day to soldier's fare, to wit and eat his breakfast off a cloth, with the
accompaniment of plate, knife and fork, carafe, and a bottle of good wine,
things of which it seemed to him that he had been deprived for months and
months. He had money in his pocket, so off he started with quickened pulse, as
if going out for a lark, to search for a place of entertainment.
It was just at the entrance of the village of Courcelles, across the canal,
that he found the breakfast for which his mouth was watering. He had been told
the day before that the Emperor had taken up his quarters in one of the houses
of the village, and having gone to stroll there out of curiosity, now remembered
to have seen at the junction of the two roads this little inn with its arbor,
the trellises of which were loaded with big clusters of ripe, golden, luscious
grapes. There was an array of green-painted tables set out in the shade of the
luxuriant vine, while through the open door of the vast kitchen he had caught
glimpses of the antique clock, the colored prints pasted on the walls, and the
comfortable landlady watching the revolving spit. It was cheerful, smiling,
hospitable; a regular type of the good old-fashioned French hostelry.
A pretty, white-necked waitress came up and asked him with a great display of
flashing teeth:
"Will monsieur have breakfast?"
"Of course I will! Give me some eggs, a cutlet, and cheese. And a bottle of
white wine!"
She turned to go; he called her back. "Tell me, is it not in one of those
houses that the Emperor has his quarters?"
"There, monsieur, in that one right before you. Only you can't see it, for it
is concealed by the high wall with the overhanging trees."
He loosed his belt so as to be more at ease in his capote, and entering the
arbor, chose his table, on which the sunlight, finding its way here and there
through the green canopy above, danced in little golden spangles. And constantly
his thoughts kept returning to that high wall behind which was the Emperor. A
most mysterious house it was, indeed, shrinking from the public gaze, even its
slated roof invisible. Its entrance was on the other side, upon the village
street, a narrow winding street between dead-walls, without a shop, without even
a window to enliven it. The small garden in the rear, among the sparse dwellings
that environed it, was like an island of dense verdure. And across the road he
noticed a spacious courtyard, surrounded by sheds and stables, crowded with a
countless train of carriages and baggage-wagons, among which men and horses,
coming and going, kept up an unceasing bustle.
"Are those all for the service of the Emperor?" he inquired, meaning to say
something humorous to the girl, who was laying a snow-white cloth upon the
table.
"Yes, for the Emperor himself, and no one else!" she pleasantly replied, glad
of a chance to show her white teeth once more; and then she went on to enumerate
the suite from information that she had probably received from the stablemen,
who had been coming to the inn to drink since the preceding day; there were the
staff, comprising twenty-five officers, the sixty cent-gardes and the half-troop
of guides for escort duty, the six gendarmes of the provost-guard; then the
household, seventy-three persons in all, chamberlains, attendants for the table
and the bedroom, cooks and scullions; then four saddle-horses and two carriages
for the Emperor's personal use, ten horses for the equerries, eight for the
grooms and outriders, not mentioning forty-seven post-horses; then a char a
banc and twelve baggage wagons, two of which, appropriated to the cooks, had
particularly excited her admiration by reason of the number and variety of the
utensils they contained, all in the most splendid order.
"Oh, sir, you never saw such stew-pans! they shone like silver. And all sorts
of dishes, and jars and jugs, and lots of things of which it would puzzle me to
tell the use! And a cellar of wine, claret, burgundy, and champagne—yes! enough
to supply a wedding feast."
The unusual luxury of the snowy table-cloth and the white wine sparkling in
his glass sharpened Maurice's appetite; he devoured his two poached eggs with a
zest that made him fear he was developing epicurean tastes. When he turned to
the left and looked out through the entrance of the leafy arbor he had before
him the spacious plain, covered with long rows of tents: a busy, populous city
that had risen like an exhalation from the stubble-fields between Rheims city
and the canal. A few clumps of stunted trees, three wind-mills lifting their
skeleton arms in the air, were all there was to relieve the monotony of the gray
waste, but above the huddled roofs of Rheims, lost in the sea of foliage of the
tall chestnut-trees, the huge bulk of the cathedral with its slender spires was
profiled against the blue sky, looming colossal, notwithstanding the distance,
beside the modest houses. Memories of school and boyhood's days came over him,
the tasks he had learned and recited: all about the sacre of our kings,
the sainte ampoule, Clovis, Jeanne d'Arc, all the long list of glories of
old France.
