CHAPTER XIIITHE DEATH RIDEGeneral Michelhad been in the woods of the Niederwald since dawn. Two regiments of cuirassiers were at his command, and those squadrons of lancers which Tripard had left for scouting duty. The General did not doubt that all the work he would have to do would be to engage the few daring hussars who had appeared above the village of Gunstett and thence opened fire on the valley land below. Imitating MacMahon, his chief, he believed that the army of the Vosges had encountered no other enemy than the outposts of the Crown Prince’s army. The day undeceived him, but not until twelve o’clock had struck and the sun was hot upon the vineyards.All morning the troopers were in the saddle waiting. Around them the overturned pans and scattered fires spoke of breakfast interrupted and of hunger continuing. Theirmoralwas beyond question. They asked only that they might charge those spiked helmets and drive themacross the Rhine. They thought that no infantry the world had ever seen could withstand the cuirassiers of France. The lesson to be learned was bitter—the first of many they must master.It was just light when Lefort joined his men, and found the laughing Giraud full of the good news, and of those promises of hope which youth can give abundantly. The boyish voice and unquestioning belief were a tonic of the morning. His own night had been such a night of foreboding. Fear for France and for his child-wife at the châlet had pursued him even in his sleep. But here, in the green wood, with the big fellows on their fine horses; here, where the helmets shone like gold and the chargers pawed the glistening grass, and all the talk was of victory, he drank in a great draught of courage, and remembered the purpose of his life, and all that his life’s task demanded of him. Those friends of his, they would drive the Prussians to the Rhine! Beatrix would go to Saverne with old Jules Picard and Jacob. He would write to her that night and tell her of the victory. And Giraud gave him such a welcome:“Ah, Captain—you come, then, in good time. And Madame, she is up there still? Well, it is good to fight like that. She will stay, of course! She does not fear all the hussars in Germany—she told me so. If only those others were like her! But they run—they have been running since yesterday, the sheep. There is not a woman in Gunstett now. Have you breakfasted, Captain?”A trooper took his horse, and Lefort began to pace the wood with the lieutenant. The cuirassiers were all about, figures of white and gold against the ripe green of the leaves. Rifle shots crepitated in the distance. There was a loom of smoke above Gunstett, and those with strong eyes could distinguish the black figures of the Prussians, or count the daring Uhlans who rode out upon the heights to scan the opposing camps.“The outposts of the eleventh, Captain,” exclaimed Giraud impulsively, as he pointed to the figures on the hills;“we must have missed them when we rode out yesterday. The General speaks of the heads of columns, and he is right. There will be no army corps here to-day. They say that the Bavarians are in force at Görsdorf, but Ducrot is there and Raoult holds Froeschweiler. It will be a strong division which takes Froeschweiler! Look at the slopes of it. And the engineers have been at work. If the battle must be, to-day is our time. We shall find no better position. And we have sixty thousand men in the hills.”“I doubt that,” said Lefort quickly. “We were short in Strasburg, and our numbers cannot have been completed here. Why do the gunners not begin? The men are falling yonder; look at the ambulances, busy already. It is a good position, certainly, for those who defend. But why are we the defenders always? It was so at Weissenburg, they tell me. You cannot keep up themoralof troops who must always stand for targets. Believe me, Giraud, I cannot help seeing these things. No man, who is not blind, can fail to see that we have neither the men nor the generals to do any of those things which France is asking us to do.”The lieutenant, his oldest friend, laid his hand upon his arm in a gesture of affection.“Mon ami,” he said,“if it is as you say, our work is to alter it. But is it? I repeat, look at Froeschweiler. You could hold it against a nation. When the time for advance comes, it will be the cavalry who will send the answer to Paris. I know well how you feel this morning. Madame is up there in your home. You will go back to-night to tell her all about it. She can see Froeschweiler almost from your gardens. She will count the Prussians who die. Let us go and breakfast and pledge her in a bottle of champagne. I have two on my holsters now. There is nothing like champagne when you feel that way. I know it—and I have not a little wife waiting for me.”The hard expression passed from the face of Lefort.“Confess,” he said, “how many wait in Paris, Giraud—to how many did you write yesterday?”The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.“Come, then,” he said, “why do we fight if it is not to tell those others about it? Applause is the food of glory—I do not want to grow thin. Let us breakfast,mon ami, and drink to all the pretty ones in France.”The lancers were bivouacked almost upon the north-west edge of the wood. Lefort, having exchanged cheery words with the men of his own company, sat down upon a log beneath a vast chestnut tree and took the biscuits and the wine his young comrade offered generously. Away upon his left hand was the steep hill of Froeschweiler, its wooded slopes running down sharply toward the town of Wörth. He could see Raoult’s brigade already busy upon it; the blue tunics and the red breeches of infantry soldiers flashed beneath the trees; even the quaint uniforms of the zouaves,and the black Turcos, were to be seen. From the extreme north there came an echo of rifle shots, even of artillery; and it was there, Giraud said, that Ducrot was driving back the Bavarians. Fitfully, indeed, along the whole line of the valley, the firing was now sustained. Yet few fell. Lefort believed with an effort only that this was battle, this the working of a nation’s destiny.“Look,” he said, “how odd it is! A strip of valley land, vineyards and villages in the sunlight, the birds still singing in the woods, who knows, even the labourer in the fields. And yet to-morrow all Europe will hear of it. A great battle will have been fought. We are fighting it now. Men are looking at the sky who will never see another sun. Do you realise it yourself, Giraud; do you understand it all?”“I, Captain? I realise nothing except that the champagne is good. Men must die, it is true, but will they die less well because I am thirsty?Nom d’un chien, let us wait until our time comes, and then remember that it is for France.”He lifted the glass to his lips, but set it down again quickly. One of the lancers, who had been leading a troop horse, turned suddenly with a sharp cry on his lips and came quickly toward them. A curious pallor, tinged with green, spread over hisface. He pressed his hand to his head, and a crimson stain dyed his fingers.