The Conscript Part 25

"You are rejoining your corps?"

"Yes; the Sixth at Torgau."

"And you came from?"----

"The hospital at Leipzig."

"That is easily seen," said he; "you are fat as a beadle. They fed you on chickens down there, while we were eating cow-beef."

I looked around at my sleeping neighbors. He was right; the poor conscripts were mere skin and bone. They were bronzed as veterans, and scarcely seemed able to stand.

The old man, in a moment, continued his questions:

"You were wounded?"

"Yes, veteran, at Lutzen."

"Four months in the hospital!" said he, whistling; "what luck! I have just returned from Spain, flattering myself that I was going to meet the _Kaiserliks_ of 1807 once more--sheep, regular sheep--but they have become worse than guerillas. Everything goes to the bad."

He said the most of this to himself, without paying much attention to me, all the while sewing his shoe, which from time to time he tried on, to be sure that the sewn part would not hurt his foot. At last he put the thread in his knapsack, and the shoe upon his foot, and stretched himself upon a truss of straw.

I was too fatigued to sleep at once, and for an hour lay awake.

In the morning I set out again with the quartermaster Poitevin, and three other soldiers of Souham's division. Our route lay along the bank of the Elbe; the weather was wet and the wind swept fiercely over the river, throwing the spray far on the land.

We hastened on for an hour, when suddenly the quartermaster cried:

"Attention!"

He had halted suddenly, and stood listening. We could hear nothing but the sighing of the wind through the trees, and the splash of the waves; but his ear was finer than ours.

"They are skirmis.h.i.+ng yonder," said he, pointing to a wood on our right. "The enemy may be near us, and the best thing we can do is to enter the wood and pursue our way cautiously. We can see at the other end of it what is going on; and if the Prussians or Russians are there, we can beat a retreat without their perceiving us. If they are French, we will go on."

We all thought the quartermaster was right; and, in my heart, I admired the shrewdness of the old drunkard. We kept on toward the wood, Poitevin leading, and the others following, with our pieces c.o.c.ked. We marched slowly, stopping every hundred paces to listen. The shots grew nearer; they were fired at intervals, and the quartermaster said:

"They are sharp-shooters reconnoitring a body of cavalry, for the firing is all on one side."

It was true. In a few moments we perceived, through the trees, a battalion of French infantry about to make their soup, and in the distance, on the plain beyond, platoons of Cossacks defiling from one village to another. A few skirmishers along the edge of the wood were firing on them, but they were almost beyond musket-range.

"There are your people, young man," said Poitevin. "You are at home."

He had good eyes to read the number of a regiment at such a distance.

I could only see ragged soldiers with their cheeks and famine-glistening eyes. Their great-coats were twice too large for them, and fell in folds along their bodies like cloaks. I say nothing of the mud; it was everywhere. No wonder the Germans were exultant, even after our victory at Dresden.

We went toward a couple of little tents, before which three or four horses were nibbling the scanty gra.s.s. I saw Colonel Lorain, who now commanded the Third battalion--a tall, thin man, with brown mustaches and a fierce air. He looked at me frowningly, and when I showed my papers, only said:

"Go and rejoin your company."

I started off, thinking that I would recognize some of the Fourth; but, since Lutzen, companies had been so mingled with companies, regiments with regiments, and divisions with divisions, that, on arriving at the camp of the grenadiers, I knew no one. The men seeing me approach, looked distrustfully at me, as if to say:

"Does _he_ want some of our beef? Let us see what he brings to the pot!"

I was almost ashamed to ask for my company, when a bony veteran, with a nose long and pointed like an eagle's beak, and a worn-out coat hanging from his shoulders, lifting his head, and gazing at me, said quietly:

"Hold! It is Joseph. I thought he was buried four months ago."

Then I recognized my poor Zebede. My appearance seemed to affect him, for, without rising, he squeezed my hand, crying:

"Klipfel! here is Joseph!"

Another soldier, seated near a pot, turned his head, saying:

"It is you, Joseph, is it? Then you were not killed."

This was all my welcome. Misery had made them so selfish that they thought only of themselves. But Zebede was always good-hearted; he made me sit near him, throwing a glance at the others that commanded respect, and offered me his spoon, which he had fastened to the b.u.t.ton-hole of his coat. I thanked him, and produced from my knapsack a dozen sausages, a good loaf of bread, and a flask of brandy, which I had the foresight to purchase at Risa. I handed a couple of the sausages to Zebede, who took them with tears in his eyes. I was also going to offer some to the others; but he put his hand on my arm, saying:

"What is good to eat is good to keep."

We retired from the circle and ate, drinking at the same time; the rest of the soldiers said nothing, but looked wistfully at us. Klipfel, smelling the sausages, turned and said:

"Holloa! Joseph! Come and eat with us. Comrades are always comrades, you know."

