The Debacle

Just then, as a slim, tall, shadowy figure walked past them rapidly, both Jean and Maurice recognised Colonel de Vineuil. He was with Surgeon-Major Bouroche, a stout man with the head of a lion. They were exchanging disconnected words in an undertone, words but imperfectly articulated, like those one sometimes hears in dreams: 'It came from Basle—our first division is destroyed—twelve hours' fighting, the entire army in retreat.' The colonel stopped short, and called to another shadowy figure, slight, nimble, and dapper, that was hastily approaching, 'Is that you, Beaudoin?'

'Yes, colonel.'

'Ah! my poor friend. MacMahon has been beaten at Frœschweiler, Frossard is beaten at Speichern, De Failly hemmed in between them, gave neither any support. At Frœschweiler we had but a single corps engaged against an entire army. Prodigies of valour, but everything was swept away—rout and panic, and France open to the invader.'

His sobs were choking him, and the words he added died away as he and his shadowy companions disappeared, melting as it were in the surrounding darkness.

Maurice had sprung from the ground, shuddering from head to foot. 'My God!' he stammered.

And he found nothing else to say, whilst Jean, with an icy chill at his heart, muttered: 'Ah! What cursed luck! That gentleman, your relative, was right, after all, when he said they were stronger than we are.'

Maurice, quite beside himself, felt inclined to strangle Jean. The Prussians stronger than the French! The thought made his pride revolt. But the sober-minded, stubborn peasant was already adding—'Still it doesn't much matter. A man doesn't give in just for one blow. We shall have to hit them back.'

A tall figure had just sprung up in front of them, and they recognised Rochas, still draped in his cloak. The fugitive noises, perhaps even the passing breath of defeat, had roused him from his heavy slumber. He questioned them, determined to know the truth, and when, with great difficulty, he understood what had happened, an expression of profound stupefaction appeared in his empty child-like eyes. Again and again he repeated: 'Beaten! beaten! How's that? Beaten—why?'

The night had been pregnant with the anguish of this disaster. And now in the east appeared the dawn, an ambiguous dawn, infinitely sad, that whitened the tents full of sleepers, among whom one could now dimly descry the cadaverous-looking faces of Loubet and Lapoulle, Chouteau and Pache, who were still snoring with their mouths wide open. The aurora of a day of mourning was rising amid the soot-tinted mists that had ascended from the distant river.

CHAPTER II

THE PANIC—FROM BELFORT TO RHEIMS

Towards eight o'clock the heavy clouds were dissipated by the sun, and the bright, hot August Sunday shone upon Mulhausen, nestling amid the broad fertile plain. From the camp, now wide awake and buzzing with life, one could hear the bells of all the parish churches ringing out in full peal through the limpid atmosphere. Fraught though it was with a terrible disaster, this beautiful Sunday was a gay one, and the sky had a festive brilliancy.

When Gaude suddenly sounded the call to rations, Loubet affected great astonishment. What would there be? Some of that fowl which he had promised to Lapoulle the night before? Born amid the Paris Halles, in the Rue de la Cossonnerie, Loubet was the chance offspring of a market woman, and had enlisted, so he expressed it, for money's sake, after trying in turn a variety of callings. Fond of his stomach, he had a keen scent for dainty morsels, so he went off to see the rations distributed, whilst Chouteau, the artist—in reality a house painter of Montmartre—a handsome man and a revolutionist, who was furious at having been kept in the army after completing his time, began chaffing Pache, whom he had caught saying his prayers, on his knees, behind the tent. Pache, a sorry-looking little fellow with a pointed head, coming from some far-away village in Picardy, submitted to the chaffing with the patient gentleness of a martyr. He, and that colossus Lapoulle—a brutish peasant reared amid the Sologne marshes, and so stupendously ignorant that on joining the regiment he had asked to be shown the King—were the butts of the squad.

Although the news of the disaster of Frœschweiler had been current since the reveille, the four men laughed together, and set about their accustomed tasks with the indifference of machines. A bantering growl of surprise was heard when Corporal Jean, accompanied by Maurice, came back from the rationing with some firewood. So the supply which the men had vainly awaited the evening before in order to cook their soupe had arrived at last. There had merely been twelve hours' delay.

'A good mark for the commissariat!' exclaimed Chouteau.

'Never mind, we've got it now!' said Loubet. 'You shall see what a capital pot-au-feu I'll make you.'

He willingly took charge of the cooking as a rule; and the others thanked him for doing so, for he was a capital cook. But on these occasions he would overwhelm Lapoulle with extraordinary fatigue-duties. 'Go and fetch the champagne,' he would say to him, 'go and fetch the truffles.' That morning a comical idea, worthy of a Parisian gamin poking fun at a fool, came into his head: 'Make haste!' he cried; 'give me the fowl.'

'The fowl—why, where is it?'

'Why, there, on the ground. The fowl I promised you, the fowl the corporal brought.' So saying he pointed to a large white stone lying at their feet.

Lapoulle, quite amazed, ended by picking up the stone and turning it over in his hands.

'Now then, wash it! Wash the feet and the neck,' called Loubet, 'and use plenty of water, lazybones.' Then, by way of a joke and because the idea that they were going to have some soupe made him quite gay and facetious, he flung the stone into the pot full of water: 'That will flavour the broth nicely. What, didn't you know it? Don't you know anything, pighead? You shall have the parson's nose; you will see how tender it is.'

