French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART II
Chapter V
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CALVARY—THE GREAT CHARGE
At ten o’clock the men of Captain Beaudoin’s company were still lying in the cabbage field on the plateau of Algeria, whence they had not stirred since early morning. The cross fire from the batteries on the Hattoy hill and the peninsula of Iges was increasing in violence, and had again just killed a couple of soldiers; but still no orders came to advance. Were they going to remain there all day then, allowing themselves to be pounded like that, without making any attempt at fighting?
The men were no longer even able to relieve their feelings by firing their chassepots, for Captain Beaudoin had succeeded in putting a stop to that furious and useless fusillade, directed upon the little wood over yonder, where not a single Prussian seemed to have remained. The sun was now becoming most oppressive; the men fairly roasted as they lay there under the flaming sky.
Jean, on turning round, felt anxious on seeing that Maurice’s head had sunk to the ground. The young fellow’s eyes were closed, and his cheek was close pressed to the soil; he looked, too, extremely pale and did not stir. ‘Hallo, what’s up?’ asked Jean.
Maurice, however, had simply fallen asleep. He had been overcome by waiting and weariness, although death was on the wing all around. When he suddenly awoke again there was a calm look in his widely opened eyes, but the scared, wavering expression of the battlefield immediately returned to them. He had no notion how long his slumber had lasted; it seemed to him as though he were emerging from delightful, infinite nihility.
‘Ah! that’s funny,’ he muttered, ‘I’ve been asleep—it has done me good.’
Indeed, he now felt less of that painful oppression, the bone-splitting clasp of fright upon his temples and his ribs; and he began to poke fun at Lapoulle, who had not merely been expressing anxiety about Chouteau and Loubet, ever since their disappearance, but had even talked of going to look for them. That was a fine idea; all he wanted, no doubt, was to shelter himself behind a tree and smoke a pipe there! Pache opined that the two men had been detained at the ambulance, where there was probably a lack of bearers. Ah! that business of picking up the wounded under the enemy’s fire was by no means a pleasant one. Full of the superstitious notions of his native village, Pache added that it was very unlucky to touch a corpse—whoever did so would soon die.
‘Thunder! will you just shut up?’ cried Lieutenant Rochas, who had overheard this remark. ‘Does anybody die?’
Colonel de Vineuil, erect on his big charger a few paces away, turned his head at this, and smiled for the first time that morning, Then he again subsided into his motionless attitude, still impassively waiting for orders, whilst the shells continued raining around him.
Maurice, who had now become interested in the bearers, watched them as they searched about in the various folds of the ground. A field ambulance was being installed behind a bank, at the edge of the hollow road near by, and the bearers attached to it were beginning to explore the plateau. A tent was promptly pitched whilst the necessary matériel was removed from a van waiting on the road. Instruments, apparatus, and linen were produced—the few things, in fact, that were requisite for summary dressings pending the despatch of the wounded to Sedan, whither they were sent as rapidly as could be managed. Vehicles, however, were already becoming scarce. There were only some assistant surgeons in charge of the ambulance, and it was more particularly the bearers who gave proof of a stubborn, inglorious courage. Clad in grey, with the red cross of Geneva on their caps and their arm-badges, they could be seen venturing slowly and quietly under the projectiles, as far as the spots where the soldiers had fallen. They often crawled along on hands and knees, and endeavoured to take advantage of the various ditches and hedges, of all the protection that the ground afforded, never evincing any braggardism in unnecessarily exposing themselves to peril. As soon as they found any men on the ground their laborious task began, for many of those who were lying there had simply fainted, and it was necessary to distinguish the wounded from the dead. Some men had remained face downwards, and were stifling with their mouths in pools of blood; others had their throats full of earth, as though they had bitten the ground; others, again, were lying in a heap, pell-mell, with their arms and legs contracted and their chests half crushed. The bearers carefully extricated and picked up those who were still breathing, stretching their limbs and raising their heads, which they cleaned as well as they could manage. Each bearer carried a can of water, in the use of which he was extremely sparing. And one or another of them would often be seen kneeling on the same spot for many minutes together, trying to revive some wounded man and waiting for him to open his eyes.
At fifty yards or so, on his left hand, Maurice noticed one bearer looking for the wound of a little soldier, from one of whose sleeves a streamlet of blood trickled continuously. This was a case of hæmorrhage, and the man with the red cross having at last found the wound managed to stop the flow of blood by compressing the artery. In this manner the bearers attended to all urgent cases. Whenever there was a fracture they were not only particularly careful how they moved the man, but they fixed and bandaged his damaged limb, so that his condition might not be aggravated by transport. The conveyance of the wounded to the ambulance was indeed the great affair; the bearers supported those who could still walk, and carried others either in their arms like babies or in pick-a-back fashion. At times also, according to the difficulties of the case, two, three, or four of them assembled and formed a seat with their joined hands, or carried the sufferer away in a horizontal position, by his legs and shoulders. To supplement the regulation stretchers, recourse was had to all sorts of ingenious devices; at times a stretcher would be formed by linking a couple of chassepots together with knapsack-straps. And all over the bare plateau which the shells were ploughing the bearers could be seen, now single, now in small parties, gliding along with their burdens, bending their heads, testing the ground with their feet, and displaying prudent but admirable heroism.
Whilst Maurice was watching one of them on his right hand, a thin, puny fellow, who, like some toilsome ant burdened with too large a grain of wheat, was staggering along with bended legs, carrying a heavy sergeant whose arms were entwined around his neck, he suddenly saw both men topple over and disappear amid the explosion of a shell. When the smoke had cleared off the sergeant again appeared to view, lying on his back and without any fresh wound, whereas the bearer was stretched beside him with his flank ripped open. And thereupon another bearer came up, another busy ant, who after turning his comrade over and finding him dead, again picked up the wounded sergeant and carried him away.
