The Blockade of Phalsburg: An Episode of the End of the Empire

by Erckmann-Chatrian

XIII

A DESERTER CAPTURED

The city was joyful the next day, notwithstanding the firing in the night. A number of men who came from the ramparts about seven o'clock, came down our street shouting: "They are gone! There is not a single Cossack to be seen in the direction of Quatre-Vents, nor behind the barracks of the Bois-de-Chênes! Vive l'Empereur!"

Everybody ran to the bastions.

I had opened one of our windows, and leaned out in my nightcap. It was thawing, the snow was sliding from the roofs, and that in the streets was melting in the mud. Sorlé, who was turning up our bed, called to me: "Do shut the window, Moses! We shall catch cold from the draught!"

But I did not listen. I laughed as I thought: "The rascals have had enough of my old bars and rusty nails; they have found out that they fly a good way: experience is a good thing!"

I could have stayed there till night to hear the neighbors talk about the clearing away of the Russians, and those who came from the ramparts declaring that there was not one to be seen in the whole region. Some said that they might come back, but that seemed to me contrary to reason. It was clear that the villains would not quit the country at once, that they would still for a long time pillage the villages, and live on the peasants; but to believe that the officers would excite their men to take our city, or that the soldiers would be foolish enough to obey them, never entered my head.

At last Zeffen came into our room to dress the children, and I shut the window. A good fire roared in the stove. Sorlé made ready our breakfast, while Zeffen washed her little Esdras in a basin of warm water.

"Ah, now, if I could only hear from Baruch, it would all be well," said she.

Little David played on the floor with Sâfel, and I thanked the Lord for having delivered us from the scoundrels.

While we were at breakfast, I said to my wife: "It has all gone well! We shall be shut up for a while until the Emperor has carried the day, but they will not fire upon us, they will be satisfied with blockading us; and bread, wine, meats, and brandies, will grow dearer. It is the right time for us to sell, or else we might fare like the people of Samaria when Ben-Hadad besieged their city. There was a great famine, so that the head of an ass sold for four-score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's-dung for five pieces. It was a good price; but still the merchants were holding back, when a noise of chariots and horses and of a great host came from heaven, and made the Syrians escape with Ben-Hadad, and after the people had pillaged their camp, a measure of fine flour sold for only a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel. So let us try to sell while things are at a reasonable price; we must begin in good season."

Sorlé assented, and after breakfast I went down to the cellar to go on with the mixing.

Many of the mechanics had gone back to their work. Klipfel's hammer sounded on his anvil. Chanoine put back his rolls into his windows, and Tribolin, the druggist, his bottles of red and blue water behind his panes.

Confidence was restored everywhere. The citizen-gunners had taken off their uniforms, and the joiners had come back to finish our counter; the noise of the saw and plane filled the house.

Everybody was glad to return to his own business, for war brings nothing but harm; the sooner it is over the better.

As I carried my jugs from one tun to another, in the cellar, I saw the passers-by stop before our old shop, and heard them say to each other, "Moses is going to make his fortune with the brandy; these rascals of Jews always have good scent; while we have been selling this month past, he has been buying. Now that we are shut up he can sell at any price he pleases."

You can judge whether that was not pleasant to hear! A man's greatest happiness is to succeed in his business; everybody is obliged to say: "This man has neither army, nor generals, nor cannon, he has nothing but his own wit, like everybody else; when he succeeds he owes it to himself, and not to the courage of others. And then he ruins no one; he does not rob, or steal, or kill; while, in war, the strongest crushes the weakest and often the best."

So I worked on with great zeal, and would have kept on till night if little Sâfel had not come to call me to dinner. I was hungry, and was going upstairs, glad in the thought of sitting down in the midst of my children, when the call-beat began on the Place d'Armes, before the town-house. During a blockade a court-martial sits continually at the mayoralty to try those who do not answer to the call. Some of my neighbors were already leaving their houses with their muskets on their shoulders. I had to go up very hastily, and swallow a little soup, a morsel of meat, and a glass of wine.

