第 九十 章 · THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
Let us return—it is a necessity in this book—to that fatal
battle-field.
On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Blücher’s
ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered up
that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the
massacre. Such tragic favors of the night do occur sometimes during
catastrophes.
After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean
remained deserted.
The English occupied the encampment of the French; it is the usual sign
of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established
their bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, let loose on the
retreating rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of
Waterloo to draw up his report to Lord Bathurst.
If ever the _sic vos non vobis_ was applicable, it certainly is to that
village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from
the scene of action. Mont-Saint-Jean was cannonaded, Hougomont was
burned, La Haie-Sainte was taken by assault, Papelotte was burned,
Plancenoit was burned, La Belle-Alliance beheld the embrace of the two
conquerors; these names are hardly known, and Waterloo, which worked
not in the battle, bears off all the honor.
We are not of the number of those who flatter war; when the occasion
presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War has frightful beauties
which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous
features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the
bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle
always rises on naked corpses.
Who does this? Who thus soils the triumph? What hideous, furtive hand
is that which is slipped into the pocket of victory? What pickpockets
are they who ply their trade in the rear of glory? Some
philosophers—Voltaire among the number—affirm that it is precisely
those persons who have made the glory. It is the same men, they say;
there is no relief corps; those who are erect pillage those who are
prone on the earth. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night.
One has assuredly the right, after all, to strip a corpse a bit when
one is the author of that corpse. For our own part, we do not think so;
it seems to us impossible that the same hand should pluck laurels and
purloin the shoes from a dead man.
One thing is certain, which is, that generally after conquerors follow
thieves. But let us leave the soldier, especially the contemporary
soldier, out of the question.
Every army has a rear-guard, and it is that which must be blamed.
Bat-like creatures, half brigands and lackeys; all the sorts of
vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders; wearers of
uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended invalids;
formidable limpers; interloping sutlers, trotting along in little
carts, sometimes accompanied by their wives, and stealing things which
they sell again; beggars offering themselves as guides to officers;
soldiers’ servants; marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,—we
are not speaking of the present,—dragged all this behind them, so that
in the special language they are called “stragglers.” No army, no
nation, was responsible for those beings; they spoke Italian and
followed the Germans, then spoke French and followed the English. It
was by one of these wretches, a Spanish straggler who spoke French,
that the Marquis of Fervacques, deceived by his Picard jargon, and
taking him for one of our own men, was traitorously slain and robbed on
the battle-field itself, in the course of the night which followed the
victory of Cerisoles. The rascal sprang from this marauding. The
detestable maxim, _Live on the enemy!_ produced this leprosy, which a
strict discipline alone could heal. There are reputations which are
deceptive; one does not always know why certain generals, great in
other directions, have been so popular. Turenne was adored by his
soldiers because he tolerated pillage; evil permitted constitutes part
of goodness. Turenne was so good that he allowed the Palatinate to be
delivered over to fire and blood. The marauders in the train of an army
were more or less in number, according as the chief was more or less
severe. Hoche and Marceau had no stragglers; Wellington had few, and we
do him the justice to mention it.
Nevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead
were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught
in the act should be shot; but rapine is tenacious. The marauders stole
in one corner of the battlefield while others were being shot in
another.
The moon was sinister over this plain.
Towards midnight, a man was prowling about, or rather, climbing in the
direction of the hollow road of Ohain. To all appearance he was one of
those whom we have just described,—neither English nor French, neither
peasant nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul attracted by the scent of
the dead bodies having theft for his victory, and come to rifle
Waterloo. He was clad in a blouse that was something like a great coat;
he was uneasy and audacious; he walked forwards and gazed behind him.
Who was this man? The night probably knew more of him than the day. He
had no sack, but evidently he had large pockets under his coat. From
time to time he halted, scrutinized the plain around him as though to
see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed something
silent and motionless on the ground, then rose and fled. His sliding
motion, his attitudes, his mysterious and rapid gestures, caused him to
resemble those twilight larvæ which haunt ruins, and which ancient
Norman legends call the Alleurs.
Certain nocturnal wading birds produce these silhouettes among the
marshes.
A glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have perceived
at some distance a sort of little sutler’s wagon with a fluted wicker
hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was cropping the grass across
its bit as it halted, hidden, as it were, behind the hovel which
adjoins the highway to Nivelles, at the angle of the road from
Mont-Saint-Jean to Braine l’Alleud; and in the wagon, a sort of woman
seated on coffers and packages. Perhaps there was some connection
between that wagon and that prowler.
The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it if
the earth be red! the moon remains white; these are the indifferences
of the sky. In the fields, branches of trees broken by grape-shot, but
not fallen, upheld by their bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night.
A breath, almost a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which
resembled the departure of souls ran through the grass.
In the distance the coming and going of patrols and the general rounds
of the English camp were audible.
Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, forming, one in the
west, the other in the east, two great flames which were joined by the
cordon of bivouac fires of the English, like a necklace of rubies with
two carbuncles at the extremities, as they extended in an immense
semicircle over the hills along the horizon.
