CHAPTER XI
We remained with Cousin Desjardins all that day. Cousin Lise had ourshirts washed, our clothes cleaned, and our shoes dried before thefire, after having first filled them with hot embers; and the next daywe took our leave of these excellent people, thanking them from thebottom of our hearts.
We were very impatient to see our native place again, of which we hadhad no news for a month; and especially our poor wives, who must havesupposed us lost.
The weather was damp; there were forebodings of a hard winter.
At Dieuze the rumor reached us that Bazaine had just surrendered Metz,with all his army, his flags, his guns, rifles, stores, and wounded,unconditionally!
The Prussian officers were drinking champagne at the inn where wehalted. They were laughing! George was pale; I felt an oppression onmy heart.
Some people who were there, carriers--German Jews, who followed theirarmies with carts, to load them with the clocks, the pots and pans, thelinen, the furniture, and everything which the officers and soldierssold them after having pillaged them in our houses--told us how horseswere given away round Metz for nothing; that Arab horses were sold fora hundred sous, but that nobody would have them, horses' provenderselling at an exorbitant price; that these poor beasts were eating oneanother--they devoured each other's hair to the quick, and even gnawedthe bark off trees to which they were tied; that our captive soldiersdropped down with hunger in the ditches by the roadside, and then thePrussians abused them for drunkards. We heard, also, that theinhabitants of Metz, on hearing the terms of capitulation, had meant torise and put Bazaine to death, but that all through the siege threemitrailleuses had been placed in front of his head-quarters, and thathe had escaped the day before this shameful capitulation was to takeplace.
All this appeared to us almost impossible. Metz surrenderunconditionally! Metz, the strongest town in France, defended by anarmy of a hundred thousand well-seasoned troops: the last army left tous after Sedan!
But it was true, nevertheless!
And in spite of all that can be said of the ignorance and the folly ofthe chiefs, to account for this terrible disaster, I cannot but believethat our _honest man_ gave his orders to the very last; that Bazaineobeyed, and that they did everything together. Besides, Bazaine wentto join him immediately at Wilhelmshoehe, where the cuisine was soexcellent; there they reposed after their toils, until the opportunityshould return of recommencing a campaign after the fashion of the 2d ofDecember, in which men were entrapped by night in their beds, whilethey were relying upon _the honest man's_ oath; or in the style of theMexican war, where he ran away, deserting the men he had sworn todefend! In this sort of campaign, and if the people continue to haveconfidence in such men, as many assert will happen, they may beginagain some fine morning, and once more get hold of the keys of thetreasury; they will once more distribute crosses, and salaries, andpensions to their friends and acquaintances; and in a few yearsBismarck will discover that the Germans possess claims upon Champagneand Burgundy.
Well, everything is possible; we have seen such strange things theselast twenty years.
At Fenetrange, through which we passed about two o'clock, nothing wasknown.
At six in the evening we arrived upon the plateau of Metting, near thefarm called Donat, and saw in the dim distance, two leagues from us,Phalsbourg, without its ramparts, and its demilunes; its church and itsstreets in ashes! The Germans were hidden by the undulations of thesurrounding country, their cannon were on the hill-sides, and sentinelswere posted behind the quarries.
There was deep silence: not a shot was heard: it was the blockade!Famine was doing quietly what the bombardment had been unable to effect.
Then, with heads bowed down, we passed through the little wood on ourleft, full of dead leaves, and we saw our little village of Rothalp,three hundred paces behind the orchards and the fields; it looked deadtoo: ruin had passed over it--the requisitions had utterly exhaustedit; winter, with its snow and ice, was waiting at every door.
The mill was working; which astonished me.
George and I, without speaking, clasped each other's hands; then hestrode toward his house, and I passed rapidly to mine, with a fullheart.
Prussian soldiers were unloading a wagon-load of corn under my shed;fear laid hold of me, and I thought, "Have the wretches driven away mywife and daughter?"
Happily Catherine appeared at the door directly; she had seen mecoming, and extended her arms, crying, "Is it you, Christian? Oh! whatwe have suffered!"