I was very pale. Sorlé, Zeffen, and the children said not a word. The drum corps continued the call to arms; it came down the main street and stopped at last before our house, on the little square. Then I ran for my cartridge-box and musket.

"Ah!" said Sorlé, "we thought we were going to have a quiet time, and now it is all beginning again."

Zeffen did not speak, but burst into tears.

At that moment the old Rabbi Heymann came in, with his old martin-skin cap drawn down to the nape of his neck.

"For heaven's sake let the women and children hurry to the casemates! An envoy has come threatening to burn the whole city if the gates are not opened. Fly, Sorlé! Zeffen, fly!"

Imagine the cries of the women on hearing this; as for myself, my hair stood on end.

"The rascals have no shame in them!" I exclaimed. "They have no pity on women or children! May the curse of heaven fall on them!"

Zeffen threw herself into my arms. I did not know what to do.

But the old rabbi said: "They are doing to us what our people have done to them! So the words of the Lord are fulfilled: 'As thou hast done unto thy brother so shall it be done unto thee!'—But, you must fly quickly."

Below, the call-beat had ceased; my knees trembled. Sorlé, who never lost courage, said to me: "Moses, run to the square, make haste, or they will send you to prison!"

Her judgment was always right; she pushed me by the shoulders, and in spite of Zeffen's tears I went down, calling out: "Rabbi, I trust in you—save them!"

I could not see clearly; I went through the snow, miserable man that I was, running to the townhouse where the National Guard was already assembled. I came just in time to answer the call, and you can imagine my trouble, for Zeffen, Sorlé, Sâfel, and the little ones were abandoned before my eyes. What was Phalsburg to me? I would have opened the gates in a minute to have had peace.

The others did not look any better pleased than myself; they were all thinking of their families.

Our governor, Moulin, Lieutenant-Colonel Brancion, and Captains Renvoyé, Vigneron, Grébillet, with their great military caps put on crosswise, these alone felt no anxiety. They would have murdered and burnt everything for the Emperor. The governor even laughed, and said that he would surrender the city when the shells set his pocket-handkerchief on fire. Judge from this, how much sense such a being had!

While they were reviewing us, groups of the aged and infirm, of women and children, passed across the square on their way to the casemates.

I saw our little wagon go by with the roll of coverings and mattresses on it. The old rabbi was between the shafts—Sâfel pushed behind. Sorlé carried David, and Zeffen Esdras. They were walking in the mud, with their hair loose as if they were escaping from a fire; but they did not speak, and went on silently in the midst of that great trouble.

I would have given my life to go and help them—I must stay in the ranks. Ah, the old men of my time have seen terrible things! How often have they thought:—"Happy is he who lives alone in the world; he suffers only for himself, he does not see those whom he loves weeping and groaning, without the power to help them."

Immediately after the review, detachments of citizen-gunners were sent to the armories to man the pieces, the firemen were sent to the old market to get out the pumps, and the rest of us, with half a battalion of the Sixth Light Infantry, were sent to the guard-house on the square, to relieve the guards and supply patrols.

The two other battalions had already gone to the advance-posts of Trois-Maisons, of La Fontaine-du-Chateau,—to the block-houses, the half moons, the Ozillo farm, and the Maisons-Rouges, outside of the city.

Our post at the mayoralty consisted of thirty-two men; sixteen soldiers of the line below, commanded by Lieutenant Schnindret, and sixteen of the National Guard above, commanded by Desplaces Jacob. We used Burrhus's lodging for our guard-house. It was a large hall with six-inch planks, and beams such as you do not find nowadays in our forests. A large, round, cast-iron stove, standing on a slab four feet square, was in the left-hand corner, near the door; the zigzag pipes went into the chimney at the right, and piles of wood covered the floor.