All the other men of the squad were splitting at sight of the expression on the face of Lapoulle, who, convinced at last, was already licking his lips. Ah! that rascal Loubet, there was no chance of catching the blues in his company. When the fire crackled in the sunlight and the pot began to sing, the whole squad, ranged around it like worshippers, visibly brightened as they watched the meat dancing on the water, and sniffed the nice smell that began to spread. They had felt fearfully hungry since the night before, and the idea of feeding took precedence of everything else. The army had been beaten, but all the same they must fill their stomachs. From one end to the other of the camp the fires were flaming and the pots boiling, and a voracious delight displayed itself while the bells continued clearly pealing from every steeple in Mulhausen.

Just as nine o'clock was about to strike, however, a sudden stir spread through the camp; officers hurried hither and thither, and Lieutenant Rochas, on receiving instructions from Captain Beaudoin, passed in front of the tents of his section.

'Now then, fold up everything, pack up everything; we are starting.'

'But the soupe?'

'You'll have it another day. We start at once.'

Gaude's bugle now rang out imperiously. Consternation and covert rage were general. What! must they start off without a bite, without waiting even an hour, by which time the soupe might be eatable? All the same the squad wished to drink the broth, but as yet it was merely so much water, whilst the uncooked meat was like tough leather between the men's teeth. Chouteau growled angry words, and Jean had to intervene to hasten the preparations for departure. What could there be such a tremendous hurry about that they should have to rush off in that style, without an opportunity even to recruit their strength? Some said they were about to march against the Prussians, to revenge the previous day's defeat; but Maurice, on hearing this, incredulously shrugged his shoulders. In a quarter of an hour the camp was raised, the tents were folded and strapped to the knapsacks, the guns were shouldered, and nothing remained on the bare ground save the expiring breakfast fires.

General Douay had determined on an immediate retreat, for some serious reasons. The Sub-Prefect of Schelestadt's despatch, already three days old, had been confirmed. Telegrams stated that Prussian camp-fires had again been seen threatening Markolsheim, and that an army corps of the enemy was crossing the Rhine at Huningen. Full and precise details were at hand; cavalry and artillery had been observed, with infantry marching from all directions to their rallying point. An hour's delay, and the line of retreat on Belfort would assuredly be intercepted. As a result of the defeats of Weissenburg and Frœschweiler, the general, isolated, adrift in his advanced position, now had no alternative but to fall back in all haste, especially as the morning's tidings were worse even than those of the night before.

The staff set out ahead at a rapid trot, spurring their horses onward and in dread lest they should be outstripped and find the Prussians already at Altkirch. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, foreseeing a hard march, took the precaution to pass through Mulhausen, where he breakfasted copiously, cursing the scramble all the while. And Mulhausen, as the officers rode through it, wore a sorrowful aspect. At news of the retreat the townsfolk poured into the streets, lamenting the sudden departure of the troops whose protection they had so pressingly implored. So they were to be abandoned, and all the valuable supplies accumulated at the railway station were to be left for the enemy; even the town itself would perhaps be merely a captured town before the evening. Along the country roads, the villagers and the peasants dwelling in wayside homesteads also hurried to their doors in astonishment and dismay. So the regiments they had seen marching to battle only the day before were already retreating, flying from the enemy without even having fought! The commanders were gloomy, and without answering any questions urged on their horses, as though the very fiend were at their heels. Was it true then that the Prussians had crushed the army, and were pouring forth from all sides into France like the waters of a swollen river? And, infected with the growing panic, the peasants fancied they could hear the distant roll of the invasion travelling through the atmosphere and roaring louder and louder every moment. Then carts were filled with furniture, houses were swiftly emptied, and families fled one after another by the roads along which fear was galloping.

In the confusion of the retreat, whilst skirting the canal from the Rhone to the Rhine, the 106th was brought to a halt near the bridge, after covering only the first thousand yards of the march. The marching orders, given badly enough, had been even worse executed, and had resulted in the whole of the Second Division crowding together at this spot. The passage was so narrow—barely sixteen feet—that the defiling seemed likely to last for ever.

Two hours elapsed and the 106th was still waiting there, facing the interminable stream of troops that flowed past it. Standing under the fiery sunrays with their knapsacks on their shoulders and their arms grounded, the men at last waxed indignant in their impatience.

'It seems we belong to the rear-guard,' said Loubet in that waggish voice of his.

'They are having a fine game with us, letting us roast here,' cried Chouteau in a rage; 'we were the first to arrive, we ought to have gone on ahead.'

At sight of the broad fertile plain and the level roads intersecting the hop grounds and fields of ripe corn, on the other side of the canal, it was now quite apparent that they were retreating, returning indeed along the same route they had come by the day before, and as this was realised jeers and furious scoffing sped through the ranks.

'So we are taking to our heels,' resumed Chouteau. 'Well, this march to meet the enemy, which they have been dinning into our ears since the other morning, is a precious funny one. Really now, this is too much bluster! We arrive, and then back we bolt without even having time to eat anything.'

At this, the men began to laugh again in their bitter rage, and Maurice, who stood near Chouteau, admitted he was in the right. As they had been kept standing there like posts for a couple of hours why hadn't they been allowed to cook their soupe quietly and eat it? They were getting hungry again, and felt the more rancorous that their pots should have been upset before the soupe was ready, as they could not understand the need of all this haste, which seemed to them both cowardly and stupid. Well, they were fine hares and no mistake.

However, Lieutenant Rochas began to trounce Sergeant Sapin for the disorderly bearing of his men; and hearing the noise, Captain Beaudoin, as dapper as ever, drew near: 'Silence in the ranks!'