Maurice thereupon remarked to Lapoulle: ‘Well, if you like their job better than ours, just go and lend them a hand.’
For a moment or so the batteries of St. Menges had been firing their utmost, and the hailstorm of projectiles was becoming more violent. Captain Beaudoin, who was still nervously walking up and down in front of his company, at last ventured to approach the colonel. It was pitiful, said he, that the spirits of the men should be worn out like that, by long hours of idle waiting.
‘I have no orders,’ stoically repeated the colonel.
Just then General Douay was again seen galloping past, followed by his staff. A few minutes previously he had met General de Wimpffen, who had hastened to this part of the field to beg him to hold out; and this he had thought he might promise to do, on the express condition, however, that the Calvary of Illy, on his right, should be defended. If the position of Illy were lost, he should be unable to answer for anything; for a retreat would then become unavoidable. General de Wimpffen declared that some troops of the First Corps were about to occupy the Calvary, and, in fact, almost immediately afterwards a regiment of Zouaves was seen to establish itself there; whereupon General Douay, feeling more at his ease, consented to send Dumont’s division to the support of the Twelfth Corps, which was being hard pressed. A quarter of an hour afterwards, however, he was returning from an inspection of his left wing, which still presented a firm front, when, on raising his eyes, he gave vent to a cry of dismay, for the Calvary was bare: not a Zouave remained there. Under the terrific fire from the Fleigneux batteries the position was not tenable, and had consequently been abandoned. In despair, foreseeing the disaster that must overwhelm the army, General Douay was galloping off to rejoin his right wing, when he encountered Dumont’s division falling back in disorder, panic-stricken, and mingled with some remnants of the First Corps. The latter, after its early retreat, had failed to reconquer the positions it had held at dawn, and, leaving Daigny in possession of the Saxons, and Givonne in that of the Prussian Guard, it had been obliged to proceed northwards through the wood of La Garenne, cannonaded by the batteries which the enemy planted upon every crest from one to the other end of the valley. The terrible circle of flame and iron was closing up. Whilst a portion of the Prussian Guard turned the heights and proceeded on its westward march towards Illy, the Fifth German Corps, screened by the Eleventh, which was in possession of St. Menges, still continued on its easterly course, already leaving Fleigneux behind it, and incessantly throwing its artillery forward with the most impudent temerity; its commanders being so convinced, indeed, of the ignorance and powerlessness of the French generals that they did not even wait for infantry to support their gunners. It was now midday, and the whole horizon was glowing and thundering, raining cross fires upon the Seventh and First French Corps.
And now, whilst the foe’s artillery was in this wise preparing for the supreme attack on the Calvary, General Douay determined upon a last desperate effort to reconquer it. He despatched orders, threw himself in person among the fugitives of Dumont’s division, and succeeded in forming a column which he hurled upon the plateau. It held out there for a few minutes, but the bullets rained so thickly, and such an avalanche of shells swept the bare, treeless fields, that a panic speedily broke out, and carried the men down the slopes again, whirling them away like bits of straw caught in a storm. The general was obstinate, however, and ordered up other regiments.
An estafette, galloping past, shouted some order to Colonel de Vineuil amid the fearful uproar. The colonel was already erect in his stirrups with his face aglow; and brandishing his sword and pointing to the Calvary, he cried: ‘It’s our turn at last, my boys! Forward, up yonder!’
Inspirited by the colonel’s manner, the 106th set out. Beaudoin’s men had been among the first to spring to their feet, jesting together, and remarking that they felt quite rusty, and had every joint clogged with earth. They had taken but a few steps, however, when so violent became the enemy’s fire that they had to dive into a shelter-trench which they luckily came upon. They filed along it, bending double.
‘Take care, youngster,’ said Jean to Maurice; ‘here’s the rub. Don’t show the tip of your nose even; if you do, it will surely be carried away. And get your bones well together if you don’t want to drop any of them on the road. Those who come back from this affair will be lucky ones.’
Amid the buzzing, mob-like clamour that filled his head, Maurice could scarcely hear the corporal. He no longer knew whether he was afraid or not; he ran along, carried onward by the gallop of his comrades and destitute of any personal will, having but one desire, that of finishing the business at once. And so completely had he become a mere wave of this marching torrent, that he felt panic seize hold of him and was ready to take to flight as soon as a sudden recoil set in at the farther end of the trench, at view of the bare ground remaining to be climbed. The instinct of self-preservation broke loose within him; swayed by the impulses around him his muscles rebelled against his duty.
Some men were already turning back, when the colonel threw himself in their way. ‘Come, my boys,’ said he, ‘you don’t mean to grieve me like that; you are surely not going to behave like cowards! Remember, that the 106th has never recoiled; you would be the first to stain our colours!’
Urging on his horse he barred the way, expostulating in turn with each of the fugitives, and speaking of France in a voice that was tremulous with tears.
Lieutenant Rochas was so affected by the scene that he flew into a violent passion, and, raising his sword, began beating the men with it, as though it were a stick. ‘You dirty curs!’ he shouted, ‘I’ll kick you all the way up—that I will! Mind you obey orders, or I’ll smash the jaw of the first man who turns tail.’
This violence, however, this idea of kicking soldiers into fighting, was not to the colonel’s taste. ‘No, no, lieutenant,’ he said; ‘they’ll all follow me. Isn’t that so, my boys? You won’t let your old colonel face the Prussians all alone? Forward then, up yonder!’