Then Maurice's thoughts reverted again to that unassuming bourgeoise house,
so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial occupant; and directing his eyes
upon the high, yellow wall he was surprised to read, scrawled there in great,
awkward letters, the legend: Vive Napoleon! among the meaningless
obscenities traced by schoolboys. Winter's storms and summer's sun had half
effaced the lettering; evidently the inscription was very ancient. How strange,
to see upon that wall that old heroic battle-cry, which probably had been placed
there in honor of the uncle, not of the nephew! It brought all his childhood
back to him, and Maurice was again a boy, scarcely out of his mother's arms,
down there in distant Chene-Populeux, listening to the stories of his
grandfather, a veteran of the Grand Army. His mother was dead, his father, in
the inglorious days that followed the collapse of the empire, had been compelled
to accept a humble position as collector, and there the grandfather lived, with
nothing to support him save his scanty pension, in the poor home of the small
public functionary, his sole comfort to fight his battles o'er again for the
benefit of his two little twin grandchildren, the boy and the girl, a pair of
golden-haired youngsters to whom he was in some sense a mother. He would place
Maurice on his right knee and Henriette on his left, and then for hours on end
the narrative would run on in Homeric strain.
But small attention was paid to dates; his story was of the dire shock of
conflicting nations, and was not to be hampered by the minute exactitude of the
historian. Successively or together English, Austrians, Prussians, Russians
appeared upon the scene, according to the then prevailing condition of the
ever-changing alliances, and it was not always an easy matter to tell why one
nation received a beating in preference to another, but beaten they all were in
the end, inevitably beaten from the very commencement, in a whirlwind of genius
and heroic daring that swept great armies like chaff from off the earth. There
was Marengo, the classic battle of the plain, with the consummate generalship of
its broad plan and the faultless retreat of the battalions by squares, silent
and impassive under the enemy's terrible fire; the battle, famous in story, lost
at three o'clock and won at six, where the eight hundred grenadiers of the
Consular Guard withstood the onset of the entire Austrian cavalry, where Desaix
arrived to change impending defeat to glorious victory and die. There was
Austerlitz, with its sun of glory shining forth from amid the wintry sky,
Austerlitz, commencing with the capture of the plateau of Pratzen and ending
with the frightful catastrophe on the frozen lake, where an entire Russian
corps, men, guns, horses, went crashing through the ice, while Napoleon, who in
his divine omniscience had foreseen it all, of course, directed his artillery to
play upon the struggling mass. There was Jena, where so many of Prussia's
bravest found a grave; at first the red flames of musketry flashing through the
October mists, and Ney's impatience, near spoiling all until Augereau comes
wheeling into line and saves him; the fierce charge that tore the enemy's center
in twain, and finally panic, the headlong rout of their boasted cavalry, whom
our hussars mow down like ripened grain, strewing the romantic glen with a
harvest of men and horses. And Eylau, cruel Eylau, bloodiest battle of them all,
where the maimed corpses cumbered the earth in piles; Eylau, whose new-fallen
snow was stained with blood, the burial-place of heroes; Eylau, in whose name
reverberates still the thunder of the charge of Murat's eighty squadrons,
piercing the Russian lines in every direction, heaping the ground so thick with
dead that Napoleon himself could not refrain from tears. Then Friedland, the
trap into which the Russians again allowed themselves to be decoyed like a flock
of brainless sparrows, the masterpiece of the Emperor's consummate strategy; our
left held back as in a leash, motionless, without a sign of life, while Ney was
carrying the city, street by street, and destroying the bridges, then the left
hurled like a thunderbolt on the enemy's right, driving it into the river and
annihilating it in that cul-de-sac; the slaughter so great that at ten
o'clock at night the bloody work was not completed, most wonderful of all the
successes of the great imperial epic. And Wagram, where it was the aim of the
Austrians to cut us off from the Danube; they keep strengthening their left in
order to overwhelm Massena, who is wounded and issues his orders from an open
carriage, and Napoleon, like a malicious Titan, lets them go on unchecked; then
all at once a hundred guns vomit their terrible fire upon their weakened center,
driving it backward more than a league, and their left, terror-stricken to find
itself unsupported, gives way before the again victorious Massena, sweeping away
before it the remainder of the army, as when a broken dike lets loose its
torrents upon the fields. And finally the Moskowa, where the bright sun of
Austerlitz shone for the last time; where the contending hosts were mingled in
confused melee amid deeds of the most desperate daring: mamelons carried
under an unceasing fire of musketry, redoubts stormed with the naked steel,
every inch of ground fought over again and again; such determined resistance on
the part of the Russian Guards that our final victory was only assured by
Murat's mad charges, the concentrated fire of our three hundred pieces of
artillery, and the valor of Ney, who was the hero of that most obstinate of
conflicts. And be the battle what it might, ever our flags floated proudly on
the evening air, and as the bivouac fires were lighted on the conquered field
out rang the old battle-cry: Vive Napoleon! France, carrying her
invincible Eagles from end to end of Europe, seemed everywhere at home, having
but to raise her finger to make her will respected by the nations, mistress of a
world that in vain conspired to crush her and upon which she set her foot.
