Czytaj książkę: «The Plébiscite; or, A Miller's Story of the War», strona 15

CHAPTER XIII

We were now rid of our Landwehr, who were garrisoned at Phalsbourg, but a part of whom were sent off into the interior. They were indignant, and declared that if they had known that they were to be sent farther, the blockade would have lasted longer; that they would have let the cows, the bullocks, and the bread find their way in, many a time, in spite of their chiefs; and that it was infamous to expose them to new dangers when every man had done his part in the campaign.

There was no enthusiasm in them; but, all the same, they marched in step in their ranks, and were moved some on Belfort, some on Paris.

We learned, through the German newspapers, that they had severer sufferings to endure round Belfort than with us; that the garrison made sorties, and drove them several leagues away; that their dead bodies were rotting in heaps, behind the hedges, covered with snow and mud; that the commander, Denfert, gave them many a heavy dig in the ribs; and every day people coming from Alsace told us that such an one of the poor fellows whom we had known had just been struck down by a ball, maimed by a splinter or a shell, or bayoneted by our Mobiles. We could not help pitying them, for they all had five or six children each, of whom they were forever talking; and naturally, for when the parent-bird dies the brood is lost.

And all this for the honor and glory of the King of Prussia, of Bismarck, of Moltke, and a few heroes of the same stamp, not one of whom has had a scratch in the chances of war.

How can one help shrugging one's shoulders and laughing inwardly at seeing these Germans, with all their education, greater fools than ourselves? They have won! That is to say, the survivors; for those who are buried, or who have lost their limbs, have no great gain to boast of, and can hardly rejoice over the success of the enterprise. They have gained – what? The hatred of a people who had loved them; they have gained that they will be obliged to fight every time their lords or masters give the order; they have gained that they can say Alsace and Lorraine are German, which is absolutely no gain whatever; and besides this they have gained the envy of a vast number of people, and the distrust of a vast many more, who will end by agreeing together to fall upon them in a body, and treat them to fire and slaughter and bombardment, of which they have set us the example.

This is what the peasants, the artisans, and the bourgeois have gained: as for the chiefs, they have won some a title, some a pension or an épaulette: others have the satisfaction of saying, "I am the great So-and-So! I am William, Emperor of Germany; a crown was set on my head at Versailles, whilst thousands of my subjects were biting the dust!"

Alas! notwithstanding all this, these people will die, and in a hundred years will be recognized as barbarians; their names will be inscribed on the roll of the plagues of the human race, and there they will remain to the end of time.

But what is the use of reasoning with such philosophers as these? In time they will acknowledge the truth of what I say!

Now to our story again.

They were fighting furiously round Belfort; our men did not drop off asleep in casements; they occupied posts at a distance all round the place: their sortie from Bourcoigne, and their slaughter of the Bavarians at Haute-Perche, were making a great noise in Alsace.

We learned from the Indépendance the battles of Chanzy at Vendôme against the army of Mecklenburg; the fight by General Crémer at Nuits against the army of Von Werder; the retreat of Manteuffel toward Amiens, after having overwhelmed Rouen with forced contributions; the bayonet attack upon the villages around Pont-Noyelles, in which Faidherbe had defeated the enemy; and especially the grand measures of Gambetta, who had at last dissolved the Councils-General named by the Prefects of the Empire, and replaced them by really Republican departmental commissions.

Cousin George highly approved of this step. This was of more importance in his eyes than the decrees of our Prussian Préfet Henckel de Bonnermark; though he had inflicted heavy fines upon the fathers and mothers of the young men who had left home to join the French armies, and had laid Lorraine, already ruined by the invasion, under a contribution of 700,000 livres to compensate the losses suffered by the German mercantile marine; plundering decrees which went nigh to tearing the bread out of our mouths.

Then George passed on to the campaign of Chanzy; for what could be grander than this struggle of a young, inexperienced army, scarcely organized, against forces double their number, commanded by the great Prussian general who had been victorious at Woerth, Sedan, and Metz, over the whole of the Imperial troops?

