The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories

by Émile Erckmann

  They sat down on the benches opposite, and ordered the favorite sour beer of the country for us to drink. Buche asked for some bread; the innkeeper’s wife brought us a whole loaf and a large piece of beef in a porringer.

  All urged us to “Eat, eat!” When one or another would ask us a question about the battle, the smith or the mayor would say:

  “Let the men finish, you can see plainly that they have come a long way.”

  And it was only when we had finished eating, that they questioned us, asking if it was true that the French had lost a great battle. The first report was that we were the victors, but afterward they heard a rumor that we were defeated.

  We understood that they were speaking of Ligny, and that their ideas were confused. I was ashamed to tell that we were overthrown; I looked at Buche, and he said:

  “We have been betrayed. The traitors revealed our plans. The army was full of traitors, who cried, ‘Sauve qui peut!’ How was it possible for us not to lose, under such circumstances?”

  It was the first time I had heard treason spoken of; some of the wounded, it is true, had said, “We are betrayed,” but I had paid no attention to their words, and when Buche relieved us from our embarrassment by this means, I was glad of it, though I was astonished.

  The people sympathized with us in our indignation against the traitors.

  Then we were obliged to explain the battle and the treason. Buche said the Prussians had fallen upon us through the treason of Marshal Grouchy.

  This seemed to me to be going too far, but the peasants in their pity for us had made us drink again and again, and had given us pipes and tobacco, and at last I said the same as Buche. It was not till after we had left the place that the recollection of our shameful falsehoods made me ashamed of myself, and I said to Buche:

  “Do you know, Jean, that our lies about the traitors were not right? If every one tells as many, we shall all be traitors, and the Emperor will be the only true man amongst us. It is a disgrace to the country to say that we have so many traitors; it is not true.”

  “Bah! bah!” said he. “We have been betrayed; if we had not, the English and Prussians could never have forced us to retreat.”

  We did nothing but dispute this point till eight o’clock in the evening. By this time we had reached a village called Bouvigny.

  We were so tired that our legs were as stiff as stakes, and for a long while we had needed a great deal of courage to take a single step.

  We were certain that the Prussians were no longer near, and as I had money we went into an inn and asked for a bed.

  I took out a six-franc piece in order to let them see that we could pay. I had resolved to change my uniform the next day, to leave my gun and knapsack and cartridge-box here and to go home, for I believed that the war was over, and I rejoiced in the midst of my misfortunes that I had escaped with my arms and legs.

  Buche and I slept that night in a little room, with a Holy Virgin and infant Jesus in a niche between the curtains over our heads, and we rested like the blessed in heaven.

  The next morning, instead of keeping on our way, we were so glad to sit on a comfortable chair in the kitchen, to stretch our legs and smoke our pipes as we watched the kettles boiling, that we said, “Let us stay quietly here. To-morrow we shall be well rested, and we will buy two pairs of linen pantaloons, and two blouses, we will cut two good sticks from a hedge, and go home by easy stages.”

  The thought of these pleasant plans touched us. And it was from this inn that I wrote to Catherine and Aunt Grédel and Mr. Goulden. I wrote only a word:

  “I have escaped, let us thank God, I am coming, I embrace you a thousand times with all my heart.

  “JOSEPH BERTHA.”

  I thanked God as I wrote, but a great many things were to happen before I should mount our staircase at the corner of the rue Fouquet opposite the “Red Ox.” When one has been taken by conscription he must not be in a hurry to write that he is released. That happiness does not depend upon us, and the best will in the world helps nothing.

  I sent off my letter by the post, and we stayed all that day at the inn of the “Golden Sheep.”

  After we had eaten a good supper, we went up to our beds, and I said to Buche, “Ha! Jean, to do what you please is quite a different thing from being forced to respond to the roll-call.”

  We both laughed in spite of the misfortunes of the country, of course without thinking, otherwise we should have been veritable rascals.

