The Conscript: A Story of the French war of 1813

XVI

How much were we to learn that day! At the hospital no one troubled himself about anything: when every morning you see fifty wounded come in, and when every evening you see as many depart upon the bier, you have the world before you in a narrow compass, and you think —

"After us comes the end of the universe!"

But without, these ideas change. When I caught the first glimpse of the street of Halle, – that old city with its shops, its gateways filled with merchandise, its old peaked roofs, its heavy wagons laden with bales, in a word, all its busy commercial life, – I was struck with wonder; I had never seen anything like it, and I said to myself:

"This is indeed a mercantile city, such as they talk of – full of industrious people trying to make a living, or competence, or wealth; where every one seeks to rise, not to the injury of others, but by working – contriving night and day how to make his family prosperous; so that all profit by inventions and discoveries. Here is the happiness of peace in the midst of a fearful war!"

But the poor wounded, wandering about with their arms in slings, or perhaps dragging a leg after them as they limped on crutches, were sad sights to see.

I walked dreamily through the streets, led by Zimmer, who recognized every corner, and kept repeating:

"There – there is the church of Saint Nicholas; that large building is the university: that on yonder is the Hôtel de Ville."

He seemed to remember every stone, having been there in 1807, before the battle of Friedland, and continued:

"We are the same here as if we were in Metz, or Strasbourg, or any other city in France. The people wish us well. After the campaign of 1806, they used to do all they could for us. The citizens would take three or four of us at a time to dinner with them. They even gave us balls and called us the heroes of Jena. Go where we would they everywhere received us as benefactors of the country. We named their elector King of Saxony, and gave him a good slice of Poland."

Suddenly he stopped before a little, low door and cried:

"Hold! Here is the Golden Sheep Brewery. The front is on the other street, but we can enter here. Come!"

I followed him into a narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner's Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every story of the house.

The clinking of glasses was heard coming from a room which opened on the Rue de Tilly, and under the windows of this was a deep cellar resounding with the cooper's hammer. The sweet smell of the new March beer filled the air, and Zimmer, with a look of satisfaction, cried:

"Yes, here I came six years ago with Ferré and stout Rousillon. How glad I am to see it all again, Josephel! It was six years ago. Poor Rousillon! he left his bones at Smolensk last year! and Ferré must now be at home in his village near Toul, for he lost his left leg at Wagram. How everything comes back as I think of it!"

At the same time he pushed open the door, and we entered a lofty hall, full of smoke. I saw, through the thick, gray atmosphere, a long row of tables, surrounded by men drinking – the greater number in short coats and little caps, the remainder in the Saxon uniform. The first were students, young men of family who came to Leipzig to study law, medicine, and all that can be learned by emptying glasses and leading a jolly life, which they call Fuchs-commerce. They often fight among themselves with a sort of blade rounded at the point and only its tip sharpened, so that they slash their faces, as Zimmer told me, but life is never endangered. This shows the good sense of these students, who know very well that life is precious, and that one had better get five or six slashes, or even more, than lose it.

Zimmer laughed as he told me these things; his love of glory blinded him; he said they might as well load cannon with roasted apples, as fight with swords rounded at the point.

But we entered the hall, and we saw the oldest of the students – a tall withered-looking man with a red nose and long flaxen beard, stained with beer – standing upon a table, reading the gazette aloud which hung from his hand like an apron. He held the paper in one hand, and in the other a long porcelain pipe. His comrades, with their long, light hair falling upon their shoulders, were listening with the deepest interest; and as we entered, they shouted, "Vaterland! Vaterland!"

They touched glasses with the Saxon soldiers, while the tall student bent over to take up his glass, and the round, fat brewer cried:

"Gesundheit! Gesundheit!"

Scarcely had we made half a dozen steps toward them, when they became silent.

"Come, come, comrades!" cried Zimmer, "don't disturb yourselves. Go on reading. We do not object to hear the news."

