The Petitpaon Era

by Henri Austruy

  Bernard Petitpaon’s anticipations were partly realized. It was indeed on Belgium that the armies of the two coalitions converged in order to find a battlefield worthy of them, but the Germans refused to fall into the trap of distancing themselves from their frontiers. The “ocean stroke” thus remained to the count of its inventor, who reserved the option of bringing it into play later if the opportunity presented itself subsequently.

  Throughout the month of November and a part of December the Germans continued the maneuver that consisted of exiting their homeland via Alsace and Lorraine in order to reenter it via the Prussian Rhineland, passing through Belgium. It was a circular voyage that their military trains accomplished, and since the violated nation did not make any complaint heard, it was supposed that the booty stolen by the Germans went, at least in part, to buy silence from the brave Belgians, who are never at a loss when it comes to banking.

  Responding to the supplications of Bernard Petitpaon, General Croppeton had made superhuman efforts to contain the ardor of the French troops, impatient for the promised victories.

  The populations visited by the enemy did not hide their discontentment; they accused the Government of being disinterested in their fate. On several occasions, in fact, meetings were held in which the word treason was pronounced, and as politics does not lose its rights in any circumstances, the adversaries of the Republic counseled the inhabitants to defend themselves, since the masters of France had abandoned them.

  Trans were stoned; at Hirson, in the département of the Aisne a stick of dynamite placed on the track exploded, fortunately after the passage of the train, for the accident might have had grave consequences for a large number of soldiers.

  Meanwhile, a French army had reached the upper Rhine, the left bank of which it descended with such prudence and skill that its presence had not yet been detected. The secret plan was to go as far as Cologne in order to cut off the retreat of the Germans who, in all probability, would remain stuck in Belgian territory by the surprise of such a mysterious attack.

  Following the example of very great men of war, General Croppeton wanted to remain free in his movements and not be bound by a sequence of operations whose ensemble is often contrary to the utilization of unexpected advantages furnished by the enemy as a result of imprudence or poorly executed maneuvers. He therefore refrained from anticipating what he would do once he had cut off the German retreat.

  On an immense map pinned to a table he had planted little flags representing the positions of the different armies. As soon as a telegram arrived one of the orderly officers would quickly stick a flag bearing the number of men, horses and artillery pieces at the point indicated by the information.

  The British standard floated over Dover with an inscription of five hundred thousand men, ready to cross the Channel with their cannons, munitions and baggage, all fully assembled. England was, therefore keeping her promises with the rigorous exactitude of a bank.

  The Russian flag remained fixed at St. Petersburg, which meant that our powerful allies had not yet completed their campaign preparations.

  The Austrian banner indicated a million combatants on the frontier lines, while Italy and the other countries bore question marks in their indicative flags, signifying that nothing was known about them.

  For France and Germany the general staff had operated in accordance with authentic—or supposedly authentic—mobilization plans, at least with regard to our neighbors. The areas of the two countries had been turned into skimmers by the innumerable small flags necessary to identify each combat unit. General Croppeton contemplated that eloquent bristling with admiration, murmuring: “There are two veritably great nations, worthy of measuring themselves against one another.”

  Gradually, in small stages, like travelers in no hurry to get to the destination where a rendezvous has been arranged for a long time and where they are sure to meet up, the first arrivals having to wait for the laggards, the little German and French flags drew nearer to Belgium.

  Day by day, Bernard Petitpaon was brought up to date with that progress, which did not surprise him at all.

  “I told you so! Great days happen in Belgium!”

  “Damn! It’s just that there’s Waterloo!” observed Croppeton, chewing a few hairs from his beard.

  “Do you think, then, that all Waterloos are the same?” cried the President. “The Usurper was vanquished there in summer; the Republic will be victorious there in winter. I tell you, personally, that we’ll have a dazzling Waterloo, which will leave far behind the Waterloo of which historians have the habit of speaking. And I wish the Germans a Cambronne as energetic as ours!”20

  “They surely don’t have one of them!” Croppeton articulated, scornfully.

  The English, invited to cross the Channel, occupied the entire coast from Dieppe to Calais, their tents causing belief in an invasion of bathers who had mistaken the season—for that mid-December, the temperature was so rigorous that many soldiers froze to death.

  Scattered cases of cholera appeared in the French corps massed in the quadrilateral formed by Alençon, Chartres, Beauvais and Caen. The sanitary services loudly proclaimed that the disease remained limited to a few isolated individuals, but in lower voices they anticipated the beginning of a formidable epidemic, impossible to check.

  Following the opinion of General Croppeton, the Council of Ministers, and Petitpaon himself, thought that it would be best to get the war over with as soon as possible, in order to devote themselves subsequently entirely to the struggle against the terrible scourge.

  For identical reasons, the Germans, in whose ranks cholera was also causing great ravages, sought battle. In consequence, they did not wait for the Austrians to join forces with their army based in Westphalia, ready to march as soon as the signal was given against the French headquarters established in Aix-la-Chapelle.