Thereupon he set out, and they one and all followed him, feeling that he had talked to them like a father whom they could not abandon without showing themselves to be arrant cowards. And he quietly rode across the bare fields on his big charger, whilst his men scattered and spread themselves out like skirmishers, taking advantage of the slightest cover. The ground rose, and more than five hundred yards of stubble and beetroot fields had to be crossed before reaching the Calvary. Instead of the correct lines of the classical assault, such as is witnessed in sham-fighting, all that could be seen in a minute or two was the backs of the men as they bent double and glided along close to the ground, now singly, and now in little groups, now crawling on their knees, and now suddenly springing forward like insects, making their way to the summit, by dint of agility and cunning. The hostile batteries must have perceived them, for the soil was ploughed up by the shells which fell so frequently that there was no pause in the detonations. On the way five of the men were killed, and a lieutenant was cut clean in half.
Maurice and Jean were lucky enough to come upon a hedge, behind which they were able to run on without being seen. A bullet, however, here penetrated the temple of one of their comrades, who, in falling, almost tripped them up. They had to push him aside with their feet. They no longer paid any attention to the dead; there were too many of them. The horrors of the battlefield—a wounded man whom they perceived howling and holding in his entrails with both hands, a horse, which was still dragging itself along although its haunches were broken—all the frightful agonies displayed to view had ended by no longer affecting them. Their only sufferings were occasioned by the oppressive heat of the midday sun which was biting into their shoulders.
‘How thirsty I am!’ stammered Maurice; ‘it seems as if my throat were full of soot. Can’t you smell that horrible stench of burning wool?’
Jean nodded: ‘It was the same at Solferino. Perhaps it’s the smell of war. Wait a bit; I’ve still some brandy left, we’ll drink a drop together.’
They quietly halted for a minute behind the hedge, but the brandy burnt their stomachs, instead of quenching their thirst. That burning taste in their mouths was quite exasperating. And, besides, they felt famished, and would willingly have devoured the half-loaf which Maurice still had in his knapsack. But was there any possibility of getting at it? Other men were each moment coming up behind them, and pushing them onward. At last, they too bounded over the last slope and found themselves upon the plateau, at the very foot of the Calvary, the old stone cross reared between two meagre lime-trees, and eaten away here and there by the wind and the rain.
‘Ah, dash it! here we are at last!’ Jean exclaimed; ‘but the thing is to stop here.’
He was right. As Lapoulle, in a plaintive voice, remarked to the amusement of his comrades, the spot was hardly a pleasant one. And now, once again, they all stretched themselves among some stubble. Nevertheless three more men were speedily killed. A perfect hurricane was raging up there; the projectiles came from St. Menges, Fleigneux, and Givonne, in such numbers that vapour seemed to issue from the soil, as happens during a heavy storm of rain. Evidently enough, the position could not be long retained unless artillery promptly arrived to support the men who had been so daringly sent to the front. General Douay, it was said, had given orders to run up a couple of batteries of the reserve artillery; and the men looked round anxiously every moment, waiting for these guns which did not arrive.
‘It’s ridiculous, ridiculous!’ repeated Captain Beaudoin, who had again resumed his jerky promenade. ‘A regiment ought not to be sent to an exposed position like this without being at once supported.’ Then, noticing a dip in the ground on his left, he called out to Rochas: ‘I say, lieutenant, the company might lie down there.’
Rochas, erect and motionless, shrugged his shoulders: ‘Oh! captain, here or there, it’s all the same. The best is not to stir.’
Thereupon Beaudoin, who as a rule never swore, flew into a passion. ‘But, d—— it, we shall all leave our carcases here,’ said he; ‘we can’t allow ourselves to be destroyed in this fashion.’
And, getting obstinate, he determined to inspect the position which he had pointed out as a preferable one. He had not taken a dozen steps, however, when he disappeared in a sudden explosion. His right leg was smashed by a splinter of a shell, and he fell upon his back, raising a shrill cry, like a woman surprised.
‘It was a dead certainty,’ muttered Rochas; ‘so much moving about does no good. Besides, there’s no escape from fate.’
Some of the men raised themselves up on seeing their captain fall; and as he called for help, begging that they would carry him away, Jean at last ran to him, immediately followed by Maurice.
‘In heaven’s name, my friends, don’t abandon me; carry me to the ambulance.’
‘Well, sir, it won’t be an easy job. However, we’ll try.’
They were already concerting as to how they should lift him, when, sheltered behind the hedge which they had previously skirted, they noticed a couple of bearers who appeared to be waiting for employment. Jean and Maurice signed to them energetically and prevailed upon them to approach. If these men could only carry the captain to the ambulance without mishap, he might be saved. The road was a long one, however, and the storm of iron hail was increasing in violence.
As the bearers, after tightly bandaging the wounded limb, were carrying the captain away on their joined hands, one of his arms being passed round each of their necks, Colonel de Vineuil, who had been informed of the casualty, rode up, urging on his horse. He had a liking for the young officer, whom he had known ever since he had left St. Cyr, and he showed himself much affected. ‘Keep up your courage, my poor fellow,’ said he; ‘it won’t be anything serious. They’ll save you.’
The captain made a gesture of relief, as though a great deal of courage had at last come to him. ‘No, no,’ he answered; ‘it’s all over, and I prefer it should be so. The exasperating thing is having to wait for what we cannot avoid.’
He was carried away, and the bearers were lucky enough to reach the hedge without any mishap. They swiftly skirted it with their burden, and when the colonel saw them disappear behind the clump of trees, where the ambulance was established, he gave a sigh of relief.
‘But you yourself are wounded, sir,’ Maurice suddenly exclaimed. He had just noticed that the colonel’s left boot was covered with blood. The heel had been carried away, and a piece of leather had penetrated into the flesh of the leg.
M. de Vineuil quietly leant over his saddle and looked for a moment at his foot, which must have felt both burning hot and terribly heavy. ‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered, ‘I caught that just now. But it’s nothing, it doesn’t prevent me from keeping in the saddle.’ And as he rode off to take his place again at the head of his regiment, he added: ‘A man can always get on when he’s in the saddle and can stay there.’
