A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XIII

  WE SEEK GARIBALDI

  Hugh Deventer and I reached Orange only to hear that the recruitingparties of the Garibaldians had gone away north. But on the railway,hundreds of wagons laden with supplies were moving in the samedirection, and with the conductors of these we made what interest wecould.

  We showed the letter we had brought from Gaston Cremieux, but these weremen of the Saone and Isere, who had never heard of the agitator. ButHugh's willing help during heavy hours of loading and "transhipment,"and perhaps also the multitude and flavour of my tales of Scotland,gained us a footing.

  From them we heard with pride of what had already been done byGaribaldi, with such wretched material, and how the great Manteuffelhimself, in his dispatches, had allowed the excellence of Garibaldi'stactics.

  What we were most afraid of was that the whole war would be over beforewe got a chance. The men of the Isere, however, who on the strength ofsix months' campaigning considered themselves veterans, laughedscornfully at our young enthusiasms. They would march. They would fight.But as for beating the Germans in the long run it was impossible. Thattime had gone by when Bazaine had let himself be locked up in Metz.

  "All we can do is to help the Republic to get out of the mess with somecredit!" said a tall sergeant who sat in the open door of a bullockwagon. And the others agreed with him. They were on tenterhooks to knowwhy we English should be so eager to take up their quarrel. The thousandItalians they could understand. They came because Garibaldi did, touchedby the glory of his name, but we English--what had we to do with theaffair?

  Me they suspected of Southern blood from my quick slimness and swarthycolour, but Deventer was a joy to them. "That Englishman!" they cried,and laughed as at an excellent jest. His big hearty blundering ways, hisignorance of military affairs kept them perpetually on the grin. Butwhen they saw him strip and repair a chassepot with no more tools than apocket screw-driver and a nail file, they changed the fashion of theircountenances. Hugh was not the son of Dennis Deventer for nothing.

  Presently we found ourselves privileged stowaways, whirling in thedirection of Lyons, protected by these good fellows, who hid uscarefully from the rounds of inspection which visited the wagons atevery stopping place. Mostly, however, no severe examination was made,and the word of the sergeant was taken that all was right inside.

  But as soon as the train slackened speed we sprang on a shelf which ranalong one end of the wagon, and there lay snug behind a couple of bagsof potatoes.

  At last, near Civry, a little town on the foothills of the Cote d'Or, wewere abruptly ordered down.

  It was a dark night and raining as we set our noses out. We would muchrather have remained behind the potato sacks, but there was no help forit. Out we must come along with the rest, for Manteuffel's Uhlans wereoff on a raid and had cut the line between us and Dijon. At first wecould only see the blackness and the shapes of the trees bent eastwardby many winter blasts, but after a time our eyes grew accustomed, and webecame aware of a long line of wagoners' teams drawn up on a road thatskirted the railway.

  We did our best to assist at the changing of the provisions andammunition, and would have been glad of permission to accompany theconvoy through the hills to its destination.

  But we had the ill fortune to fall in the way of a captain of regularswho asked us our business there, and on our telling him, he answeredwith evident contempt, that in that case we had better go and look for"Monsieur Garibaldi." As far as he was concerned, if he found us in hisconvoy again he would have us shot for spies. Hugh Deventer and I couldnot rejoice enough that we had left our two beautiful Henry rifles andour stores of ammunition on our sleeping shelf. We knew well that ourprotector the sergeant and his men would say nothing about the matter,though they looked with unrestrained envy and desire of possession uponour repeating rifles.

  Accordingly I advised Hugh to confide to the sergeant in private thename of his father, and promise that a similar rifle would be sent tohim with the next consignment of chassepots.

  The sergeant's eyes glowed, and he told us that he was under orders forhis native town of Epinal, which he hoped to reach in about a fortnight.Hugh promised that he would find a Henry repeater with an abundantsupply of cartridges waiting for him there at his mother's house. Andaccordingly he sat down in the empty wagon, and by the light of thelantern wrote a note to his father which he gave into the sergeant'shands to be posted at the first opportunity. He in his turn entrusted itto the care of the engine driver, who was getting ready to take hisempty wagons rattling southward again to bring further supplies from therich Rhone valley.

  The sergeant also arranged that we should accompany the rear-guard sofar as was possible during the night, when we were to strike offdiagonally to the west to pick up Autun, where Menotti Garibaldi wasreported to be waiting with a large force to cut off the retreat of theGerman raiders.