But they did not seem inclined to profit by our invitation, and the reader descended from the table, folding up his paper, which he put in his pocket.

"We are done," said he, "we are done."

"Yes; we are done," repeated the others, looking at each other with a peculiar expression.

Two or three of the German soldiers rose and left the room, as if to take the air in the court. And the fat landlord said:

"You do not perhaps know that the large hall is on the Rue de Tilly?"

"Yes; we know it very well," replied Zimmer; "but I like this little hall better. Here I used to come, long ago, with two old comrades, to empty a few glasses in honor of Jena and Auerstadt. I know this room of old."

"Ah! as you please, as you please," returned the landlord. "Do you wish some March beer?"

"Yes; two glasses and the gazette."

"Very good."

The glasses were handed us, and Zimmer, who observed nothing, tried to open a conversation with the students; but they excused themselves, and, one after another, went out. I saw that they hated us, but dared not show it.

The gazette, which was from France, spoke of an armistice, after two new victories at Bautzen and Wurtschen. This armistice commenced on the sixth of June, and a conference was then being held at Prague, in Bohemia, to arrange on terms of peace. All this naturally gave me pleasure. I thought of again seeing home. But Zimmer, with his habit of thinking aloud, filled the hall with his reflections, and interrupted me at every line.

"An armistice!" he cried. "Do we want an armistice. After having beaten those Prussians and Russians at Lutzen, Bautzen and Wurtschen, ought we not to annihilate them? Would they give us an armistice if they had beaten us? There, Joseph, you see the Emperor's character – he is too good. It is his only fault. He did the same thing after Austerlitz, and he had to begin over again. I tell you, he is too good; and if he were not so, we should have been masters of Europe."

As he spoke, he looked around as if seeking assent; but the students scowled, and no one replied. At last Zimmer rose.

"Come, Joseph," said he; "I know nothing of politics, but I insist that we should give no armistice to those beggars. When they are down we should keep them there."

After we had paid our reckoning, and were once more in the street, he continued:

"I do not know what was the matter with those people to-day. We must have disturbed them in something."

"It is very possible," I replied. "They certainly did not seem like the good-natured folks you were speaking of."

"No," said he. "Those young fellows are far beneath the old students I have seen. They passed – I might say – their lives at the brewery. They drank twenty and sometimes thirty glasses a day; even I, Joseph, had no chance with such fellows. Five or six of them whom they called 'seniors' had gray beards and a venerable appearance. We sang Fanfan la Tulipe and 'King Dagobert' together, which are not political songs, you know. But these fellows are good for nothing."

I knew afterward, that those students were members of the Tugend-bund.

On returning to the hospital, after having had a good dinner and drank a bottle of wine apiece in the inn of La Grappe in the Rue de Tilly, we learned that we were to go, that same evening, to the barracks of Rosenthal – a sort of depot for wounded, near Lutzen, where the roll was called morning and evening, but where, at all other times, we were at liberty to do as we pleased. Every three days, the surgeon made his visit; as soon as one was well, he received his order to march to rejoin his corps.

One may imagine the condition of from twelve to fifteen hundred poor wretches clothed in gray great-coats with leaden buttons, shakos shaped like flower-pots, and shoes worn out by marches and counter-marches – pale, weak, most of them without a sou, in a rich city like Leipzig. We did not cut much of a figure among these students, these good citizens and smiling young women, who, despite our glory, looked on us as vagabonds.

All the fine stories of my comrade only made me feel my situation more bitterly.

It is true that we were formerly well received, but in those days our men did not always act honestly by those who treated them like brothers, and now doors were slammed in our faces. We were reduced to the necessity of contemplating squares, churches, and the outside of sausage-shops, which are there very handsome, from morning till night.

We tried every way of amusing ourselves; the idlers played at drogue², the younger ones drank. We had also a game called "Cat and Rat," which we played in front of the barracks. A stake was planted in the ground, to which two cords were fastened; the rat held one of these, and the cat the other. Their eyes were bandaged. The cat was armed with a cudgel and tried to catch the rat, who kept out of the way as much as he could, listening for the cat's approach – thus they kept going around on tiptoe, and exhibiting their cunning to the company.