The two batteries of the reserve artillery were now at last coming up, to the intense relief of the anxious soldiers, to whom it seemed as though these guns were bringing salvation, a rampart and thunder that would speedily silence the cannon of the foe over yonder. It was, moreover, a superb sight, so correctly were the batteries run up in order of battle, each gun followed by its caisson, the drivers astride the near-horses, and holding the off-horses by the bridle; the gunners seated on the boxes; and the corporals and sergeants galloping alongside in their respective places. It might have been thought they were parading, anxious to preserve the regulation distances as they dashed at full speed over the stubble, with a dull rumbling like that of a storm.
Maurice, who was again lying in a furrow, raised himself up, enraptured, and said to Jean: ‘There, that is Honoré’s battery on the left. I recognise the men.’
With a back-hander, Jean threw him to the ground again. ‘Lie flat, and keep still,’ he said.
With their cheeks resting on the soil, however, they both continued watching the battery, feeling greatly interested in the manœuvres that were being executed, and with their hearts beating quickly at sight of the calm, active bravery of the artillerymen from whom they yet expected victory.
The battery had suddenly halted on a bare summit, on their left hand, and in a moment everything was ready; the gunners sprang from the boxes and unhooked the limbers, and the drivers, leaving the pieces in position, wheeled their horses and withdrew to a distance of some fifteen yards, where they remained motionless, facing the enemy. The six guns were already levelled, set wide apart, in three sections, commanded by lieutenants, and united under the orders of a captain whose slim, extremely tall figure rose up, unluckily for him, like some conspicuous landmark. And when he had rapidly made a calculation, he was heard to exclaim: ‘Sight at 1,700 yards.’
The mark was to be a Prussian battery established behind some bushes on the left of Fleigneux, and whose terrible fire was rendering the plateau of Illy untenable.
‘Do you see,’ again began Maurice, who was quite unable to hold his tongue, ‘Honoré’s gun is in the central section. There he is, leaning forward with the gun-layer—little Louis—we drank a glass together at Vouziers, as you may remember. And that driver over there who sits so stiffly on his horse, a beautiful chestnut, is Louis’ chum, Adolphe.’
The whole stream of men, horses and matériel, was disposed in a straight line about a hundred yards in depth. First was the gun with its six gunners and its quartermaster,[29] farther off the limber and its four horses and its pair of drivers; then the caisson with its six horses and its three drivers; further still the ammunition and forage waggons and the field smithy; whilst the spare caissons and spare men and horses, provided to fill up any gaps in the battery, waited at some distance on the right, so that they might not be unnecessarily exposed in the enfilade of the firing.
Honoré was now attending to the loading of his gun. Two of his men were already bringing the charge and the projectile from the caisson, over which the corporal and the artificer were watching; and two other gunners, after inserting the serge-covered charge by the muzzle, at once rammed it carefully into position and then slipped in the shell, the points of which grated as they slid along the grooves. Then the assistant gun-layer, after pricking the cartridge with the priming-wire, swiftly applied the match to the touch-hole. Honoré was desirous of aiming this first shot himself, and half-lying on the block-trail, he worked the regulating screw to obtain the correct range, indicating the proper direction by a gentle, continuous wave of the hand, whilst the gun-layer, holding the lever behind him, imperceptibly moved the piece more to the right or more to the left.
‘That must be right,’ said Honoré, rising up.
The captain, with his lofty figure bent double, inspected the sighting. At each piece the assistant gun-layer was in position, holding the lanyard in readiness to pull the saw-like blade that ignited the fulminate. And the command was then given slowly, and in due order: ‘Number one, fire! Number two, fire!’
The six shells were hurled into space, the guns recoiled and were brought back into position, whilst the quartermasters noted that their fire had not nearly reached the required distance. They rectified it; the practice began afresh in the same orderly fashion as before; and it was this precise routine, this mechanical labour that needed to be calmly and deliberately accomplished, that sustained the men’s firmness. That beloved creature, the gun, grouped a little family around her, whose members were closely united by the bonds of a common occupation. The gun was indeed the connecting link, the one object of concern; it was for her that they all existed, the caisson, the waggons, the horses, even the men themselves. And from all this sprang the great cohesion of the battery, a steadfastness and tranquillity such as prevail in happy families.
Some acclamations from the men of the 106th had greeted the first discharge. At last, then, they were going to stop the jabbering of those Prussian cannon. But a feeling of disappointment immediately followed when it was seen that the shells did not travel the distance, most of them bursting in the air before reaching the bushes among which the enemy’s artillery was hidden.
‘Honoré,’ resumed Maurice, ‘says that the other guns are mere nails by the side of his. In his estimation his one will never be matched! See how lovingly he looks at it, and how carefully he has it sponged so that the dear thing may not feel too warm.’
In this way he jested with Jean, both of them quite inspirited by the smart, calm bravery of the artillerymen. In three shots, however, the Prussian batteries had regulated their fire; their range had at first been too long, but their practice now became so wonderfully accurate that their shells fell upon the French guns, which, despite every effort to increase their range, still failed to carry the distance. One of Honoré’s men, on the left, was killed. The corpse was pushed aside, and the firing continued, still with the same careful regularity, and without the slightest display of haste. Projectiles were coming from, and exploding on all sides, whilst around each piece the same methodical manœuvres were repeated, the gun was loaded with its charge and shell, the sighting was regulated, the shot was fired, and the piece, having recoiled, was run up again as though the work absorbed these men to such a degree that they could neither see nor hear anything else.