Jean, who like a well-disciplined veteran soldier held his peace, was looking at Maurice, who seemed amused by Chouteau's malignant, passionate raillery: and he was astonished that a gentleman who had received so much schooling should approve of things which, however true they might be, were certainly not things to be said. If each soldier began blaming the generals and giving his opinion, they would certainly not get on together.

At last, after waiting another hour, the 106th was ordered to advance. The bridge, however, was still so crowded with the fag end of the division that the most deplorable disorder was created. Several regiments became intermingled; some companies were carried along and got across, whilst others, driven to the edge of the roadway, had to stay there marking time. And to make matters worse, a squadron of cavalry insisted on passing, driving the laggards who were already falling out of the ranks of the infantry into the neighbouring fields. After an hour's marching, quite a large party of stragglers stretched along the road, crawling and dawdling at their ease.

It was thus that Jean found himself in the rear, adrift with his squad, which he had not cared to leave, in the depths of a hollow road. The 106th had disappeared, not another man nor an officer of the company was to be seen—only solitary soldiers, a medley of strange men exhausted at the very outset of the march, and who were walking along leisurely wheresoever the paths might lead them. The sunrays were overpowering, it was extremely hot, and the knapsacks, rendered the heavier by the tents and all the complicated paraphernalia that swelled them out, weighed terribly on the men's shoulders. Many of these stragglers were not habituated to carrying them, and were inconvenienced too by their thick, campaigning great-coats, which seemed to them like leaden vestments. All at once a pale little linesman, whose eyes were full of tears, stopped short and flung his knapsack into a ditch with a deep sigh of relief, the long breath which the man who has been agonising draws as he feels himself coming back to life.

'He's in the right,' muttered Chouteau, though he himself continued marching along with his shoulders bending under the knapsack's weight. Two other men, however, having disburdened themselves, he could no longer hold out. 'Ah: curse it!' he cried, and with a jerk of his shoulders he tossed his knapsack on to the bank. Half a hundredweight on his shoulders—no, thanks. He had had enough of it. They were not beasts of burden that they should have to drag such things about.

Immediately afterwards Loubet imitated him, and compelled Lapoulle to do the same. Pache, who crossed himself each time they came upon a wayside cross, unfastened the straps of his knapsack, and carefully deposited it at the foot of a low wall, as if intending to come back and fetch it. And Maurice alone was still laden when Jean, on turning round, saw what his men had done.

'Take up your knapsacks. I shall have to pay for it if you don't.'

The men, however, without as yet openly revolting, trudged on silently, with an evil expression on their faces, as they pushed the corporal before them along the narrow road.

'Take them up or I shall report you!'

These words stung Maurice as though he had been lashed with a whip across the face. Report them! What! that brute of a peasant report them, because the poor fellows, feeling their muscles quite crushed, had eased themselves? And in a fit of feverish irritation he also unbuckled his straps, and with a defiant look at Jean, let his knapsack fall by the roadside.

'All right,' calmly said the corporal, realising the futility of a struggle; 'we will settle all that this evening.'

Maurice's feet caused him intense suffering. They were swelling in his coarse hard shoes, to which he was not habituated. He was far from robust, and though he had rid himself of his knapsack he could still feel a smarting sore on his spine, the unbearable hurt occasioned by his burden. Now, too, the mere weight of his gun, no matter how he carried it, made his breath come short and fast. But he was yet more distressed by the moral agony he experienced, for he was in one of those crises of despair to which he was subject. All at once, without possible resistance on his part, he would see his will-power collapse, and give way to evil instincts and self-abandonment, that subsequently made him sob with very shame. His errors in Paris had never been aught but the madness of 'his other self' as he expressed it, of the weak-minded fellow, capable of any degraded action, that he became in moments of low-spiritedness. And since he had been dragging himself along, under the overpowering sun, in this retreat which resembled a rout, he had become but a unit of the dawdling, disbanded flock spread over the roads. It was the countershock of the defeat, of the thunderbolt that had fallen leagues away, and the echo of which was following close at the heels of these panic-stricken men who fled without having seen an enemy. What could be hoped for now? Was it not all over? They were beaten, and there was nothing to do but to lie down and die.

'All the same,' shouted Loubet with that market boy's laugh of his; 'all the same we are not going to Berlin.'

'To Berlin! to Berlin!' Maurice again heard the cry bellowed forth by the swarming crowd on the Boulevards during that night of mad enthusiasm that had determined him to enlist. But the wind had changed into a tempestuous squall, there had been a terrible veering, and the very temperament of the French race was symbolised by the heated confidence which at the first reverse had suddenly collapsed into the despair now galloping among these vagrant, dispersed soldiers who were vanquished without having fought.

'This popgun of mine jolly well hurts my arms,' resumed Loubet, as he again changed his chassepot from one shoulder to the other. 'A nice toy, indeed, to carry about with one.' And then alluding to the money he had received as a substitute[9] he added: 'All the same, only fifteen hundred francs for such a trade as this—it's a regular swindle. That rich bloke whose place I've took must be smoking some nice pipes by his fireside, while I'm off to get my head cracked.'

'I had finished my time,' growled Chouteau, 'and I was just about to slope, but on account of this war they made me stay. Ah! what cursed bad luck to stumble into such a swinish business as this.'

He was balancing his rifle with a feverish hand, and suddenly he threw it, with all his strength, over a hedge. 'There,' said he, 'that's the place for the dirty thing.'

