Part 16 (1/2)

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 flas.h.i.+ng torrent of armored men--and then! Cras.h.!.+ 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, pus.h.i.+ng, 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 slas.h.i.+ng at the walls of the houses, breaking their heavy sabres to splinters against the stones; their powerful horses, white with foam, reared, fell back, crus.h.i.+ng 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.