  For the second time we went to sleep in our good bed, when about one o’clock in the morning we were wakened in a most extraordinary manner: the drums were beating and we heard men marching all over the village.

  I pushed Jean, and he said, “I hear it, the Prussians are outside.”

  You cannot imagine our terror, but it was much worse a moment after; some one knocked at the door of the inn, and it opened; in a moment the great hall was full of people. Some one came up the stairs. We had both got up, and Buche said, “I shall defend myself if they try to take me.”

  I dared not think what I was going to do.

  We were almost dressed, and I was hoping to escape in the darkness without being recognized, when suddenly there was a knock at the door and a shout, “Open.”

  We were obliged to open it.

  An infantry officer, wet through by the rain, with his great blue cloak thrown over his epaulettes, followed by an old sergeant with a lantern, came in.

  We recognized them as Frenchmen, and the officer asked brusquely, “Where do you come from?”

  “From Mont-St.-Jean, lieutenant,” I replied.

  “From what regiment are you?”

  “From the Sixth light infantry,” I answered.

  He looked at the number on my shako, which was lying on the table, and at the same time I saw that his number was also the Sixth.

  “From which battalion are you?” said he, knitting his brows.

  “The third.”

  Buche, pale as ashes, did not say a word. The officer looked at our guns and knapsacks and cartridge-boxes behind the bed in the corner.

  “You have deserted,” said he.

  “No, lieutenant, we left, the last ones, at eight o’clock, from Mont-St.-Jean.”

  “Go downstairs, we will see if that is true.”

  We went downstairs. The officer followed us, and the sergeant went before with his lantern.

  The great hall below was full of officers of the 12th mounted chasseurs, and of the 6th light infantry. The commandant of the 4th battalion of the 6th was promenading up and down, smoking a little wooden pipe. They were all of them wet through and covered with mud.

  The officers said a few words to the commandant, who stopped, and fixed his black eyes upon us, while his crooked nose turned down into his gray mustache.

  His manner was not very gentle as he asked us half a dozen questions about our departure from Ligny, the road to Quatre-Bras, and the battle. He winked and compressed his lips. The others walked up and down dragging their sabres without listening to us. At last the commandant said, “Sergeant, these men will join the second company; go!”

  He took his pipe again from the edge of the mantel, and we went out with the sergeant, happy enough to get off so easily, for they might have shot us as deserters before the enemy.

  We followed the sergeant for two hundred paces to the other end of the village to a shed. Fires had been lighted farther on in the fields; men were sleeping under the shed, leaning against the doors of the stables, and the posts.

  A fine rain was falling and the puddles quivered in the gray uncertain moonlight. We stood up under a part of the roof at the corner of the old house thinking of our troubles.

  At the end of an hour, the drums began to beat with a dull sound; the men shook the straw from their clothes and we resumed our march. It was still dark—but we could hear the chasseurs sounding their signal to mount, behind us.

  Between three and four in the morning, at dawn, we saw a great many other re
giments, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, on the march like ourselves by different roads, all the corps of Marshal Grouchy in retreat! The wet weather, the leaden sky, the long files of weary men, the disappointment of being retaken, and the thought that so many efforts and so much bloodshed had only terminated a second time in an invasion, all this made us hang down our heads. Nothing was heard but the sound of our own footsteps in the mud.

  I could not shake off my sadness for a long time, when a voice near me said:

  “Good-morning, Joseph.”

  I was awakened, and looking at the man who spoke to me, I recognized the son of Martin the tanner, our neighbor at Pfalzbourg; he was corporal of the Sixth, and the file-closer, marching with arms at will. We shook hands. It was a real consolation for me to see some one from our own place.

  In spite of the rain which continued to fall and our great fatigue, we could talk of nothing but this terrible campaign.

