The Maids of Paradise Part 16

Grief-stricken, I groaned aloud: "Madame, there rides the finest cavalry in the world!--to annihilation."

How could I know that they were coming deliberately to sacrifice themselves?--that they rode with death heavy on their souls, knowing well there was no hope, understanding that they were to die to save the fragments of a beaten army?

Yet something of this I suspected, for already I saw the long, dark Prussian lines overlapping the French flank; I heard the French mitrailleuses rattling through the cannon's thunder, and I saw an entire French division, which I did not then know to be Lartigue's, falling back across the hills.

And straight into the entire Prussian army rode the "grosse cavallerie" and the lancers.

"They are doomed, like their fathers," I muttered--"sons of the cuira.s.siers of Waterloo. See what men can do for France!"

The young Countess started and stood up very straight.

"Look, madame!" I said, harshly--"look on the men of France! You say you do not understand the narrow love of country! Look!"

"It is too pitiful, too horrible," she said, hoa.r.s.ely. "How the horses fall in that meadow!"

"They will fall thicker than that in this street!"

"See!" she cried; "they have begun to gallop! They are coming! Oh, I cannot look!--I--I cannot!"

Far away, a thin cry sounded above the cannon din; the doomed cuira.s.siers were cheering. It was the first charge they had ever made; n.o.body had ever seen cavalry of their arm on any battle-field of Europe since Waterloo.

Suddenly their long, straight blades shot into the air, the cuira.s.siers broke into a furious gallop, and that ma.s.s of steel-clad men burst straight down the first slope of the plateau, through the Prussian infantry, then wheeled and descended like a torrent on Morsbronn.

In the first ranks galloped the giants of the Eighth Cuira.s.siers, Colonel Guiot de la Rochere at their head; the Ninth Cuira.s.siers thundered behind them; then came the lancers under a torrent of red-and-white pennons. Nothing stopped them, neither hedges nor ditches nor fallen trees.

Their huge horses bounded forward, manes in the wind, tails streaming, iron hoofs battering the shaking earth; the steel-clad riders, sabres pointed to the front, leaned forward in their saddles.

Now among the thicket of hop-vines long lines of black arose; there was a flash, a belt of smoke, another flash--then the metallic rattle of bullets on steel breastplates. Entire ranks of cuira.s.siers went down in the smoke of the Prussian rifles, the sinister clash and crash of falling armor filled the air. Sheets of lead poured into them; the rattle of empty scabbards on stirrups, the metallic ringing of bullets on helmet and cuira.s.s, the rifle-shots, the roar of the sh.e.l.ls exploding swelled into a very h.e.l.l of sound. And, above the infernal fracas rose the heavy cheering of the doomed riders.

Into the deep, narrow street wheeled the hors.e.m.e.n, choking road and sidewalk with their galloping squadrons, a solid cataract of impetuous horses, a flashing torrent of armored men--and then! Crash! the first squadron dashed headlong against the barricade of wagons and went down.

Into them tore the squadron behind, unable to stop their maddened horses, and into these thundered squadron after squadron, unconscious of the dead wall ahead.

In the terrible tumult and confusion, screaming horses and shrieking men were piled in heaps, a human whirlpool formed at the barricade, hurling bodily from its centre horses and riders. Men galloped headlong into each other, riders struggled knee to knee, pushing, shouting, colliding.

Posted behind the upper and lower windows of the houses, the Prussians shot into them, so close that the flames from the rifles set the jackets of the cuira.s.siers on fire: a German captain opened the shutters of a window and fired his pistol at a cuira.s.sier, who replied with a sabre thrust through the window, transfixing the German's throat.

Then a horrible butchery of men and horses began; the fusillade became so violent and the scene so sickening that a Prussian lieutenant went crazy in the house opposite, and flung himself from the window into the ma.s.s of writhing hors.e.m.e.n. Tall cuira.s.siers, in impotent fury, began slashing at the walls of the houses, breaking their heavy sabres to splinters against the stones; their powerful horses, white with foam, reared, fell back, crushing their riders beneath them.

In front of the barricade a huge fellow reined in his horse and turned, white-gloved hand raised, red epaulets tossing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'HALT! HALT!' HE SHOUTED"]

"Halt! Halt!" he shouted. "Stop the lancers!" And a trumpeter, disengaging himself from the frantic chaos, set his long, silver trumpet to his lips and blew the "Halt!"

A bullet rolled the trumpeter under his horse's feet; a volley riddled the other's horse, and the agonized animal reared and cleared the bristling abatis with a single bound, his rider dropping dead among the hay-wagons.

Then into this awful struggle galloped the two squadrons of the lancers.

For a moment the street swam under their fluttering red-and-white lance-pennons, then a volley swept them--another--another--and down they went.

Herds of riderless horses tore through the street; the road undulated with crushed, quivering creatures crawling about. Against the doorway of a house opposite a n.o.ble horse in agony leaned with shaking knees, head raised, lips shrinking back over his teeth.