Maurice was contentedly finishing his cutlet, cheered not so much by the wine
that sparkled in his glass as by the glorious memories that were teeming in his
brain, when his glance encountered two ragged, dust-stained soldiers, less like
soldiers than weary tramps just off the road; they were asking the attendant for
information as to the position of the regiments that were encamped along the
canal. He hailed them.
"Hallo there, comrades, this way! You are 7th corps men, aren't you?"
"Right you are, sir; 1st division—at least I am, more by token that I was at
Froeschwiller, where it was warm enough, I can tell you. The comrade, here,
belongs in the 1st corps; he was at Wissembourg, another beastly hole."
They told their story, how they had been swept away in the general panic, had
crawled into a ditch half-dead with fatigue and hunger, each of them slightly
wounded, and since then had been dragging themselves along in the rear of the
army, compelled to lie over in towns when the fever-fits came on, until at last
they had reached the camp and were on the lookout to find their regiments.
Maurice, who had a piece of Gruyere before him, noticed the hungry eyes fixed
on his plate.
"Hi there, mademoiselle! bring some more cheese, will you—and bread and wine.
You will join me, won't you, comrades? It is my treat. Here's to your good
health!"
They drew their chairs up to the table, only too delighted with the
invitation. Their entertainer watched them as they attacked the food, and a
thrill of pity ran through him as he beheld their sorry plight, dirty, ragged,
arms gone, their sole attire a pair of red trousers and the capote, kept in
place by bits of twine and so patched and pieced with shreds of vari-colored
cloth that one would have taken them for men who had been looting some
battle-field and were wearing the spoil they had gathered there.
"Ah! foutre, yes!" continued the taller of the two as he plied his
jaws, "it was no laughing matter there! You ought to have seen it,—tell him how
it was, Coutard."
And the little man told his story with many gestures, describing figures on
the air with his bread.
"I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest of them were making soup.
Just try and picture to yourself a miserable hole, a regular trap, all
surrounded by dense woods that gave those Prussian pigs a chance to crawl up to
us before we ever suspected they were there. So, then, about seven o'clock the
shells begin to come tumbling about our ears. Nom de Dieu! but it was
lively work! we jumped for our shooting-irons, and up to eleven o'clock it
looked as if we were going to polish 'em off in fine style. But you must know
that there were only five thousand of us, and the beggars kept coming, coming as
if there was no end to them. I was posted on a little hill, behind a bush, and I
could see them debouching in front, to right, to left, like rows of black ants
swarming from their hill, and when you thought there were none left there were
always plenty more. There's no use mincing matters, we all thought that our
leaders must be first-class nincompoops to thrust us into such a hornet's nest,
with no support at hand, and leave us to be crushed there without coming to our
assistance. And then our General, Douay,[*] poor devil! neither a fool nor a
coward, that man,—a bullet comes along and lays him on his back. That ended it;
no one left to command us! No matter, though, we kept on fighting all the same;
but they were too many for us, we had to fall back at last. We held the railway
station for a long time, and then we fought behind a wall, and the uproar was
enough to wake the dead. And then, when the city was taken, I don't exactly
remember how it came about, but we were upon a mountain, the Geissberg, I think
they call it, and there we intrenched ourselves in a sort of castle, and how we
did give it to the pigs! they jumped about the rocks like kids, and it was fun
to pick 'em off and see 'em tumble on their nose. But what would you have? they
kept coming, coming, all the time, ten men to our one, and all the artillery
they could wish for. Courage is a very good thing in its place, but sometimes it
gets a man into difficulties, and so, at last, when it got too hot to stand it
any longer, we cut and run. But regarded as nincompoops, our officers were a
decided success; don't you think so, Picot?"
