Some of the men had already faced about when the colonel came hurrying up.
“Steady there, my children. You won’t cause me this great sorrow; you won’t behave like cowards. Remember, the 106th has never turned its back upon the enemy; will you be the first to disgrace our flag?”
And he spurred his charger across the path of the fugitives, addressing them individually, speaking to them, of their country, in a voice that trembled with emotion.
Lieutenant Rochas was so moved by his words that he gave way to an ungovernable fit of anger, raising his sword and belaboring the men with the flat as if it had been a club.
“You dirty loafers, I’ll see whether you will go up there or not! I’ll kick you up! About face! and I’ll break the jaw of the first man that refuses to obey!”
But such an extreme measure as kicking a regiment into action was repugnant to the colonel.
“No, no, lieutenant; they will follow me. Won’t you, my children? You won’t let your old colonel fight it out alone with the Prussians! Up there lies the way; forward!”
He turned his horse and left the trench, and they did all follow, to a man, for he would have been considered the lowest of the low who could have abandoned their leader after that brave, kind speech. He was the only one, however, who, while crossing the open fields, erect on his tall horse, was cool and unconcerned; the men scattered, advancing in open order and availing themselves of every shelter afforded by the ground. The land sloped upward; there were fully five hundred yards of stubble and beet fields between them and the Calvary, and in place of the correctly aligned columns that the spectator sees advancing when a charge is ordered in field maneuvers, all that was to be seen was a loose array of men with rounded backs, singly or in small groups, hugging the ground, now crawling warily a little way on hands and knees, now dashing forward for the next cover, like huge insects fighting their way upward to the crest by dint of agility and address. The enemy’s batteries seemed to have become aware of the movement; their fire was so rapid that the reports of the guns were blended in one continuous roar. Five men were killed, a lieutenant was cut in two.
Maurice and Jean had considered themselves fortunate that their way led along a hedge behind which they could push forward unseen, but the man immediately in front of them was shot through the temples and fell back dead in their arms; they had to cast him down at one side. By this time, however, the casualties had ceased to excite attention; they were too numerous. A man went by, uttering frightful shrieks and pressing his hands upon his protruding entrails; they beheld a horse dragging himself along with both thighs broken, and these anguishing sights, these horrors of the battlefield, affected them no longer. They were suffering from the intolerable heat, the noonday sun that beat upon their backs and burned like hot coals.
“How thirsty I am!” Maurice murmured. “My throat is like an ash barrel. Don’t you notice that smell of something scorching, a smell like burning woolen?”
Jean nodded. “It was just the same at Solferino; perhaps it is the smell that always goes with war. But hold, I have a little brandy left; we’ll have a sup.”
And they paused behind the hedge a moment and raised the flask to their lips, but the brandy, instead of relieving their thirst, burned their stomach. It irritated them, that nasty taste of burnt rags in their mouths. Moreover they perceived that their strength was commencing to fail for want of sustenance and would have liked to take a bite from the half loaf that Maurice had in his knapsack, but it would not do to stop and breakfast there under fire, and then they had to keep up with their comrades. There was a steady stream of men coming up behind them along the hedge who pressed them forward, and so, doggedly bending their backs to the task before them, they resumed their course. Presently they made their final rush and reached the crest. They were on the plateau, at the very foot of the Calvary, the old weather-beaten cross that stood between two stunted lindens.
“Good for our side!” exclaimed Jean; “here we are! But the next thing is to remain here!”
He was right; it was not the pleasantest place in the world to be in, as Lapoulle remarked in a doleful tone that excited the laughter of the company. They all lay down again, in a field of stubble, and for all that three men were killed in quick succession. It was pandemonium let loose up there on the heights; the projectiles from Saint-Menges, Fleigneux, and Givonne fell in such numbers that the ground fairly seemed to smoke, as it does at times under a heavy shower of rain. It was clear that the position could not be maintained unless artillery was dispatched at once to the support of the troops who had been sent on such a hopeless undertaking. General Douay, it was said, had given instructions to bring up two batteries of the reserve artillery, and the men were every moment turning their heads, watching anxiously for the guns that did not come.