Maurice, however, was especially struck by the demeanour of the drivers, who, stiffly erect on their horses, confronted the enemy, fifteen yards or so in the rear of the guns. Adolphe was among them with his broad shoulders, bushy fair moustaches, and rubicund face; and a man needed to be brave, indeed, to stay there like that, without so much as blinking his eyes, whilst he watched the shells coming straight towards him, and without being able even to bite his nails by way of occupation, and in order to divert his thoughts. The gunners on their side were working; they had so much to attend to that they could not think of danger, whereas the motionless drivers saw but death before their eyes, and had full leisure to ponder upon it and await its coming. They were compelled to face the enemy, because, had they turned their backs upon him, an irresistible impulse to flee might have carried both men and horses away. A man can brave danger when he sees it. There is no more obscure and yet no greater heroism than this.
Another gunner had just had his head carried off; two horses, harnessed to a caisson, had fallen with their bellies ripped open; and the fire of the foe was proving so slaughterous that it was evident the entire battery would be dismounted, if they obstinately remained on this same spot. Despite all the inconvenience of a change of position, it was necessary to foil the enemy’s terrible fire, and the captain no longer hesitated, but ordered up the fore-carriages.
The dangerous manœuvre was executed with lightning-like rapidity; the drivers wheeled round again, bringing back the limbers, to which the gunners at once hooked the carriage trails. Whilst this was being accomplished, however, a lengthy front was developed, at sight of which the enemy redoubled his fire. Three more men thereupon fell to the ground. Then the battery dashed off at a fast trot, describing an arc through the fields, and establishing itself some fifty yards farther away on the right, upon a little plateau on the other side of the position held by the 106th. The guns were unlimbered, the drivers again found themselves confronting the foe, and the fire began afresh, without a pause, and with so much commotion that the ground did not cease shaking.
All at once Maurice raised a cry. In three shots the Prussian batteries had again regulated their fire, and the third shell had fallen upon Honoré’s gun. Honoré was seen to dart forward and feel the freshly made wound with a trembling hand; a large piece had been chipped off the bronze muzzle. The gun could still be worked, however, and as soon as the wheels had been cleared of the corpse of another gunner, whose blood had splashed the carriage, the practice was resumed.
‘No, it isn’t little Louis,’ continued Maurice, venting his thoughts aloud. ‘There he is aiming; he must be wounded, however, for he’s only using his left arm. Ah! little Louis—he got on so well with Adolphe, on condition though that the gunner, the footman, should, in spite of his superior education, act as the humble servant of the driver, the mounted man——’
At this moment Jean, hitherto silent, interrupted Maurice with a cry of anguish: ‘They can never stay there; we are done for!’
In less than five minutes, indeed, this new position had become as untenable as the previous one. The enemy’s projectiles rained upon it with precisely the same accuracy. One shell smashed a gun and killed a lieutenant and two men. Every shot took effect, to such a degree, in fact, that if they obstinately lingered there neither a gun nor an artilleryman would soon remain. The enemy’s fire was destruction incarnate; it swept everything away. And so, for the second time, the captain’s voice rang out, ordering up the limbers.
Once more was the manœuvre executed, the drivers setting their horses at a gallop, and wheeling so that the gunners might again limber the pieces. This time, however, during the movement, a splinter gashed Louis’ throat and tore away his jaw, and he fell across the block-trail which he had been raising. And just as Adolphe came up, at the moment when the enemy obtained a flank view of the line of teams, a furious volley swooped down. Adolphe fell, with his chest split open, and his arms outstretched, and in a last convulsion he caught hold of his comrade; and there they lay embracing, fiercely contorted, coupled together even in death.
But, despite the killing of many horses, despite the disorder which the slaughterous volley had wrought in the ranks, the entire battery was already ascending a slope, establishing itself in a more advanced position at a few yards from the spot where Maurice and Jean were lying. The guns were now unlimbered for the third time, the drivers again found themselves facing the enemy, whilst the gunners immediately reopened fire with the obstinacy of unconquerable heroism.
‘This is the end of everything,’ said Maurice, in a dying voice.
It seemed, indeed, as though earth and sky were mingled. The stones split asunder, dense smoke occasionally hid the sun. The horses stood with their heads low, dizzy, stupefied amid the fearful uproar. Wherever the captain appeared he seemed abnormally tall. At last he was cut in two—snapped, and fell like a flag-staff.
The effort was being tenaciously, deliberately prolonged, however, especially by Honoré and his men. He, himself, despite his stripes, now had to help work the gun, for only three gunners remained to him. He levelled and fired whilst the three men fetched the ammunition, loaded the piece, and handled the sponge and the rammer. Spare men and horses had been asked for to fill up the gaps that death had made, but they were a long time coming, and meanwhile it was necessary to do without them. The worry was that the gun still failed to carry the distance, almost all the projectiles bursting in the air, and doing but little harm to those terrible batteries of the foe whose fire was so efficacious. And all at once Honoré swore an oath which rang out above all the thunder of the cannonade: there was no end to their ill luck, the gun’s right wheel had just been pounded to pieces. Thunder! So now the poor creature had a leg broken, and was thrown on her side, with her nose on the ground, crippled and useless! Honoré shed big tears at the sight, and clasped her neck with his twitching hands, as though he hoped to set her erect again by the mere warmth of his affection. To think of it!—the best gun of all, the only one that had managed to send a few shells over yonder! Then a mad resolution took possession of him, that of immediately replacing the shattered wheel under the enemy’s fire. With the assistance of a gunner, he himself went to fetch a spare wheel from the ammunition waggon, and the work then began, the most dangerous that can be performed on the field of battle. Fortunately the spare men and horses had eventually arrived, and a couple of fresh gunners lent a helping hand.
But once again the battery was dismantled. This heroic madness could be carried no farther. Orders to fall back for good were on the point of being given.
