by Théo Varlet
During this speech, the horsemen of the escort had spread out quietly into the open space behind the church and the infirmary, and when the Emir fell silent, the procession of presents was set out in the square, in front of the poilus, facing Renard and the General Staff.
First came seven camels bearing hermetically-sealed cages, led by the halter by black men in scarlet trousers and turbans. Behind them came black mules with red leather harnesses and red pompoms over their ears, drawing four brightly-painted carts carrying pyramids of fruits and vegetables, live chickens and confused heaps of foodstuffs. Closing the parade, a veritable flock of sheep kicked up dust, all their feet making a noise like rain.
“We do not have your science,” the Emir went on, smiling delicately in his benzoin-perfumed beard. “Our friend Geronimo and my cavalrymen have told me that you can enclose an entire ox in a little iron box. I offer you these gifts as nature has made them, but if you wish, our cooks will prepare them in our fashion, and a fraternal feast will bring your men and mine together this day.”
On an order from Renard, the poilus spread out and mingled with the Moors, making contact cheerfully and noisily. A canvas tent had been erected by the Mors with marvelous promptitude, beside the Englishman’s villa, and the two orderlies set up a trestle table laden with the wines of honor destined for the two General Staffs.
The presents were not yet finished. The carts of victuals and the flock of sheep had continued their progress as far as the kitchens, where, amid the curiosity of the poilus, and even that of Duranton, playing the idle critic for once, the Moorish cooks lit big fires under their pans of couscous and commenced the methodical slaughter of the desperately bleating and clucking animals. The camels remained, however. The eunuchs made them kneel in front of Renard and his companions; the green silk curtains at the sides of the ages opened, and women appeared, clad in pink, white, blue and yellow veils that revealed pretty faces—blushing, smiling or affronted—with eyes magnified with kohl. The Emir, delighted by the effect produced by his “surprise” pointed out that these slaves—Greeks, Circassians and Italians—numbered fourteen: two for each member of the allied General Staff!
With the exception of the aviator, who was apoplectic and scandalized, their eyes devoured these forms exhaling a rare and voluptuous Oriental odor. The major was already taking liberties; he pinched the chin of the nearest one and called her “My little chick!”
Fearful of regrettable scenes and faithful to his role as leader, Renard removed the temptation. He thanked the Emir warmly for his royal gift, but declared that the division would be made at leisure that evening. Between now and then, it would be better to lodge the ladies in the former town hall under the vigilant guard of their eunuchs—and the harem, veiled again and remounted on the camels, were guided to the retreat by Dupuy, who was ordered to provide them with a box of chocolates.
Wines were drunk—or rather, in view of the reluctance of the Moors, who were good Muslims, to taste the juice of the vine, the honorary Pernod. The opaline liquor was a big hit with the Emir and his officers. Even the monk accepted a glass, and in spite of the linguistic difficulties, gesture and broad smiles supplied a rather animated conversation.
The men, for their part, fraternized around cooking-pots in their tents. They too were soon exchanging presents: uniform buttons, matches, lighters. Aluminum rings—especially those ornamented with lice—were at a premium—and, competing in generosity to win the friendship of a poilu, the Moors did not hesitate to part with their gold rings in exchange. “That’s super, mate!” one of them sniggered. “It really suits me!” And there were handshakes all round, and embraces thereafter—for the wine and rum were flowing feely around the plates. The poilus, out of deference to the manners of their hosts, plunged their fingers into the steaming couscous just like them and attempted the same position, sitting on the ground with their legs crossed.
Gradually, the feast warmed up; the orchestra was added to the hubbub of joyful voices filled the square. Corporal Meunier took out his ocarina; a taciturn Limousin fetched an accordion; the Moors’ drums, pipes and cymbals played a prelude, and then the orchestra joined in, and songs rose up in a pleasant cacophony. The General Staffs, in their tent, did not want to be left out. With the aid of many strong arms, the piano was extracted from the cellar and Monocard started to play—with all his energy—to drown out the din. Lénac, endowed with a fine tenor voice, sang the Madelon20 and Marseillaise. The Emir, who had passed on from kummel to whisky and from whisky to Benedictine, was jubilant.