“It is absurd, ridiculous!” declared Beaudoin, who was again fidgeting up and down before the company. “Who ever heard of placing a regiment in the air like this and giving it no support!” Then, observing a slight depression on their left, he turned to Rochas: “Don’t you think, Lieutenant, that the company would be safer there?”
Rochas stood stock still and shrugged his shoulders. “It is six of one and half a dozen of the other, Captain. My opinion is that we will do better to stay where we are.”
Then the captain, whose principles were opposed to swearing, forgot himself.
“But, good God! there won’t a man of us escape! We can’t allow the men to be murdered like this!”
And he determined to investigate for himself the advantages of the position he had mentioned, but had scarcely taken ten steps when he was lost to sight in the smoke of an exploding shell; a splinter of the projectile had fractured his right leg. He fell upon his back, emitting a shrill cry of alarm, like a woman’s.
“He might have known as much,” Rochas muttered. “There’s no use his making such a fuss over it; when the dose is fixed for one, he has to take it.”
Some members of the company had risen to their feet on seeing their captain fall, and as he continued to call lustily for assistance, Jean finally ran to him, immediately followed by Maurice.
“Friends, friends, for Heaven’s sake do not leave me here; carry me to the ambulance!”
“Dame, Captain, I don’t know that we shall be able to get so far, but we can try.”
As they were discussing how they could best take hold to raise him they perceived, behind the hedge that had sheltered them on their way up, two stretcher-bearers who seemed to be waiting for something to do, and finally, after protracted signaling, induced them to draw near. All would be well if they could only get the wounded man to the ambulance without accident, but the way was long and the iron hail more pitiless than ever.
The bearers had tightly bandaged the injured limb in order to keep the bones in position and were about to bear the captain off the field on what children call a “chair,” formed by joining their hands and slipping an arm of the patient over each of their necks, when Colonel de Vineuil, who had heard of the accident, came up, spurring his horse. He manifested much emotion, for he had known the young man ever since his graduation from Saint-Cyr.
“Cheer up, my poor boy; have courage. You are in no danger; the doctors will save your leg.”
The captain’s face wore an expression of resignation, as if he had summoned up all his courage to bear his misfortune manfully.
“No, my dear Colonel; I feel it is all up with me, and I would rather have it so. The only thing that distresses me is the waiting for the inevitable end.”
The bearers carried him away, and were fortunate enough to reach the hedge in safety, behind which they trotted swiftly away with their burden. The colonel’s eyes followed them anxiously, and when he saw them reach the clump of trees where the ambulance was stationed a look of deep relief rose to his face.
“But you, Colonel,” Maurice suddenly exclaimed, “you are wounded too!”
He had perceived blood dripping from the colonel’s left boot. A projectile of some description had carried away the heel of the foot-covering and forced the steel shank into the flesh.
M. de Vineuil bent over his saddle and glanced unconcernedly at the member, in which the sensation at that time must have been far from pleasurable.
“Yes, yes,” he replied, “it is a little remembrance that I received a while ago. A mere scratch, that don’t prevent me from sitting my horse – ” And he added, as he turned to resume his position to the rear of his regiment: “As long as a man can stick on his horse he’s all right.”
At last the two batteries of reserve artillery came up. Their arrival was an immense relief to the anxiously expectant men, as if the guns were to be a rampart of protection to them and at the same time demolish the hostile batteries that were thundering against them from every side. And then, too, it was in itself an exhilarating spectacle to see the magnificent order they preserved as they came dashing up, each gun followed by its caisson, the drivers seated on the near horse and holding the off horse by the bridle, the cannoneers bolt upright on the chests, the chiefs of detachment riding in their proper position on the flank. Distances were preserved as accurately as if they were on parade, and all the time they were tearing across the fields at headlong speed, with the roar and crash of a hurricane.
Maurice, who had lain down again, arose and said to Jean in great excitement:
“Look! over there on the left, that is Honore’s battery. I can recognize the men.”
Jean gave him a back-handed blow that brought him down to his recumbent position.
“Lie down, will you! and make believe dead!”
But they were both deeply interested in watching the maneuvers of the battery, and never once removed their eyes from it; it cheered their heart to witness the cool and intrepid activity of those men, who, they hoped, might yet bring victory to them.