[*] This was Abel Douay—not to be confounded with his brother, Felix, who
commanded the 7th corps.-TR.
There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a glass of the white
wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Of course," said he. "It was just the same at Froeschwiller; the general who
would give battle under such circumstances is a fit subject for a lunatic
asylum. That's what my captain said, and he's a little man who knows what he is
talking about. The truth of the matter is that no one knew anything; we were
only forty thousand strong, and we were surprised by a whole army of those pigs.
And no one was expecting to fight that day; battle was joined by degrees, one
portion after another of our troops became engaged, against the wishes of our
commanders, as it seems. Of course, I didn't see the whole of the affair, but
what I do know is that the dance lasted by fits and starts all day long; a body
would think it was ended; not a bit of it! away would go the music more
furiously than ever. The commencement was at Woerth, a pretty little village
with a funny clock-tower that looks like a big stove, owing to the earthenware
tiles they have stuck all over it. I'll be hanged if I know why we let go our
hold of it that morning, for we broke all our teeth and nails trying to get it
back again in the afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my children, if I were to
tell you of the slaughter there, the throats that were cut and the brains
knocked out, you would refuse to believe me! The next place where we had trouble
was around a village with the jaw-breaking name of Elsasshausen. We got a
peppering from a lot of guns that banged away at us at their ease from the top
of a blasted hill that we had also abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever
been able to tell. And there it was that with these very eyes of mine I saw the
famous charge of the cuirassiers. Ah, how gallantly they rode to their death,
poor fellows! A shame it was, I say, to let men and horses charge over ground
like that, covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And on top of it
all, nom de Dieu! what good could they accomplish? But it was very
chic all the same; it was a beautiful sight to see. The next thing for us
to do, shouldn't you suppose so? was to go and sit down somewhere and try to get
our wind again. They had set fire to the village and it was burning like tinder,
and the whole gang of Bavarian, Wurtemburgian and Prussian pigs, more than a
hundred and twenty thousand of them there were, as we found out afterward, had
got around into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest for us
then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a livelier tune than
ever around Froeschwiller. For there's no use talking, fellows, MacMahon may be
a blockhead but he is a brave man; you ought to have seen him on his big horse,
with the shells bursting all about him! The best thing to do would have been to
give leg-bail at the beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to
fight an army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see
the thing through to the end. And see it through he did! why, I tell you that
the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer human beings; they were ravening
wolves devouring one another. For near two hours the gutters ran red with blood.
All the same, however, we had to knuckle under in the end. And to think that
after it was all over they should come and tell us that we had whipped the
Bavarians over on our left! By the piper that played before Moses, if we had
only had a hundred and twenty thousand men, if we had had guns, and
leaders with a little pluck!"
