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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 Blucher'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 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 larvae
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?"
"Thenardier."
"I shall not forget that name," said the officer;
"and do you remember mine.
My name is Pontmercy."
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