The battery had wheeled into position on a bare summit to the left, where it brought up all standing; then, quick as a flash, the cannoneers leaped from the chests and unhooked the limbers, and the drivers, leaving the gun in position, drove fifteen yards to the rear, where they wheeled again so as to bring team and limber face to the enemy and there remained, motionless as statues. In less time than it takes to tell it the guns were in place, with the proper intervals between them, distributed into three sections of two guns each, each section commanded by a lieutenant, and over the whole a captain, a long maypole of a man, who made a terribly conspicuous landmark on the plateau. And this captain, having first made a brief calculation, was heard to shout:
“Sight for sixteen hundred yards!”
Their fire was to be directed upon a Prussian battery, screened by some bushes, to the left of Fleigneux, the shells from which were rendering the position of the Calvary untenable.
“Honore’s piece, you see,” Maurice began again, whose excitement was such that he could not keep still, “Honore’s piece is in the center section. There he is now, bending over to speak to the gunner; you remember Louis, the gunner, don’t you? the little fellow with whom we had a drink at Vouziers? And that fellow in the rear, who sits so straight on his handsome chestnut, is Adolphe, the driver – ”
First came the gun with its chief and six cannoneers, then the limber with its four horses ridden by two men, beyond that the caisson with its six horses and three drivers, still further to the rear were the prolonge, forge, and battery wagon; and this array of men, horses and materiel extended to the rear in a straight unbroken line of more than a hundred yards in length; to say nothing of the spare caisson and the men and beasts who were to fill the places of those removed by casualties, who were stationed at one side, as much as possible out of the enemy’s line of fire.
And now Honore was attending to the loading of his gun. The two men whose duty it was to fetch the cartridge and the projectile returned from the caisson, where the corporal and the artificer were stationed; two other cannoneers, standing at the muzzle of the piece, slipped into the bore the cartridge, a charge of powder in an envelope of serge, and gently drove it home with the rammer, then in like manner introduced the shell, the studs of which creaked faintly in the spirals of the rifling. When the primer was inserted in the vent and all was in readiness, Honore thought he would like to point the gun himself for the first shot, and throwing himself in a semi-recumbent posture on the trail, working with one hand the screw that regulated the elevation, with the other he signaled continually to the gunner, who, standing behind him, moved the piece by imperceptible degrees to right or left with the assistance of the lever.
“That ought to be about right,” he said as he arose.
The captain came up, and stooping until his long body was bent almost double, verified the elevation. At each gun stood the assistant gunner, waiting to pull the lanyard that should ignite the fulminate by means of a serrated wire. And the orders were given in succession, deliberately, by number:
“Number one, Fire! Number two, Fire!”
Six reports were heard, the guns recoiled, and while they were being brought back to position the chiefs of detachment observed the effect of the shots and found that the range was short. They made the necessary correction and the evolution was repeated, in exactly the same manner as before; and it was that cool precision, that mechanical routine of duty, without agitation and without haste, that did so much to maintain the morale of the men. They were a little family, united by the tie of a common occupation, grouped around the gun, which they loved and reverenced as if it had been a living thing; it was the object of all their care and attention, to it all else was subservient, men, horses, caisson, everything. Thence also arose the spirit of unity and cohesion that animated the battery at large, making all its members work together for the common glory and the common good, like a well-regulated household.
The 106th had cheered lustily at the completion of the first round; they were going to make those bloody Prussian guns shut their mouths at last! but their elation was succeeded by dismay when it was seen that the projectiles fell short, many of them bursting in the air and never reaching the bushes that served to mask the enemy’s artillery.
“Honore,” Maurice continued, “says that all the other pieces are popguns and that his old girl is the only one that is good for anything. Ah, his old girl! He talks as if she were his wife and there were not another like her in the world! Just notice how jealously he watches her and makes the men clean her off! I suppose he is afraid she will overheat herself and take cold!”