Loud and angry were the denunciations of Coutard and Picot in their ragged,
dusty uniforms as they cut themselves huge slices of bread and bolted bits of
cheese, evoking their bitter memories there in the shade of the pretty trellis,
where the sun played hide and seek among the purple and gold of the clusters of
ripening grapes. They had come now to the horrible flight that succeeded the
defeat; the broken, demoralized, famishing regiments flying through the fields,
the highroads blocked with men, horses, wagons, guns, in inextricable confusion;
all the wreck and ruin of a beaten army that pressed on, on, on, with the chill
breath of panic on their backs. As they had not had wit enough to fall back
while there was time and take post among the passes of the Vosges, where ten
thousand men would have sufficed to hold in check a hundred thousand, they
should at least have blown up the bridges and destroyed the tunnels; but the
generals had lost their heads, and both sides were so dazed, each was so
ignorant of the other's movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to
ascertain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off toward Luneville,
while the Crown Prince of Prussia was looking for him in the direction of the
Vosges. On the 7th the remnant of the 1st corps passed through Saverne, like a
swollen stream that carries away upon its muddy bosom all with which it comes in
contact. On the 8th, at Sarrebourg, the 5th corps came tumbling in upon the 1st,
like one mad mountain torrent pouring its waters into another. The 5th was also
flying, defeated without having fought a battle, sweeping away with it its
commander, poor General de Failly, almost crazy with the thought that to his
inactivity was imputed the responsibility of the defeat, when the fault all
rested in the Marshal's having failed to send him orders. The mad flight
continued on the 9th and 10th, a stampede in which no one turned to look behind
him. On the 11th, in order to turn Nancy, which a mistaken rumor had reported to
be occupied by the enemy, they made their way in a pouring rainstorm to Bayon;
the 12th they camped at Haroue, the 13th at Vicherey, and on the 14th were at
Neufchateau, where at last they struck the railroad, and for three days the work
went on of loading the weary men into the cars that were to take them to
Chalons. Twenty-four hours after the last train rolled out of the station the
Prussians entered the town. "Ah, the cursed luck!" said Picot in conclusion;
"how we had to ply our legs! And we who should by rights have been in hospital!"
Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own and his comrade's
glass. "Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, and are running yet. Bah! it is the
best thing for us, after all, since it gives us a chance to drink the health of
those who were not knocked over."
Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of Froeschwiller,
following so close on the heels of the idiotic surprise at Wissembourg, was the
lightning flash whose baleful light disclosed to him the entire naked, terrible
truth. We were taken unprepared; we had neither guns, nor men, nor generals,
while our despised foe was an innumerable host, provided with all modern
appliances and faultless in discipline and leadership. The three German armies
had burst apart the weak line of our seven corps, scattered between Metz and
Strasbourg, like three powerful wedges. We were doomed to fight our battle out
unaided; nothing could be hoped for now from Austria and Italy, for all the
Emperor's plans were disconcerted by the tardiness of our operations and the
incapacity of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to be working against us,
heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed accidents in our path and favoring
the secret plan of the Prussians, which was to divide our armies, throwing one
portion back on Metz, where it would be cut off from France, while they, having
first destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on Paris. It was as plain
now as a problem in mathematics that our defeat would be owing to causes that
were patent to everyone; it was bravery without intelligent guidance pitted
against numbers and cold science. Men might discuss the question as they would
in after days; happen what might, defeat was certain in spite of everything, as
certain and inexorable as the laws of nature that rule our planet.
In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice's eyes suddenly lighted on the
legend scrawled on the wall before him—Vive Napoleon! and a sensation of
intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a red hot iron. Could it be
true, then, that France, whose victories were the theme of song and story
everywhere, the great nation whose drums had sounded throughout the length and
breadth of Europe, had been thrown in the dust at the first onset by an
insignificant race, despised of everyone? Fifty years had sufficed to compass
it; the world had changed, and defeat most fearful had overtaken those who had
been deemed invincible. He remembered the words that had been uttered by Weiss
his brother-in-law, during that evening of anxiety when they were at Mulhausen.
Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had penetrated the hidden causes
that had long been slowly sapping our strength, had felt the freshening gale of
youth and progress under the impulse of which Germany was being wafted onward to
prosperity and power. Was not the old warlike age dying and a new one coming to
the front? Woe to that one among the nations which halted in its onward march!
the victory is to those who are with the advance-guard, to those who are clear
of head and strong of body, to the most powerful.
But just then there came from the smoke-blackened kitchen, where the walls
were bright with the colored prints of Epinal, a sound of voices and the
squalling of a girl who submits, not unwillingly, to be tousled. It was
Lieutenant Rochas, availing himself of his privilege as a conquering hero, to
catch and kiss the pretty waitress. He came out into the arbor, where he ordered
a cup of coffee to be served him, and as he had heard the concluding words of
Picot's narrative, proceeded to take a hand in the conversation:
"Bah! my children, those things that you are speaking of don't amount to
anything. It is only the beginning of the dance; you will see the fun commence
in earnest presently. Pardi! up to the present time they have been five
to our one, but things are going to take a change now; just put that in your
pipe and smoke it. We are three hundred thousand strong here, and every move we
make, which nobody can see through, is made with the intention of bringing the
Prussians down on us, while Bazaine, who has got his eye on them, will take them
in their rear. And then we'll smash 'em, crac! just as I smash this fly!"
