The Blockade of Phalsburg Part 19

The others, with the help of our two axes, began at once to break up everything. Some of them filled a basket with the pieces of cast-iron, and ran with it to the wagon.

The captain looked at his watch, and said, "Make haste! We have just ten minutes!"

I thought to myself, "They have no need of credit; they take what they please; it is more convenient."

All my bars and old iron were broken in pieces--more than fifteen hundred pounds of iron.

As they were starting to run to the ramparts, Chanoine laughed, and said to me, "Capital grape-shot, Moses! Thou canst get ready thy pennies. We'll come and take them to-morrow."

The wagon started through the crowd which ran behind it, and I followed too.

As we came nearer the ramparts the firing became more and more frequent. As we turned from the curate's house two sentinels stopped everybody, but they let me pa.s.s on account of my iron, which they were going to fire.

You can never imagine that ma.s.s of people, the noise around the bastion, the smoke which covered it, the orders of the infantry officers whom we heard going up the glacis, the gunners, the lighted match, caissons with the piles of bullets behind! No, in all these thirty years I have not forgotten those men with their levers, running back the cannon to load them to their mouths; those firings in file, at the bottom of the ramparts; those volleys of b.a.l.l.s hissing in the air; the orders of the gun-captains, "Load! Ram! Prime!"

What crowds upon those gun-carriages, seven feet high, where the gunners were obliged to stand and stretch their arms to fire the cannon! And what a frightful smoke!

Men invent such machines to destroy each other, and they would think that they did a great deal if they sacrificed a quarter as much to a.s.sist their fellow-men, to instruct them in infancy, and to give them a little bread in their old age.

Ah! those who make an outcry against war, and demand a different state of things, are not in the wrong.

I was in the corner, at the left of the bastion, where the stairs go down to the postern behind the college, among three or four willow baskets as high as chimneys, and filled with clay. I ought to have stayed there quietly, and made use of the right moment to get away, but the thought seized me that I would go and see what was going on below the ramparts, and while they were loading the cannon, I climbed to the level of the glacis, and lay down flat between two enormous baskets, where there was scarcely a chance that b.a.l.l.s could reach me.

If hundreds of others who were killed in the bastions had done as I did, how many of them might be still living, respectable fathers of families in their villages!

Lying in this place, and raising my nose, I could see over the whole plain. I saw the cordon of the rampart below, and the line of our skirmishers behind the palankas, on the other side of the moat; they did nothing but tear off their cartridges, prime, charge, and fire.

There one could appreciate the beauty of drilling; there were only two companies of them, and their firing by file kept up an incessant roll.

Farther on, directly to the right, stretched the road to Quatre-Vents.

The Ozillo farm, the cemetery, the horse-post-station, and George Mouton's farm at the right; the inn of La Roulette and the great poplar-walk at the left, all were full of Cossacks, and such-like rascals, who were galloping into the very gardens, to reconnoitre the environs of the place. This is what I suppose, for it is against nature to run without an object, and to risk being struck by a ball.

These people, mounted on small horses, with large gray cloaks, soft boots, fox-skin caps, like those of the Baden peasants, long beards, lances in rest, great pistols in their belts, came whirling on like birds.

They had not been fired upon as yet, because they kept themselves scattered, so that bullets would have no effect; but their trumpets sounded the rally from La Roulette, and they began to collect behind the buildings of the inn.

About thirty of our veterans, who had been kept back in the cemetery lane, were making a slow retreat; they made a few paces, at the same time hastily reloading, then turned, shouldered, fired, and began marching again among the hedges and bushes, which there had not been time to cut down in this locality.

Our sergeant was one of these; I recognized him at once, and trembled for him.

Every time these veterans gave fire, five or six Cossacks came on like the wind, with their lances lowered; but it did not frighten them: they leaned against a tree and levelled their bayonets. Other veterans came up, and then some loaded, while others parried the blows. Scarcely had they torn open their cartridges when the Cossacks fled right and left, their lances in the air. Some of them turned for a moment and fired their large pistols behind like regular bandits. At length our men began to march toward the city.