‘We must make haste, comrades!’ shouted Honoré. ‘We’ll take her away at any rate; they sha’n’t have her.’
‘Twas his one idea, to save his gun, like others save the colours. And he was still speaking when he was annihilated, his right arm torn away and his left side ripped open. He fell upon the gun and remained there as though stretched upon a bed of honour, his head still erect, and his face unscathed, turned with a fine expression of anger towards the enemy yonder. A letter—Silvine’s—had slipped through a rent in his uniform and was stained with drop after drop of his blood, as he grasped it with his twisted fingers.
The only lieutenant who had not been killed now shouted the command: ‘Limber up!’
One of the caissons had already blown up with the commotion of fireworks, fusing and bursting. The horses of another caisson had to be taken to save a gun whose team was lying on the ground. And, this last time, when the drivers had wheeled, and the four remaining guns had again been limbered, the battery galloped off without stopping until it was some eleven hundred yards away, behind the fringing trees of the wood of La Garenne.
Maurice had seen everything, and with a faint shudder of horror he repeated in a mechanical fashion: ‘Oh! the poor fellow, the poor fellow!’
It seemed as though his grief imparted increased intensity to the growing pain that was griping his stomach. The animal part of his nature was rebelling; his strength was exhausted; he was dying of hunger. His eyesight was becoming dim, he was no longer conscious even of the danger to which the regiment was exposed, now that the battery had been compelled to fall back. At any moment, indeed, the plateau might be attacked by the enemy in force.
‘I say,’ he remarked to Jean, ‘I really must eat—I’d rather eat and be killed at once.’
Having opened his knapsack, he took the bread in his trembling hands and began to bite it voraciously. The bullets whistled by, a couple of shells exploded a few yards away, but nothing had any existence for him save his hunger, which must be satisfied.
‘Will you have a bit, Jean?’
Stupefied, his eyes swollen, and his stomach rent by a similar craving, Jean looked at him and answered: ‘Yes, all the same I’ll have some; I feel too bad.’
They divided the bread and ate it gluttonously, without a thought of anything else so long as a mouthful of it remained. And it was only after they had finished that they again saw their colonel, on his big charger, with his bloody boot. The 106th was being overlapped on either side. Some companies must have already fled, and M. de Vineuil, compelled to give way to the torrent, raised his sword, and, with his eyes full of tears, exclaimed, ‘God shield us, my lads, since He would not take us!’ Bands of fugitives were surrounding him, and he disappeared from view in a depression of the ground.
Without knowing how they had got there, Jean and Maurice next found themselves with the remnants of their company behind the hedge which they had skirted in the morning. There remained at most some forty men under the command of Lieutenant Rochas. The colours were with them, and with a view of trying to save them, the sub-lieutenant, acting as ensign, had just rolled the silk around the staff. They all filed along to the end of the hedge, and then threw themselves among some little trees on a slope, where Rochas ordered them to open fire again. Sheltered and scattered in skirmishing order, the men were able to hold out here, the more especially as a mass of cavalry was being set in motion on their right, and regiments of infantry were again being brought into line to support it.
And now Maurice realised the slow, invincible encompassment which was on the point of being completed. Early in the morning he had seen the Prussians debouching from the defile of St. Albert, reaching first St. Menges, and then Fleigneux, and now he could not only hear the cannon of the Prussian Guard thundering behind the wood of La Garenne, but began to perceive some other German uniforms coming up by the heights of Givonne. But a few minutes more and the circle would close up, and the Guard would join hands with the Fifth German Corps, surrounding the French army with a living wall, an annihilating belt of artillery. It must have been with the desperate thought of making a last effort, of striving to break through this marching wall, that a division of the reserve cavalry, that commanded by General Margueritte, was now being massed behind a fold in the ground in readiness to charge. They, were, indeed, about to charge to death, without any possibility of effecting their object, but for the honour of France. And Maurice, thinking of Prosper, witnessed the terrible sight.
Since early morning Prosper had done nothing but urge on his horse, continually marching and counter-marching from one to the other end of the plateau of Illy. He and his comrades had been wakened one by one at dawn, without any trumpet call; and in order that they might make their coffee they had ingeniously contrived to screen each fire with a cloak so as not to set the Prussians on the alert. After that they had remained in ignorance of everything. They could certainly hear the guns, see the smoke, espy distant movements of infantry, but in the complete inaction in which they were left by the generals they knew nothing of the incidents of the battle, its importance and its results. Prosper, for his own part, was so sleepy that he could hardly keep up. Fatigue was the great suffering: bad nights, an accumulation of weariness, followed by invincible somnolence when the men rocked in the saddle. Prosper himself became a prey to hallucinations—fancied at times that he was on the ground, snoring on a mattress of pebbles; or dreamt that he was in a comfortable bed with clean white sheets. Sometimes he actually slept in the saddle for minutes together, becoming a mere moving thing, carried along according to the chances of the trot. In this way some of his comrades had occasionally fallen from their mounts. They were all so weary that the trumpet calls no longer awoke them; it was only by dint of kicking that they could be roused from oblivion and set upon their legs.
‘What game are they having, what game are they having with us?’ Prosper kept on saying, in the hope that by doing so he might shake off his irresistible torpor.
The cannon had been thundering since six o’clock. A couple of comrades had been killed by a shell beside him while they were ascending a hill, and, farther on, three others had fallen to the ground, riddled with bullets which had come no one knew whence. This useless, dangerous military promenade across the battlefield was altogether exasperating. At last, however, at about one o’clock, he realised that the commanders had decided to get them killed in a decent fashion, at any rate. The whole of General Margueritte’s division, three regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique, one of Chasseurs de France, and one of Hussars had just been assembled in a fold of the ground, on the left of the road, and slightly below the Calvary. The trumpets had sounded ‘Dismount,’ and the officers thereupon gave orders to tighten the girths and secure the kits.