“Monsieur,” he said very quietly, “they have killed me.”There were three men at his side in a moment, but, even as they stooped over him, a shell hurtled through the trees and pitched in the very centre of the bivouac. For an instant Lefort beheld a leaping flame of crimson fire. He saw horses rearing upon their haunches; heard cries of agony; was conscious of a ringing sensation in his ears as though someone were beating a drum there. Then an acrid taste of gunpowder filled his mouth; he could not see for the blinding smoke; he pressed his hands to his eyes, which pained him intolerably. When Giraud spoke to him the voice came as from afar.“You are all right, Captain?”“Yes; and you?”“I don’t know—I seem to have only one hand. Where is the ambulance? You are going to fall back, of course? How those devils fire! And we are silent. What folly!”He babbled incessantly, while the loom of smoke lifted and showed them the death it had cloaked. Three of the troopers lay prone at their feet. A horse, pawing the ground in agony, turned to them pitiful eyes. One of the sergeantsof Lefort’s company ran up and down with blood upon his tunic. Others of the horses were galloping, blind with terror, up and down the glade. Lieutenant Giraud hugged his left arm—there were tears of rage and pain in his eyes. They had shot away his hand.“What pain! what pain!” he cried, as a child that is hurt. “I am maimed for life, Captain. At the beginning, too. Oh, my God, where is the ambulance?”He ran to and fro as one distracted, and fell anon in a dead faint. Lefort, stupefied for a moment, began to remember his duty. This was battle, then—these agonising cries, this maiming of youth and courage, these eyes looking to his so pitifully. And he must face these things that his country might be saved. In that moment he awoke to the spirit of combat. He forgot even the child-wife waiting on the distant hills for him who had taught her the meaning of love.The ambulance entered the wood now, and Giraud was the first to be lifted on it. He lay as one asleep, his mangled hand nursed as a babe nurses a little wounded limb. Lefort bent over him. He wondered how many of his friends would sleep like that before the sun set. And he himself—would he see the dawn again, the home he loved, or her who had made it a hometo him? A burning hatred of those who had made the war steeled his heart to action and to courage. He would fight for his little wife—for the homes of France and the children waiting there.The cavalry fell back into the heart of the wood, but, without, the sounds of battle magnified and came nearer. Bullets sang among the trees always. Shells came hurtling over the thickets, or fell in the open places of the vineyards. A little while, and men laughed at those fellows. You could see them afar, black specks, as comets, with tails of steam, hissing through the air. The bullets were more to be feared, the song of death wailing in flight, the unseen blow ending in a gasp and a stagger and a crimson stain upon the earth. And the delay was intolerable to those troops of horsemen who must be spectators while their comrades fell in the open places of the fields and marsh lands. Brave horses pawed the ground or became restive at the thunder of sounds. Old troopers, who had been in Africa, and had won triumphs at Masena, shrugged their shoulders and asked what sort of a general that was who forgot his cavalry. They watched the batteries spitting fire from the trenches below them and mocked the spectacle. Every aide-de-camp galloping by, every driver ofa waggon who passed them was followed by a hundred questions.“How goes it, comrade? Do they fall back? When are we to ride?”Lefort heard the questions of his fellows and did not rebuke them. He shared their impatience. Sitting there idly upon his horse with that old fire-eater Captain Quirat by his side, he thought how odd it was to see those glittering ranks of motionless troopers and to know that men were falling by thousands in the vineyards below. What held them back? The Prussians were in the villages now. Those cursed guns were putting a girdle of fire about the heights. Was this the victory of which an aide-de-camp, dashing up to Froeschweiler, spoke as he went by? The very word seemed an irony.“What a tale,” he said to Quirat savagely; “we hold them at all points. How does Morsbronn burn them? And look at the mill. We had it an hour ago. Where are our fellows now?”Quirat pulled his long moustache fiercely.“The men are saying that von Kirchback is through Wörth with the fifth corps. That would be the eleventh corps yonder. We are fighting the heads of columns,mon ami—two hundred thousand men if I have any eyes to see. Why do we sit here like fools? Is thecavalry for an autumn manœuvre, then? It’s nonsense to hear them. A charge would settle it; but we are more ornamental. We shall remain in this wood to applaud when the Germans ride through to Paris.”Lefort took a cigar from his case and lighted it.“If we were at the opera, I would say bravo,” he exclaimed ironically. “As we are not, we must count our fingers until the time comes. There is plenty to see, at least. They are burning the farmhouse now to amuse the poor fellows up in the wood.Ma foi, what flames! If the weather were not so hot, the farmer could warm himself at his own fireside. As it is, he is probably saying to himself that the army knows how to protect the people. You let the Prussians burn their houses, Quirat, and then they have no anxieties.”A great white farmhouse, the Albrechtshauser, situated upon the edge of the wood, burst into flames as he spoke. Smoke curled above its thatch; tongues of fire licked its gables, and spread from barn to barn and rick to rick. All about the house the shrieks of the dying were to be heard. Red breeches and blue gave colour to every yard. Bayonets flashed in the sunlight; the spiked helmets were everywhere. Foot by foot the Prussians drove those others beforethem. The din of battle, resounding as a crash of thunder, mingled with voices of woe and cries of agony and the blaring of trumpets and the baying of the guns. Through the whole length of the valley the French were retreating. Up the rugged slopes, leaping from trench to trench, Vorwärts, their song of battle, on their lips, von Werder’s men came on. It was the culminating hour. The cavalry would wait idling no longer.The command came to the woods when the Prussians were already in the outstanding thickets. Lefort heard it, and scarce believed his ears. They were to charge then! They must drive those spiked helmets from the vineyards or their own right would be turned. He rode up to his troops and spoke a good word of encouragement. It was odd to draw his sword for the first time in earnest and to know that he must kill wherever the enemies of France were to be seen. The danger of the charge was never in his thoughts. It was dreadful ground; the obstacles were many—but for this day all his life had been the school.“We go to save our comrades down yonder,” he said.