Bringing his hands together with a sounding clap he caught and crushed a fly
on the wing, and he laughed loud and cheerily, believing with all his simple
soul in the feasibility of a plan that seemed so simple, steadfast in his faith
in the invincibility of French courage. He good-naturedly informed the two
soldiers of the exact position of their regiments, then lit a cigar and seated
himself contentedly before his demitasse.
"The pleasure was all mine, comrades!" Maurice replied to Coutard and Picot,
who, as they were leaving, thanked him for the cheese and wine.
He had also called for a cup of coffee and sat watching the Lieutenant, whose
hopefulness had communicated itself to him, a little surprised, however, to hear
him enumerate their strength at three hundred thousand men, when it was not more
than a hundred thousand, and at his happy-go-lucky way of crushing the Prussians
between the two armies of Chalons and Metz. But then he, too, felt such need of
some comforting illusion! Why should he not continue to hope when all those
glorious memories of the past that he had evoked were still ringing in his ears?
The old inn was so bright and cheerful, with its trellis hung with the purple
grapes of France, ripening in the golden sunlight! And again his confidence
gained a momentary ascendancy over the gloomy despair that the late events had
engendered in him.
Maurice's eyes had rested for a moment on an officer of chasseurs d'Afrique
who, with his orderly, had disappeared at a sharp trot around the corner of the
silent house where the Emperor was quartered, and when the orderly came back
alone and stopped with his two horses before the inn door he gave utterance to
an exclamation of surprise:
"Prosper! Why, I supposed you were at Metz!"
It was a young man of Remilly, a simple farm-laborer, whom he had known as a
boy in the days when he used to go and spend his vacations with his uncle
Fouchard. He had been drawn, and when the war broke out had been three years in
Africa; he cut quite a dashing figure in his sky-blue jacket, his wide red
trousers with blue stripes and red woolen belt, with his sun-dried face and
strong, sinewy limbs that indicated great strength and activity.
"Hallo! it's Monsieur Maurice! I'm glad to see you!"
He took things very easily, however, conducting the steaming horses to the
stable, and to his own, more particularly, giving a paternal attention. It was
no doubt his affection for the noble animal, contracted when he was a boy and
rode him to the plow, that had made him select the cavalry arm of the service.
"We've just come in from Monthois, more than ten leagues at a stretch," he
said when he came back, "and Poulet will be wanting his breakfast."
Poulet was the horse. He declined to eat anything himself; would only accept
a cup of coffee. He had to wait for his officer, who had to wait for the
Emperor; he might be five minutes, and then again he might be two hours, so his
officer had told him to put the horses in the stable. And as Maurice, whose
curiosity was aroused, showed some disposition to pump him, his face became as
vacant as a blank page.
"Can't say. An errand of some sort—papers to be delivered."
But Rochas looked at the chasseur with an eye of tenderness, for the uniform
awakened old memories of Africa.
"Eh! my lad, where were you stationed out there?"
"At Medeah, Lieutenant."
Ah, Medeah! And drawing their chairs closer together they started a
conversation, regardless of difference in rank. The life of the desert had
become a second nature, for Prosper, where the trumpet was continually calling
them to arms, where a large portion of their time was spent on horseback, riding
out to battle as they would to the chase, to some grand battue of Arabs. There
was just one soup-basin for every six men, or tribe, as it was called, and each
tribe was a family by itself, one of its members attending to the cooking,
another washing their linen, the others pitching the tent, caring for the
horses, and cleaning the arms. By day they scoured the country beneath a sun
like a ball of blazing copper, loaded down with the burden of their arms and
utensils; at night they built great fires to drive away the mosquitoes and sat
around them, singing the songs of France. Often it happened that in the luminous
darkness of the night, thick set with stars, they had to rise and restore peace
among their four-footed friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had set
to biting and kicking one another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and
snorting furiously. Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed
their only, luxury, which they ground by the primitive appliances of a
carbine-butt and a porringer, and afterward strained through a red woolen sash.
But their life was not one of unalloyed enjoyment; there were dark days, also,
when they were far from the abodes of civilized man with the enemy before them.