Prosper dismounted, stretched himself, and fondled Zephyr with his hand. Poor Zephyr! he was as stultified as his master, quite worn out by the stupid life he was led. Besides, he carried such a multitude of things: First, there was the linen in the holsters, and the cloak rolled up above them; then the blouse, the overalls, and the haversack, with everything required for grooming, behind the saddle; and in addition there was the provision bag thrown across the horse’s back, without mentioning the goat-skin, the water-can, and the mess-tin. The Chasseur’s heart was flooded with tender compassion for his steed as he tightened the girth and made sure that all the paraphernalia on his back was properly secured.
It was a trying moment. Prosper, who was not more of a coward than his comrades, felt his mouth quite parched, and lighted a cigarette. When orders are given to charge, each man may fairly say: ‘It’s all up with me this time;’ so few, indeed, are the chances in his favour.
Some five or six minutes went by, and the men told one another that General Margueritte had gone forward to reconnoitre the ground. Meantime, they waited. The five regiments had been assembled in three columns; each column was seven squadrons deep, so there would be plenty of food for the enemy’s cannon.
All at once the trumpets sounded: ‘To horse!’ And almost immediately afterwards another command rang out: ‘Draw swords!’
The colonel of each regiment had already galloped forward, taking up his regulation position—at seven-and-twenty yards in advance of the front. The captains were at their places at the head of their men. Then the spell of waiting began again, amid death-like silence. No longer a sound, not even the faintest breath was heard under the fierce sun. The men’s hearts alone were beating. But another command, the last, and then this motionless mass would spring forward, and rush onward with the speed of a tempest.
At that moment, however, a mounted officer, wounded and supported by two men, appeared upon the hill-crest. At first he was not recognised; then a roar resounded, swelling into a furious clamour. It was General Margueritte, whose cheeks had been transpierced by a bullet, and who was destined to die of his wound. He was unable to speak, but he waved his arm towards the enemy.
The clamour was still increasing: ‘Our general! Vengeance! vengeance!’
Thereupon the colonel of the first regiment raised his sabre in the air, and cried in a voice like thunder: ‘Charge!’
The trumpets sounded and the mass started off, first of all at a trot. Prosper was in the front rank, but almost at the end of the right wing. The greatest danger is in the centre, upon which the enemy instinctively directs his more violent fire. When they had reached the crest of the Calvary and were beginning to descend the other slope, in the direction of the broad plain, Prosper could distinctly see, a thousand yards ahead of him, the Prussian squares against which they were being hurled. He trotted along, however, as though he were in a dream, swaying like a man asleep, feeling light and buoyant, and with his brain so empty that he had no idea of anything. He had become a mere machine worked by an irresistible power. Orders were repeated for the men to keep as close together as possible, knee to knee, so that they might acquire the resistive strength of granite. And as the trot became swifter and changed into a desperate gallop, the Chasseurs d’Afrique in Arab fashion began raising savage yells which maddened their horses. It soon became a diabolical race, at hellish speed, and as an accompaniment to the furious gallop and the ferocious howls there resounded the crackling of the fusillade, the bullets striking the cans and pans of the advancing squadrons, the brass on the uniforms of the men and on the harness of the horses, with the loud pit-a-pat of hail. And through this hail swept the shells—the hurricane of wind and thunder which shook the ground and impregnated the sunlight with a stench akin to that of burning wool and sweating beasts.
At five hundred yards from the foe a furious eddy, sweeping everything away, threw Prosper from his horse. He caught Zephyr by the mane, however, and managed to get into the saddle again. Riddled and broken by the fusillade, the centre had just given way, and the two wings were whirling round, falling back to re-form and rush forward once more. This was the fatal, foreseen annihilation of the first squadron. The fallen horses barred the ground; some had been struck dead on the spot; others were struggling in violent throes; and dismounted soldiers could be seen running hither and thither at the full speed of their little legs in search of other horses. The dead were already strewing the plain, and many riderless chargers continued galloping, coming back to the ranks of their own accord so that they might return at a mad pace to the fight, as though the powder fascinated them. The charge was resumed; the second squadron swept on with growing fury, the men bending low over their horses’ necks, with their sabres on a level with the knee, ready to strike. Another couple of hundred yards were covered amid a deafening, tempestuous clamour. Yet again did the bullets make a gap in the centre, men and horses fell, arresting the onslaught with the inextricable obstruction of their corpses. And thus, in its turn, was the second squadron mowed down, annihilated, leaving the front place to those that followed behind it.
When, with heroic obstinacy, the third charge was made, Prosper found himself mixed up with some Hussars and Chasseurs de France. The regiments were mingling; there was now only a huge wave of horsemen which incessantly broke and re-formed, carrying whatever it met along with it. Prosper no longer had any idea of anything; he had surrendered himself to his horse, brave Zephyr, whom he was so fond of, and who seemed maddened by a wound in the ear. At present he was in the centre; other horses reared and fell around him; some men were thrown to the ground as by a hurricane, whilst others, though shot dead, remained in the saddle, and continued charging, showing but the whites of their eyes. And, this time, again, another two hundred yards having been covered, the stubble in the rear of the squadrons was littered with dead and dying. There were some whose heads had sunk deep into the soil. Others, who had fallen on their backs, gazed at the great round sun with terrified eyes starting from their sockets. Then there was a big black horse, an officer’s charger, whose belly had been ripped open, and who vainly strove to rise with the hoofs of both forelegs caught in his entrails. Whilst the foe redoubled his fire, the wings whirled once again, and fell back, to return, however, to the charge with desperate fury.