“You will win honour for us,mes enfants—for me and for France. You will remember our fathers who fought at Jena!”Ringing cheers greeted his words. At last, at last, the weary hours of waiting were done with. The woods quickened to the awakening impulses. A fever of excitement lighted eyes dull and savage with delay. The breastplates of the cuirassiers glittered as the golden shields of a mighty host, moving apace in the sunshine.En avant! En avant!The bugle’s blast was as some call to judgment and to victory. Onward—if to death, it mattered not. Onward—it was good to be out there where the bullets fell as hail and the shells dug graves for the living. Onward—for the sake of France, if you wished it so; for the sake of movement and of life, as the dull truth went.In columns of squadrons, the eighth cuirassiers leading, the ninth following, the lancers last of all, General Michel led his brigade through the stubble of the wood to the steeper slopes beyond it. From shadow they passed to the glare of the fuller day. Whatever quaking hearts the white tunics covered, no sign there was of hesitation or of delay. The troopers were to charge those Prussians and to send them back across the river. Prayer, death, the morrow—Lefort himself had no thought for any of them. He seemed to pass through some door to a mighty amphitheatre beyond. The thunder of battlecrashed in his ears. His horse stumbled over the terrible ground, leaped the trenches, snorted with the delight of it—yet never faltered. Hills and valleys, crested helmets, golden trappings, houses aflame, rivers glistening in the sun’s rays—he saw them all as things far off. The very danger was a delight inexplicable. Down and yet down into the very pit of death. Onward—over the living and the dead.As the slopes became steeper, so the ferocity of that death-ride was the greater. Men and horses fell together in blinding clouds of dust. Troopers hung limp from their stirrups; blood gushed from their mouths and ears. Or stiff figures, with swords upraised, sat rigidly in their saddles, where Death had chained them sardonically. The trail they left was a trail of mangled beasts and men—a trail of glittering cuirasses and battered helmets and bloody shapes. The living knew nothing of it. They swept on in a delirium of slaughter. “For France,” they said. Yet France was far from their thoughts. Life—for that their hunger was.Out into the sunny fields, over the ripened crops, into the mazes of the vineyards, downward always toward the shimmering river and the valley’s heart. The Prussians heard their cheers and answered them with rifles at their shouldersand bayonets fixed. Coiled as black snakes behind every sheltering furrow or outstanding ridge, they were there to prove that the glorious cavalry of France was invincible no more. It mattered not that lances cleaved the hearts of some; that swords struck upturned faces; that screams of pain and rage followed the horses’ path. The rifle would avenge their comrades. The mighty human cataract pouring about them did not envelop or dismay them. Even the coward forgot his cowardice and struck a blow for his very life. The lowliest trooper among them remembered the General’s word, “I must do my duty.” Behind him lay the Fatherland. The cities of France were beyond the hills—the goal of victory and of duty vindicated.Into the death-pit Lefort rode; sword in hand, a cry that was almost incoherent upon his lips. He saw the shimmer of the light, the burning houses, the black figures in the grass; but of his own acts he carried no memory. Once he remembered asking himself what Beatrix was doing at that moment—but all thoughts of her were far from him when, at length, the woods were passed and the great shock of encounter fired his very heart with all the impulse of deed and of desire. To slay! He had no other wish but that. To slash the life from the upturnedfaces, to hack and cut, to strike a good blow for France, to avenge the dead upon the hills. Bayonets glistened at his very breast, the smoke of the rifles enveloped him, the acrid taste of gunpowder was in his mouth always. He knew not what power enabled him to ignore these things. A madness of the death-ride possessed him. The thunder of his horse’s hoofs was as a melody recurring again and again or singing in his ears defiantly. He was aware that half his men lay dead on the slopes behind him; he understood that General Michel’s great attack had failed and that the chosen cavalry of France had been annihilated that day. But still he rode on. There was neither wish nor thought to regain the shelter of his own camp. The Prussians lay before him. His way lay there to the guns upon the heights. Fatigue intolerable could not tighten his hand upon the rein. He had no longer the power to lift his sword.When the sun set, a regiment of Prussian hussars, riding through the hills of Baden, found him alone upon the road, far from Wörth and the battle there. He sat with haggard face and dizzy head and tears upon his cheeks beside the horse which never more would hear his voice or stretch its neck at his caress.“Messieurs,” he said to them pitifully, “if you could save my horse—?”The troopers nodded their heads significantly. One of them, with a good heart, put a flask of brandy to his lips.“Come,” he said,“you will catch cold here, Monsieur, and your horse is dead.”
CHAPTER XIIITHE DEATH RIDEGeneral Michelhad been in the woods of the Niederwald since dawn. Two regiments of cuirassiers were at his command, and those squadrons of lancers which Tripard had left for scouting duty. The General did not doubt that all the work he would have to do would be to engage the few daring hussars who had appeared above the village of Gunstett and thence opened fire on the valley land below. Imitating MacMahon, his chief, he believed that the army of the Vosges had encountered no other enemy than the outposts of the Crown Prince’s army. The day undeceived him, but not until twelve o’clock had struck and the sun was hot upon the vineyards.All morning the troopers were in the saddle waiting. Around them the overturned pans and scattered fires spoke of breakfast interrupted and of hunger continuing. Theirmoralwas beyond question. They asked only that they might charge those spiked helmets and drive themacross the Rhine. They thought that no infantry the world had ever seen could withstand the cuirassiers of France. The lesson to be learned was bitter—the first of many they must master.It was just light when Lefort joined his men, and found the laughing Giraud full of the good news, and of those promises of hope which youth can give abundantly. The boyish voice and unquestioning belief were a tonic of the morning. His own night had been such a night of foreboding. Fear for France and for his child-wife at the châlet had pursued him even in his sleep. But here, in the green wood, with the big fellows on their fine horses; here, where the helmets shone like gold and the chargers pawed the glistening grass, and all the talk was of victory, he drank in a great draught of courage, and remembered the purpose of his life, and all that his life’s task demanded of him. Those friends of his, they would drive the Prussians to the Rhine! Beatrix would go to Saverne with old Jules Picard and Jacob. He would write to her that night and tell her of the victory. And Giraud gave him such a welcome:“Ah, Captain—you come, then, in good time. And Madame, she is up there still? Well, it is good to fight like that. She will stay, of course! She does not fear all the hussars in Germany—she told me so. If only those others were like her! But they run—they have been running since yesterday, the sheep. There is not a woman in Gunstett now. Have you breakfasted, Captain?”A trooper took his horse, and Lefort began to pace the wood with the lieutenant. The cuirassiers were all about, figures of white and gold against the ripe green of the leaves. Rifle shots crepitated in the distance. There was a loom of smoke above Gunstett, and those with strong eyes could distinguish the black figures of the Prussians, or count the daring Uhlans who rode out upon the heights to scan the opposing camps.