It seems as if I were now in that hall. The melted snow which we shook off on entering ran along the floor. I have never seen a sadder day than that; not only because the bombshells and balls might rain upon us at any moment, and set everything on fire, but because of the melting snow, and the mud, and the dampness which reached your very bones, and the orders of the sergeant, who did nothing but call out: "Such and such an one, march! Such an one forward, it is your turn!" etc.

And then the jests and jokes of this mass of tilers, and cobblers, and plasterers, with their patched blouses, shoes run down at the heel, and caps without visors, seated in a circle around the stove, with, their rags sticking to their backs, thouing you like all the rest of their beggarly race: "Moses, pass along the pitcher! Moses, give me some fire!—Ah, rascals of Jews, when a body risks his life to save property, how proud it makes them! Ah, the villains!"

And they winked at each other, and pushed each other's elbows, and made up faces askance. Some of them wanted me to go and get some tobacco for them, and pay for it myself! In fine, all sorts of insults, which a respectable man could endure from the rabble!—Yes, it disgusts me whenever I think of it.

In this guard-house, where we burned whole logs of wood as if they were straw, the steaming old rags which came in soaking wet did not smell very pleasantly. I had to go out every minute to the little platform behind the hall, in order to breathe, and the cold water which the wind blew from the spout sent me in again at once.

Afterward, in thinking it over, it has seemed as if, without these troubles, my heart would have broken at the thought of Sorlé, Zeffen, and the children shut up in a cellar, and that these very annoyances preserved my reason.

This lasted till evening. We did nothing but go in and out, sit down, smoke our pipes, and then begin again to walk the pavement in the rain, or remain on duty for hours together at the entrance of the posterns.

Toward nine o'clock, when all was dark without, and nothing was to be heard but the pacing of the patrols, the shouts of the sentries on the ramparts: "Sentries, attention!" and the steps of our men on their rounds up and down the great wooden stairway of the admiralty, the thought suddenly came to me that the Russians had only tried to frighten us, that it meant nothing; and that there would be no shells that night.

In order to be on good terms with the men, I had asked Monborne's permission to go and get a jug full of brandy, which he at once granted. I took advantage of the opportunity to bite a crust and drink a glass of wine at home. Then I went back, and all the men at the station were very friendly; they passed the jug from one to another, and said that my brandy was very good, and that the sergeant would give me leave to go and fill it as often as I pleased.

"Yes, since it is Moses," replied Monborne, "he may have leave, but nobody else."

We were all on excellent terms with each other and nobody thought of bombardment, when a red flash passed along the high windows of the room. We all turned round, and in a few seconds the shell rumbled on the Bichelberg hill. At the same time a second, then a third flash passed, one after the other, through the large dark room, showing us the houses opposite.

You can never have an idea, Fritz, of those first lights at night! Corporal Winter, an old soldier, who grated tobacco for Tribou, stooped down quietly and lighted his pipe, and said: "Well, the dance is beginning!"

Almost instantly we heard a shell burst at the right in the infantry quarters, another at the left in the Piplinger house on the square, and another quite near us in the Hemmerle house.

I can't help trembling as I think of it now after thirty years.

All the women were in the casemates, except some old servants who did not want to leave their kitchens; they screamed out: "Help! Fire!"

We were all sure that we were lost; only the old soldiers, crooked on their bench by the stove, with their pipes in their mouths, seemed very calm, as people might who have nothing to lose.

What was worst of all, at the moment when our cannon at the arsenal and powder-house began to answer the Russians', and made every pane of glass in the old building rattle, Sergeant Monborne called out: "Somme, Chevreux, Moses, Dubourg: Forward!"

To send fathers of families roaming about through the mud, in danger, at every step, of being struck by bursting shells, tiles, and whole chimneys falling on their backs, is something against nature; the very mention of it makes me perfectly furious.

Somme and the big innkeeper Chevreux turned round, full of indignation also; they wanted to exclaim: "It is abominable!"

But that rascal of a Monborne was sergeant, and nobody dared speak a word or even give a side-look; and as Winter, the corporal of the round, had taken down his musket, and made a signal for us to go on, we all took our arms and followed him.