She hung upon my neck, crying and sobbing. Then came Gredel; we allclung together, crying like children.
The Prussians, ten paces off, stared at us. A few neighbors werecrying, "Here is the old mayor come back again!"
At last we entered our little room. I sat facing the bed, gazing atthe old bed-curtains, the branch of box-tree at the end of the alcove,the old walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the littlewindow-panes, and my good wife and my wayward daughter, whom I love.Everything seemed to me so nice. I said to myself, "We are not alldead yet. Ah! if now I could but see Jacob, I should be quite happy."
My wife, with her face buried in her apron between her knees, neverceased sobbing, and Gredel, standing in the middle of the room, waslooking upon us. At last she asked me: "And the horses, and the carts,where are they?"
"Down there, somewhere near Montmedy."
"And Cousin George?"
"He is with Marie Anne. We have had to abandon everything--we escapedtogether--we were so wretched! The Germans would have let us die withhunger."
"What! have they ill-used you, father?"
"Yes, they have beaten me."
"Beaten you?"
"Yes, they tore my beard--they struck me in the face."
Gredel, hearing this, went almost beside herself; she threw a windowopen, and shaking her fist at the Germans outside, she screamed tothem, "Ah, you brigands! You have beaten my father--the best of men!"
Then she burst into tears, and came up to kiss me, saying, "They shallbe paid out for all that!" I felt moved.
My wife, having become calmer, began to tell me all they had suffered:their grief at receiving no news of us since the third day after thepassage of the pedler; then the appointment of Placiard in my place,and the load of requisitions he had laid upon us, saying that I was aJacobin.
He associated with none but Germans now; he received them in his house,shook hands with them, invited them to dinner, and spoke nothing butPrussian German. He was now just as good a servant of King William ashe had been of the Empire. Instead of writing letters to Paris to getstamp-offices and tobacco-excise-offices, he now wrote toBismarck-Bohlen, and already the good man had received large promisesof advancement for his sons, and son-in-law. He himself was to be madesuperintendent of something or other, at a good salary.
I listened without surprise; I was sure of this beforehand.
One thing gave me great pleasure, which was to see the mill-dam full ofwater: so the chest was still at the bottom. And Gredel having leftthe room to get supper, that was the first thing I asked Catherine.
She answered that nothing had been disturbed: that the water had neversunk an inch. Then I felt easy in my mind, and thanked God for havingsaved us from utter ruin.
The Germans had been making their own bread for the last fortnight;they used to come and grind at my mill, without paying a liard. How toget through our trouble seemed impossible to find out. There wasnothing left to eat. Happily the Landwehr had quickly become used toour white bread, and, to get it, they willingly gave up a portion oftheir enormous rations of meat. They would also exchange fat sheep forchickens and geese, being tired of always eating joints of mutton, andCatherine had driven many a good bargain with them. We had, indeed,one cow left in the Krapenfelz, but we had to carry her fodder everyday among these rocks, to milk her, and come back laden.
Gredel, ever bolder and bolder, went herself. She kept a hatchet underher arm, and she told me smiling that
one of those drunken Germanshaving insulted her, and threatened to follow her into the wood, shehad felled him with one blow of her hatchet, and rolled his body intothe stream.
Nothing frightened her: the Landwehr who lodged with us--big, beardedmen--dreaded her like fire; she ordered them about as if they were herservants: "Do this! do that! Grease me those shoes, but don't eat thegrease, like your fellows at Metting; if you do, it will be the worsefor you! Go fetch water! You sha'n't go into the store-room straightout of the stable! your smell is already bad enough without horse-dung!You are every one of you as dirty as beggars, and yet there is no wantof water: go and wash at the pump."
And they obediently went.
She had forbidden them to go upstairs, telling them, "_I_ live upthere! that's my room. The first man who dares put his foot there, Iwill split his head open with my hatchet."
And not a man dared disobey.