He continued rattling on in this pleasant vein to Jean, both of them cheered and encouraged by the cool bravery with which the artillerymen served their guns; but the Prussian batteries, after firing three rounds, had now got the range, which, too long at the beginning, they had at last ciphered down to such a fine point that their shells were landed invariably among the French pieces, while the latter, notwithstanding the efforts that were made to increase their range, still continued to place their projectiles short of the enemy’s position. One of Honore’s cannoneers was killed while loading the piece; the others pushed the body out of their way, and the service went on with the same methodical precision, with neither more nor less haste. In the midst of the projectiles that fell and burst continually the same unvarying rhythmical movements went on uninterruptedly about the gun; the cartridge and shell were introduced, the gun was pointed, the lanyard pulled, the carriage brought back to place; and all with such undeviating regularity that the men might have been taken for automatons, devoid of sight and hearing.
What impressed Maurice, however, more than anything else, was the attitude of the drivers, sitting straight and stiff in their saddles fifteen yards to the rear, face to the enemy. There was Adolphe, the broad-chested, with his big blond mustache across his rubicund face; and who shall tell the amount of courage a man must have to enable him to sit without winking and watch the shells coming toward him, and he not allowed even to twirl his thumbs by way of diversion! The men who served the guns had something to occupy their minds, while the drivers, condemned to immobility, had death constantly before their eyes, and plenty of leisure to speculate on probabilities. They were made to face the battlefield because, had they turned their backs to it, the coward that so often lurks at the bottom of man’s nature might have got the better of them and swept away man and beast. It is the unseen danger that makes dastards of us; that which we can see we brave. The army has no more gallant set of men in its ranks than the drivers in their obscure position.
Another man had been killed, two horses of a caisson had been disemboweled, and the enemy kept up such a murderous fire that there was a prospect of the entire battery being knocked to pieces should they persist in holding that position longer. It was time to take some step to baffle that tremendous fire, notwithstanding the danger there was in moving, and the captain unhesitatingly gave orders to bring up the limbers.
The risky maneuver was executed with lightning speed; the drivers came up at a gallop, wheeled their limber into position in rear of the gun, when the cannoneers raised the trail of the piece and hooked on. The movement, however, collecting as it did, momentarily, men and horses on the battery front in something of a huddle, created a certain degree of confusion, of which the enemy took advantage by increasing the rapidity of their fire; three more men dropped. The teams darted away at breakneck speed, describing an arc of a circle among the fields, and the battery took up its new position some fifty or sixty yards more to the right, on a gentle eminence that was situated on the other flank of the 106th. The pieces were unlimbered, the drivers resumed their station at the rear, face to the enemy, and the firing was reopened; and so little time was lost between leaving their old post and taking up the new that the earth had barely ceased to tremble under the concussion.
Maurice uttered a cry of dismay, when, after three attempts, the Prussians had again got their range; the first shell landed squarely on Honore’s gun. The artilleryman rushed forward, and with a trembling hand felt to ascertain what damage had been done his pet; a great wedge had been chipped from the bronze muzzle. But it was not disabled, and the work went on as before, after they had removed from beneath the wheels the body of another cannoneer, with whose blood the entire carriage was besplashed.
“It was not little Louis; I am glad of that,” said Maurice, continuing to think aloud. “There he is now, pointing his gun; he must be wounded, though, for he is only using his left arm. Ah, he is a brave lad, is little Louis; and how well he and Adolphe get on together, in spite of their little tiffs, only provided the gunner, the man who serves on foot, shows a proper amount of respect for the driver, the man who rides a horse, notwithstanding that the latter is by far the more ignorant of the two. Now that they are under fire, though, Louis is as good a man as Adolphe – ”
Jean, who had been watching events in silence, gave utterance to a distressful cry:
“They will have to give it up! No troops in the world could stand such a fire.”
Within the space of five minutes the second position had become as untenable as was the first; the projectiles kept falling with the same persistency, the same deadly precision. A shell dismounted a gun, fracturing the chase, killing a lieutenant and two men. Not one of the enemy’s shots failed to reach, and at each discharge they secured a still greater accuracy of range, so that if the battery should remain there another five minutes they would not have a gun or a man left. The crushing fire threatened to wipe them all out of existence.