As we went down the stairway, you should have seen the red light, flash after flash, lighting up every nook and corner under the stairs and the worm-eaten rafters; you should have heard our twenty-four pounders thunder; the old rat-hole shook to its foundations, and seemed as if it was all falling to pieces. And under the arch below, toward the Place d'Armes, this light shone from the snow banks to the tops of the roofs, showing the glittering pavements, the puddles of water, the chimneys, and dormer-windows, and, at the very end of the street, the cavalry barracks, even the sentry in his box near the large gate:—what a sight!

"It is all over! We are all lost!" I thought.

Two shells passed at this moment over the city: they were the first that I had seen; they moved so slowly that I could follow them through the dark sky; both fell in the trenches, behind the hospital. The charge was too heavy, luckily for us.

I did not speak, nor did the others—we kept our thoughts to ourselves. We heard the calls "Sentries, attention!" answered from one bastion to another all around the place, warning us of the terrible danger we were in.

Corporal Winter, with his old faded blouse, coarse cotton cap, stooping shoulders, musket in shoulder-belt, pipe-end between his teeth, and lantern full of tallow swinging at arm's length, walked before us, calling out: "Look out for the shells! Lie flat! Do you hear?"

I have always thought that veterans of this sort despise citizens, and that he said this to frighten us still more.

A little farther on, at the entrance of the cul-de-sac where Cloutier lived, he halted.

"Come on!" he called, for we marched in file without seeing each other. When we had come up to him he said, "There, now, you men, try to keep together! Our patrol is to prevent fire from breaking out anywhere; as soon as we see a shell pass, Moses will run up and snatch the fuse."

He burst into a laugh as he spoke, so that my anger was roused.

"I have not come here to be laughed at," said I; "if you take me for a fool, I will throw down my musket and cartridge-box, and go to the casemates."

He laughed harder than ever. "Moses, respect thy superiors, or beware of the court-martial!" said he.

The others would have laughed too, but the shell-flashes began again; they went down the rampart street, driving the air before them like gusts of wind; the cannon of the arsenal bastion had just fired. At the same time a shell burst in the street of the Capuchins; Spick's chimney and half his roof fell to the ground with a frightful noise.

"Forward! March!" called Winter.

They had now all become sober. We followed the lantern to the French gate. Behind us, in the street of the Capuchins, a dog howled incessantly. Now and then Winter stopped, and we all listened; nothing was stirring, and nothing was to be heard but the dog and the cries: "Sentries, attention!" The city was as still as death.

We ought to have gone into the guard-house, for there was nothing to be seen; but the lantern went on toward the gate, swinging above the gutter. That Winter had taken too much brandy!

"We are of no use in this street," said Cheyreux; "we can't keep the balls from passing."

But Winter kept calling out: "Are you coming?" And we had to obey.

In front of Genodet's stables, where the old barns of the gendarmerie begin, a lane turned to the left toward the hospital. This was full of manure and heaps of dirt—a drain in fact. Well, this rascal of a Winter turned into it, and as we could not see our feet without the lantern, we had to follow him. We went groping, under the roofs of the sheds, along the crazy old walls. It seemed as if we should never get out of this gutter; but at last we came out near the hospital in the midst of the great piles of manure, which were heaped against the grating of the sewer.

It seemed a little lighter, and we saw the roof of the French gate, and the line of fortifications black against the sky; and almost immediately I perceived the figure of a man gliding among the trees at the top of the rampart. It was a soldier stooping so that his hands almost touched the ground. They did not fire on this side; the distant flashes passed over the roofs, and did not lighten the streets below.

I caught Winter's arm, and pointed out to him this man; he instantly hid his lantern under his blouse. The soldier whose back was toward us, stood up, and looked round, apparently listening. This lasted for two or three minutes; then he passed over the rampart at the corner of the bastion, and we heard something scrape the wall of the rampart.

Winter immediately began to run, crying out: "A deserter! To the postern!"