The gun spun round twice, and then fell in a furrow, where it lay motionless, stretched out like a dead body. Other guns were already flying through the air to join it, and the field was soon strewn with prostrate weapons looking sadly stiff in their abandonment under the oppressive sun. What with hunger torturing their stomachs, their shoes which injured their feet, this march which filled them with suffering, and the unforeseen defeat threateningly pursuing them, the men were seized as it were with epidemic madness. They could not hope for anything now; the generals bolted, the commissariat did not even feed them; and what with weariness and worry they experienced a desire to have done with the whole business before even beginning it. And that being so, the chassepot might as well join the knapsack. So with imbecile rage, and with the jeers of madmen amusing themselves, the laggards, scattered in endless file far away into the country, sent their guns flying into the fields.

Before ridding himself of his weapon, Loubet twirled it round and round like a drum-major's cane. Lapoulle, seeing his comrades fling their guns away, fancied no doubt it was a new drill exercise, and imitated them. Pache, however, with a confused consciousness of his duty, which he owed to his religious education, refused to do so, and was bespattered with insults by Chouteau, who called him a parson's drudge. 'There's a black-beetle for you,' said the house painter. 'Well, go and serve mass, as you're afraid to do like your comrades.'

Maurice, who was very gloomy, marched on in silence, his head bent under the fiery sun. Amid a kind of nightmare, brought on by his atrocious weariness, and peopled with phantoms, he advanced as if bound for some abyss lying ahead; and he, the man of education, experienced a subsidence of all his culture, an abasement that lowered him to the bestial level of the wretches surrounding him. 'Ah! you are right,' he suddenly said to Chouteau.

He had already deposited his gun on a pile of stones, when Jean, who had vainly been trying to prevent the arms being thrown away in this abominable fashion, perceived him, and darted towards him.

'Take up your gun at once; at once, you hear me!' cried the corporal, his face suffused by a rush of terrible anger. Usually so calm and conciliatory, he now had flaming eyes, and his voice thundered. His men, who had never seen him like this before, stopped short in surprise. 'Take up your gun at once, or you'll have to deal with me.'

Maurice, quivering with excitement, let but one word fall which he sought to render insulting: 'Clodhopper!'

'Yes, that's it; I'm a clodhopper, and you are a gentleman, you are! And for that very reason you're a pig, a dirty pig. I tell you so to your face.' At this some hooting was heard, but the corporal continued vehemently: 'When a man's educated, he shows it. If we are peasants and brutes you ought to set us a good example, you who know more than we do. Take up your gun, I say, or I'll have you shot when we halt.'

Maurice, already conquered, had picked up his gun. Tears of rage obscured his eyes. He resumed his march, staggering like a drunken man amid his comrades, who now jeered at him for having given in. Ah! that Jean, Maurice hated him with an inextinguishable hatred, struck as he was in the heart by this severe lesson which he felt to be deserved. And when Chouteau growled out that when men had a corporal like that they waited for a day of battle to lodge a stray bullet in his head, Maurice, quite maddened, distinctly saw himself smashing Jean's skull behind a wall.

A diversion occurred, however. Loubet noticed that during the quarrel Pache also had ended by getting rid of his gun, gently depositing it at the foot of a bank. Why had he done this? He did not try to explain, but laughed slyly, in the somewhat shame-faced style of a good little boy detected in his first fault. Then, very gay and quite revived, he marched on with his arms swinging; and along the endless roads, between the fields of ripe corn and the hop grounds that followed one another, ever the same, the straggling march continued, and the laggards without knapsacks or guns were now but a tramping crowd, a medley of scamps and beggars, at whose approach the frightened villagers closed their doors.

Just then an unforeseen meeting put the finishing touch to Maurice's rage. A dull, continuous rumbling was heard from afar; it was the reserve artillery, which had been the last to start, and the first detachment of which suddenly debouched round a turn of the road, the laggard linesmen having barely time to throw themselves into the fields. There was an entire artillery regiment of six squadrons marching in column, the colonel in the centre and each officer in his place, and they all clattered along at equal, carefully observed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, horses, and men. And in the fifth squadron Maurice recognised his cousin Honoré's gun. The quartermaster was there, proudly erect on his horse, to the left of the front driver, Adolphe, a stalwart, fair-complexioned man, who bestrode a sturdy chestnut, which admirably matched the off-horse trotting beside it; whilst Adolphe's chum, Louis, the gunner, a dark little fellow, would be seen among the six men seated in pairs on the ammunition boxes. They all seemed to have grown taller to Maurice, who had become acquainted with them at the camp, and the gun, drawn by its four horses and followed by its caisson, to which six other horses were harnessed, appeared to him as dazzling as a sun, well groomed and furbished, idolised by all its people, man and beast, who clung to it as it were with the discipline and attachment of a gallant family; and fearfully was Maurice's suffering increased when he saw his cousin Honoré dart a contemptuous glance at all the laggards, and then look quite stupefied on perceiving him among this flock of unarmed men. The defiling was nearly over already. The train of the batteries, the ammunition and forage waggons, the field smithies passed by; and then in a last cloud of dust came the spare men and horses, who vanished from sight at another bend of the road, amid the gradually subsiding clatter of wheels and hoofs.

'Pooh!' said Loubet, 'it's easy enough to swagger when you travel about in a carriage.'

The staff had found Altkirch unoccupied. There were no Prussians there as yet. Still fearing, however, that he was being pursued, and that the enemy might appear at any moment, General Douay had determined upon pushing on to Dannemarie, where the first detachments only arrived at five in the evening. Eight o'clock had struck, and night was gathering in, when the regiments, in frightful confusion and reduced to half their strength, commenced preparations for bivouacking. The men were quite exhausted, sinking both with hunger and fatigue. The laggards, the lamentable and interminable tag-rag and bobtail of the army, the cripples and mutineers scattered along the roads, continued arriving, now one by one, now in little bands, until ten o'clock, and had to search in the darkness for their companies which they could not find.