Again the captain’s ringing voice was heard ordering up the limbers. The drivers dashed up at a gallop and wheeled their teams into place to allow the cannoneers to hook on the guns, but before Adolphe had time to get up Louis was struck by a fragment of shell that tore open his throat and broke his jaw; he fell across the trail of the carriage just as he was on the point of raising it. Adolphe was there instantly, and beholding his prostrate comrade weltering in his blood, jumped from his horse and was about to raise him to his saddle and bear him away. And at that moment, just as the battery was exposed flank to the enemy in the act of wheeling, offering a fair target, a crashing discharge came, and Adolphe reeled and fell to the ground, his chest crushed in, with arms wide extended. In his supreme convulsion he seized his comrade about the body, and thus they lay, locked in each other’s arms in a last embrace, “married” even in death.
Notwithstanding the slaughtered horses and the confusion that that death-dealing discharge had caused among the men, the battery had rattled up the slope of a hillock and taken post a few yards from the spot where Jean and Maurice were lying. For the third time the guns were unlimbered, the drivers retired to the rear and faced the enemy, and the cannoneers, with a gallantry that nothing could daunt, at once reopened fire.
“It is as if the end of all things were at hand!” said Maurice, the sound of whose voice was lost in the uproar.
It seemed indeed as if heaven and earth were confounded in that hideous din. Great rocks were cleft asunder, the sun was hid from sight at times in clouds of sulphurous vapor. When the cataclysm was at its height the horses stood with drooping heads, trembling, dazed with terror. The captain’s tall form was everywhere upon the eminence; suddenly he was seen no more; a shell had cut him clean in two, and he sank, as a ship’s mast that is snapped off at the base.
But it was about Honore’s gun, even more than the others, that the conflict raged, with cool efficiency and obstinate determination. The non-commissioned officer found it necessary to forget his chevrons for the time being and lend a hand in working the piece, for he had now but three cannoneers left; he pointed the gun and pulled the lanyard, while the others brought ammunition from the caisson, loaded, and handled the rammer and the sponge. He had sent for men and horses from the battery reserves that were kept to supply the places of those removed by casualties, but they were slow in coming, and in the meantime the survivors must do the work of the dead. It was a great discouragement to all that their projectiles ranged short and burst almost without exception in the air, inflicting no injury on the powerful batteries of the foe, the fire of which was so efficient. And suddenly Honore let slip an oath that was heard above the thunder of the battle; ill-luck, ill-luck, nothing but ill-luck! the right wheel of his piece was smashed! Tonnerre de Dieu! what a state she was in, the poor darling! stretched on her side with a broken paw, her nose buried in the ground, crippled and good for nothing! The sight brought big tears to his eyes, he laid his trembling hand upon the breech, as if the ardor of his love might avail to warm his dear mistress back to life. And the best gun of them all, the only one that had been able to drop a few shells among the enemy! Then suddenly he conceived a daring project, nothing less than to repair the injury there and then, under that terrible fire. Assisted by one of his men he ran back to the caisson and secured the spare wheel that was attached to the rear axle, and then commenced the most dangerous operation that can be executed on a battlefield. Fortunately the extra men and horses that he had sent for came up just then, and he had two cannoneers to lend him a hand.
For the third time, however, the strength of the battery was so reduced as practically to disable it. To push their heroic daring further would be madness; the order was given to abandon the position definitely.
“Make haste, comrades!” Honore exclaimed. “Even if she is fit for no further service we’ll carry her off; those fellows shan’t have her!”
To save the gun, even as men risk their life to save the flag; that was his idea. And he had not ceased to speak when he was stricken down as by a thunderbolt, his right arm torn from its socket, his left flank laid open. He had fallen upon his gun he loved so well, and lay there as if stretched on a bed of honor, with head erect, his unmutilated face turned toward the enemy, and bearing an expression of proud defiance that made him beautiful in death. From his torn jacket a letter had fallen to the ground and lay in the pool of blood that dribbled slowly from above.
The only lieutenant left alive shouted the order: “Bring up the limbers!”
A caisson had exploded with a roar that rent the skies. They were obliged to take the horses from another caisson in order to save a gun of which the team had been killed. And when, for the last time, the drivers had brought up their smoking horses and the guns had been limbered up, the whole battery flew away at a gallop and never stopped until they reached the edge of the wood of la Garenne, nearly twelve hundred yards away.