Those people, from the time they had set over us their governorBismarck-Bohlen, had no doubt received orders to be careful with us, totreat us kindly, to promise us indemnities. Captain Floegel went ondrinking from morning till night, from night till morning; but insteadof calling us rascals, wretches! he called us "his good Germans, hisdear Alsacian and Lorraine brothers," promising us all the prosperityin the world, as soon as we should have the happiness of living underthe old laws of Fatherland.
They were already talking of dismissing all French school-masters, andthen we began to see the abominable carelessness of our government inthe matter of public education. Half of our unhappy peasants did notknow a word of French: for two hundred years they had been leftgrovelling in ignorance!
Now the Germans have laid hands upon us, and are telling them that theFrench are enemies of their race; that they have kept them in bondageto get all they could out of them, to live at their cost, and to usetheir bodies for their own protection in time of danger. Who can sayit is not so? Are not all appearances against us? And if the Germansbestow on the peasants the education which all our governments havedenied them, will not these people have reason to attach themselves totheir new country?
The Germans having altered their bearing toward us, and seeking to winus over, lodged in our houses. They were Landwehr, who thought only oftheir wives and children, wishing for the end of the war, and muchfearing the appearance of the francs-tireurs.
The arrival of Garibaldi in the Vosges with his two sons was announced,and often George, pointing from his door at the summit of the Donon andthe Schneeberg, already white with snow, would say: "There is fightinggoing on down there! Ah, Christian, if we were young again, what afine blow we might deliver in our mountain passes!"
Our greatest sorrow was to know that famine was prevailing in the town,as well as small-pox. More than three hundred sick, out of fifteenhundred inhabitants, were filling the College, where the hospital hadbeen established. There was no salt, no tobacco, no meat. The flagsof truce which were continually coming and going on the road toLuetzelbourg, reported that the place could not hold out any longer.
There had been a talk of bringing heavy guns from Strasbourg and fromMetz, after the surrender of these two places; but I remember that the_Hauptmann_ who was lodging with the cure, M. Daniel, declared that itwas not worth while; that a fresh bombardment would cost his MajestyKing William at least three millions; and that the best way was to letthese people die their noble death quietly, like a lamp going out forwant of oil. With these words the _Hauptmann_ put on airs of humanity,continually repeating that we ought to save human life, and economizeammunition.
And what had become of Jacob in the midst of this misery? And JeanBaptiste Werner? I am obliged to mention him too, for God knows whatmadness was possessing Gredel at the thought that he might be sufferinghunger: she was no longer human; she was a mad creature without controlover herself, and she often made me wonder at the meek patience of theLandwehr. When one or another wanted to ask her for anything, shewould show them the door, crying: "Go out; this is not your place!"
She even openly wished them all to be massacred; and then she would sayto them, in mockery: "Go, then! attack the town! ... go and storm theplace! ... You don't dare! ... You are afraid for your skin! You hadrather starve people, bombard women and children, burn the houses ofpoor creatures, hiding yourselves behind your heaps of clay! You mustbe cowards to set to work that way. If ours were out, and you were in,they would have been a dozen times upon the walls: but you are afraidof getting your ribs stove in! You are prudent men!"
And they, seated at our door, with their heads hanging down, spoke nota word, but went on smoking, as if they did not hear.
Yet one day these peaceable men showed a considerable amount ofindignation, not against Gredel or us, but against their own generals.
It was some time after the capture of Metz. The cold weather had setin. Our Landwehr returning from mounting guard were squeezed aroundthe stove, and outside lay the first fall of snow. And as they weresitting thus, thinking of nothing but eating and drinking, the bugleblew outside a long blast and a loud one, the echoes of which died faraway in the distant mountains.
An order had arrived to buckle on their knapsacks, shoulder theirrifles, and march for Orleans at once.
You should have seen the long, dismal faces of these fellows. Youshould have heard them protesting that they were Landwehr, and couldnot be made to leave German provinces. I believe that if there hadbeen at that moment a sortie of fifty men from Phalsbourg, they wouldhave given themselves up prisoners, every one, to remain where theywere.