They were reminded of serious business at about five o’clock in the afternoon by an emissary from the guard-posts. A troop of approximately three hundred men was approaching slowly from Valencia.
It was a superb opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of firearms to the new allies. The Emir sent his officers to assemble the Moors; the trumpets sounded “boots and saddles.” They were about to charge the enemy! Renard asked him to keep his troops on this side of the Seille; then he went with the French General Staff to a mound near the tower from which the entire plain could be seen, all the way to Valencia.
The company of Spaniards, whose helmets and weapons were glinting in the sunlight between the bushes, was still some two thousand meters away.
“Hand you binoculars to our friend,” the sublieutenant whispered in Renard’s ear. The latter had not thought of it.
With remarkable sagacity, Abdul Khan grasped the purpose of the instrument and the operation of the focusing mechanism at the first try. When he had located them in the field of the Zeiss, the martial figures of his enemies suddenly moved a hundred paces closer and he uttered a little cry of joy, removed the lenses from his eyes for the sake of comparison, replaced them, and started spitting out a stream of insults at the Spaniards, as if they could hear him.
Pale with enthusiasm, the monk, who was experimenting on his own account with the major’s binoculars, stammered halting sentences which featured the names of Ptolemy and Averroes, and that of Aristotle, accompanied by epithets that were obviously unflattering. Out of deference to his hosts, he communicated a part of his reflections to his former pupil in Latin. “You see how far superior this crystal is to the eye alone? Well, it appears that it’s by an even greater margin that our friends’ weapons surpass the javelin and the arrow. In spite of your treasures, your genius and the science that I’ve shared with you, we’re like little children compared to them.”
“Nine hundred meters!” Renard said, and commanded: “Etcheverry, have the machine-guns open fire.”
The crepitation of detonations frightened the horses, but the Moorish cavalrymen, forewarned and reassured by Nénesse, only manifested a brief nervous start. They restrained their prancing mounts, and reformed their lines almost immediately. The Emir scarcely trembled, without quitting his binoculars—but he exclaimed with astonishment and joy, and his troops roared with triumph, as he saw the ranks of the enemy column collapse one by one, like scythed-down ears of wheat, under the invisible thunderbolts. Within two minutes, not one was left standing.
“Cease fire!”
Then, roused by their chiefs, to the bellowing of horns, with frenzied shouts, the Moorish squadrons departed at a great gallop, shaking the ground, in a vast palpitation of burnooses and a flamboyance of lances and naked scimitars. With his eyes glued to the magic crystal, the Emir stamped his feet, urging them on with guttural monosyllables. He breathed out, his jaws clenched in a rictus, his red lips pulling back to display his white teeth, as he watched them lean over the recumbent bodies, decapitating the dead and wounded indiscriminately, and come back brandishing scalps in a triumphant fantasia, pursued by the curses of the Spaniards who had watched from the heights of the ramparts, to the dismay of their fellow citizens.
Judging that the performance was over, Abdul Khan prepared to get down from the mound.
Renard retained him. “You haven’t seen everything.” And, addressing Etcheverry. “Have the 75mm aimed at the
city. Just one shell…we don’t have that many. An incendiary shell.”
The shot thundered. Almost immediately, from the roofs of Valencia, on the left of the city—the quarter where the poilus had been taken by surprise—a column of smoke rose into the sky. The silhouettes of archers on the ramparts waved their arms at the heavens tumultuously, and the sound of the tocsin rang out, shrill and multiplied, in the hot and limpid afternoon air.
Instinctively, as a true warrior, the Emir understood the relationship between the cannon-shot and the fire lit in the distance, in more than one place. He exhaled his enthusiasm, in Latin to the Frenchmen and the flabbergasted and admiring monk, and in Arabic to his General Staff, who had come to meet him. For the Moors, that final flick of the thumb was superfluous; they lavished respectful salaams upon the machine-guns and the reformed ranks of Lebels.