George especially admired the noble protest of Chanzy, proclaiming to the world the ferocity of the Germans, and pointing out with pride the falsehoods of their generals, who invariably claimed the victory.

"The Commander-in-Chief lays before the army the subjoined protest, which he transmits, under a flag of truce, to the commander of the Prussian troops at Vendôme, with the assurance that his indignation will be shared by all, as well as his desire to take signal revenge for such insults.

"To the Prussian commander at Vendôme:

"I am informed that unjustifiable acts of violence have been committed by troops under your orders upon the unoffending inhabitants of St. Calais. In spite of our humane treatment of your sick and wounded, your officers have exacted money and commanded pillage. Such conduct is an abuse of power, which will weigh heavily upon your consciences, and which the patriotism of our people will enable them to endure; but what I cannot permit is, that you should add to these injuries insults which you know full well to be entirely gratuitous.

"You have asserted that we were defeated; that assertion is false. We have beaten you and held you in check since the 4th of this month. You have presumed to attach the name of coward to men who are prevented from answering you; pretending that they were coerced by the Government of National Defence, which, as you said, compelled them to resist when they wanted peace, and you were offering it. I deny this: I deny it by the right given me by the resistance of entire France and this army which confronts you, and which you have been hitherto unable to vanquish. This communication reaffirms what our resistance ought already to have taught you. Whatever may be the sacrifices still left us to endure, we will struggle to the very end, without truce or pity; since now we are resisting the attacks not of loyal and honorable enemies but of devastating bands who aim solely at the ruin and disgrace of a nation, which itself is striving to maintain its honor, rank, and independence. To the generous treatment we have accorded to your prisoners and wounded, your reply is insolence, fire, and plunder. I therefore protest, with deep indignation, in the name of humanity and the rights of men, which you will trample underfoot.

"The present order will be read before the troops at three consecutive muster-calls.

"CHANZY, Commander-in-Chief, "HEAD-QUARTERS, Le Mans, 26th December, 1870."

These are the words of an honorable man and a patriot, words to make a man lift up his head.

And as Manteuffel, whose only merit consists in having been during his youth the boon companion of the pious William; as this old courtier followed the same system as Frederick Charles and Mecklenburg, of lowering us to raise themselves, and to get their successes cheap; General Faidherbe also obliged him to abate his pride after the affair of Pont-Noyelles.

"The French army have left in the hands of the enemy only a few sailors, surprised in the village of Daours. It has kept its positions, and has waited in vain for the enemy until two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day."

This was plain speaking, and it was clear on which side good faith was to be looked for.

Thus, after having opposed a million of men to 300,000 conscripts, these Germans were even now obliged to lie in order not to discourage their armies.

Of course they could not but prevail in the end: France had had no time to prepare anew, to arm, and to recover herself after this disgraceful capitulation of the honest man and his friend Bazaine; but still she resisted with terrible energy, and the Prussians at last became anxious for peace too, and wished for it, perhaps, even more than ourselves.

The proof of this is the numberless petitions of the Germans entreating King William to bombard Paris.

Humane Germans, fathers of families, pious men, seated quietly by their counters at Hamburg, Cologne, or Berlin, in every town and village of Germany, eating and drinking heartily, warming their fat legs before the fire during this winter of unexampled severity, cried to their king at Christmas time to bombard Paris, and set fire to the houses – to kill and burn fathers and mothers of families like themselves, but reduced to famine in their own dwellings!

Have any but the Germans ever done the like?

We too have besieged German towns, but never have petitions been sent up like this under the Republic, or under the Empire, to ask our soldiers to do more injury than war between brave men requires. And since that period we have never uselessly shelled houses inhabited by inoffensive persons; and even when we have had to bombard walled towns, warning was given, as at Odessa and everywhere else, to give helpless people time to depart for the interior, if they did not want to run the risk of meeting with stray bullets; and permission was given to old men, women, and children to come out – a privilege never granted by the Prussians.

Ah! the French may not be so pious, so learned, and so good as the good German people, but they have better hearts and feelings of compassion; they have less of the Gospel upon their lips, but they have it in the bottoms of their souls. They are not hypocrites, and therefore we Alsacians and Lorrainers had rather remain French than belong to the good German people, and be like them.