No more fires, then; no singing, no good times. There were times when hunger,
thirst and want of sleep caused them horrible suffering, but no matter; they
loved that daring, adventurous life, that war of skirmishes, so propitious for
the display of personal bravery and as interesting as a fairy tale, enlivened by
the razzias, which were only public plundering on a larger scale, and by
marauding, or the private peculations of the chicken-thieves, which afforded
many an amusing story that made even the generals laugh.
"Ah!" said Prosper, with a more serious face, "it's different here; the
fighting is done in quite another way."
And in reply to a question asked by Maurice, he told the story of their
landing at Toulon and the long and wearisome march to Luneville. It was there
that they first received news of Wissembourg and Froeschwiller. After that his
account was less clear, for he got the names of towns mixed, Nancy and
Saint-Mihiel, Saint-Mihiel and Metz. There must have been heavy fighting on the
14th, for the sky was all on fire, but all he saw of it was four uhlans behind a
hedge. On the 16th there was another engagement; they could hear the artillery
going as early as six o'clock in the morning, and he had been told that on the
18th they started the dance again, more lively than ever. But the chasseurs were
not in it that time, for at Gravelotte on the 16th, as they were standing drawn
up along a road waiting to wheel into column, the Emperor, who passed that way
in a victoria, took them to act as his escort to Verdun. And a pretty little
jaunt it was, twenty-six miles at a hard gallop, with the fear of being cut off
by the Prussians at any moment!
"And what of Bazaine?" asked Rochas.
"Bazaine? they say that he is mightily well pleased that the Emperor lets him
alone."
But the Lieutenant wanted to know if Bazaine was coming to join them, whereon
Prosper made a gesture expressive of uncertainty; what did any one know? Ever
since the 16th their time had been spent in marching and countermarching in the
rain, out on reconnoissance and grand-guard duty, and they had not seen a sign
of an enemy. Now they were part of the army of Chalons. His regiment, together
with two regiments of chasseurs de France and one of hussars, formed one of the
divisions of the cavalry of reserve, the first division, commanded by General
Margueritte, of whom he spoke with most enthusiastic warmth.
"Ah, the bougre! the enemy will catch a Tartar in him! But what's the
good talking? the only use they can find for us is to send us pottering about in
the mud."
There was silence for a moment, then Maurice gave some brief news of Remilly
and uncle Fouchard, and Prosper expressed his regret that he could not go and
shake hands with Honore, the quartermaster-sergeant, whose battery was stationed
more than a league away, on the other side of the Laon road. But the chasseur
pricked up his ears at hearing the whinnying of a horse and rose and went out to
make sure that Poulet was not in want of anything. It was the hour sacred to
coffee and pousse-cafe, and it was not long before the little hostelry
was full to overflowing with officers and men of every arm of the service. There
was not a vacant table, and the bright uniforms shone resplendent against the
green background of leaves checkered with spots of sunshine. Major Bouroche had
just come in and taken a seat beside Rochas, when Jean presented himself with an
order.
"Lieutenant, the captain desires me to say that he wishes to see you at three
o'clock on company business."
Rochas signified by a nod of the head that he had heard, and Jean did not go
away at once, but stood smiling at Maurice, who was lighting a cigarette. Ever
since the occurrence in the railway car there had been a sort of tacit truce
between the two men; they seemed to be reciprocally studying each other, with an
increasing interest and attraction. But just then Prosper came back, a little
out of temper.
"I mean to have something to eat unless my officer comes out of that shanty
pretty quick. The Emperor is just as likely as not to stay away until dark,
confound it all."
"Tell me," said Maurice, his curiosity again getting the better of him,
"isn't it possible that the news you are bringing may be from Bazaine?"
"Perhaps so. There was a good deal of talk about him down there at Monthois."
At that moment there was a stir outside in the street, and Jean, who was
standing by one of the doors of the arbor, turned and said:
"The Emperor!"
Immediately everyone was on his feet. Along the broad, white road, with its
rows of poplars on either side, came a troop of cent-gardes, spick and span in
their brilliant uniforms, their cuirasses blazing in the sunlight, and
immediately behind them rode the Emperor, accompanied by his staff, in a wide
open space, followed by a second troop of cent-gardes.