Interrupted by this martial episode, the feast got under way again with a new zest. The couscous had been eaten some time before, but there were still fruits to gnaw and pickles; there was still drinking, smoking and singing... Above all, there was still the alliance to be sealed. The poilus did not think that indispensable, but they did not want to sadden such generous guests and cavalry so skilled at cleaning up battlefields. The Moors, already wonderstruck by the practical demonstration of firearms, could no longer see any means other than the alliance to thank such powerful and modest collaborators, for they had refused the gift of the severed heads, and those trophies were already ornamenting the little camp to which the horses had been relegated, behind the presbytery.
The sun was setting. The tents were relocated in order to take better advantage of the sea breeze, and the two General Staffs appeared in public view. With loud shouts, the men in the burnooses clamored for their prince to give the signal for the ceremony.
The Emir stood up. Pulling back the sleeve of his tunic, he laid bare a slender arm, as firm and polished as bronze. With the point of his dagger he pricked the crease of his elbow. Renard, warned by the monk, imitated all his actions. For want of a dagger, he used his pen-knife.
“Hey, watch out!” muttered the doctor, passing his lighter, ready lit. “Cauterize that!”
In a liquor-glass still half full of gin Abdul Khan collect the generous trickle of his blood and held it out to Renard, who did the same.
“Drink!” proclaimed the Emir. “It is the sacred libation, more binding than all the most terrible oaths.”
Amid the hearty cheers of the Moors, the two leaders drank their mingled blood.
On seeing that it would be necessary for him to carry out the same ceremony with a tall young man with long black hair, the major pulled a face. “It’s not very antiseptic, you know, that procedure,” he said. “If one or other of these chaps has the...”21
“You’re forgetting that Christopher Columbus hasn’t yet discovered America,” Monocard observed.
It was necessary to do it. Ritually, the two General Staffs—even the aviator, furious at being obliged to lend himself to “pagan maneuvers”—completed the exchange of blood. Among the poilus, this was a pretext for enormous merriment. In view of their small number, and as they could not bleed themselves white to satisfy the six or seven Moors that surrounded each of them, soliciting the libation of fraternity, they thought of diluting a few red droplets in a full mug of rum and passing it round. The Moors accepted the new rite without demur.
The Emir explained his plans to his “brother.” The following day, when the bulk of his army had arrived, he would begin the siege of Valencia; within a month, by virtue of famine or otherwise, the city would fall.
Renard smiled. “Tomorrow, noble brother, with the aid of your warriors, we shall be in Valencia.”
The prince, already excited by the unaccustomed beverages, was overcome by this prospect, which surpassed his wildest hopes. He stammered a few inconsequential words and was seen to go pale, and then his head fell back on the back of his armchair. The major hurried forward to catch him, in the midst of exclamations and general distress.
“It only needs him to pop his clogs—we’ll be accused of poisoning him! Jasmin, run to the infirmary and ask Paincarat for a flask of ether!”
The ether reanimated the Emir. He took a deep breath from the handkerchief steeped in the strange perfume. He plunged his face into it delightedly and demanded a second dose. Then raising a visage radiant with ecstasy, he paraded his shining and intoxicated eyes over his entourage.
“Victory, my friends!” he murmured. “The Prophet has just revealed the victory to me! I’ve seen...”
In the darkness, beneath the fabulous eye of the large acetylene searchlight that Renard had ordered to be lit on the tower to give warning of any new incursion by the Spaniards—for troops had come out of the city and lined up under the walls—the two fraternal armies continued drinking for a long time...
VI. The Battle
All night long the Spanish troops continued massing in front of the ramparts. New detachments hastily summoned from neighboring towns had joined the garrison decimated two days earlier by the first attack, demoralized by the explosion of the gate, which had taken refuge in the fortress and had then taken Corporal Venette’s poilus by surprise. In all, there were between five and six thousand. Evidently the Spaniards were making a supreme effort to rid the land of the diabolical intruders.