  So we started on our march, and had soon reason to be glad that we werenot stumbling at hazard up and down those leg-breaking vine-terraces.

  The convoy had relays of peasants as guides, and at least we were keptalong some semblance of a path. We could hear the rumbling and creakingof the wheels before us, but for that night the goad superseded the loudcrack of the whip, and the language beloved of all nationalities ofteamsters was, if not wholly silenced, at least sunk to a whisper. Wemarched far enough in the rear to be rid of the cloud of dust raised bythe convoy, which fell quickly in the damp night air.

  Occasionally an orderly would gallop back, dust-mantled in grey fromhead to heel. He was sent to see that we of the rear-guard kept ourdistance and did not straggle. The Isere and Grenoble men with whom wemarched were veterans and in no ways likely to desert, so that theadjutant's report was at once accepted, and the officer galloped back.All the same we two regularly sneaked aside into a belt of trees or tookrefuge behind the vine-terraces as soon as the sound of hoofs was heard.

  We had marched many hours in the darkness--from eight or nine of theevening till the small hours were passing one by one with infiniteweariness. I was lighter on my feet than Hugh, having less to carry inthe way of "too, too solid flesh." Consequently he suffered more, bothfrom the weight of his rifle, and the dumb remorseless steadiness of themarching column. Forward we went, however, stumbling now and then withsleep, our feet blistered, and the rattle and wheeze of the ammunitionwagons coming back to us mixed with a jingle of mules' gear through thedark.

  At last, when it seemed as if we could do no more, the column halted,and our grateful sergeant came back in order to set us on the road toAutun.

  "Yonder," he said, "you can see a hill which cuts the stars. It is highand steep, but to the right of it is a pass, and when you reach the topyou will look down upon the lights of Autun."

  He bade us a rapid good-bye, and hastened away to his own place in thecolumn. With a final word of thanks to the adjutant (who is here a kindof sergeant-major), we left our kindly rear-guard and set out to findGaribaldi.

  The night grew suddenly darker as we missed the shoulder-touch of acomrade on either side of us. We rolled over vine-terraces, clutching atthe gnarled roots, or stumbled with a breath-expelling "ouch" into dryditches all laid out for the summer irrigation. Fence rails and thecorner posts of vineyard guard-shelters marked us black, and blue, butaloft or alow we held firm to the Henry rifles which were to be ourchief treasures, when we should at last don the red cardigan of theGaribaldian troops.

  To us it seemed as if we never would reach the top of that pass. Wecould see the mountain towering up on our left hand, and once a showerof stones came rumbling down as a warning not to venture too near. Thewind was now soft and equal, and the unusual warmth had served no doubtto loosen the frost-bound rocks above, as well as to keep us in a gentleperspiration while we climbed the corkscrew pathway towards the hillcrest. Things became easier after we had left the vineyards beneath us,and our road lay over the clean grassy plateau on which the sheep hadthat day been grazing. We rested a while in a sheph
erd's shelter hut,and did not scruple to refresh ourselves with some slices of bread andsausage, washed down by a long swig from a skin of wine. We left a francin payment, stuck into the cut end of the sausage, with a note appendedthat we were two recruits on our way to join Garibaldi. Little did weimagine that in a few weeks we should, without hurt to our consciences,simply have transferred the whole supply to our haversacks withoutthanks or payment.

  There was still no hint of dawn when we started out, but beyond thelowest part of the ridge immediately above us a kind of faintillumination appeared. It burned steadily, and for a long while we couldnot explain it. It could not be the approaching sunrise, for ourcompasses told us that we were marching as near as possible due west.

  Quite suddenly we topped the crest, and saw beneath us the lights ofAutun gleaming hazily through a kind of misty drizzle. But that whichstruck our faces was in no wise wetting. It only struck a chill throughus, making our greatcoats welcome. We had so far carried them _enbandouliere_.

  The west side of the ridge was, in fact, already spotted with finesifted snow, which blew in our faces and sought a way down our necks.Its coming had caused the fluorescent light we had seen as we weremounting the eastern slopes, and now with bowed heads and our rifles aswell "happed" as possible, we strode downhill in the direction of thetown.