  That army was, therefore, to see its retreat cut off by the German forces that were occupying very strong positions in Luxembourg and the province of Liège. It was necessary to hasten to its rescue without counting on the support of the Russians, who announced that their preparations had been somewhat delayed by unforeseen events. Nevertheless, five hundred thousand men had embarked at Kronstadt on rapid transports destined for Kiel, whose canal they would cross in order to reach the north of France and join up with us. Volunteers from Italy, Spain, Greece, the United States and the four corners of the world, out of sympathy for France, had joined our armies, which they augmented by a hundred thousand men.

  The mathematician Thunasol had carried out very meticulous calculations, and he affirmed that, in the case of a general engagement, the opposed forces would be exactly equal, the volunteer soldiers, by their number and their valor, balancing out the slight inferiority caused by the English and Russian coefficients.

  “But then there’ll be neither victor nor vanquished,” remarked General Croppeton.

  “Come on, General, don’t you have confidence in the soldiers of France?” President Petitpaon criticized. “Given equality, the content will evidently be hot, but we’ll be victorious if our arbiters do their duty with conscience and firmness. Can we count on them?”

  “They’ve been chosen from among the generals with the longest energetic past...”

  “You’re sure that past hasn’t worn them out? Will-power is a string that weakens in old age. It might perhaps have been preferable to designate as arbiters young officers full of ardor and impetuosity.”

  “My dear President, when I was in command in Algeria, I often had occasion to study the mores of apes—the apes which, by virtue of their intelligence, would perhaps be superior to humans if they were provided with a soul and speech. Those cunning and prudent quadrumanes live in colonies, and I always noticed that the role of sentinel was played by the oldest ape in the band. It had lost much of its native agility; its eyes no longer had the same acuity; and yet, it was on him that communal security relied. That’s because the old ape had the experience that permitted
him to distinguish the fortuitous and innocent approach of a traveler from the veritable danger of hunters. In the same way, our arbiters, grown old in harness, will give voice, perhaps less brilliantly, to far more solid arguments. Our enemies have understood that so well that they’ve appointed centenarians.”

  “What about the English? And the Russians?” asked Petitpaon.

  “The English have similarly sought among the remotest ancestors. As for the Russians, the age of their Grand Dukes isn’t counted by the number of their years but the favor they enjoy with the Tsar. The arbiters of the other Powers are all at least nonagenarians.”

  “In that case, you’ve chosen well,” Petitpaon approved. “I’ll finally be able to contemplate my work on a stage-set worthy of it.” And suddenly, as if he were taking a great resolution, he declared in a profound voice: “I want to witness the battle in person.”

  “What, you, Monsieur le Président? A civilian? To see the fire, it’s necessary to be military...”

  “I can wear a uniform as well as anyone else.”

  “You don’t have the right to get yourself killed!”

  “Who mentioned getting myself killed, my dear General? I would have that right if I sought to use it, but I know my duty to France too well to go into combat, seeking the possibility of a death that is only natural for a soldier. I simply want to be a spectator, to taste the joy of the artist before the creation of his brain and his genius. I shall leave tomorrow to join the main body of the army. Ask Verbuis to notify the German government of the purely esthetic character of my presence on the terrain of hostilities...”

  “Your departure might provoke troubles in Paris,” Croppeton reasoned, feeling close to vertigo at the idea of being deprived of the comforting tutor that Bernard Petitpaon was to him. In vain he cited the danger of cholera. The President of the Republic replied, with a good deal of justification, that the disease was as rife in Paris, and he left the next day for Valenciennes, where gigantic military honors were rendered to him by three million soldiers.

  It was the twentieth of December. The cold prevented the digging of graves for the countless victims of cholera, but the physicians were sure that the frozen cadavers would not enter into putrefaction, and that, in consequence, there was no danger in leaving them exposed for some time on the ground.

  New alarms arriving from the army of the Rhine, which feared being surrounded, begged the generalissimo of the French forces to move forward as rapidly as possible, while it fell back toward Belgium, pushing before it German corps derived of any hope of retreat.

  The international arbiters had established their headquarters in the vicinity of Wavre, which was the almost certain point of the imminent encounter.21

  The French, with Bernard Petitpaon at their head—who confessed that he was more emotional than he had been when the curtain went up at the first performance of Cincinnatus—reached Nivelles on the twenty-fifth of December.

  The advance guard stopped in order to rally the laggards, and resumed its march the following day.

  “It’s hotting up! It’s hotting up!” repeated Petitpaon nervously, his teeth chattering with cold and emotion.

  In fact, the enemy and almost captive forces were installed on the plateau of Mont Saint-Jean, facing up to French detachments that had retreated before the compact mass of four million Germans.

  “It really is the battle of Waterloo recommencing!” said Bernard Petitpaon, on horseback alongside the commander-in-chief.

  Spies signaled the departure of the bulk of the German army from Ottignies, where it had been camped for forty-eight hours.

  According to the most plausible predictions, battle would be engaged on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of December.

  Bernard Petitpaon, seething with ardor, wanted the forces to get to grips as soon as possible, because he was impatient to return to Paris, his arms full of laurels. The strategy for which the high command assumed responsibility resisted any desire for precipitation, and preferred to accumulate to the French side all the advantages resulting from the application of the most savant and most sure methods of combat.