“The outposts of the eleventh, Captain,” exclaimed Giraud impulsively, as he pointed to the figures on the hills;“we must have missed them when we rode out yesterday. The General speaks of the heads of columns, and he is right. There will be no army corps here to-day. They say that the Bavarians are in force at Görsdorf, but Ducrot is there and Raoult holds Froeschweiler. It will be a strong division which takes Froeschweiler! Look at the slopes of it. And the engineers have been at work. If the battle must be, to-day is our time. We shall find no better position. And we have sixty thousand men in the hills.”“I doubt that,” said Lefort quickly. “We were short in Strasburg, and our numbers cannot have been completed here. Why do the gunners not begin? The men are falling yonder; look at the ambulances, busy already. It is a good position, certainly, for those who defend. But why are we the defenders always? It was so at Weissenburg, they tell me. You cannot keep up themoralof troops who must always stand for targets. Believe me, Giraud, I cannot help seeing these things. No man, who is not blind, can fail to see that we have neither the men nor the generals to do any of those things which France is asking us to do.”The lieutenant, his oldest friend, laid his hand upon his arm in a gesture of affection.“Mon ami,” he said,“if it is as you say, our work is to alter it. But is it? I repeat, look at Froeschweiler. You could hold it against a nation. When the time for advance comes, it will be the cavalry who will send the answer to Paris. I know well how you feel this morning. Madame is up there in your home. You will go back to-night to tell her all about it. She can see Froeschweiler almost from your gardens. She will count the Prussians who die. Let us go and breakfast and pledge her in a bottle of champagne. I have two on my holsters now. There is nothing like champagne when you feel that way. I know it—and I have not a little wife waiting for me.”The hard expression passed from the face of Lefort.“Confess,” he said, “how many wait in Paris, Giraud—to how many did you write yesterday?”The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.“Come, then,” he said, “why do we fight if it is not to tell those others about it? Applause is the food of glory—I do not want to grow thin. Let us breakfast,mon ami, and drink to all the pretty ones in France.”The lancers were bivouacked almost upon the north-west edge of the wood. Lefort, having exchanged cheery words with the men of his own company, sat down upon a log beneath a vast chestnut tree and took the biscuits and the wine his young comrade offered generously. Away upon his left hand was the steep hill of Froeschweiler, its wooded slopes running down sharply toward the town of Wörth. He could see Raoult’s brigade already busy upon it; the blue tunics and the red breeches of infantry soldiers flashed beneath the trees; even the quaint uniforms of the zouaves,and the black Turcos, were to be seen. From the extreme north there came an echo of rifle shots, even of artillery; and it was there, Giraud said, that Ducrot was driving back the Bavarians. Fitfully, indeed, along the whole line of the valley, the firing was now sustained. Yet few fell. Lefort believed with an effort only that this was battle, this the working of a nation’s destiny.“Look,” he said, “how odd it is! A strip of valley land, vineyards and villages in the sunlight, the birds still singing in the woods, who knows, even the labourer in the fields. And yet to-morrow all Europe will hear of it. A great battle will have been fought. We are fighting it now. Men are looking at the sky who will never see another sun. Do you realise it yourself, Giraud; do you understand it all?”“I, Captain? I realise nothing except that the champagne is good. Men must die, it is true, but will they die less well because I am thirsty?Nom d’un chien, let us wait until our time comes, and then remember that it is for France.”He lifted the glass to his lips, but set it down again quickly. One of the lancers, who had been leading a troop horse, turned suddenly with a sharp cry on his lips and came quickly toward them. A curious pallor, tinged with green, spread over hisface. He pressed his hand to his head, and a crimson stain dyed his fingers.“Monsieur,” he said very quietly, “they have killed me.”There were three men at his side in a moment, but, even as they stooped over him, a shell hurtled through the trees and pitched in the very centre of the bivouac. For an instant Lefort beheld a leaping flame of crimson fire. He saw horses rearing upon their haunches; heard cries of agony; was conscious of a ringing sensation in his ears as though someone were beating a drum there. Then an acrid taste of gunpowder filled his mouth; he could not see for the blinding smoke; he pressed his hands to his eyes, which pained him intolerably. When Giraud spoke to him the voice came as from afar.“You are all right, Captain?”“Yes; and you?”“I don’t know—I seem to have only one hand. Where is the ambulance? You are going to fall back, of course? How those devils fire! And we are silent. What folly!”He babbled incessantly, while the loom of smoke lifted and showed them the death it had cloaked. Three of the troopers lay prone at their feet. A horse, pawing the ground in agony, turned to them pitiful eyes. One of the sergeantsof Lefort’s company ran up and down with blood upon his tunic. Others of the horses were galloping, blind with terror, up and down the glade. Lieutenant Giraud hugged his left arm—there were tears of rage and pain in his eyes. They had shot away his hand.“What pain! what pain!” he cried, as a child that is hurt. “I am maimed for life, Captain. At the beginning, too. Oh, my God, where is the ambulance?”He ran to and fro as one distracted, and fell anon in a dead faint. Lefort, stupefied for a moment, began to remember his duty. This was battle, then—these agonising cries, this maiming of youth and courage, these eyes looking to his so pitifully. And he must face these things that his country might be saved. In that moment he awoke to the spirit of combat. He forgot even the child-wife waiting on the distant hills for him who had taught her the meaning of love.The ambulance entered the wood now, and Giraud was the first to be lifted on it. He lay as one asleep, his mangled hand nursed as a babe nurses a little wounded limb. Lefort bent over him. He wondered how many of his friends would sleep like that before the sun set. And he himself—would he see the dawn again, the home he loved, or her who had made it a hometo him? A burning hatred of those who had made the war steeled his heart to action and to courage. He would fight for his little wife—for the homes of France and the children waiting there.The cavalry fell back into the heart of the wood, but, without, the sounds of battle magnified and came nearer. Bullets sang among the trees always. Shells came hurtling over the thickets, or fell in the open places of the vineyards. A little while, and men laughed at those fellows. You could see them afar, black specks, as comets, with tails of steam, hissing through the air. The bullets were more to be feared, the song of death wailing in flight, the unseen blow ending in a gasp and a stagger and a crimson stain upon the earth. And the delay was intolerable to those troops of horsemen who must be spectators while their comrades fell in the open places of the fields and marsh lands. Brave horses pawed the ground or became restive at the thunder of sounds. Old troopers, who had been in Africa, and had won triumphs at Masena, shrugged their shoulders and asked what sort of a general that was who forgot his cavalry. They watched the batteries spitting fire from the trenches below them and mocked the spectacle. Every aide-de-camp galloping by, every driver ofa waggon who passed them was followed by a hundred questions.