Bewildered, stupefied, exhausted, the cuira.s.siers sat in their saddles, staring up at the windows where the Prussians stood and fired. Now and then one would start as from a nightmare, turn his jaded horse, and go limping away down the street. The road was filled with hors.e.m.e.n, wandering helplessly about under the rain of bullets.

One, a mere boy, rode up to a door, leaned from his horse and began to knock for admittance; another dismounted and sat down on a doorstep, head buried in his hands, regardless of the bullets which tore the woodwork around him.

The street was still crowded with entrapped cuira.s.siers, huddled in groups or riding up and down the walls mechanically seeking shelter. A few of these, dismounted, were wearily attempting to drag a heavy cart away from the barricade; the Prussians shot them, one at a time, but others came to help, and a few lancers aided them, and at length they managed to drag a hay-wagon aside, giving a narrow pa.s.sage to the open country beyond. Instantly the Prussian infantry swarmed out of the houses and into the street, shouting, "Prisoners!" pushing, striking, and dragging the exhausted cuira.s.siers from their saddles. But contact with the enemy, hand to hand, seemed to revive the fury of the armored riders. The debris of the regiments closed up, long, straight sabres glittered, trembling horses plunged forward, broke into a stiff gallop, and pa.s.sed through the infantry, through the rent in the barricade, and staggered away across the fields, buried in the smoke of a thousand rifles.

So rode the "Cuira.s.siers of Morsbronn," the flower of an empire's chivalry, the elect of France. So rode the gentlemen of the Sixth Lancers to shiver their slender spears against stone walls--for the honor of France.

Death led them. Death rode with them knee to knee. Death alone halted them. But their shining souls galloped on into that vast Valhalla where their ancestors of Waterloo stood waiting, and the celestial trumpets pealed a last "Dismount!"

VI

THE GAME BEGINS

The room in the turret was now swimming in smoke and lime dust; I could scarcely see the gray figure of the Countess through the powder-mist which drifted in through shutters and loop-hole, dimming the fading daylight.

In the street a dense pall of pungent vapor hung over roof and pavement, motionless in the calm August air; two houses were burning slowly, smothered in smoke; through a ruddy fog I saw the dead lying in mounds, the wounded moving feebly, the Prussian soldiery tossing straw into the hay-carts that had served their deadly purpose.

But oh, the dreadful murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous, ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures, tenacious of life, who are dying and who die hard.

Helmeted figures swarmed through the smoke; wagon after wagon, loaded deep with dead cavalrymen, was drawn away by heavy teams of horses now arriving from the regimental transport train, which had come up and halted just at the entrance to the village.

And now wagon-loads of French wounded began to pa.s.s, jolting over crushed helmets, rifles, cuira.s.ses, and the carca.s.ses of dead horses.

A covey of Uhlans entered the shambles, picking their way across the wreckage of the battle, a slim, wiry, fastidious company, dainty as spurred gamec.o.c.ks, with their helmet-cords swinging like wattles and their schapskas tilted rakishly.

Then the sad cortege of prisoners formed in the smoke, the wounded leaning on their silent comrades, bandaged heads hanging, the others erect, defiant, supporting the crippled or standing with arms folded and helmeted heads held high.

And at last they started, between two files of mounted Uhlans--Turcos, line infantrymen, gendarmes, lancers, and, towering head and shoulders above the others, the superb cuira.s.siers.

A German general and his smartly uniformed staff came clattering up the slippery street and halted to watch the prisoners defile. And, as the first of the captive cuira.s.siers came abreast of the staff, the general stiffened in his saddle and raised his hand to his helmet, saying to his officers, loud enough for me to hear:

"Salute the brave, gentlemen!"

And the silent, calm-eyed cuira.s.siers pa.s.sed on, heads erect, uniforms in shreds, their battered armor foul with smoke and mud, spurs broken, scabbards empty.

Troops of captured horses, conducted by Uhlans, followed the prisoners, then wagons piled high with rifles, sabres, and saddles, then a company of Uhlans cantering away with the shot-torn guidons of the cuira.s.siers.

Last of all came the wounded in their straw-wadded wagons, escorted by infantry; I heard them coming before I saw them, and, sickened, I closed my ears with my hands; yet even then the deep, monotonous groaning seemed to fill the room and vibrate through the falling shadows long after the last cart had creaked out of sight and hearing into the gathering haze of evening.

The deadened booming of cannon still came steadily from the west, and it needed no messenger to tell me that the First Corps had been hurled back into Alsace, and that MacMahon's army was in full retreat; that now the Rhine was open and the pa.s.sage of the Vosges was clear, and Strasbourg must stand siege and Belfort and Toul must man their battlements for a struggle that meant victory, or an Alsace doomed and a Lorraine lost to France forever.

The room had grown very dark, the loop-hole admitting but little of the smoky evening sunset. Some soldiers in the hallway outside finally lighted torches; red reflections danced over the torn ceiling and plaster-covered floor, illuminating a corner where the Countess was sitting by the bedside, her head lying on the covers. How long she had been there I did not know, but when I spoke she raised her head and answered quietly.