We have described the catastrophe of the road of Ohain. The heart is
terrified at the thought of what that death must have been to so many
brave men.
If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which
surpasses dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun; to be in full
possession of virile force; to possess health and joy; to laugh
valiantly; to rush towards a glory which one sees dazzling in front of
one; to feel in one’s breast lungs which breathe, a heart which beats,
a will which reasons; to speak, think, hope, love; to have a mother, to
have a wife, to have children; to have the light—and all at once, in
the space of a shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss; to
fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed; to see ears of wheat, flowers,
leaves, branches; not to be able to catch hold of anything; to feel
one’s sword useless, men beneath one, horses on top of one; to struggle
in vain, since one’s bones have been broken by some kick in the
darkness; to feel a heel which makes one’s eyes start from their
sockets; to bite horses’ shoes in one’s rage; to stifle, to yell, to
writhe; to be beneath, and to say to one’s self, “But just a little
while ago I was a living man!”
There, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death-rattle, all
was silence now. The edges of the hollow road were encumbered with
horses and riders, inextricably heaped up. Terrible entanglement! There
was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the
plain, and reached the brim like a well-filled bushel of barley. A heap
of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower
part—such was that road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The
blood ran even to the Nivelles highway, and there overflowed in a large
pool in front of the abatis of trees which barred the way, at a spot
which is still pointed out.
It will be remembered that it was at the opposite point, in the
direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of the cuirassiers
had taken place. The thickness of the layer of bodies was proportioned
to the depth of the hollow road. Towards the middle, at the point where
it became level, where Delort’s division had passed, the layer of
corpses was thinner.
The nocturnal prowler whom we have just shown to the reader was going
in that direction. He was searching that vast tomb. He gazed about. He
passed the dead in some sort of hideous review. He walked with his feet
in the blood.
All at once he paused.
A few paces in front of him, in the hollow road, at the point where the
pile of dead came to an end, an open hand, illumined by the moon,
projected from beneath that heap of men. That hand had on its finger
something sparkling, which was a ring of gold.
The man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a moment, and
when he rose there was no longer a ring on the hand.
He did not precisely rise; he remained in a stooping and frightened
attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead, scanning the
horizon on his knees, with the whole upper portion of his body
supported on his two forefingers, which rested on the earth, and his
head peering above the edge of the hollow road. The jackal’s four paws
suit some actions.
Then coming to a decision, he rose to his feet.
At that moment, he gave a terrible start. He felt some one clutch him
from behind.
He wheeled round; it was the open hand, which had closed, and had
seized the skirt of his coat.
An honest man would have been terrified; this man burst into a laugh.
“Come,” said he, “it’s only a dead body. I prefer a spook to a
gendarme.”
But the hand weakened and released him. Effort is quickly exhausted in
the grave.
“Well now,” said the prowler, “is that dead fellow alive? Let’s see.”
He bent down again, fumbled among the heap, pushed aside everything
that was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the arm, freed the head,
pulled out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging the
lifeless, or at least the unconscious, man, through the shadows of
hollow road. He was a cuirassier, an officer, and even an officer of
considerable rank; a large gold epaulette peeped from beneath the
cuirass; this officer no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut
had scarred his face, where nothing was discernible but blood.
However, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and, by some happy
chance, if that word is permissible here, the dead had been vaulted
above him in such a manner as to preserve him from being crushed. His
eyes were still closed.
On his cuirass he wore the silver cross of the Legion of Honor.
The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one of the
gulfs which he had beneath his great coat.
Then he felt of the officer’s fob, discovered a watch there, and took
possession of it. Next he searched his waistcoat, found a purse and
pocketed it.
When he had arrived at this stage of succor which he was administering
to this dying man, the officer opened his eyes.
“Thanks,” he said feebly.
The abruptness of the movements of the man who was manipulating him,
the freshness of the night, the air which he could inhale freely, had
roused him from his lethargy.
The prowler made no reply. He raised his head. A sound of footsteps was
audible in the plain; some patrol was probably approaching.
The officer murmured, for the death agony was still in his voice:—
“Who won the battle?”
“The English,” answered the prowler.
The officer went on:—
“Look in my pockets; you will find a watch and a purse. Take them.”
It was already done.
The prowler executed the required feint, and said:—
“There is nothing there.”
“I have been robbed,” said the officer; “I am sorry for that. You
should have had them.”
The steps of the patrol became more and more distinct.
“Some one is coming,” said the prowler, with the movement of a man who
is taking his departure.
The officer raised his arm feebly, and detained him.
“You have saved my life. Who are you?”
The prowler answered rapidly, and in a low voice:—
“Like yourself, I belonged to the French army. I must leave you. If
they were to catch me, they would shoot me. I have saved your life. Now
get out of the scrape yourself.”
“What is your rank?”
“Sergeant.”
“What is your name?”
“Thénardier.”
“I shall not forget that name,” said the officer; “and do you remember
mine. My name is Pontmercy.”
BOOK SECOND—THE SHIP ORION