But Captain Floegel, with his red nose and his harsh voice, had come togive the word of command, "Fall in!"
They had to obey. So there they stood in line before our mill, threeor four hundred of them, and were then obliged to march up the hill toMittelbronn, whilst the villagers, from their windows, were crying, "Agood riddance!"
It was supposed, too, that the blockade of Phalsbourg would be raised,and everybody was preparing baskets, bags, and all things needful tocarry victuals to our poor lads. Gredel, who was most unceremonious,had her own private basket to carry. It was quite a grand removal.
But where did this order to march come from? What was the meaning ofit all?
I was standing at our door, meditating upon this, when Cousin MarieAnne came up, whispering to me, "We have won a great battle: all themen at Metz are running to the Loire."
"How do you know that, cousin?"
"From an Englishman who came to our house last night."
"And where has this battle taken place?"
"Wait a moment," said she. "At Coulmiers, near Orleans. The Germansare in full retreat; their officers are taking refuge in themayoralty-office with their men, to escape being slaughtered."
I asked no more questions, and I ran to Cousin George's, very curiousto see this Englishman and hear what he might have to tell us.
As I went in, my cousin was seated at the table with this foreigner.They had just breakfasted, and they seemed very jolly together. MarieAnne followed me.
"Here is my cousin, the former mayor of this village," said George,seeing me open the door.
Immediately the Englishman turned round. He was a young man of aboutfive and thirty, tall and thin, with a hooked nose, hazel eyes full ofanimation, clean shaved, and buttoned up close in a long gray surtout.
"Ah, very good!" said he, speaking a little nasally, and with his teethclose, as is the habit of his countrymen. "Monsieur was mayor?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you refused to post the proclamations of the Governor,Bismarck-Bohlen?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very good--very good."
I sat down, and, without any preamble, this Englishman ran on witheight or ten questions: upon the requisitions, the pillaging, thenumber of carriages and horses carried away into the interior; how manyhad come back since the invasion; how many were still left in France;what we thought of the Germans; if there was any chance of our agreeingtogether: had we rather
remain French, or become neutral, like theSwiss.
He had all these questions in his head, and I went on answering,without reflecting that it was a very strange thing to interrogatepeople in this way.
George was laughing, and, when it was over, he said, "Now, my lord, youmay go on with your article."
The Englishman smiled, and said, "Yes, that will do! I believe youhave spoken the truth."
We drank a glass of wine together, which George had found somewhere.
"This is good wine," said the Englishman. "So the Prussians have nottaken everything."
"No, they have not discovered everything; we have a few goodhiding-places yet."
"Ah! exactly so--yes--I understand."
George wanted to question him too, but the Englishman did not answer asfast as we; he thought well over his answers, before he would say yesor no!
It was not from him that Cousin George had learned the latestintelligence; it was from a heap of newspapers which the Englishman hadleft upon the table the night before as he went to bed--English andBelgian newspapers--which George had read hastily up to midnight: forhe had learned English in his travels, which our friend was not awareof.
Besides the battle of Coulmiers, he had learned many other things: theorganization of an army in the North under General Bourbaki; the marchof the Germans upon Dijon; the insurrection at Marseilles; the nobledeclaration of Gambetta against those who were accusing him of throwingthe blame of our disasters upon the army, and not upon its chiefs; andespecially the declaration of Prince Gortschakoff "that the Emperor ofRussia refused to be bound any longer by the treaty which was torestrain him from keeping in the Black Sea more than a certain numberof large ships of war."
The Englishman had marked red crosses down this article; and Georgetold me by and by that these red crosses meant something very serious.
The Englishman had a very fine horse in the stable; we went outtogether to see it; it was a tall chestnut, able no doubt to run like adeer.
If I tell you these particulars, it is because we have since seen manymore English people, both men and women, all very inquisitive, and whoput questions to us, just like this one; whether to write articles, orfor their own information, I know not.