“How goes it, comrade? Do they fall back? When are we to ride?”Lefort heard the questions of his fellows and did not rebuke them. He shared their impatience. Sitting there idly upon his horse with that old fire-eater Captain Quirat by his side, he thought how odd it was to see those glittering ranks of motionless troopers and to know that men were falling by thousands in the vineyards below. What held them back? The Prussians were in the villages now. Those cursed guns were putting a girdle of fire about the heights. Was this the victory of which an aide-de-camp, dashing up to Froeschweiler, spoke as he went by? The very word seemed an irony.“What a tale,” he said to Quirat savagely; “we hold them at all points. How does Morsbronn burn them? And look at the mill. We had it an hour ago. Where are our fellows now?”Quirat pulled his long moustache fiercely.“The men are saying that von Kirchback is through Wörth with the fifth corps. That would be the eleventh corps yonder. We are fighting the heads of columns,mon ami—two hundred thousand men if I have any eyes to see. Why do we sit here like fools? Is thecavalry for an autumn manœuvre, then? It’s nonsense to hear them. A charge would settle it; but we are more ornamental. We shall remain in this wood to applaud when the Germans ride through to Paris.”Lefort took a cigar from his case and lighted it.“If we were at the opera, I would say bravo,” he exclaimed ironically. “As we are not, we must count our fingers until the time comes. There is plenty to see, at least. They are burning the farmhouse now to amuse the poor fellows up in the wood.Ma foi, what flames! If the weather were not so hot, the farmer could warm himself at his own fireside. As it is, he is probably saying to himself that the army knows how to protect the people. You let the Prussians burn their houses, Quirat, and then they have no anxieties.”A great white farmhouse, the Albrechtshauser, situated upon the edge of the wood, burst into flames as he spoke. Smoke curled above its thatch; tongues of fire licked its gables, and spread from barn to barn and rick to rick. All about the house the shrieks of the dying were to be heard. Red breeches and blue gave colour to every yard. Bayonets flashed in the sunlight; the spiked helmets were everywhere. Foot by foot the Prussians drove those others beforethem. The din of battle, resounding as a crash of thunder, mingled with voices of woe and cries of agony and the blaring of trumpets and the baying of the guns. Through the whole length of the valley the French were retreating. Up the rugged slopes, leaping from trench to trench, Vorwärts, their song of battle, on their lips, von Werder’s men came on. It was the culminating hour. The cavalry would wait idling no longer.The command came to the woods when the Prussians were already in the outstanding thickets. Lefort heard it, and scarce believed his ears. They were to charge then! They must drive those spiked helmets from the vineyards or their own right would be turned. He rode up to his troops and spoke a good word of encouragement. It was odd to draw his sword for the first time in earnest and to know that he must kill wherever the enemies of France were to be seen. The danger of the charge was never in his thoughts. It was dreadful ground; the obstacles were many—but for this day all his life had been the school.“We go to save our comrades down yonder,” he said.“You will win honour for us,mes enfants—for me and for France. You will remember our fathers who fought at Jena!”Ringing cheers greeted his words. At last, at last, the weary hours of waiting were done with. The woods quickened to the awakening impulses. A fever of excitement lighted eyes dull and savage with delay. The breastplates of the cuirassiers glittered as the golden shields of a mighty host, moving apace in the sunshine.En avant! En avant!The bugle’s blast was as some call to judgment and to victory. Onward—if to death, it mattered not. Onward—it was good to be out there where the bullets fell as hail and the shells dug graves for the living. Onward—for the sake of France, if you wished it so; for the sake of movement and of life, as the dull truth went.In columns of squadrons, the eighth cuirassiers leading, the ninth following, the lancers last of all, General Michel led his brigade through the stubble of the wood to the steeper slopes beyond it. From shadow they passed to the glare of the fuller day. Whatever quaking hearts the white tunics covered, no sign there was of hesitation or of delay. The troopers were to charge those Prussians and to send them back across the river. Prayer, death, the morrow—Lefort himself had no thought for any of them. He seemed to pass through some door to a mighty amphitheatre beyond. The thunder of battlecrashed in his ears. His horse stumbled over the terrible ground, leaped the trenches, snorted with the delight of it—yet never faltered. Hills and valleys, crested helmets, golden trappings, houses aflame, rivers glistening in the sun’s rays—he saw them all as things far off. The very danger was a delight inexplicable. Down and yet down into the very pit of death. Onward—over the living and the dead.As the slopes became steeper, so the ferocity of that death-ride was the greater. Men and horses fell together in blinding clouds of dust. Troopers hung limp from their stirrups; blood gushed from their mouths and ears. Or stiff figures, with swords upraised, sat rigidly in their saddles, where Death had chained them sardonically. The trail they left was a trail of mangled beasts and men—a trail of glittering cuirasses and battered helmets and bloody shapes. The living knew nothing of it. They swept on in a delirium of slaughter. “For France,” they said. Yet France was far from their thoughts. Life—for that their hunger was.Out into the sunny fields, over the ripened crops, into the mazes of the vineyards, downward always toward the shimmering river and the valley’s heart. The Prussians heard their cheers and answered them with rifles at their shouldersand bayonets fixed. Coiled as black snakes behind every sheltering furrow or outstanding ridge, they were there to prove that the glorious cavalry of France was invincible no more. It mattered not that lances cleaved the hearts of some; that swords struck upturned faces; that screams of pain and rage followed the horses’ path. The rifle would avenge their comrades. The mighty