"That is all very well," said Zebede; "but I find meat and drink the best comrades."

He shut up my knapsack himself, saying:

"Keep that, Joseph. I have not been so well regaled for more than a month. You shall not lose by it."

A half-hour after, the recall was beaten; the skirmishers came in, and Sergeant Pinto, who was among the number, recognized me, and said:

"Well; so you have escaped! But you came back in an evil moment!

Things go wrong--wrong!"

The colonel and commandants mounted, and we began moving. The Cossacks withdrew. We marched with arms at will; Zebede was at my side and related all that pa.s.sed since Lutzen; the great victories of Bautzen and Wurtschen; the forced marches to overtake the retreating enemy; the march on Berlin; then the armistice, during which we were encamped in the little towns; then the arrival of the veterans of Spain--men accustomed to pillaging and living on the peasantry.

Unfortunately, at the close of the armistice all were against us. The country people looked on us with horror; they cut the bridges down, and kept the Russians and Prussians informed of all our movements, and whenever any misfortune happened us, instead of helping us, they tried to force us deeper in the mire. The great rains came to finish us, and the day of the battle of Dresden it fell so heavily that the Emperor's hat hung down upon his shoulders. But when victorious, we only laughed at these things; we felt warm just the same, and we could change our clothes. But the worst of all was when we were beaten, and flying through the mud--hussars, dragoons, and such gentry on our tracks,--we not knowing when we saw a light in the night whether to advance or to perish in the falling deluge.

Zebede told me all this in detail; how, after the victory of Dresden, General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and how those whom we had beaten the day before fell upon him on all sides, front, flank, and rear, and captured him and several other generals, utterly destroying his _corps d'armee_. Two days before, on the 26th of August, a similar misfortune happened to our division, as well as to the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh corps on the heights of Lowenberg. We should have crushed the Prussians there, but by a false movement of Marshal Macdonald, the enemy surprised us in a ravine with our artillery in confusion, our cavalry disordered, and our infantry unable to fire owing to the pelting rain; we defended ourselves with the bayonet, and the Third battalion made its way, in spite of the Prussian charges, to the river Katzbach. There Zebede received two blows on his head from the b.u.t.t of a grenadier's musket, and was thrown into the river. The current bore him along, while he held Captain Arnauld by the arm; and both would have been lost, if by good luck the captain in the darkness of the night had not seized the overhanging branch of a tree on the other side, and thus managed to regain the bank. He told me how all that night, despite the blood that flowed from his nose and ears, he had marched to the village of Goldberg, almost dead with hunger, fatigue, and his wounds, and how a joiner had taken pity upon him and given him bread, onions, and water. He told me how, on the day following, the whole division, followed by the other corps, had marched across the fields, each one taking his own course, without orders, because the marshals, generals, and all mounted officers had fled as far as possible, in the fear of being captured. He a.s.sured me that fifty hussars could have captured them, one after another; but that by good fortune, Blucher could not cross the flooded river, so that they finally rallied at Wolda, where the drummers of every corps beat the march for their regiments at all the corners of the village. By this means every man extricated himself and followed his own drum.

But the happiest thing in this rout was, that a little farther on, at Buntzlau, their officers met them, surprised at yet having troops to lead. This was what my comrade told me, to say nothing of the distrust which we were obliged to have of our allies, who at any moment might fall on us unprepared to receive them. He told me how Marshal Oudinot and Marshal Ney had been beaten: the first at Gross-Beeren, and the other at Dennewitz. This was sad indeed, for in these retreats the conscripts died from exhaustion, sickness and every kind of hards.h.i.+p.

The veterans of Spain and Germany, hardened by bad weather, could alone resist such fatigue.

"In a word," said Zebede, "we had everything against us--the country, the continual rains, and our own generals, who were weary of all this.

Some of them are dukes and princes, and grow tired of being forever in the mud instead of being seated in comfortable arm-chairs; and others, like Vandamme, are impatient to become marshals, by performing some grand stroke. We poor wretches, who have nothing to gain but being crippled the rest of our days, and who are the sons of peasants and workingmen who fought to get rid of one n.o.bility, must perish to create a new one!"

I saw then that the poorest, the most miserable are not always the most foolish, and that through suffering they come at last to see the sorrowful truth. But I said nothing, and I prayed G.o.d to give me strength and courage to support the hards.h.i.+ps the coming of which these faults and this injustice foretold.

We were between three armies, who were uniting to crush us; that of the north, commanded by Bernadotte; that of Silesia, commanded by Blucher; and the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg. We believed at one time we were going to cross the Elbe, to fall on the Prussians and Swedes; at another, that we were about attacking the Austrians toward the mountains as we had done fifty times in Italy and other places.