  At the limits of the chestnut woods the vineyards began again, and ourtroubles threatened to be as great as they had been after we left theconvoy. But though fine snow fell steadily, its clinging whitenessshowed up the stone-dykes and terraces as black objects to be avoided.There was, therefore, less tumbling about among the ledges of loosestones, and presently we came out upon a regular "departmental" road,with drainage ditches on either side, rows of pollarded willows andpoplars, and kilometric pillars, with numbers on them which it was toodark to see.

  Along this we made all haste, for we were bent on getting to Autun assoon as possible, and indeed it was not long before we were in the wayof getting our wish.

  "Halt! Who goes there?" came a challenge out of the unseen. Well was itfor us that we had attempted no stealthy approach upon the town, butserenely clattered down the middle of the turnpike. Luckier still thatwe fell into the hands of regular mobiles of the army of the Vosges,instead of a stray company of _franc-tireurs_, who as like as not, wouldhave cut our throats for the sake of our rifles, the stores ofammunition, and the few silver coins we carried.

  We had come upon a picket of men of the regiment of Gray on the bordersof the Haute Saone. It was like one of Napoleon's levies afterMoscow--young lads of sixteen and men of forty or fifty standing by eachother cheerfully, and without distinction of age or previous occupation.

  We stated our purpose and asked to be taken to head-quarters. Like mostof such casual recruits, we thought we would be taken directly into thepresence of Garibaldi, but the Gray men astonished us by the informationthat the great soldier was almost a recluse, and indeed so much of aninvalid that he could only review his troops from a carriage. His sons,Menotti and Ricciotti, were his fighting generals, but all directingpower was centred in Colonel Bordone, through whom all orders came tothe army.

  In the meantime we were conveyed amicably to the temporary head-quartersof the 14th Mobiles of the Haute Saone. Here we found several officers,but after a look at us and a civil enough demand for the production ofour papers, we were permitted to betake ourselves to the snug kitchen ofan ancient monastery, where the soldiers of the outpost guard weresitting around a huge fire, or lying extended on couches of straw,sleeping the sleep of men who had marched far the day before, andexpected to do as much more on the morrow.

  Our clothes were soon dry, and our overcoats spread out to the blaze,after being well shaken and thumped to get rid of the clinging snow. Themorning began to come tardily, and as if reluctantly. The snow hadceased, but a thin whitish mist had been left behind, softening anddimming all outlines.

  The town of Autun bethought itself of waking up. A few shopkeepers tookdown their shutters in a leisurely fashion, the first of these being acouple of ladies, venders of sweet cakes, both pretty and apparentlyexceedingly attractive to the young Italian officers, all of whom hadthe racial sweet tooth as well as the desire to rival each other in theeyes of beauty.

  Our men of Gray were rather contemptuous, but could not deny that theseyoung sweet-suckers fought well and bravely whenever it came to blows.

  "And I dare say, after all," said a tall brigadier, "it is better tomunch sugar cakes flavoured with cinnamon than to swallow the filth theyserve out to you in the _cafes_."

  The others agreed, but we did not observe that their teetotal sentimentswere more than platonic. At least, during all our stay with the 3rdCorps in the town of Autun, the Frenchmen went to the _cafe_ and theItalians to the _patissiere_.

  It was nine o'clock when the brigadier of the post detailed two men toaccompany us to the Cadran Bleu, the inn where the army head-quarterswas established. We had a short time to wait, for the officers withinwere judging the case of a spy, a dull heavy-witted fellow who hadformerly served in a line regiment, but who had had the ill thought toturn his knowledge of the army of the Vosges to account by compiling acareful estimate of the strength of Garibaldi's command, and offering itby ordinary letter post to General Werder of the Prussian service. Theletter was addressed to his brother-in-law at Macon, who was to arrangeterms. He, however, preferred patriotism (and the chance of a possibleheritage) to his relative's life. So the officer of the day was alreadypicking out the firing-party, for, as was the way of the army of theVosges under Garibaldi, a very short shrift was given to any traitor.Though the supreme judges were Italian and the man a Frenchman, the goodsense of the soldiers supported them in the certainty and rapidity ofsuch military punishments. I saw the man come out between a couple ofMobiles with fixed bayonets. His hair fell in an unkempt mass over hisbrow. His face was animal and stupid, but he had little pig's eyes thatglanced rapidly from one side to the other as if seeking for any way ofescape. But there was none for him, as the rattle of musketry testifiedalmost before we had reached the antechamber.