human cataract pouring about them did not envelop or dismay them. Even the coward forgot his cowardice and struck a blow for his very life. The lowliest trooper among them remembered the General’s word, “I must do my duty.” Behind him lay the Fatherland. The cities of France were beyond the hills—the goal of victory and of duty vindicated.Into the death-pit Lefort rode; sword in hand, a cry that was almost incoherent upon his lips. He saw the shimmer of the light, the burning houses, the black figures in the grass; but of his own acts he carried no memory. Once he remembered asking himself what Beatrix was doing at that moment—but all thoughts of her were far from him when, at length, the woods were passed and the great shock of encounter fired his very heart with all the impulse of deed and of desire. To slay! He had no other wish but that. To slash the life from the upturnedfaces, to hack and cut, to strike a good blow for France, to avenge the dead upon the hills. Bayonets glistened at his very breast, the smoke of the rifles enveloped him, the acrid taste of gunpowder was in his mouth always. He knew not what power enabled him to ignore these things. A madness of the death-ride possessed him. The thunder of his horse’s hoofs was as a melody recurring again and again or singing in his ears defiantly. He was aware that half his men lay dead on the slopes behind him; he understood that General Michel’s great attack had failed and that the chosen cavalry of France had been annihilated that day. But still he rode on. There was neither wish nor thought to regain the shelter of his own camp. The Prussians lay before him. His way lay there to the guns upon the heights. Fatigue intolerable could not tighten his hand upon the rein. He had no longer the power to lift his sword.When the sun set, a regiment of Prussian hussars, riding through the hills of Baden, found him alone upon the road, far from Wörth and the battle there. He sat with haggard face and dizzy head and tears upon his cheeks beside the horse which never more would hear his voice or stretch its neck at his caress.“Messieurs,” he said to them pitifully, “if you could save my horse—?”The troopers nodded their heads significantly. One of them, with a good heart, put a flask of brandy to his lips.“Come,” he said,“you will catch cold here, Monsieur, and your horse is dead.”
General Michelhad been in the woods of the Niederwald since dawn. Two regiments of cuirassiers were at his command, and those squadrons of lancers which Tripard had left for scouting duty. The General did not doubt that all the work he would have to do would be to engage the few daring hussars who had appeared above the village of Gunstett and thence opened fire on the valley land below. Imitating MacMahon, his chief, he believed that the army of the Vosges had encountered no other enemy than the outposts of the Crown Prince’s army. The day undeceived him, but not until twelve o’clock had struck and the sun was hot upon the vineyards.
All morning the troopers were in the saddle waiting. Around them the overturned pans and scattered fires spoke of breakfast interrupted and of hunger continuing. Theirmoralwas beyond question. They asked only that they might charge those spiked helmets and drive themacross the Rhine. They thought that no infantry the world had ever seen could withstand the cuirassiers of France. The lesson to be learned was bitter—the first of many they must master.
It was just light when Lefort joined his men, and found the laughing Giraud full of the good news, and of those promises of hope which youth can give abundantly. The boyish voice and unquestioning belief were a tonic of the morning. His own night had been such a night of foreboding. Fear for France and for his child-wife at the châlet had pursued him even in his sleep. But here, in the green wood, with the big fellows on their fine horses; here, where the helmets shone like gold and the chargers pawed the glistening grass, and all the talk was of victory, he drank in a great draught of courage, and remembered the purpose of his life, and all that his life’s task demanded of him. Those friends of his, they would drive the Prussians to the Rhine! Beatrix would go to Saverne with old Jules Picard and Jacob. He would write to her that night and tell her of the victory. And Giraud gave him such a welcome:
“Ah, Captain—you come, then, in good time. And Madame, she is up there still? Well, it is good to fight like that. She will stay, of course! She does not fear all the hussars in Germany—she told me so. If only those others were like her! But they run—they have been running since yesterday, the sheep. There is not a woman in Gunstett now. Have you breakfasted, Captain?”
A trooper took his horse, and Lefort began to pace the wood with the lieutenant. The cuirassiers were all about, figures of white and gold against the ripe green of the leaves. Rifle shots crepitated in the distance. There was a loom of smoke above Gunstett, and those with strong eyes could distinguish the black figures of the Prussians, or count the daring Uhlans who rode out upon the heights to scan the opposing camps.
“The outposts of the eleventh, Captain,” exclaimed Giraud impulsively, as he pointed to the figures on the hills;“we must have missed them when we rode out yesterday. The General speaks of the heads of columns, and he is right. There will be no army corps here to-day. They say that the Bavarians are in force at Görsdorf, but Ducrot is there and Raoult holds Froeschweiler. It will be a strong division which takes Froeschweiler! Look at the slopes of it. And the engineers have been at work. If the battle must be, to-day is our time. We shall find no better position. And we have sixty thousand men in the hills.”
“I doubt that,” said Lefort quickly. “We were short in Strasburg, and our numbers cannot have been completed here. Why do the gunners not begin? The men are falling yonder; look at the ambulances, busy already. It is a good position, certainly, for those who defend. But why are we the defenders always? It was so at Weissenburg, they tell me. You cannot keep up themoralof troops who must always stand for targets. Believe me, Giraud, I cannot help seeing these things. No man, who is not blind, can fail to see that we have neither the men nor the generals to do any of those things which France is asking us to do.”
The lieutenant, his oldest friend, laid his hand upon his arm in a gesture of affection.
“Mon ami,” he said,“if it is as you say, our work is to alter it. But is it? I repeat, look at Froeschweiler. You could hold it against a nation. When the time for advance comes, it will be the cavalry who will send the answer to Paris. I know well how you feel this morning. Madame is up there in your home. You will go back to-night to tell her all about it. She can see Froeschweiler almost from your gardens. She will count the Prussians who die. Let us go and breakfast and pledge her in a bottle of champagne. I have two on my holsters now. There is nothing like champagne when you feel that way. I know it—and I have not a little wife waiting for me.”
The hard expression passed from the face of Lefort.
“Confess,” he said, “how many wait in Paris, Giraud—to how many did you write yesterday?”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders.