Zimmer told me that in former times the good Germans came in crowds to see this game, and you could hear them laugh half a league off when the cat touched the rat with his club. But times were indeed changed; every one passed by now without even turning their heads; we only lost our labor when we tried to interest them in our favor.

During the six weeks we remained at Rosenthal, Zimmer and I often wandered through the city to kill time. We went by way of the faubourg of Randstatt and pushed as far as Lindenau, on the road to Lutzen. There were nothing but bridges, swamps and wooded islets as far as the eye could reach. There we would eat an omelette with bacon at the tavern of the Carp, and wash it down with a bottle of white wine. They no longer gave us credit, as after Jena; I believe, on the contrary, that the innkeeper would have made us pay double and triple, for the honor of the German Fatherland, if my comrade had not known the price of eggs and bacon and wine as well as any Saxon among them.

In the evening, when the sun was setting behind the reeds of the Elster and the Pleisse, we returned to the city accompanied by the mournful notes of the frogs, which swarm in thousands in the marshes.

Sometimes we would stop with folded arms at the railing of a bridge and gaze at the old ramparts of Leipzig, its churches, its old ruins, and its castle of Pleissenbourg, all glowing in the red twilight. The city runs to a point where the Pleisse and the Partha branch off, and the rivers meet above. It is in the shape of a fan, the faubourg of Halle at the handle and the seven other faubourgs spreading off.³ We gazed too at the thousand arms of the Elster and the Pleisse, winding like threads among islands already growing dark in the twilight, although the waters glittered like gold. All this seemed very beautiful.

But if we had known that we would one day be forced to cross these rivers under the enemy's cannon, after having lost the most fearful and the bloodiest of battles, and that entire regiments would disappear beneath those waters, which then gladdened our eyes, I think that the sight would have made us sad enough.

At other times we would walk along the bank of the Pleisse as far as Mark-Kléeberg. It was more than a league, and every field was covered with harvests which they were hastening to garner. The people in their great wagons seemed not to see us, and if we asked for information they pretended not to understand us. Zimmer always grew angry. I held him back, telling him that the beggarly wretches only sought a pretext for falling upon us, and that we had, besides, orders to humor them.

"Very good!" he said; "but if the war comes this way, let them look out! We have overwhelmed them with benefits and this is how they receive us!"

But what shows better yet the ill-feeling of the people toward us was what happened us the day after the conclusion of the armistice, when, about eleven o'clock, we went together to bathe in the Elster. We had already thrown off our clothes, and Zimmer seeing a peasant approaching, cried:

"Holloa, comrade! Is there any danger here?"

"No. Go in boldly," replied the man. "It is a good place."

Zimmer, mistrusting nothing, went some fifteen feet out. He was a good swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current carried him away so quickly that he could not even catch the branches of the willows which hung over him; and were it not that he was carried to a ford, where he gained a footing, he would have been swept between two muddy islands, and certainly lost.

The peasant stood to see the effect of his advice. I was very angry, and dressed myself as quickly as I could, shaking my fist at him, but he laughed, and ran, quicker than I could follow him, to the city. Zimmer was wild with wrath, and wished to pursue him to Connewitz; but how could we find him among three or four hundred houses, and if we did find him, what could we do?

Finally we went into the water where there was footing, and its coolness calmed us.

I remember how, as we returned to Leipzig, Zimmer talked of nothing but vengeance.

"The whole country is against us!" cried he; "the citizens look black at us, the women turn their backs, the peasants try to drown us, and the innkeepers refuse us credit, as if we had not conquered them three or four times; and all this comes of our extraordinary goodness; we should have declared that we were their masters! We have granted to the Germans kings and princes; we have even made dukes, counts and barons with the names of their villages; we have loaded them with honors, and see their gratitude!