As soon as Jean had joined his regiment he went to look for Lieutenant Rochas to report to him all that had happened, and found him and Captain Beaudoin conferring with the colonel at the door of a little inn, all three of them visibly preoccupied about the roll call, and anxious as to what had become of their men. At the first words the corporal addressed to the lieutenant, Colonel de Vineuil, overhearing him, made him approach and relate everything. There was an expression of deep despondency on the colonel's yellow face, lighted by eyes that seemed all the blacker on account of the whiteness of his thick snowy hair and long drooping moustaches.

'Half a dozen of these scamps must be shot, sir,' exclaimed Captain Beaudoin, without waiting for M. de Vineuil to give his opinion.

Lieutenant Rochas nodded assent, but the colonel made a gesture of helplessness: 'There are too many of them. Nearly seven hundred. How could you manage—whom could you select? Besides, to tell the truth, the general won't have it. He's quite paternal, and says he never punished a single man in Algeria. No, no; I can do nothing. It's terrible.'

'It is terrible,' boldly rejoined the captain, 'it's the end of everything.'

Jean was retiring, when he heard Surgeon-Major Bouroche, whom he had not seen, growl in an undertone on the threshold of the inn that without discipline and punishments the army was done for. Before a week was over the men would be kicking their officers, whereas if a few of these fine fellows had been shot at once, the others, perhaps, would have profited by the lesson.

Nobody was punished. With commendable forethought some officers of the rear-guard escorting the army train had caused the knapsacks and guns bestrewing either side of the roads to be picked up. Only a small number was missing, and the men were re-armed at daybreak, furtively as it were, so as to hush up the affair. Orders had been given to raise the camp at five o'clock, but the men were roused at four, and the retreat on Belfort was hastened, the commanders being convinced that the Prussians were now only two or three leagues away. The men had to content themselves with biscuit, and with nothing to warm their stomachs they remained quite foundered after that brief, feverish night. And again that morning anything like an orderly march was prevented by the precipitate departure.

The day was an infinitely sad one, far worse than the day before. The character of the scenery had changed; they had entered a mountainous country, the roads climbed and descended slopes planted with fir trees; and the narrow valleys, bushy with furze, were spangled with golden flowers. But across that stretch of country so bright in the August sunrays, panic, growing more and more frenzied, had been sweeping since the previous day. A fresh despatch, instructing the mayors to warn the inhabitants to place their valuables in safety, had brought the general terror to a climax. Was the enemy at hand then? Would they even have time enough to escape? And they all fancied they could hear the roar of the invasion coming nearer and nearer; that sound like the dull roll of an overflowing river which had been swelling in volume ever since their departure from Mulhausen, and which now, at each village they came to, was increased by some fresh scene of terror, fraught with wailing and uproar.

Maurice marched along like a somnambulist, with his feet tingling, and his shoulders crushed by his gun and knapsack. He no longer thought of anything; at the sights that met his gaze he fancied himself in a nightmare; and he was no longer conscious of his comrades' tramp, realising merely that Jean was at his side, worn out with the same weariness and the same grief as himself. The villages they passed through presented a lamentable, pitiful aspect, such as to fill the heart with poignant anguish. As soon as the retreating troops, the worn-out, footsore, straggling soldiers appeared, the inhabitants began to bestir themselves, and hasten their flight. They had felt so easy in mind only a fortnight previously; all Alsace, indeed, had awaited the war with a smile, convinced that the fighting would take place in Germany. But now France was invaded, and the tempest was falling upon their heads, around their houses, and over their fields like one of those terrible hail and thunder storms which ruin an entire province in a couple of hours.

Before the doors of the houses, amid a scene of fearful confusion, men were loading carts and piling up articles of furniture, careless whether they broke them or not; and from the upper windows women flung out a last mattress or lowered a baby's cradle which had been well-nigh forgotten. And the baby having been strapped inside it, the cradle was perched atop of the load, among the upturned legs of the chairs and tables. In another vehicle, standing behind, the poor, infirm, old grandfather was being bound to a wardrobe that he might be carted away like some household utensil. Then there were those who had no cart, and who piled a few goods and chattels into a wheelbarrow, and others who went off with simply a bundle of clothes under their arm, and others too who had only thought of saving their parlour clock, which they pressed to their hearts as though it had been an infant. It was impossible to remove everything, and many articles of furniture and heavy bundles of linen lay abandoned in the ditches. Some folks before leaving fastened up their homes, and the houses with their doors and shutters securely closed looked quite dead; but the majority of the people, in their haste and the despairing conviction that everything would be destroyed, left their old homesteads open, with doors and windows gaping widely; and these poor empty houses, through which the wind could blow as it listed, and whence the very cats had fled, shuddering at what was about to happen, were the saddest of all, sad like the houses of a captured town depopulated by fright. At each succeeding village the spectacle became more and more pitiable, the number of those who were moving and hastening away became larger and larger, and there was shaking of fists, swearing of oaths, and shedding of tears amid all the growing scramble and confusion.