“Come, then,” he said, “why do we fight if it is not to tell those others about it? Applause is the food of glory—I do not want to grow thin. Let us breakfast,mon ami, and drink to all the pretty ones in France.”
The lancers were bivouacked almost upon the north-west edge of the wood. Lefort, having exchanged cheery words with the men of his own company, sat down upon a log beneath a vast chestnut tree and took the biscuits and the wine his young comrade offered generously. Away upon his left hand was the steep hill of Froeschweiler, its wooded slopes running down sharply toward the town of Wörth. He could see Raoult’s brigade already busy upon it; the blue tunics and the red breeches of infantry soldiers flashed beneath the trees; even the quaint uniforms of the zouaves,and the black Turcos, were to be seen. From the extreme north there came an echo of rifle shots, even of artillery; and it was there, Giraud said, that Ducrot was driving back the Bavarians. Fitfully, indeed, along the whole line of the valley, the firing was now sustained. Yet few fell. Lefort believed with an effort only that this was battle, this the working of a nation’s destiny.
“Look,” he said, “how odd it is! A strip of valley land, vineyards and villages in the sunlight, the birds still singing in the woods, who knows, even the labourer in the fields. And yet to-morrow all Europe will hear of it. A great battle will have been fought. We are fighting it now. Men are looking at the sky who will never see another sun. Do you realise it yourself, Giraud; do you understand it all?”
“I, Captain? I realise nothing except that the champagne is good. Men must die, it is true, but will they die less well because I am thirsty?Nom d’un chien, let us wait until our time comes, and then remember that it is for France.”
He lifted the glass to his lips, but set it down again quickly. One of the lancers, who had been leading a troop horse, turned suddenly with a sharp cry on his lips and came quickly toward them. A curious pallor, tinged with green, spread over hisface. He pressed his hand to his head, and a crimson stain dyed his fingers.
“Monsieur,” he said very quietly, “they have killed me.”
There were three men at his side in a moment, but, even as they stooped over him, a shell hurtled through the trees and pitched in the very centre of the bivouac. For an instant Lefort beheld a leaping flame of crimson fire. He saw horses rearing upon their haunches; heard cries of agony; was conscious of a ringing sensation in his ears as though someone were beating a drum there. Then an acrid taste of gunpowder filled his mouth; he could not see for the blinding smoke; he pressed his hands to his eyes, which pained him intolerably. When Giraud spoke to him the voice came as from afar.
“You are all right, Captain?”
“Yes; and you?”
“I don’t know—I seem to have only one hand. Where is the ambulance? You are going to fall back, of course? How those devils fire! And we are silent. What folly!”
He babbled incessantly, while the loom of smoke lifted and showed them the death it had cloaked. Three of the troopers lay prone at their feet. A horse, pawing the ground in agony, turned to them pitiful eyes. One of the sergeantsof Lefort’s company ran up and down with blood upon his tunic. Others of the horses were galloping, blind with terror, up and down the glade. Lieutenant Giraud hugged his left arm—there were tears of rage and pain in his eyes. They had shot away his hand.
“What pain! what pain!” he cried, as a child that is hurt. “I am maimed for life, Captain. At the beginning, too. Oh, my God, where is the ambulance?”
He ran to and fro as one distracted, and fell anon in a dead faint. Lefort, stupefied for a moment, began to remember his duty. This was battle, then—these agonising cries, this maiming of youth and courage, these eyes looking to his so pitifully. And he must face these things that his country might be saved. In that moment he awoke to the spirit of combat. He forgot even the child-wife waiting on the distant hills for him who had taught her the meaning of love.
The ambulance entered the wood now, and Giraud was the first to be lifted on it. He lay as one asleep, his mangled hand nursed as a babe nurses a little wounded limb. Lefort bent over him. He wondered how many of his friends would sleep like that before the sun set. And he himself—would he see the dawn again, the home he loved, or her who had made it a hometo him? A burning hatred of those who had made the war steeled his heart to action and to courage. He would fight for his little wife—for the homes of France and the children waiting there.
The cavalry fell back into the heart of the wood, but, without, the sounds of battle magnified and came nearer. Bullets sang among the trees always. Shells came hurtling over the thickets, or fell in the open places of the vineyards. A little while, and men laughed at those fellows. You could see them afar, black specks, as comets, with tails of steam, hissing through the air. The bullets were more to be feared, the song of death wailing in flight, the unseen blow ending in a gasp and a stagger and a crimson stain upon the earth. And the delay was intolerable to those troops of horsemen who must be spectators while their comrades fell in the open places of the fields and marsh lands. Brave horses pawed the ground or became restive at the thunder of sounds. Old troopers, who had been in Africa, and had won triumphs at Masena, shrugged their shoulders and asked what sort of a general that was who forgot his cavalry. They watched the batteries spitting fire from the trenches below them and mocked the spectacle. Every aide-de-camp galloping by, every driver ofa waggon who passed them was followed by a hundred questions.
“How goes it, comrade? Do they fall back? When are we to ride?”
Lefort heard the questions of his fellows and did not rebuke them. He shared their impatience. Sitting there idly upon his horse with that old fire-eater Captain Quirat by his side, he thought how odd it was to see those glittering ranks of motionless troopers and to know that men were falling by thousands in the vineyards below. What held them back? The Prussians were in the villages now. Those cursed guns were putting a girdle of fire about the heights. Was this the victory of which an aide-de-camp, dashing up to Froeschweiler, spoke as he went by? The very word seemed an irony.
“What a tale,” he said to Quirat savagely; “we hold them at all points. How does Morsbronn burn them? And look at the mill. We had it an hour ago. Where are our fellows now?”
Quirat pulled his long moustache fiercely.
“The men are saying that von Kirchback is through Wörth with the fifth corps. That would be the eleventh corps yonder. We are fighting the heads of columns,mon ami—two hundred thousand men if I have any eyes to see. Why do we sit here like fools? Is thecavalry for an autumn manœuvre, then? It’s nonsense to hear them. A charge would settle it; but we are more ornamental. We shall remain in this wood to applaud when the Germans ride through to Paris.”
Lefort took a cigar from his case and lighted it.