"Instead of having ordered us to respect the people, we should be given full power over them; then the thieves would change faces and treat us well, as they did in 1806. Force is everything. In the first place, conscripts are made by force, for if they were not forced to come, they would all stay at home. Of the conscripts soldiers are made by force – by discipline being taught them; with soldiers battles are gained by force, and then people are forced to give you everything: they prepare triumphal arches for you and call you heroes because they are afraid of you; that is how it is!

"But the Emperor is too good. If he were not so good I would not have been in danger of drowning to-day; – the sight of my uniform would have made that peasant tremble at the idea of telling me a lie."

So spoke Zimmer, and all this yet remains in my memory. It happened August 12, 1813.

Returning to Leipzig, we saw joy painted on the countenances of the inhabitants. It did not display itself openly; but the citizens, meeting, would shake hands with an air of huge satisfaction, and the general rejoicing glistened even in the eyes of servants and the poorest workmen.

Zimmer said: "These Germans seem to be merry about something, they all look so good-natured."

"Yes," I replied; "their good humor comes from the fine weather and good harvest."

It was true the weather was very fine, but when we reached the barracks, we found some of our officers at the gate, talking eagerly together, while those who were going by came up to listen, and then we learned the cause of so much joy. The conference at Prague was broken off, and Austria, too, was about to declare war against us, which gave us two hundred thousand more men to take care of. I have learned since that we then stood three hundred thousand men against five hundred and twenty thousand, and that among our enemies were two old French generals, Moreau and Bernadotte. Every one can read that in books, but we did not yet know it, and we were sure of victory, for we had never lost a battle. The ill-feeling of the people did not trouble us: in time of war peasants and citizens are in a manner reckoned as nothing; they are only asked for money and provisions, which they always give, for they know that if they made the least resistance they would be stripped to the last farthing.

The day after we got this important news there was a general inspection, and twelve hundred of the wounded of Lutzen were ordered to rejoin their corps. They went by companies with arms and baggage, some following the road to Altenbourg, which runs along the Elster, and some the road to Wurtzen, farther to the left.

Zimmer was of the number, having himself asked leave to go. I went with him just beyond the gate, and there we embraced with emotion. I stayed behind, as my arm was still weak.

We were now not more than five or six hundred, among whom were a number of masters of arms, of teachers of dancing and French elegance – fellows to be found at all depots of wounded. I did not care to become acquainted with them, and my only consolation was in thinking of Catharine, and sometimes of my old comrades Klipfel and Zébédé, of whom I received no tidings.

It was a sad enough life; the people looked upon us with an evil eye; they dared say nothing, knowing that the French army was only four days' march away, and Blücher and Schwartzenberg much farther. Otherwise, how soon they would have fallen upon us!

One evening the rumor prevailed that we had just won a great victory at Dresden. There was general consternation; the inhabitants remained shut up in their houses. I went to read the newspaper at the "Bunch of Grapes," in the Rue de Tilly. The French papers were there always on the table; no one opened them but me.

But the following week, at the beginning of September, I saw the same change in people's faces as I observed the day the Austrians declared against us. I guessed we had met some misfortune, and we had, as I learned afterward, for the Paris papers said nothing of it.

Bad weather set in at the end of August, and the rain fell in torrents. I no longer left the barracks. Often, as seated upon my bed, I gazed at the Elster boiling beneath the falling floods, and the trees, and the little islands swaying in the wind, I thought: "Poor soldiers! poor comrades! What are you doing now? Where are you? On the high road perhaps, or in the open fields!"

And despite my sadness at living where I was, I remembered that I was less to be pitied than they. But one day the old Surgeon Tardieu made his round and said to me:

"Your arm is strong again – let us see – raise it for me. All right! all right!"

The next day at roll-call, they passed me into a hall where there were clothing, knapsacks, cartridge-boxes and shoes in abundance. I received a musket, two packets of cartridges, and marching papers for the Sixth at Gauernitz, on the Elbe. This was the first of October. Twelve or fifteen of us set out together, under charge of a quartermaster of the Twenty-seventh named Poitevin.