It was, indeed, only the fourth squadron, at the fourth onslaught, that reached the Prussian lines. Prosper, with his sabre uplifted, smote the helmets and the dark uniforms that he saw through the smoky mist. Blood flowed, and on noticing that Zephyr’s mouth was ensanguined, he imagined that it was through having bitten the foe. So frightful was the clamour becoming, that he could no longer hear himself shout, and yet his throat was being almost torn away by the yells that issued from it. Behind the first Prussian line, however, there was yet another one, then another, and then another. Heroism remained of no avail; those deep masses of men were like lofty herbage amid which horses and horsemen disappeared. Mow them down as you might, there were always thousands left standing. The firing continued with such intensity, the muzzles of the needle guns were so close, that uniforms were set on fire. All foundered, sank down among the bayonets; chests were transpierced, and skulls were split. Two-thirds of those regiments of horsemen were to remain on the field, and of that famous charge there would abide but the memory of the glorious madness of having attempted it. And, all at once, Zephyr, in his turn, was struck by a bullet full in the chest, and fell to the ground, crushing under him Prosper’s right thigh, the pain of which was so acute that the Chasseur fainted.
Maurice and Jean, who had been watching the heroic gallop of the squadrons, gave vent to a cry of rage: ‘Thunder! Bravery’s not a bit of good.’
And then they continued discharging their chassepots, on their haunches behind the bushes of the little hillock, where they and their comrades were scattered in skirmishing order. Rochas himself had picked up a gun and joined in the firing. This time, however, the plateau of Illy was well lost, the Prussian troops were invading it from all sides. It must now have been about two o’clock, the junction of the hostile forces was at last being effected, the Fifth Corps and the Prussian Guard were meeting and buckling the belt.
All at once Jean was thrown to the ground. ‘I’m done for,’ he stammered.
A heavy blow, like that of a hammer, had struck him on the crown of the head, and his cap, torn and carried off, was lying behind him. He at first thought that his skull was split, that his brain was bare, and for a few seconds he dared not raise his hand to the spot, feeling certain he should find a hole there. Then, having ventured to do so, he drew away his hands and found them red with a thick flow of blood. And the pain was so great that he fainted.
At that same moment Rochas gave orders to fall back. A Prussian company was now no more than two or three hundred yards distant. If they remained they would be caught. ‘Don’t hurry, though,’ said he, ‘turn on the way and fire another shot. We will rally behind that low wall.’
Maurice, however, was in despair. ‘We are surely not going to leave our corporal here, sir?’
‘But what can be done if his account’s settled?’
‘No, no; he still breathes. Let’s carry him.’
Rochas shrugged his shoulders as though to say that they could not encumber themselves with every man who fell. Then Maurice turned supplicatingly to Pache and Lapoulle: ‘Come,’ said he, ‘lend me a hand. I’m not strong enough by myself.’
But they did not listen to him, did not hear him; the instinct of self-preservation was so absorbing that neither had thought for any but himself. They were already gliding along on their knees, disappearing at a gallop in the direction of the low wall. And now the Prussians were only a hundred yards away.
Shedding tears of rage, Maurice, who had remained alone with Jean, took him in his arms and endeavoured to carry him off. But he was indeed too weak, too puny, exhausted moreover by fatigue and anguish. Almost at the first step he staggered and fell with his burden. If he could only have seen a bearer! He looked about him wildly, fancied he could distinguish some bearers among the fugitive soldiers, and waved his arm to them. But nobody came. Then, collecting all his remaining strength, he again took up Jean, and succeeded in carrying him some thirty paces, when a shell having exploded near them, he fancied it was all over, and that he also was about to die on his comrade’s body.
He slowly picked himself up, felt himself, found himself unscathed, without a scratch. Why did he not flee? There was still time; he could reach the wall in a few bounds, and that would mean salvation. Fear was coming back again, distracting him, and he was on the point of rushing away, when bonds, stronger even than death, held him back. No! it was impossible; he could not abandon Jean. It would have made him bleed from every pore; the fraternity that had sprung up between that peasant and himself extended to the depths of his being, to the very roots of life. Its origin might have been traced back, perhaps, to the first days of the world; for it was as though there had been but two men left in all creation, one of whom could not part from the other without parting from himself.
If Maurice had not eaten that crust of bread amid the shells, an hour previously, he would never have found the strength to do that which he now did. Later on, moreover, he was unable to recollect how he had accomplished it. He must have lifted Jean on to his shoulders, have dragged himself along, have halted and set out afresh a score of times amid the stubble and the bushes, stumbling over each stone he encountered, but still and ever setting himself upon his legs again. He was sustained by an unconquerable will, a resistive power that would have enabled him to carry a mountain. When he at last got behind the wall, he there again found Rochas and the few remaining men of the company, who were still firing, defending the colours which the sub-lieutenant was carrying under his arm.
No line of retreat had been indicated to the different army corps for adoption in the event of a defeat. This lack of foresight and the prevailing confusion left each general free to act as he pleased, and now they all found themselves thrown back on Sedan, within the formidable embrace of the victorious German armies. The Seventh Corps’ Second Division was retiring in fairly good order, but the remnants of its other divisions, mingled with the remnants of the First Corps, were already rolling towards the town in a fearful mob—a torrent of rage and fright, in which men and horses were swept along.
Just then, however, Maurice was delighted to see Jean opening his eyes. He wished to wash his face for him, and as he was hastening to a rill near by, he was greatly astonished when, on his right hand, in the depths of a secluded valley, sheltered by rugged slopes, he again espied the same peasant whom he had seen in the morning, and who was still leisurely turning up the sod, guiding his plough drawn by a big white horse. Why should a day be lost? Corn would not cease growing, nor would the human race cease living simply because it pleased some men to fight.
< < < Chapter IV
Chapter VI > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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