“If we were at the opera, I would say bravo,” he exclaimed ironically. “As we are not, we must count our fingers until the time comes. There is plenty to see, at least. They are burning the farmhouse now to amuse the poor fellows up in the wood.Ma foi, what flames! If the weather were not so hot, the farmer could warm himself at his own fireside. As it is, he is probably saying to himself that the army knows how to protect the people. You let the Prussians burn their houses, Quirat, and then they have no anxieties.”
A great white farmhouse, the Albrechtshauser, situated upon the edge of the wood, burst into flames as he spoke. Smoke curled above its thatch; tongues of fire licked its gables, and spread from barn to barn and rick to rick. All about the house the shrieks of the dying were to be heard. Red breeches and blue gave colour to every yard. Bayonets flashed in the sunlight; the spiked helmets were everywhere. Foot by foot the Prussians drove those others beforethem. The din of battle, resounding as a crash of thunder, mingled with voices of woe and cries of agony and the blaring of trumpets and the baying of the guns. Through the whole length of the valley the French were retreating. Up the rugged slopes, leaping from trench to trench, Vorwärts, their song of battle, on their lips, von Werder’s men came on. It was the culminating hour. The cavalry would wait idling no longer.
The command came to the woods when the Prussians were already in the outstanding thickets. Lefort heard it, and scarce believed his ears. They were to charge then! They must drive those spiked helmets from the vineyards or their own right would be turned. He rode up to his troops and spoke a good word of encouragement. It was odd to draw his sword for the first time in earnest and to know that he must kill wherever the enemies of France were to be seen. The danger of the charge was never in his thoughts. It was dreadful ground; the obstacles were many—but for this day all his life had been the school.
“We go to save our comrades down yonder,” he said.“You will win honour for us,mes enfants—for me and for France. You will remember our fathers who fought at Jena!”
Ringing cheers greeted his words. At last, at last, the weary hours of waiting were done with. The woods quickened to the awakening impulses. A fever of excitement lighted eyes dull and savage with delay. The breastplates of the cuirassiers glittered as the golden shields of a mighty host, moving apace in the sunshine.En avant! En avant!The bugle’s blast was as some call to judgment and to victory. Onward—if to death, it mattered not. Onward—it was good to be out there where the bullets fell as hail and the shells dug graves for the living. Onward—for the sake of France, if you wished it so; for the sake of movement and of life, as the dull truth went.
In columns of squadrons, the eighth cuirassiers leading, the ninth following, the lancers last of all, General Michel led his brigade through the stubble of the wood to the steeper slopes beyond it. From shadow they passed to the glare of the fuller day. Whatever quaking hearts the white tunics covered, no sign there was of hesitation or of delay. The troopers were to charge those Prussians and to send them back across the river. Prayer, death, the morrow—Lefort himself had no thought for any of them. He seemed to pass through some door to a mighty amphitheatre beyond. The thunder of battlecrashed in his ears. His horse stumbled over the terrible ground, leaped the trenches, snorted with the delight of it—yet never faltered. Hills and valleys, crested helmets, golden trappings, houses aflame, rivers glistening in the sun’s rays—he saw them all as things far off. The very danger was a delight inexplicable. Down and yet down into the very pit of death. Onward—over the living and the dead.
As the slopes became steeper, so the ferocity of that death-ride was the greater. Men and horses fell together in blinding clouds of dust. Troopers hung limp from their stirrups; blood gushed from their mouths and ears. Or stiff figures, with swords upraised, sat rigidly in their saddles, where Death had chained them sardonically. The trail they left was a trail of mangled beasts and men—a trail of glittering cuirasses and battered helmets and bloody shapes. The living knew nothing of it. They swept on in a delirium of slaughter. “For France,” they said. Yet France was far from their thoughts. Life—for that their hunger was.
Out into the sunny fields, over the ripened crops, into the mazes of the vineyards, downward always toward the shimmering river and the valley’s heart. The Prussians heard their cheers and answered them with rifles at their shouldersand bayonets fixed. Coiled as black snakes behind every sheltering furrow or outstanding ridge, they were there to prove that the glorious cavalry of France was invincible no more. It mattered not that lances cleaved the hearts of some; that swords struck upturned faces; that screams of pain and rage followed the horses’ path. The rifle would avenge their comrades. The mighty human cataract pouring about them did not envelop or dismay them. Even the coward forgot his cowardice and struck a blow for his very life. The lowliest trooper among them remembered the General’s word, “I must do my duty.” Behind him lay the Fatherland. The cities of France were beyond the hills—the goal of victory and of duty vindicated.
Into the death-pit Lefort rode; sword in hand, a cry that was almost incoherent upon his lips. He saw the shimmer of the light, the burning houses, the black figures in the grass; but of his own acts he carried no memory. Once he remembered asking himself what Beatrix was doing at that moment—but all thoughts of her were far from him when, at length, the woods were passed and the great shock of encounter fired his very heart with all the impulse of deed and of desire. To slay! He had no other wish but that. To slash the life from the upturnedfaces, to hack and cut, to strike a good blow for France, to avenge the dead upon the hills. Bayonets glistened at his very breast, the smoke of the rifles enveloped him, the acrid taste of gunpowder was in his mouth always. He knew not what power enabled him to ignore these things. A madness of the death-ride possessed him. The thunder of his horse’s hoofs was as a melody recurring again and again or singing in his ears defiantly. He was aware that half his men lay dead on the slopes behind him; he understood that General Michel’s great attack had failed and that the chosen cavalry of France had been annihilated that day. But still he rode on. There was neither wish nor thought to regain the shelter of his own camp. The Prussians lay before him. His way lay there to the guns upon the heights. Fatigue intolerable could not tighten his hand upon the rein. He had no longer the power to lift his sword.
When the sun set, a regiment of Prussian hussars, riding through the hills of Baden, found him alone upon the road, far from Wörth and the battle there. He sat with haggard face and dizzy head and tears upon his cheeks beside the horse which never more would hear his voice or stretch its neck at his caress.
“Messieurs,” he said to them pitifully, “if you could save my horse—?”
The troopers nodded their heads significantly. One of them, with a good heart, put a flask of brandy to his lips.
“Come,” he said,“you will catch cold here, Monsieur, and your horse is dead.”