On the road, one after another left us to take the way to his corps; but Poitevin, four infantry men and I, kept on to the village of Gauernitz.

XVII

We were following the Wurtzen high road, our muskets slung on our backs, our great-coat capes turned up, bending beneath our knapsacks, and feeling down-hearted enough, as you may imagine. The rain was falling, and ran from our shakos down our necks; the wind shook the poplars, and their yellow leaves, fluttering around us, told of the approach of winter. So hour after hour passed.

From time to time, at long intervals, we came upon a village with its sheds, dunghills and gardens, surrounded with palings. The women standing behind their windows, with little dull panes, gazed at us as we went by; a dog bayed; a man splitting wood at his threshold turned to follow us with his eyes, and we kept on, on, splashed and muddied to our necks. We looked back; from the end of the village the road stretched on as far as one could see; gray clouds trailed along the despoiled fields, and a few lean rooks were flying away, uttering their melancholy cry.

Nothing could be sadder than such a view; and to it was added the thought that winter was coming on, and that soon we must sleep without a roof, in the snow. We might well be silent, as we were, save the quartermaster Poitevin. He was a veteran, – sallow, wrinkled, with hollow cheeks, mustaches an ell long, and a red nose, like all brandy drinkers. He had a lofty way of speaking, which he interspersed with barrack slang. When the rain came down faster than ever, he cried, with a strange burst of laughter: "Ay, ay, Poitevin, this will teach you to hiss!" The old drunkard perceived that I had a little money in my pocket, and kept near me, saying: "Young man, if your knapsack tires you, hand it to me." But I only thanked him for his kindness.

Notwithstanding my disgust at being with a man who gazed at every tavern sign when we passed through a village, and said at each one: "A little glass of something would do us good as the time passes," I could not help paying for a glass now and then, so that he did not quit me.

We were nearing Wurtzen and the rain was falling in torrents, when the quartermaster cried for the twentieth time:

"Ay, Poitevin! Here is life for you! This will teach you to hiss!"

"What sort of a proverb is that of yours?" I asked; "I would like to know how the rain would teach you to hiss."

"It is not a proverb, young man; it is an idea which runs in my head when I try to be cheerful."

Then, after a moment's pause, he continued:

"You must know," said he, "that in 1806, when I was a student at Rouen, I happened once to hiss a piece in the theatre, with a number of other young fellows like myself. Some hissed, some applauded; blows were struck, and the police carried us by dozens to the watch-house. The Emperor, hearing of it, said: 'Since they like fighting so much, put them in my armies! There they can gratify their tastes!' And, of course, the thing was done; and no one dared hiss in that part of the country, not even fathers and mothers of families."

"You were a conscript, then?" I asked.

"No, my father had just bought me a substitute. It was one of the Emperor's jokes; one of those jokes which we long remember; twenty or thirty of us are dead of hardship and want. A few others, instead of filling honorable positions in their towns, such as doctors, judges, lawyers, have become old drunkards. This is what is called a good joke!"

Then he began to laugh, looking at me from the corner of his eye. I had become very thoughtful, and two or three times more, before we reached Gauernitz, I paid for the poor wretch's little glasses of something.

It was about five o'clock in the evening, and we were approaching the village of Risa, when we descried an old mill, with its wooden bridge, over which a bridle-path ran. We struck off from the road and took this path, to make a short cut to the village, when we heard cries and shrieks for help, and, at the same moment, two women, one old, and the other somewhat younger, ran across a garden, dragging two children with them. They were trying to gain a little wood which bordered the road, and at the same moment we saw several of our soldiers come out of the mill with sacks, while others came up from a cellar with little casks, which they hastened to place on a cart standing near; still others were driving cows and horses from a stable, while an old man stood at the door, with uplifted hands, as if calling down Heaven's curse upon them; and five or six of the evil-minded wretches surrounded the miller, who was all pale, with his eyes starting from their sockets.