But it was especially whilst he followed the high road through the open country that Maurice felt his anguish stifling him. As they drew nearer to Belfort the train of runaways closed up and became a continuous procession. Ah! the poor people who imagined they would find a shelter-place under the walls of the stronghold. The man belaboured the horse, and the woman followed, dragging the children with her. Entire families, bending beneath their burdens, and with the little ones, who were unable to keep up, lagging behind, were hastening over the blinding white roads which the fiery sun was heating. Many of the fugitives had taken off their shoes that they might cover the ground more rapidly, and were walking along barefooted; and mothers with their dress-bodies unfastened were giving the breast to crying infants, without pausing for a moment in their march.

In the panic-fraught breeze which dishevelled their hair and lashed their hastily donned garments, many of the runaways looked round with scared faces, and made gestures with trembling hands as though to shut out all view of the horizon. Others, farmers, accompanied by all their servants, were hastening across the fields, driving before them their herds and flocks—their sheep, cows, oxen and horses, which they had turned out with blows from their sheds and stables. They were making for the mountain gorges, the high table-lands, the deserted forests, and the sight of them recalled the memory of those great migrations of ancient times, when invaded nations made way for the conquering barbarians. They intended to live under canvas in some lonely rock-girt spot, so far from the roads that not one of the enemy's soldiers would dare to approach it. And the flying clouds that enveloped them were soon wafted away behind the clumps of fir trees, whilst the lowing of the cattle and the thuds of their hoofs grew more and more indistinct. Meantime, the flood of vehicles and wayfarers pressed along the road, hampering the march of the troops and becoming, as one approached Belfort, so compact and strong—with a force like the irresistible current of a spreading torrent—that the soldiers were repeatedly compelled to halt.

During one of those brief halts Maurice beheld a scene which he long remembered, as one might remember a blow dealt one in the face. There was a solitary house by the roadside, the abode of some poor peasant, whose meagre patch of land stretched behind it. Firmly rooted to his native soil, this man had been unwilling to leave his fields, feeling that if he did so he must needs tear his flesh to shreds. So he remained there, and could be seen crouching on a bench in a low room, whence with empty eyes he watched the passing soldiers, whose retreat was about to place his ripe corn at the mercy of the invader. Beside him stood a young woman, his wife, with a child in her arms, whilst another child was pulling at her skirts; and all three, mother and children, were sobbing and moaning. Suddenly, however, the door was roughly flung open, and on the threshold appeared the grandmother, a tall, thin, aged woman, who was furiously flourishing her bare arms which looked like knotted cords. Her grey hair, escaping from under her cap, was waving round her gaunt head, and so intense was her rage that the words she shouted were half-stifled in her throat, whence they escaped but indistinctly in an agonising hiccough. At first the soldiers began to laugh. The old lunatic had a fine phiz! But some of her words reached them, and they heard that she was shouting: 'Blackguards! brigands! cowards! cowards!'

In a more and more piercing voice she spat forth, as it were, that insulting epithet—coward. And then the laughter ceased, and a great chill sped through the ranks. The men lowered their heads and looked elsewhere.

'Cowards! cowards! cowards!'

Suddenly the old woman appeared to increase in stature. She raised her spare, tragic figure, draped in a shred of a dress, to its full height; and waving her long arm from west to east with so comprehensive a gesture that it seemed to embrace the entire heavens, she shouted: 'The Rhine is not there, you cowards—the Rhine is over there. Cowards! cowards!'

At last they were resuming their march, and Maurice, whose glance at this moment fell upon Jean's face, saw that the corporal's eyes were full of tears. He was thunderstruck, and his own suffering was increased at the thought that even this brutish peasant had felt the insult—an unmerited one, but to which they must needs submit. Everything then seemed to crumble away in Maurice's poor, aching head, and, overcome both by physical and moral suffering, he could never remember how he had finished the march.

The Seventh Army Corps had required an entire day to cover the fourteen or fifteen miles separating Dannemarie from Belfort; and night was again falling and it was very late when the troops were able to prepare their bivouacs under the walls of the fortress, on the very spot whence they had started four days previously to march against the enemy. Despite the lateness of the hour and their great weariness, the men insisted on lighting their fires and cooking their soupe. It was the first time, for four days, that they had something warm to swallow. And squatting around the fires in the freshening night air, they were all dipping their noses into their basins, and grunts of content were rising on all sides, when a rumour circulated, burst upon, spread through, and stupefied the camp. Two fresh telegrams had arrived at brief intervals. The Prussians had not crossed the Rhine at Markolsheim, and there was no longer a single Prussian at Huningen. The passage of the Rhine at Markolsheim, the pontoon bridge thrown across the river at night, thanks to powerful electric lights—all those alarming stories were mere dreams, the unaccountable hallucinations of the sub-prefect of Schelestadt. As for the army corps that threatened Huningen, the famous army corps of the Black Forest, which had made all Alsace tremble, this was composed of a petty detachment of Wurtembergers—two battalions of foot and a squadron of horse—who by skilful tactics, repeated marching and counter-marching, sudden and unforeseen apparitions, had created a belief in the presence of thirty or forty thousand men. To think the Dannemarie Viaduct had narrowly escaped being blown up that morning! Twenty leagues of prosperous country had been ravaged through an idiotic panic, for no reason whatever; and at thought of all they had seen that dreadful day—the inhabitants flying in terror, driving their cattle into the mountains, and the stream of furniture-laden vehicles flowing towards the town amid a troop of women and children—the soldiers felt thoroughly enraged, and vented their anger in exasperated jeers.

'It's altogether too funny,' stammered Loubet, with his mouth full, as he flourished his spoon. 'So that was the enemy we were taken to fight? There was nobody at all. Twelve leagues forward and twelve back, and not even a mouse anywhere. All that for nothing—for the mere pleasure of getting in a funk!'