Indignities without a precedent have been committed by them: "Shell – bombard – burn, in the name of Heaven! Set fire everywhere with petroleum bombs! – You are too gracious a king! – Your scruples betray too much weakness for this Babylon: Bombard quick: Bombardments have succeeded better than anything else. Sire, your good and faithful people entreat you to bombard everything – leave nothing standing!"

Oh! scoundrels! – rascals! – if you have so often played the saint for fifty years; if you have talked so edifyingly about friendship, brotherhood, and the alliance of nations, it was because you did not then think yourselves the strongest; now that you think you are, you piously bombard women, old men, and children, in the name of the Saviour! Faugh! it is simply disgusting!

Every time that Cousin George read these assassins' petitions, he would spring off his chair and cry: "Now I know what to think of fanatics of every religion. These men have no need to play the hypocrite: their religion does not oblige them to it. Well, they play the Jesuit for the love of it, better than we do by profession. May they be execrated and despised perpetually."

Then he dilated with much warmth of feeling upon the kind reception which the Parisians, in former days, used to accord to the Germans, for forty years and more. Men who came to seek a livelihood among us, without a penny, lean, humble, half-clad, with a little bundle of old rags under their arms, asking for credit, even in George's and Marie Anne's little inn, for a basin of broth, a bit of meat, and a glass of wine, were kindly received; they were cheered up, and situations found for them: everybody was anxious to put them in the right way, to explain to them what they did not know. Soon they grew fat and flourishing, and gained assurance; by servility they would win the confidence of the head-clerk, who showed them all about the business; and then some fine morning it was noised about that the head-clerk was discharged and the German was in his place. He had had a private interview with the head partner, and had proposed to do the work for half the salary. Of course the partners are always glad to have good workmen, humble and obsequious, and, above all, cheap. George had witnessed this fifty times.

But people did not get angry; they would say,

"The poor fellow must earn a living somehow. The other is a Frenchman: he will very soon secure another place."

And it was thus that the Germans slipped quietly into the shoes of those who had received them kindly and taught them their trade.

A few old clerks used to get angry; but they were always held to be in the wrong. "That good German" was justified! He had not meddled; everything had gone on simply and naturally.

And twenty, thirty, fifty thousand Germans used thus to come and prosper in Paris; and then they would get a holiday to take a turn home and exhibit the flesh and fat they had gained, and their gold trinkets.

If they happened to be professors of languages or newspaper correspondents, they were sure to break out down there against the corruption of manners in this "modern Babylon." Great hulking fellows they were, with long hooded cloaks, and gold or silver spectacles, who had scandalized even their doorkeepers by bringing home night after night "princesses" of Mabile and elsewhere, singing, drinking like a sponge, shaking all the house, and preventing people from sleeping; bringing, besides, other colleagues of the same stamp, and leading disgraceful lives!

But it is the fashion in Germany to cry out against "modern Babylon." It flatters the secret envy of the Germans, and establishes the character of the speaker for seriousness, gravity, and influence; as a man worthy of every consideration, and who may hope – if his situation in Paris is permanent – for the hand of "Herr Rector's" or "Herr Doctor's" fair daughter: for in that country they are all doctors in something or other. He had gone off as cold and comfortless as the stones in the street; he would have become a school-master, or a small clerk at a couple of hundred thalers all his life, in old Germany. He weighed heavily upon his poor father, encumbered with a dozen children; but he had grown fat, well-feathered, and well-trained in Paris; and there he is now virtuously indignant against our own townswomen: against the degenerate race which has given him his daily bread, and pulled him out of the mire, instead of kicking him downstairs.

This German fellow used to be republican, socialist, communist, etc. He had fled from Cologne, or elsewhere, in consequence of the events of 1848. Nothing in our opinion was sufficiently strong, decided, or advanced for him. He spouted about his sacrifices for the universal Republic, his terrible campaign in the Duchy of Baden against the Prussians, the loss of his place, of his property. We thought, what sufferings he has endured! Surely, the Germans are the first Democrats in the world!