There was a general uncovering of heads, and here and there a hurrah was
heard; and the Emperor raised his head as he passed; his face looked drawn, the
eyes were dim and watery. He had the dazed appearance of one suddenly aroused
from slumber, smiled faintly at sight of the cheerful inn, and saluted. From
behind them Maurice and Jean distinctly heard old Bouroche growl, having first
surveyed the sovereign with his practiced eye:
"There's no mistake about it, that man is in a bad way." Then he succinctly
completed his diagnosis: "His jig is up!"
Jean shook his head and thought in his limited, common sense way: "It is a
confounded shame to let a man like that have command of the army!" And ten
minutes later, when Maurice, comforted by his good breakfast, shook hands with
Prosper and strolled away to smoke more cigarettes, he carried with him the
picture of the Emperor, seated on his easy-gaited horse, so pale, so gentle, the
man of thought, the dreamer, wanting in energy when the moment for action came.
He was reputed to be good-hearted, capable, swayed by generous and noble
thoughts, a silent man of strong and tenacious will; he was very brave, too,
scorning danger with the scorn of the fatalist for whom destiny has no fears;
but in critical moments a fatal lethargy seemed to overcome him; he appeared to
become paralyzed in presence of results, and powerless thereafter to struggle
against Fortune should she prove adverse. And Maurice asked himself if his were
not a special physiological condition, aggravated by suffering; if the
indecision and increasing incapacity that the Emperor had displayed ever since
the opening of the campaign were not to be attributed to his manifest illness.
That would explain everything: a minute bit of foreign substance in a man's
system, and empires totter.
The camp that evening was all astir with activity; officers were bustling
about with orders and arranging for the start the following morning at five
o'clock. Maurice experienced a shock of surprise and alarm to learn that once
again all their plans were changed, that they were not to fall back on Paris,
but proceed to Verdun and effect a junction with Bazaine. There was a report
that dispatches had come in during the day from the marshal announcing that he
was retreating, and the young man's thoughts reverted to the officer of
chasseurs and his rapid ride from Monthois; perhaps he had been the bearer of a
copy of the dispatch. So, then, the opinions of the Empress-regent and the
Council of Ministers had prevailed with the vacillating MacMahon, in their dread
to see the Emperor return to Paris and their inflexible determination to push
the army forward in one supreme attempt to save the dynasty; and the poor
Emperor, that wretched man for whom there was no place in all his vast empire,
was to be bundled to and fro among the baggage of his army like some worthless,
worn-out piece of furniture, condemned to the irony of dragging behind him in
his suite his imperial household, cent-gardes, horses, carriages, cooks, silver
stew-pans and cases of champagne, trailing his flaunting mantle, embroidered
with the Napoleonic bees, through the blood and mire of the highways of his
retreat.
At midnight Maurice was not asleep; he was feverishly wakeful, and his gloomy
reflections kept him tossing and tumbling on his pallet. He finally arose and
went outside, where he found comfort and refreshment in the cool night air. The
sky was overspread with clouds, the darkness was intense; along the front of the
line the expiring watch-fires gleamed with a red and sullen light at distant
intervals, and in the deathlike, boding silence could be heard the long-drawn
breathing of the hundred thousand men who slumbered there. Then Maurice became
more tranquil, and there descended on him a sentiment of brotherhood, full of
compassionate kindness for all those slumbering fellow-creatures, of whom
thousands would soon be sleeping the sleep of death. Brave fellows! True, many
of them were thieves and drunkards, but think of what they had suffered and the
excuse there was for them in the universal demoralization! The glorious veterans
of Solferino and Sebastopol were but a handful, incorporated in the ranks of the
newly raised troops, too few in number to make their example felt. The four
corps that had been got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid of every
element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the expiatory band that their rulers
were sending to the sacrifice in the endeavor to avert the wrath of destiny.
They would bear their cross to the bitter end, atoning with their life's blood
for the faults of others, glorious amid disaster and defeat.
And then it was that Maurice, there in the darkness that was instinct with
life, became conscious that a great duty lay before him. He ceased to beguile
himself with the illusive prospect of great victories to be gained; the march to
Verdun was a march to death, and he so accepted it, since it was their lot to
die, with brave and cheerful resignation.