Part 13 (1/2)
It made us feel enormously strong!
But hypocrites can always get out of their sc.r.a.pes: they vanish in the distance with well-lined pockets, and their victims are left behind sticking in the mud up to the chin!
Since our reverend fathers the Jesuits have so many spies posted about in the world, they should have told us how strong the heretics were, and not suffered us to believe until the last that we were the only masters of the earth. But they considered: ”These French fools will allow themselves to be hacked down to the very last man for our honor; they will drive back the Lutherans; and then we shall make a great figure: the Holy Father will be infallible, and we shall rule under his name.”
These things are so evident now, that one is almost ashamed to mention them.
As soon as the cavalry were posted on the heights of the place, at the rear of the hills, the infantry regiments, standing with ordered arms, began to march off.
I could hear from my door the loud voices of the officers, the neighing of the horses, and the departure of the battalions, which filed off, keeping step in admirable order. Ah! if our officers had been as highly trained, and our soldiers as firmly disciplined as the Germans, Alsace and Lorraine would still have been French.
I may be told that a good patriot ought to refrain from saying such things; but what is the use of hiding facts? Would hiding them prevent them from being true? I say these things on purpose to open people's eyes. If we want to recover what we have lost, everything must be changed; our officers must be educated, our soldiers disciplined, our contractors must supply stores, clothing, and provisions without blunders and deficiencies, or if they fail they must be shot; the life of a brave and generous nation is better worth than that of a knave, whose ignorance, laziness, or cupidity may cause the loss of provinces.
We must have a large, national army, like that of the Germans, and, to possess this army, every man must serve; the cripples and deformed in offices; every man besides, in the ranks. Full permission must be given to wear spectacles, which do not hinder a man from fighting; and citizens, as well as workmen and peasants, must come under fire.
Unless we do this, we shall be beaten--beaten again, and utterly ruined!
And above all, as Cousin George said, we must place at the head of affairs a man with a cool head, a warm heart, and great experience; in whose eyes the honor of the nation shall be above his own interest, and on whose word all men may rely, because he has already proved that his confidence in himself will not desert him, even in the most perilous times.
But we are yet very far from this; and one would really believe, in looking at the conceited countenances of the fugitives who are returning from England, Belgium, Switzerland, and farther yet, that they have won important victories, and that the country does them injustice in not hailing them as deliverers.
And now I will quietly pursue this history of our village; whoever wants to come round me again with hypocritical pretences of honesty, will have to get up very early in the morning indeed.
After the Germans had posted their infantry within the squares formed by the cavalry, they dragged guns and ammunition up the height of Wechem, in the rear of our hills. Then the thoughts of Jacob, and all our poor lads, whom they were going to sh.e.l.l, came upon us, and mother began to cry bitterly. Gredel, too, thinking of her Jean Baptiste, had become furious; if, by misfortune, we had had a gun in the house, she would have been quite capable of firing upon the Prussians, and so getting us all exterminated; she ran upstairs and downstairs, put her head out at the window, and a German having raised his head, saying, ”Oh! what a pretty girl!” she shouted, ”Be sure always to come out ten against one, or it will be all up with you!”
I was downstairs, and you may imagine my alarm. I went up to beg her to be quiet, if she did not want the whole village to be destroyed; but she answered rudely, ”I don't care--let them burn us all out! I wish I was in the town, and not with all these thieves.”
I went down quickly, not to hear more.
The rain had begun to fall again, and these Prussians kept pouring in, by regiments, by squadrons: more than forty thousand men covered the plain; some formed in the fields, in the meadows, trampling down the second crop of gra.s.s and the potatoes--all our hopes were there under their feet! others went on their way; their wheels sunk into the clay, but they had such excellent horses that all went on under the lashes of their long whips, as the Germans use them. They climbed up all the slopes; the hedges and young trees were bent and broken everywhere.
When might is right, and you feel yourself the weakest, silence is wisdom.
The report ran that they were going to attack Phalsbourg in the afternoon; and our poor Mobiles, and our sixty artillery recruits pressed to serve the guns, were about to have a dreadful storm falling upon them, as a beginning to their experience. Those heaps of sh.e.l.ls they were hurrying up to Wechem forced from us all cries of ”Poor town!
poor townspeople! poor women! poor children!”
The rain increased, and the river overflowed its banks down all the valley from Graufthal to Metting. A few officers were walking down the street to look for shelter; I saw a good number go into Cousin George's, princ.i.p.ally hussars, and at the same moment a gentleman in a round hat, black cloak and trousers, stepped before the mill and asked me: ”Monsieur le Maire?”
”I am the mayor.”
”Very good. I am the army chaplain, and I am come to lodge with you.”
I thought that better than having ten or fifteen scoundrels in my house; but he had scarcely closed his lips when another came, an officer of light horse, who cried: ”His highness has chosen this house to lodge in.”
Very good--what could I reply?
A brigadier, who was following this officer, springs off his horse, goes under the shed, and peeps into the stable. ”Turn out all that,”
said he.
”Turn out my horses, my cattle?” I exclaimed.