  On the morning of the twenty-ninth of December, a Tuesday—the day of Mars, the god of war22—curious skirmishes began the action, under the marveling eyes of Petitpaon and those of the arbiters, a dozen and a half of whom had decided to go up in a tethered balloon. From the height of that incomparable observatory, the slightest detail could not escape them.

  In the two camps, the cannons began to thunder furiously. The balloon’s gondola danced on the aerial waves raised by the uninterrupted commotions, but the arbiters, conscious of the importance of their role, remained heroically at their post, aiming with great dexterity at the key points of the battle the objective lenses of photographic apparatus designed to record documents that would become extremely precious if disputes emerged in the course of the regulation of losses.

  Night fell and became black so rapidly that the arbiters were unable to agree on the exact positions of the belligerents, several units of which, having come into overly intimate contact, were confused without distinction of nationality.

  At La Haye Sainte,23 the French and Germans were prepared to bivouac pell-mell in the fraternity of a similar fatigue and an equal hunger when, from the heights of Mont-Saint-Jean, a gigantic light sprung forth over the plain. Cannon reopened fire noisily. Powerful electric searchlights had been put in service by the German army at the beginning of the campaign, which were able to make the darkest night into clear enough day to guide the fire of cannons over a distance of several kilometers.

  The German and Austrian arbiters, along with the secret partisans of our enemies, could not retain a cry of joy, for that maneuver assured their arms an indisputable advantage. The French arbiters had a moment of anguish, quickly passed. A cloud of complete opacity surged from the ground, raising a curtain of unbreachable darkness between the two armies.

  The German artillerymen, afraid of firing on their own brothers, ceased fire.

  The nocturnal truce being ensured, this time, since the French had responded with shadow to the attempted illumination of the enemy, the arbiters returned to the ground to file their documents and observations and take a well-merited rest.

  The next day, at dawn, the battle recommenced with a new ardor.

  At dusk, the arbiters held a rapid council in their gondola. By a unanimous decision, they declared the battle finished and ordered the immediate cessation of hostilities.

  Bernard Petitpaon immediately returned to Paris.

  A complicated and delicate work of accountancy commenced. The general staffs of the two armies were invited to furnish statements of men and munitions before and after the battle, with supporting evidence. The arbiters, installed at the Belle Alliance,24 devoted the entire month of January to their operations, while cholera claimed forty thousand victims a day in each camp.

  On the first of February, by unanimous accord, they fixed the number of the dead at four millions, to be equally shared between the two armies, and the figure of the wounded at five million, also equally divided between the French and the Germans.

  The arbiters had, therefore, done things on a grand scale. To reduce the duration of the drawing of lots to a minimum, it was agreed that each serial number drawn out of the urn should be applicable to all the regiments taking part in the action.

  Two canteen-girls, one French and one German, of virtue guaranteed by seals placed on them at the beginning of the campaign, represented hazard with their innocent hands.

  The first numbers drawn in each camp created an absolutely unforeseen complication. The majority of the designated dead really had been reduced to the state of cadavers by cholera. Ought they or ought they not to be counted in the number of the four million dead?

  The drawing of lots was suspended in order to take advice from the arbiters, who declared unanimously that in order to die, even theoretically, it was necessary to exist. It was therefore necessary to continue th
e designations until the totals of two million dead were attained in each army.

  The canteen-girls went back to work. Untiringly, they drew small pieces of paper folded in four from the urns. After three weeks they stopped; there were still a great many slips in the urns, but there no longer remained a single man to call “Present!” at the appeal of any serial number whatsoever.

  The accountants had only been able to register eighteen hundred thousand designated dead men in each camp. It was therefore necessary not to have any wounded at all. Adding in the effects of the cholera, there was a total figure of three million four hundred thousand soldiers that it was necessary to take away. The civilian populations in France and Germany had been so rudely tested by the scourge that entire provinces were almost completely depopulated.

  As the first days of March arrived, the armies broke up to return to their respective countries.

  XX

  France and Germany were thus obliged, as the international treaties required, to lay down their arms.

  The Germans had begun to pile up in the fields rifles, sabers and revolvers, when the rumor ran around that the French, in spite of the orders of their officers, were refusing to do the same. They said that they needed them to defend themselves, and the unfortunates, maddened by the cholera that was creating enormous gaps in their ranks, did not understand that their weapons could do nothing against the disease.

  The Germans picked up their rifles, sabers and revolvers again, and got ready to return to their own country in good order, without a word of anger against the cholera, which had not spare them either.

  The return of the French army resembled a formidable rout. In complete confusion, the regiments fled, aimlessly and hopelessly, full of the invasive horror or oblivion, driven by the instinctive need to distance themselves from the victims who fell by the thousand on the road. Irritation, muted and contained at first, soon burst forth. Threats were made by the soldiers against their leaders, whom they held responsible for all their troubles.

  While the German army allowed itself to be guided passively to isolation camps, the French Government had conceived the plan of embarking all the soldiers whose despair was to be feared on warships at Le Havre. A sea cruise might perhaps impede the propagation of cholera through France, and, in any case, would remove the danger of a possible revolt.