But now this very same gentleman is the most faithful servant of his Majesty William, King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany. No doubt he talks at Berlin of the sacrifices which he has made to the noble cause of Germany, the battles he has fought in the public-houses amongst the broken bottles of beer which he has been swallowing by the dozen, to reclaim old Alsace, where lie deep the roots of the Germanic tongue. He abounds in indignation against the "modern Babylon;" his name stands at the head of the earliest petitions that Babylon should be burned, till nothing but ashes were left: that that race of madmen should be exterminated; and as during his residence in France he has rendered police services to Bismarck, he is pretty sure to obtain a post in Alsace-Lorraine, where all these old German spies are swooping down to Germanize us.

Thus spoke George, in his indignation; and Marie Anne, after listening to him, said: "Ah, it is too true! Those men did deceive us; and they did not even pay their debts. Some fine morning, when their bill had run up, three-fourths of them would make a start, and they were never heard of again. I have never had any confidence in any of them, except the crossing-sweepers and the shoe-blacks: one knew where to find them; but as for the professors, the newspaper correspondents, the inventors, the book-worms – they have done us too many bad turns; and they were too overbearing. They were filled with hatred and envy of our nation."

Since the departure of the Landwehr, we were able to speak more freely: those sulky eavesdroppers were no longer spying upon us, and we felt the relief.

Paris, as we saw in the Indépendance, was making sorties. The Gardes Mobiles and the National Guards were being drilled and becoming better skilled in the use of arms. Our sailors, in the forts, were admirable. But the Germans grew stronger from day to day; they had brought such enormous guns – called Krupp's – that the railways were unable to bear them, the tunnels were not high enough to give them passage, and the bridges gave way under their ponderous mass. This proves that if the bombardment had not yet commenced, in spite of the innumerable petitions of the good Germans, it was not for want of will on the part of his Majesty King William, Messieurs Moltke, Bismarck, and all those good men. Oh, no! our forts and our sorties hampered them a good deal in gaining their positions!

At last, about the end of December, "by the grace of God," as the Emperor William said, they began by bombarding a few forts, and were soon enabled to reach houses, hospitals, churches, and museums.

George and Marie Anne knew all these places by name, and these ferocious acts drew from them cries of horror. I, my wife, and Grédel could not understand these accounts: having never been in Paris, we could not form an idea of it.

The German news-writers knew them, however; for daily they told us how great a misfortune it was to be obliged to shell such rich libraries, such beautiful galleries of pictures, such magnificent monuments, and gardens so richly stocked with plants and rare collections; that it made their hearts bleed: they professed themselves inconsolable at being driven to such an extremity by the evil dispositions of those who presumed to defend their property, their homes, their wives, their children, contrary to every principle of justice! They pitied the French for their want of common-sense; they said that their brains were addled; that they were in their dotage, and uttered similar absurdities.

But every time that they lost men, their fury rose: "The Germans are a sacred race! Kill Germans! a superior race! it is a high crime. The French, the Swiss, the Danes, the Dutch, Belgians, Poles, Hungarians, even the Russians, are destined to be successively devoured by the Germans." I have heard this with my own ears! Yes, the Russians, too, they cannot dispense with the Germans; their manufactures, their trade, their sciences come to them from Germany; they, too, belong to an inferior race. The renowned Gortschakoff is unworthy to dust the boots of Monsieur Bismarck, and the Emperor of Russia is most fortunate in being allied by marriage to the Emperor William: it is a glorious prerogative for him!

The captain, Floegel, used often to repeat these things; and besides, the Germans all say the same at this time; you have but to listen to them: they are too strong now to need to hide their ambition. They think they are conferring a great honor upon us Alsacians and Lorrainers in acknowledging us as cousins, and gathering us to themselves out of love. We were a superior race in "that degenerate France;" but we are about to become little boys again amongst the noble German people. We are the last new-comers into Germany, and shall require time to acquire the noble German virtues: to become hypocrites, spies, bombarders, plunderers; to learn to receive slaps and kicks without winking. But what would you have? You cannot regenerate a people in a day.