  I related the story of the battle of Waterloo, and he told me that the 4th battalion on leaving Fleurus had taken the route toward Wavre with the whole of Grouchy’s corps, and that in the afternoon of the next day, the 18th, they heard the cannon on their left and that they all wanted to go in that direction, even the generals, but the marshal having received positive orders, had continued on the route to Wavre. It was between six and seven o’clock, before they were convinced that the Prussians had escaped; then they changed their course to the left in order to rejoin the Emperor, but unfortunately, it was too late, and toward midnight they were obliged to take a position in the fields.

  Each battalion formed in a square. At three o’clock in the morning the cannon of the Prussians had awakened the bivouacs, and they had skirmished until two o’clock in the afternoon, when the order to retreat reached them.

  Again, Martin said they were too late, for a part of the enemy’s force which had been engaged with that of the Emperor, was in their rear, and they were obliged to march all the rest of that day and the night following in order to escape from their pursuers.

  At six o’clock the battalion had taken a position near the village of Temploux, and at ten the Prussians came up in superior force. They opposed them in the most vigorous manner in order to give the baggage and artillery time to get over the bridge at Namur.

  Fortunately the whole army corps had escaped from the village except the 4th battalion which, through a mistake of the commandant, had turned off the road at the left, and was obliged to throw itself into the Sambre in order to escape being cut off. Some of the men were taken prisoners and some were drowned in trying to swim across the river.

  This was all that Martin told me; he had no news from home.

  That same day we passed through Givet; the battalion bivouacked near the village of Hierches half a league farther on. The next day we passed through Fumay and Rocroy, and slept at Bourg-Fidèles, the 23d of June at Blombay, the 24th at Saulsse-Lenoy—where we heard of the abdication of the Emperor—and the days following at Vitry, near Rheims, at Jonchery, and at Soissons. From there the battalion took the route toward Ville-Cotterets, but the enemy was already before us, and we changed our course to Ferté-Milon, and bivouacked at Neuchelles, a village destroyed by the invasion of 1814, and which had not yet been rebuilt. We left that place on the 29th, about one o’clock in the morning, passing through Meaux.

  Here we were obliged to take the road to Laguy, because the Prussians occupied that which led to Claye. We marched all that day and the night following.

  On the 30th, at five in the morning, we were at the bridge of Saint-Maur.

  The same day we passed outside of Paris and bivouacked in a place rich in everything, called Vaugirard.

  The 1st of July we reached Meudon, a superb place. We could see by the walled gardens and orchards, and by the size and good condition of the houses, that we were in the suburbs of the most beautiful city in the world, and yet we were in the midst of the greatest danger and suffering, and our hearts bled in consequence.

  The people were kind and friendly to the soldiers, and called us the defenders of the country, and even the poorest were willing to go to battle with us.

  We left our position at eleven o’clock in the evening of the 1st of July, and went to St. Cloud, which is nothing but palace upon palace, and garden upon garden, with great trees, and magnificent alleys, and everything that is beautiful. At six o’clock we quitted St. Cloud to go back to our position at Vaugirard.

  The most startling rumors filled the city. The Emperor had gone to Rochefort—they said; the King was coming back—Louis the XVIII. was en route—and so forth.

  They knew nothing certain in the city, where they should soonest know everything.

  The enemy attacked us in the suburbs of Issy about one o’clock in the afternoon, and we fought till midnight for our capital.

  The people aided as much as possible; they carried off the wounded from under the enemy’s fire; even the women took pity on us.

  What we suffered from being driven to this, I cannot describe. I have seen Buche himself cry because we were in one sense dishonored. I wished I had never seen that time. Twelve days before I did not know that France was so beautiful. But on seeing Paris with its towers and its innumerable palaces extending as far as the horizon, I thought, “This is France, these are the treasures that our fathers have amassed during century after century. What a misfortune that the English and Prussians should ever come here.”

  At four in the morning we attacked the Prussians with new fury, and retook the positions we had lost the day before. Then it was that some generals came and announced a suspension of hostilities. This took place on the 3d of July, 1815.