George assured me that the article writers spared no expense to earntheir pay honorably; that they went great distances--hundreds ofleagues--going to the fountain-head; that they would have consideredthemselves guilty of robbing their fellow-countrymen, if they inventedanything: which, besides, would very soon be discovered, and woulddeprive them of all credit in England.
I believe it; and I only wish news-hunters of equal integrity for ourcountry. Instead of having newspapers full of long arguments, whichfloat before you like clouds, and out of which no one can extract theleast profit, we should get positive facts that would help us to clearup our ideas: of which we are in great need.
So we thought we were rid of our Landwehr, when presently theyreturned, having received counter orders, which seemed to us a very badsign.
George, who had just accompanied his Englishman back to Sarrebourg,came into our house, and sat by the stove, deep in thought. He hadnever seemed to me so sad; when I asked him if he had received any badnews, he answered: "No, I have heard nothing new; but what has happenedshows plainly that the German army of Metz has arrived in time toprevent our troops from raising the blockade of Paris after the victoryof Coulmiers."
And all at once his anger broke out against the Dumouriez and thePichegrus, men without genius, who were selling their country to servea false dynasty.
"A week or a fortnight more, and we should have been saved."
He smote the table with his fist, and seemed ready to cry. All at oncehe went out, unable to contain himself any longer, and we saw him inthe moonlight cross the meadow behind and disappear into his house.
It was the middle of November; the frost grew more intense and hardenedthe ground everywhere: every morning the trees were covered withhoar-frost.
We were now compelled to do forced labor; not only to supply wood, butalso to go and cleave it for the Landwehr. I paid Father Offran, whosupplied my place; it was an additional expense, and the day of ruin,utter ruin, was drawing close.
Of course the Landwehr, offended at having been hissed all through thevillage, had lost all consideration for us, and but for stringentorders, they would have wrung our necks on the spot; every time theywere able to tell us a piece of bad news, they would come up laughing,dropping the butt-ends of their rifles on the stone floor, and crying:"Well, now, here's another crash! There goes another stampede ofFrenchmen! Orleans evacuated! Champigny to be abandoned! Capital!all goes on right! Now, then, you people, is that soup ready? Hurry!good news like these give one a good appetite!"
"Try to hold your tongues, if you can, pack of beggars," cried Gredel;"we don't believe your lies."
Then they grinned again, and said: "There is no need you should believeus, if only you get put into our basket; when you are there you willbelieve! Then look out! If you stir a finger we'll nail you to thewall like mangy cats. Aha! did you laugh and hiss when you saw usgoing? but there are more yet to come. You will regret us,Mademoiselle Gredel; you will regret us some day; you will cry, 'if wehad but our good Landwehr again!' but it will be too late."
What surprises me is that Gredel never seems to have thought ofpoisoning them; luckily it was not the time of the year for the redtoadstools: besides, we were obliged to boil our soup in the samekettle; or these wary people would have had their suspicions, andobliged us to taste their meat, as they did at the Quatre Vents, theBaraques du Bois de Chenes, and in several other places.
They then drew their lines closer and closer round the place: upon allthe roads which led to the advanced posts they placed guns, and watchedby them day and night; they regulated their range and line of fire byday with pickets and with grooves cut in the ground, to enable them tochange its direction and sweep the roads and paths, even in the darknights, in case of an attack.
The snow was then falling in great flakes; all the country was coveredwith snow, and often at midnight or at one or two in the morning, themusketry opened, and they cried in the street: "A sortie! a sortie!"
And all the villagers, who still kept their cattle at home by order ofthe new mayor Placiard, were compelled to drive them to a distance,into the fields, to prevent the French, if they reached us, fromfinding anything in the stables.
Ah! that abominable, good-for-nothing scoundrel Placiard, that famouspillar of the Empire, what abominations he has perpetrated, what toilshas he undergone to merit the esteem of the Prussians!
Does it not seem sad that such thieves should sometimes quietlyterminate their existence in a good bed?
The Plébiscite; or, A Miller's Story of the War Page 11