  Here there were half a dozen young French officers and many Italians alltalking together, who turned from their conversations to gaze at us. Wehad made what toilets we could, and the men of the Gray regiments hadrolled up our overcoats in military style.

  "Two English come from Aramon to enlist," we heard them say, with acertain resentment as if they had been offered an affront. "Do all theforeigners in the world think that France has need of them to fight herbattles?"

  However, one of the sub-lieutenants, a handsome lad, from a Protestantfamily in the Isere, came over to talk to us. The ice was at oncebroken, and the next moment we had quite a gathering round us admiringour Henry repeaters, and asking questions.

  "That is the new Remington action!" said one who stated that he readEnglish and American periodicals, but became appallingly unintelligibleas soon as he attempted to speak a single sentence of the language.

  "No," said Hugh Deventer, "the movement was invented by my father."

  "And who may your father be? Are you travelling for the firm?"

  "My father," said Hugh steadily, "is Monsieur Dennis Deventer,director-in-chief of the Arms Factory at Aramon-sur-Rhone, and he willsupply as many of these repeaters as the Company is paid for. TheGovernment have the matter under consideration, but if they do nothurry, the war will be over before their minds are made up."

  An officer in the red cloak of the Italian corps pushed a door open,spoke an order in imperfect French, and the next moment we foundourselves in an apartment where two men were sitting rolling cigarettesat opposite sides of a long table. They were both tall, dark-bearded menwith swarthy faces, clad in uniforms much the worse for wear. I knewthem by instinct to be Menotti and Ricciotti Garibaldi. Both had a lookof the common lithograph portraits of their father, but perhaps no morethan one weather-beaten shepherd on a Scottish hill resembles hiscomrade on the next.

  We stood at attention a
fter the English manner instilled into us by JackJaikes and the numerous old soldiers who by Dennis Deventer's orders hadtaken us for drill during vacation time at the works.

  The two grave men looked at one another and smiled. "We have seensomething like this when the English lads came to us in Sicily elevenyears ago, eh, brother? Tell us your names, little ones! Can you speakItalian?"

  We could, and that made us, if not of the "children," at least somethingvery different from the dull peasants whom Gambetta's conscriptionsupplied, or the innumerable company of ne'er-do-weels who appeared fromnowhere in particular, drawn by the mere sound of Garibaldi's name.

  Hugh Deventer did not much like to be called a "little one," but theItalian speech is not like our English, which lends itself more easilyto oaths and cursing than to the "little language" and the expression ofemotion.

  We presented the letters with which we had been furnished--one apersonal epistle to Ricciotti from Dennis Deventer--the others for themost part addressed to the General himself.

  That, however, made no difference. His sons opened them all withouthesitation or apology. Indeed, we soon learned that, excepting theconduct of the campaign, Father Garibaldi was not allowed to concernhimself with anything.

  "Ah, Dennis Deventer," said Ricciotti, starting up and embracing Hugh onboth cheeks. "I owe much to your father, more than I am likely to payfor some while. He took our word for it that the chassepots for the newtroops would be paid for, even though he knows that the Government islikely to fall into the hands of those who hate us. Also the newtwelve-pounders--Menotti, brother, what shall we do for this man's son?"

  "I must stay with my comrade, Angus Cawdor," put in Hugh Deventer. "Heis far more clever than I am, and I should be lost without him. I amonly a boy, but he----"

  "Has the thoughts of a man--I see," interrupted Menotti, who had beenconsidering us from under his hand without speaking. "I think it wouldbe no kindness to add two recruits of such mettle to the number of theadmirably combed and pressed young gentlemen in the anteroom out there.You had better take them, Ricciotti. You will be sure to find oldManteuffel hammering away at you on your return to Dijon, and the ladscan take bite and sup with the 'Enfants.' Since they speak Italian noexplanations need be made. They can be fitted out by the commissariatadjutant."

  "The favour is an unusual one, brother. There will be grumbling."

  "The circumstances are unusual, and so are the lads. There is but oneDennis Deventer, and we must do the best we can for his son."

  And in this manner we became part of the personal following of RicciottiGaribaldi, and were destined to take part in the war game which heplayed out successfully against Manteuffel and Werder till the coming ofthe armistice stopped all fighting.