  We thought that this suspension was to give notice to the enemy, that if he did not quit our country, France would rise as one man, and crush them all as she did in ‘92. These were our opinions, and seeing that the people were on our side, I remembered the general levies which Mr. Goulden was always talking about.

  But unhappily a great many were so tired of Napoleon and his soldiers, that they sacrificed the country itself, in order to be rid of him. They laid all the blame on the Emperor, and said, if it had not been for him, our enemies would never have had the force or the courage to attack us, that he had exhausted our resources, and that the Prussians themselves would give us more liberty than he had done.

  The people talked like Mr. Goulden, but they had neither guns nor cartridges, their only weapons were pikes.

  On the 4th, while we were thinking of these things, they announced to us the armistice, by which the Prussians and English were to occupy the barriers of Paris, and the French army was to retire beyond the Loire.

  When we heard this, our indignation was so great that we were furious. Some of the soldiers broke their guns, and others tore off their uniforms, and everybody exclaimed, “We are betrayed, we are given up.” The old officers were quiet, but they were pale as death, and the tears ran down their cheeks.

  Nobody could pacify us, we had fallen below contempt, we were a conquered people.

  For thousands of years it would be said, that Paris had been taken by the Prussians and the English. It was an everlasting disgrace, but the shame did not rest on us.

  The battalion left Vaugirard at five o’clock in the afternoon to go to Montrouge. When we saw that the movement toward the Loire had commenced, each one said, “What are we then? Are we subjects to the Prussians? because they want to see us on the other side of the Loire, are we forced to gratify them? No, no! that cannot be. Since they have betrayed us, let us go! All this is none of our concern any longer. We have done our duty, but we will not obey Blücher!”

  The desertion commenced that very night; all the soldiers went, some to the right and some to the left; men in blouses and poor old women tried to take us with them through the wilderness of streets, and endeavored to console us, but we did not need consolation. I said to Buche: “Let us leave the whole thing, and return to Pfalzbourg and Harberg, let us go back to our trades and live li
ke honest people. If the Austrians and Russians come there, the mountaineers and villagers will know how to defend themselves. We shall need no great battles to destroy thousands of them, let us go!”

  There were fifteen of us from Lorraine in the battalion, and we all left Montrouge, where the headquarters were, together; we passed through Ivry and Bercy, both places of great beauty, but our trouble prevented us from seeing a quarter of what we should have done. Some kept their uniforms, while others had only their cloaks, and the rest had bought blouses.

  We found the road to Strasbourg at last, in the rear of St. Mandé, near a wood to the left of which we could see some high towers, which they told us was the fortress of Vincennes.

  From this place, we regularly made our twelve leagues a day.

  On the 8th of July we learned that Louis XVIII. was to be restored, and that Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois would secure his salvation. All the wagons and boats and diligences already carried the white flag, and they were singing “Te Deums” in all the villages through which we passed; the mayors and their assistants and the councillors all praised and glorified God for the return of “Louis the well-beloved.”

  The scoundrels called us “Bonapartists,” as they saw us pass, and even set their dogs on us.

  But I do not like to speak of them; such people are the disgrace of the human race.

  We replied only by contemptuous glances, which made them still more insolent and furious.

  Some of them flourished their sticks, as much as to say, “If we had you in a corner, you would be as meek as lambs.”

  The gendarmes upheld these Pinacles and we were arrested in three or four places. They demanded our papers and took us before the mayor, and the rascals forced us to shout “Vive le Roi!”

  It was shameful, and the old soldiers rather than do it allowed themselves to be taken to prison. Buche wanted to follow their example, but I said to him, “What harm will it do us to shout Vive Jean Claude, or Vive Jean Nicholas? All these kings and emperors, old and new, would not give a hair of their heads to save our lives, and shall we go and break our necks in order to shout one thing rather than another? No, it does not concern us, and if people will be so stupid, as long as we are not the strongest, we must satisfy them. By and by, they will shout something else, and afterward still something else. Everything changes—nothing but good sense and good will remain.”