Then Chouteau, who was noisily cleaning his basin, soundly rated the generals without naming them: 'The hogs! What idiots they are! As timid as hares. As they bolted like that when there was nobody, what would they have done had they found a real army in front of them?'

Another armful of wood had been flung on the fire that they might enjoy themselves around the tall leaping flame, and Lapoulle, whilst warming his legs, with an air of ecstasy, burst into an idiotic laugh at Chouteau's remarks, though he could not understand them; whereupon Jean, who had hitherto turned a deaf ear to the chatter, ventured to say paternally: 'Can't you be quiet? If you were overheard there might be some unpleasantness.' He, himself, with his simple common sense, was disgusted with the stupidity of the commanders. Still, he must enforce respect, and as Chouteau continued growling, he stopped him by saying, 'Silence! Here's the lieutenant. Address yourself to him if you have any remark to make.'

Maurice, who sat apart from the others in silence, had lowered his head. This was the end of everything! They were only at the beginning of the war, but it was all over. The indiscipline and mutinous behaviour of the men at the very first reverse had already turned the army into a mere mob without a tie to bind it together, but thoroughly demoralised and ripe for every catastrophe. They, beneath Belfort, had not seen a single Prussian, yet they were already beaten.

The monotonous days that followed were fraught with uneasiness and the tedium of waiting. To occupy the time of his men General Douay made them toil at the defensive works of the fortress, which were still far from completed. They turned up the soil and split the rocks. Meanwhile, no news came. Where was MacMahon? What was taking place under Metz? The most extravagant rumours circulated; only a few Paris newspapers reached the troops, and these, by their contradictory statements, increased the black anxiety amid which they were struggling. Twice had the general written asking for orders, and without even receiving an answer. However, on August 12, the Seventh Corps was at last completed by the arrival of its third division from Italy.[10] Still even now the general only had two divisions with him, for the first one, beaten at Frœschweiler, had been carried off in the rout, and it was not known where the current had cast it. At last, after a week of abandonment, of complete separation from the rest of France, a telegram brought orders for departure. The men were delighted, anything was preferable to the blank life they were leading. And whilst they were getting ready speculations were indulged in. No one knew where they were going. Some said they were to be sent to Strasburg to defend it, while others talked of a bold dash into the Black Forest to intercept the Prussian line of retreat.

Next morning the 106th was among the first regiments to start, packed in cattle trucks. The one in which Jean's squad found itself installed was so full that Loubet pretended there wasn't even room to sneeze. Rations, as usual, had been distributed amid great disorder, and the men, having received in brandy what they ought to have received in food, were nearly all drunk—drunk with a violent, brawling intoxication which vented itself in obscene songs. As the train travelled on they could no longer see one another, owing to the smoke of their pipes, which filled the truck as with fog. It was also unbearably hot there, owing to the fermentation of all these closely packed bodies, and as they sped along vociferous cries poured out of the black flying vehicle, drowning the sound of the wheels, and dying away afar off in the mournful country. It was only on reaching Langres that the men realised they were being taken back to Paris.

'Ah! Thunder!' repeated Chouteau, who, by the might of his glib tongue, already reigned undisputed master of his little corner, 'sure enough, we shall be drawn up at Charentonneau to prevent Bismarck from taking a nap at the Tuileries.'

The others roared, thinking this very droll, though they could not say why. However, the slightest incidents of the journey—the sight of some peasants posted beside the line, of the groups of anxious people who, in the hope of obtaining news, were waiting at the smaller stations for the trains to pass, the view, too, of all that region of France scared and quivering in presence of the invasion—sufficed to provoke hooting, shouting, and deafening laughter. And in the gust of wind that swept by as the engine forged onward, amid the rapid view they obtained of the train enveloped in smoke and noise, those that had hastened to the stations received full in the face the howls of these men, all food for powder, who were being carried along at express speed. At one station, however, where they stopped, three well-dressed ladies, rich bourgeoises of the town, who distributed bowls of broth to the soldiers, met with great success. The men cried as they thanked them, and kissed their hands.

But farther on, the filthy songs and the savage yells burst forth again. Shortly after passing Chaumont the train met another one full of some artillerymen who were no doubt being taken to Metz. Speed had just been slackened, and the soldiers of the two trains fraternised amid a fearful clamour. It was, however, the artillerymen, doubtless more intoxicated than the others, who carried off the palm by shaking their fists out of the trucks and raising this cry with such despairing violence that it drowned everything else: 'To the slaughter! slaughter! slaughter!'

It seemed as if a great chill, an icy wind from a charnel-house were passing by. There was a sudden brief silence, amid which one heard Loubet jeering: 'The comrades are not gay.'

'But they are in the right,' rejoined Chouteau, in his tavern-orator's voice; 'it's disgusting to send a lot of brave chaps to get their heads cracked on account of some dirty business they don't know a word about.' And he continued talking in the same strain. This incapable workman of Montmartre, this lounging, dissipated house-painter, who had badly digested some scraps of speeches heard at public meetings, and who mingled revolutionary clap-trap with the great principles of equality and liberty, played the part of the perverter. He knew everything, and indoctrinated his comrades, especially Lapoulle, whom he had promised to make a man of: 'Eh, old fellow? It's simple enough. If Badinguet and Bismarck have a row together let them settle it between them with their fists, instead of troubling hundreds of thousands of men who don't even know one another, and have no wish to fight.'

The whole truck-load laughed, feeling amused and subjugated, and Lapoulle, who did not even know who Badinguet[11] was, and who could not even have said whether he was fighting for an Emperor or a King, repeated, with that overgrown-baby air of his: 'Of course, with their fists—and a glass of wine together afterwards.'