Maurice had seen the whole. He shivered with horror, and murmured mechanically, in a faint voice:
“Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!”
In addition to this feeling of mental distress he had a horrible sensation of physical suffering, as if something was gnawing at his vitals. It was the animal portion of his nature asserting itself; he was at the end of his endurance, was ready to sink with hunger. His perceptions were dimmed, he was not even conscious of the dangerous position the regiment was in now it no longer was protected by the battery. It was more than likely that the enemy would not long delay to attack the plateau in force.
“Look here,” he said to Jean, “I must eat – if I am to be killed for it the next minute, I must eat.”
He opened his knapsack and, taking out the bread with shaking hands, set his teeth in it voraciously. The bullets were whistling above their heads, two shells exploded only a few yards away, but all was as naught to him in comparison with his craving hunger.
“Will you have some, Jean?”
The corporal was watching him with hungry eyes and a stupid expression on his face; his stomach was also twinging him.
“Yes, I don’t care if I do; this suffering is more than I can stand.”
They divided the loaf between them and each devoured his portion gluttonously, unmindful of what was going on about them so long as a crumb remained. And it was at that time that they saw their colonel for the last time, sitting his big horse, with his blood-stained boot. The regiment was surrounded on every side; already some of the companies had left the field. Then, unable longer to restrain their flight, with tears standing in his eyes and raising his sword above his head:
“My children,” cried M. de Vineuil, “I commend you to the protection of God, who thus far has spared us all!”
He rode off down the hill, surrounded by a swarm of fugitives, and vanished from their sight.
Then, they knew not how, Maurice and Jean found themselves once more behind the hedge, with the remnant of their company. Some forty men at the outside were all that remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their commander, and the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern who carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to save it. They made their way along the hedge, as far as it extended, to a cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas made them halt and reopen fire. The men, dispersed in skirmishing order and sufficiently protected, could hold their ground, the more that an important calvary movement was in preparation on their right and regiments of infantry were being brought up to support it.
It was at that moment that Maurice comprehended the full scope of that mighty, irresistible turning movement that was now drawing near completion. That morning he had watched the Prussians debouching by the Saint-Albert pass and had seen their advanced guard pushed forward, first to Saint-Menges, then to Fleigneux, and now, behind the wood of la Garenne, he could hear the thunder of the artillery of the Guard, could behold other German uniforms arriving on the scene over the hills of Givonne. Yet a few moments, it might be, and the circle would be complete; the Guard would join hands with the Vth corps, surrounding the French army with a living wall, girdling them about with a belt of flaming artillery. It was with the resolve to make one supreme, desperate effort, to try to hew a passage through that advancing wall, that General Margueritte’s division of the reserve cavalry was massing behind a protecting crest preparatory to charging. They were about to charge into the jaws of death, with no possibility of achieving any useful result, solely for the glory of France and the French army. And Maurice, whose thoughts turned to Prosper, was a witness of the terrible spectacle.
What between the messages that were given him to carry and their answers, Prosper had been kept busy since daybreak spurring up and down the plateau of Illy. The cavalrymen had been awakened at peep of dawn, man by man, without sound of trumpet, and to make their morning coffee had devised the ingenious expedient of screening their fires with a greatcoat so as not to attract the attention of the enemy. Then there came a period when they were left entirely to themselves, with nothing to occupy them; they seemed to be forgotten by their commanders. They could hear the sound of the cannonading, could descry the puffs of smoke, could see the distant movements of the infantry, but were utterly ignorant of the battle, its importance, and its results. Prosper, as far as he was concerned, was suffering from want of sleep. The cumulative fatigue induced by many nights of broken rest, the invincible somnolency caused by the easy gait of his mount, made life a burden. He dreamed dreams and saw visions; now he was sleeping comfortably in a bed between clean sheets, now snoring on the bare ground among sharpened flints. For minutes at a time he would actually be sound asleep in his saddle, a lifeless clod, his steed’s intelligence answering for both. Under such circumstances comrades had often tumbled from their seats upon the road. They were so fagged that when they slept the trumpets no longer awakened them; the only way to rouse them from their lethargy and get them on their feet was to kick them soundly.