The superstitious dread of the infernal “nocturnal sun” aimed at their concentration, however, paralyzed the Spaniards. While it was shining, they had not dared to advance.
Renard was not displeased, for that respite gave the bulk of the Moorish army time to arrive. To be sure, he did not need such reinforcements to put five or six thousand enemies to flight, but if they did not capture the runaways, the war might drag on at length. On the other hand, with a numerous and well-organized cavalry, no one would escape and the battle would be conclusive.
Emboldened by the advent of daylight and the extinction of the searchlight, the Spaniards advanced, in an order inspired by the ancient phalanx, in tight deep columns, presenting a front of five hundred meters at the most. Bristling with long pikes, their squares were unintimidated by the danger of being surrounded by Moorish horsemen. Their intention was to bring down the French gathered in the center, to annihilate that handful of men and to turn their attention thereafter to their old enemies, incapable of prevailing in formal battle against the pikes and arbalests.
Preceding the two General Staffs on horseback, the truck, hidden behind a curtain of troopers, advanced slowly with its two machine guns, the 75mm having remained in Port-sur-Seille, aimed at the city. To the right and the left, the two ranks of cavalry, still swelling, were more widespread than the Spaniards. Intoxicated by the certainty of their victory, the latter mingled prayers with war-cries and, once they had recovered from their initial alarm, howled insults at the airplane that was circling above them inoffensively. Eleven or twelve hundred meters still separated them from the poilus.
Suddenly, the truck was unmasked, and the machine-guns and Lebels opened fire.
It was more a massacre than a battle—a mere shooting match—and the poilus enjoyed themselves tremendously in creating that epic collapse.
“Your turn, Guillaume!”
“That won the egg-cup!”
“Chalk up the one on horseback to me—that was a least a general I shot just then!”
“It was me, not you, you clown!”
“Sock it to them, lads!”
“It’s better than the fair at Neuilly!”
“It’s thirsty work—pass me your bottle.”
“Fuck! My rifle’s hot!”
“Piss on it!”
The Spaniards, literally mown down, initially fell without understanding what was happening. Their ranks had lost half their personnel when the panic commenced and the remaining three thousand men turned round and fled toward the city. But the crackling truck launched forward in pursuit, spitting death from left to right and right to left; the Lebels were still firing withou
t sparing cartridges; the aviator launched his grenades on retreating groups of bewildered men, who threw away their weapons in order to run faster. On the crowd of spectators swarming on the ramparts the 75mm shells inflicted somber blows.
In its turn, the Moorish cavalry charged, irresistibly, in a whirlwind of dust. It was necessary to cease fire. Already, though, no more than five hundred men of the Spanish army were still standing, and the Moorish charge quickly completed the extermination, at the price of five or six horsemen killed and a dozen wounded.
From the city, on which the aircraft’s grenades and the shells were still raining down, a frantic clamor of despair was audible.
The victory was crushing, absolute and definitive.
At the top of the palace-fortress overlooking the city a white flag was unfurled; another floated on the ramparts, and a third appeared in the breach of the blasted gate.
Fortunately for the deputation, the Moors were busy with the cadavers with which the plain was strewn, and the officers did not have to protect the negotiators against their fury. The latter were brought to Renard, the Emir and their entourages.
A lamentable procession! In chemises and bare feet on the sharp stones, with lighted wax torches in hand, there were a dozen individuals of venerable appearance, but defeated, white-faced and tremulous in the legs. Amid the jeers of the poilus, greatly amused by the underdressed procession, the leader of the postulants, the governor, Don Pedro Casanova himself, darted a glance of unspeakable hatred at the monk and knelt down before the Emir to set down two enormous keys of polished steel on a green velvet cushion—the keys of the city and the fortress. He surrendered them unconditionally, but implored the conqueror’s mercy.