Those old soldiers, with their great shakos set square on their heads, their large capes hanging to the back of their calves, their sabres and cartridge-boxes on their backs, calm in the midst of these savages, reloading, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and parrying as quietly as if they were smoking their pipes in the guard-house, were something to be admired. At last, after seeing them come out of the whirlwind two or three times, it seemed almost an easy thing to do.

Our sergeant commanded them. I understood then why he was such a favorite with the officers, and why they always took his part against the citizens: there were not many such. I wanted to call out, "Make haste, sergeant; let us make haste!" but neither he nor his men hurried in the least.

As they reached the foot of the glacis, suddenly a large ma.s.s of Cossacks, seeing that they were escaping, galloped up in two files, to cut off their retreat. It was a dangerous moment, and they formed in a square instantly.

I felt my back turn cold, as if I had been one of them.

Our sharpshooters behind the ammunition wagons did not fire, doubtless for fear of hitting their comrades; our gunners on the bastion leaned down to see, and the file of Cossacks stretched to the corner near the drawbridge.

There were seven or eight hundred of them. We heard them cry, "Hurra!

hurra! hurra!" like crows. Several officers in green cloaks and small caps galloped at the sides of their lines, with raised sabres. I thought our poor sergeant and his thirty men were lost; I thought already, "How sorry little Safel and Sorle will be!"

But then, as the Cossacks formed in a half-circle at the left of the outworks, I heard our gun-captain call out, "Fire!"

I turned my head; old Goulden struck the match, the fusee glittered, and at the same instant the bastion with its great baskets of clay shook to the very rocks of the rampart.

I looked toward the road; nothing was to be seen but men and horses on the ground.

Just then came a second shot, and I can truly say that I saw the grape-shot pa.s.s like the stroke of a scythe into that ma.s.s of cavalry; it all tumbled and fell; those who a second before were living beings were now nothing. We saw some try to raise themselves, the rest made their escape.

The firing by file began again, and our gunners, without waiting for the smoke to clear away, reloaded so quickly that the two discharges seemed to come at once.

This ma.s.s of old nails, bolts, broken bits of cast-iron, flying three hundred metres, almost to the little bridge, made such slaughter that, some days after, the Russians asked for an armistice in order to bury their dead.

Four hundred were found scattered in the ditches of the road.

This I saw myself.

And if you want to see the place where those savages were buried, you have only to go up the cemetery lane.

On the other side, at the right, in M. Adam Ottendorf's orchard, you will see a stone cross in the middle of the fence; they were all buried there, with their horses, in one great trench.

You can imagine the delight of our gunners at seeing this ma.s.sacre.

They lifted up their sponges and shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"

The soldiers shouted back from the covered ways, and the air was filled with their cries.

Our sergeant, with his thirty men, their guns on their shoulders, quietly reached the glacis. The barrier was quickly opened for them, but the two companies descended together to the moat and came up again by the postern.

I was waiting for them above.

When our sergeant came up I took him by the arm, "Ah, sergeant!" said I, "how glad I am to see you out of danger!"

I wanted to embrace him. He laughed and squeezed my hand.

"Then you saw the engagement, Father Moses!" said he, with a mischievous wink. "We have shown them what stuff the Fifth is made of!"

"Oh, yes! yes! you have made me tremble."

"Bah!" said he, "you will see a good deal more of it; it is a small affair."

The two companies re-formed against the wall of the _chemin de ronde_, and the whole city shouted, "Vive l'Empereur!"

They went down the rampart street in the midst of the crowd. I kept near our sergeant.

As the detachment was turning our corner, Sorle, Zeffen, and Safel called out from the windows, "Hurrah for the veterans! Hurrah for the Fifth!"