The Prussians had announced that Paris would surrender after an eight-days' bombardment; but as the Parisians held out; as there were passing by Saverne innumerable convoys of wounded, scorched, maimed, and sick by thousands; as General Faidherbe had gained a victory in the North, the victory of Bapaume, in which we had driven the Prussians from the field of battle all covered with their dead, and in which the enemy had left in our hands not only all their wounded, but a great number of prisoners; as the inhabitants of Paris had only one fault to find with General Trochu, that he did not lead them out to the great battle, and they were raising the cry of "victory or death;" since Chanzy, repulsed at Le Mans, was falling back in good order, while in the midst of the deep snows of January and the severest cold, Bourbaki was still advancing upon Belfort; and Garibaldi with his francs-tireurs was not losing courage; since the Germans were suffering from exhaustion; and it takes but an hour, a minute, to turn all the chances against one; and if Faidherbe had gained his victory nearer to Paris a great sortie would have ensued, which might have entirely changed the face of things – for these and other reasons, I suppose, all at once there was much talk of humanity, mildness, peace; of the convocation of an assembly at Bordeaux, where the true representatives of the nation might settle everything, and restore order to our unhappy France.

As soon as these rumors began to spread, George said that Alsace and German Lorraine were to be sacrificed; that our egotists had come to an understanding with the Germans; that all our defeats had been unable to cast us down, and the Prussians were better pleased than ourselves to come to an end of it, for they needed peace, having no reserves left to throw into the scale; that Gambetta's enthusiasm and courage might at once win over the most timid, and that then the Germans would be lost, because a people that rises in a body, and at the same time possesses arms and munitions of war in a third of our provinces, such a nation in the long run would crush all resistance.

I could say nothing. Even to-day I do not know what might have happened. When Cousin George spoke, I was of his opinion; and then, left to my own reflections, when I saw that immense body of prisoners delivered by Bonaparte and Bazaine all at once; all our arms surrendered at Metz and Strasbourg, and our fortresses fallen one after another; then the ill-will, to say the least of all the former place-holders under the Empire, three-fourths of whom were retaining their posts – I thought it quite possible that we might wage against the Germans a war much more dangerous than the first; that we might destroy many more of the enemy at the same time with ourselves; but, if I had been told to choose, I should have found it hard to decide.

Of course, if the Prussians had been defeated in the interior, before abandoning our country, they would have ruined us utterly, and set fire to every village. I have myself several times heard a Hauptmann at Phalsbourg say, "You had better pray for us! For woe to you, if we should be repulsed! All that you have hitherto suffered would be but a joke. We would not leave one stone upon another in Alsace and Lorraine. That would be our defensive policy. So pray for the success of our armies. If we should be obliged to retire, you would be much to be pitied!"

I can hear these words still.

But I would not have minded even that: I would have sacrificed house, mill, and all, if we could only have finally been victorious and remained French; but I was in doubt. Misery makes a man lose, not courage, but confidence; and confidence is half the battle won.

About that time we received Jacob's first letter; he was at Rastadt, and I need not tell you what a relief it was to his mother to think that she could go and see him in one day.

Here is the letter, which I copy for you:

"MY DEAR FATHER AND MY DEAR MOTHER, —

"Thank God, I am not dead yet; and I should be glad to hear from you, if possible. You must know that, on arriving at Lützelbourg, we were sent off by railway in cattle-trucks. We were thirty or forty together; and we were not so comfortable as to be able to sit, since there were no seats, nor to breathe the air, as there was only a small hole to each side. Those of us who wanted to breathe or to drink, found a bayonet before our noses, and charitable souls were forbidden to give us a glass of water. We remained in this position more than twenty hours, standing, unable even to stoop a little. Many were taken ill; and as for me, my thigh bones seemed to run up into my ribs, so that I could scarcely breathe, and I thought with my comrades that they had undertaken to exterminate us after some new fashion.