But Chouteau had turned towards Pache, in view of taking him in hand. 'And you—you're religious—Well, your religion forbids fighting. So why are you here, you idiot?'

'Well,' replied Pache, taken aback, 'I'm not here to please myself. Only the gendarmes——'

'The gendarmes! Humbug! Who cares a rap for the gendarmes? Do you know, you others, what we ought to do if we were the right sort? Why, by-and-by, when we get out, we ought to slope—yes, quietly slope and leave that fat hog Badinguet and his clique of twopenny-halfpenny generals to settle matters as they please with their dirty Prussians.'

Bravos resounded, the work of perversion was proceeding, and then Chouteau triumphed, parading his theories, in which were confusedly mingled the Republic, the rights of man, the rottenness of the Empire, which must be overthrown, and the treachery of all the generals who commanded them, and each of whom, as it had been proved, had sold himself for a million! He, Chouteau, proclaimed himself a revolutionist: Loubet also knew what his opinions were, he was in favour of grub and nothing else; but the others did not know whether they were Republicans or not, or even in what fashion a man might be a Republican. Nevertheless, carried away by Chouteau's oratory, they all railed at the Emperor, the officers, the whole cursed show, which they were bent on abandoning at the double-quick the first time they felt worried. While fanning their increasing intoxication, Chouteau stealthily watched Maurice, the gentleman, whom he was enlivening, and whom he felt so proud indeed to have on his side that at last, to impassion him the more, he fell upon Jean, who with his eyes half closed had until now stood there amid all the noise, motionless and as if asleep. If Maurice harboured any spite against the corporal for the bitter lesson the latter had given him in forcing him to pick up his gun, now was the time to urge the one against the other.

'And there are folks I know, who talked of having us shot,' resumed Chouteau, threateningly. 'Dirty curs who treat us worse than brute beasts, and who can't understand that when a man has had enough of his sack and his popgun he pitches the whole lot into the fields. Well, comrades, what would those curs say if we pitched them on to the line now that we have them comfortably in a corner? Is it agreed, eh? We must make an example if we don't want to be plagued any more with this beastly war. To death with Badinguet's vermin! To death with the dirty curs who want us to fight!'

Jean had become very red—red with the rush of blood which rose to his cheeks in his rare moments of anger; and close pressed though he was by his companions, he managed to draw himself up, hold out his clenched fists, and protrude his flaming face with so terrible an air that Chouteau turned quite pale.

'Thunder! just you shut up!' cried the corporal. 'I've said nothing for hours past, for there are no commanders left, and I can't even send you to the lock-up. I know well enough I should have rendered a big service to the regiment by ridding it of a filthy blackguard like you. But never mind, as punishment is mere humbug, you'll have to deal with me. I'm not a corporal now, but simply a chap you pester, and who'll shut your jaw for you. You filthy coward, you won't fight, and you try to prevent others from fighting! Just say all that again, and you'll feel my fists.' All the men in the truck had already turned round, stirred by Jean's gallant defiance, and deserting Chouteau, who stammered and drew back at sight of his adversary's big fists. 'And I don't care a rap for Badinguet any more than you do,' resumed Jean; 'I've never cared a rap for politics, for either Republic or Empire, and when I tilled my field I never wished but one thing, everybody's happiness, good order, and prosperity everywhere, the same as I wish now. No doubt it does plague one to have to fight, but all the same the rascals as try to discourage one when it's already so hard to behave properly ought to be stuck against a wall and shot. Dash it all, friends! doesn't your blood boil when you're told that the Prussians are here in France, and that we've got to bundle them out!'

In that easy way in which crowds change sides, the soldiers now began to acclaim Jean as he repeated his oath to break the skull of the first man in his squad who talked of not fighting. Bravo, corporal! That was the style! Bismarck's hash would soon be settled! In the midst of the savage ovation, Jean, who had calmed down, said to Maurice politely, as though he were not addressing one of his men, 'You can't be on the side of the cowards, sir—we haven't fought yet, but we'll end by licking them some day, those Prussians.'

At these words Maurice felt a sunray glide into his heart. He was disturbed, humiliated. So this Jean was not a mere rustic. Maurice remembered the fearful hatred that had consumed him when he picked up his gun after throwing it down in a moment of self-abandonment. But he also remembered how startled he had been at seeing the two large tears that stood in the corporal's eyes when the old grandmother, with streaming grey hair, was insulting them and pointing to the Rhine afar off beyond the horizon. Was it the fraternity born of fatigue and pain, endured in common, that was carrying his rancour away? Belonging as he did to a Bonapartist family, Maurice had never dreamt of the Republic otherwise than in theory; his inclinations were rather in favour of the Emperor personally, and he was a partisan of the war, war being in his mind an essential condition of the life of nations. Now, all of a sudden, hope was coming back to him in one of those veerings of the mind to which he was so subject; whilst the enthusiasm which one evening had impelled him to enlist again beat within him, filling his heart with confidence in victory.

'Certainly, corporal,' he answered gaily, 'we'll lick them!'

With its load of men, enveloped in the dense smoke of their pipes, and the stifling heat of their closely packed bodies, the cattle truck rolled and rolled along, greeting the anxious crowds at the stations and the haggard peasants posted along the hedges with obscene songs and drunken clamour. On August 20 they reached the Pantin station, just outside Paris, and the same night they started off again, quitting the train on the morrow at Rheims, en route for the camp of Châlons.