The whole scene, the mill, the dam, the broken windows, the flying women, our soldiers in fatigue caps, looking like veritable bandits, the old man cursing them, the cows shaking their heads to throw off those who were leading them, while others pricked them behind with their bayonets – all seems yet before me – I seem yet to see it.

"There," cried the quartermaster, "there are fellows pillaging. We are not far from the army."

"But that is horrible!" I cried. "They are robbers."

"Yes," returned the quartermaster, coolly; "it is contrary to discipline, and if the Emperor knew of it, they would be shot like dogs."

We crossed the little bridge, and found the thieves crowded around a cask which they had tapped, passing around the cup. This sight roused the quartermaster's indignation, and he cried majestically:

"By whose permission are you plundering in this way?"

Several turned their heads, but seeing that we were but three, for the rest of our party had gone on, one of them replied:

"Ha! what do you want, old joker? A little of the spoil, I suppose. But you need not curl up your mustaches on that account. Here, drink a drop."

The speaker held out the cup, and the quartermaster took it and drank, looking at me as he did so.

"Well, young man," said he, "will you have some, too? It is famous wine, this."

"No, I thank you," I replied.

Several of the pillaging party now cried:

"Hurry, there; it is time to get back to camp."

"No, no," replied others; "there is more to be had here."

"Comrades," said the quartermaster, in a tone of gentle reproof and warning, "you know, comrades, you must go gently about it."

"Yes, yes, old fellow," replied a drum-major, with half-closed eyes, and a mocking smile; "do not be alarmed; we will pluck the pigeon according to rule. We will take care; we will take care."

The quartermaster said no more, but seemed ashamed on my account. He at length said:

"What would you have, young man? War is war. One cannot see himself starving, with food at hand."

He was afraid I would report him; he would have remained with the pillagers, but for the fear of being captured. I replied, to relieve his mind:

"Those are probably good fellows, but the sight of a cup of wine makes them forget everything."

At length, about ten o'clock at night, we saw the bivouac fires, on a gloomy hill-side to the right of the village of Gauernitz, and of an old castle from which a few lights also shone. Farther on, in the plain, a great number of other fires were burning. The night was clear, and as we approached the bivouac, the sentry challenged:

"Who goes there?"

"France!" replied the quartermaster.

My heart beat, as I thought that, in a few moments, I should again meet my old comrades, if they were yet in the world.

Some men of the guard came forward from a sort of shed, half a musket-shot from the village, to find out who we were. The commandant of the post, a gray-haired sub-lieutenant, his arm in a sling under his cloak, asked us whence we came, whither we were going, and whether we had met any parties of Cossacks on our route. The quartermaster answered his questions. The lieutenant informed us that Souham's division had that morning left Gauernitz, and ordered us to follow him, that he might examine our marching-papers; which we did in silence, passing among the bivouac fires, around which men, covered with dried mud, were sleeping, in groups of twenty. Not one moved.

We arrived at the officers' quarters. It was an old brick-kiln, with an immense roof, resting on posts driven into the ground. A large fire was burning in it, and the air was agreeably warm. Around it soldiers were sleeping, with a contented look, their backs against the wall; the flames lighted up their figures under the dark rafters. Near the posts shone stacks of arms. I seem yet to see these things; I feel the kindly warmth which penetrated me. I see my comrades, their clothes smoking, a few paces from the kiln, where they were gravely waiting until the officer should have finished reading the marching-papers, by the dim, red light. One bronzed old veteran watched alone, seated on the ground, and mending a shoe with a needle and thread.

The officer handed me back my paper first, saying:

"You will rejoin your battalion to-morrow, two leagues hence, near Torgau."

Then the old soldier, looking at me, placed his hand upon the ground, to show that there was room beside him, and I seated myself. I opened my knapsack, and put on new stockings and shoes, which I had brought from Leipzig, after which I felt much better.

The old man asked:

"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.