"During the night we crossed the Rhine, and then we went on rolling along the line, and travelling along the other side as far as Rastadt, where we are now. The hindmost trucks, where I was, remained; the others went on into Germany. We were first put into the casemates under the ramparts; damp, cold vaults, where many others who had arrived before us were dying like flies in October. The straw was rotting – so were the men. The doctors in the town and those of the Baden regiments were afraid of seeing sickness spreading in the country; and since the day before yesterday those who are able to walk have been made to come out. They have put us into large wooden huts covered in with tarred felt, where we have each received a fresh bundle of straw. Here we live, seated on the ground. We play at cards, some smoke pipes, and the Badeners mount guard over us. The hut in which I am – about three times as large as the old market-hall of Phalsbourg – is situated between two of the town bastions; and if by some evil chance any of us took a fancy to revolt, we should be so overwhelmed with shot and shell that in ten minutes not a man would be left alive. We are well aware of this, and it keeps our indignation within bounds against these Badeners, who treat us like cattle. We get food twice a day – a little haricot or millet soup, with a very small piece of meat about the size of a finger: just enough to keep us alive. After such a blockade as ours, something more is wanted to set us up; our noses stand out of our faces like crows' bills, our cheeks sink in deeper and deeper; and but for the guns pointed at us, we should have risen a dozen times.

"I hope, however, I may get over it; father's cloak keeps me warm, and Cousin George's louis are very useful. With money you can get anything; only here you have to pay five times the value of what you want, for these Badeners are worse than Jews; they all want to make their fortunes in the shortest time out of the unhappy prisoners.

"I use my money sparingly. Instead of smoking, I prefer buying from time to time a little meat or a very small bottle of wine to fortify my stomach; it is much better for my health, and is the more enjoyable when your appetite is good. My appetite has never failed. When the appetite fails, comes the typhus. I do not expect I shall catch typhus. But, if it please God to let me return to Rothalp, the very first day I will have a substantial meal of ham, veal pie, and red wine. I will also invite my comrades, for it is a dreadful thing to be hungry. And now, to tell you the truth, I repent of having never given a couple of sous to some poor beggar who asked me for alms in the winter, saying that he had nothing, I know what hunger is now, and I feel sorry. If you meet one in this condition, father or mother, invite him in, give him bread, let him warm himself, and give him two or three sous when he goes. Fancy that you are doing it for your son; it will bring me comfort.

"Perhaps mother will be able to come and see me: not many people are allowed to come near us; a permit must be had from the commandant at Rastadt. These Badeners and these Bavarians, who were said to be such good Catholics, treat us as hardly as the Lutherans. I remember now that Cousin George used to say that was only part of the play: he was right. Instead of only praising and singing to our Lord, they would much better follow His example.

"Let mother try! Perhaps the commandant may have had a good dinner; then he will be in a good temper, and will give her leave to come into the huts: that is my wish. And now, to come to an end, I embrace you all a hundred times; father, mother, Grédel, Cousin George, and Cousin Marie Anne.

"Your son,

"JACOB WEBER.

"I forgot to tell you that several out of our battalion escaped from Phalsbourg before and after the muster-call of the prisoners: in the number was Jean Baptiste Werner. It is said that they have joined Garibaldi: I wish I was with them. The Germans tell us that if they can catch them they will shoot them down without pity; yes, but they won't let themselves be caught; especially Jean Baptiste; he is a soldier indeed! If we had but two hundred thousand of his sort, these Badeners would not be bothering us with their haricot-soup, and their cannons full of grape-shot.

"RASTADT, January 6, 1871."

From that moment my wife only thought of seeing Jacob again; she made up her bundle, put into her basket sundry provisions, and in a couple of days started for Rastadt.

I put no hindrance in her way, thinking she would have no rest until she had embraced our boy.

Grédel was quite easy, knowing that Jean Baptiste Werner was with Garibaldi. I even think she had had news from him; but she showed us none of his letters, and had again begun to talk about her marriage-portion, reminding me that her mother had had a hundred louis, and that she ought to have the same. She insisted upon knowing where our money was hidden, and I said to her, "Search; if you can find it, it is yours."

Girls who want to be married are so awfully selfish; if they can only have the man they want, house, family, native land, all is one to them. They are not all like that; but a good half. I was so annoyed with Grédel that I began to wish her Jean Baptiste would come back, that I might marry them and count out her money.