We had heard before this of deserters slipping down into the trenches by means of their bayonets. We all ran. The sentry called out: "Who goes there?"

"The citizen patrol," replied Winter.

He advanced, gave the order, and we went down the postern steps like wild beasts.

Below, at the foot of the large bastions built on the rock, we saw nothing but snow, large black atones, and bushes covered with frost. The deserter needed only to keep still under the bushes; our lantern, which shone only for fifteen or twenty feet, might have wandered about till morning without discovering him: and we should ourselves have supposed that he had escaped. But unfortunately for him, fear urged him on, and we saw him in the distance running to the stairs which lead up to the covered ways. He went like the wind.

"Halt! or I fire!" cried Winter; but he did not stop, and we all ran together on his track, calling out "Halt! Halt!"

Winter had given me the lantern so as to run faster; I followed at a distance, thinking to myself: "Moses, if this man is taken, thou will be the cause of his death." I wanted to put out the lantern, but if Winter had seen me he would have been capable of knocking me down with the butt-end of his musket. He had for a long time been hoping for the cross, and was all the time expecting it and the pension with it.

The deserter ran, as I said, to the stairs. Suddenly he perceived that the ladder, which takes the place of the eight lower steps, was taken away, and he stopped, stupefied! We came nearer—he heard us and began to run faster, to the right toward the half-moon. The poor devil rolled over the snow-banks. Winter aimed at him, and called out: "Halt! Surrender!"

But he got up and began to run again.

Behind the outworks, under the drawbridge, we thought we had lost him: the corporal called to me, "Come along! A thousand thunders!" and at that moment we saw him leaning against the wall, as pale as death. Winter took him by the collar and said: "I have got you!"

WINTER TOOK HIM BY THE COLLAR, AND SAID: "I HAVE YOU NOW!"

Then he tore an epaulette from his shoulder: "You are not worthy to wear that!" said he; "come along!"

He dragged him out of his corner, and held the lantern before his face. We saw a handsome boy of eighteen or nineteen, tall and slender, with small, light mustaches, and blue eyes.

Seeing him there so pale, with Winter's fist at his throat, I thought of the poor boy's father and mother; my heart smote me, and I could not help Baying: "Come, Winter, he is a child, a mere child! He will not do it again!"

But Winter, who thought that now surely his cross was won, turned upon me furiously:

"I tell thee what, Jew, stop, or I will run my bayonet through thy body!"

"Wretch!" thought I, "what will not a man do to make sure of his glass of wine for the rest of his days?"

I had a sort of horror of that man; there are wild beasts in the human race!

Chevreux, Somme, and Dubourg did not speak.

Winter began to walk toward the postern, with his hand on the deserter's collar.

"If he stops," said he, "strike him on the back with your muskets! Ah, scoundrel, you desert in the face of the enemy! Your case is clear: next Sunday you will sleep under the turf of the half-moon! Will you come on? Strike him with the butt-end, you cowards!"

What pained me most was to hear the poor fellow's heavy sighs; he breathed so hard, from his fright at being taken, and knowing that he would be shot, that we could hear him fifteen paces off; the sweat ran down my forehead. And now and then he turned to me and gave me such a look as I shall never forget, as if to say: "Save me!"

If I had been alone with Dubourg and Chevreux, we would have let him go; but Winter would sooner have murdered him.

We came in this way to the foot of the postern. They made the deserter pass first. When we reached the top, a sergeant, with four men from the next station, was already there, waiting for us.

"What is it?" asked the sergeant.

"A deserter," said Winter.

The sergeant—an old man—looked at him, and said: "Take him to the station."

"No," said Winter, "he will go with us to the station on the square."

"I will reinforce you with two men," said the sergeant.

"We do not need them," replied Winter roughly. "We took him ourselves, and we are enough to guard him."

The sergeant saw that we ought to have all the glory of it, and he said no more.

We started off again, shouldering our arms; the prisoner, all in tatters and without his shako, walked in the midst.

We soon came to the little square; we had only to cross the old market before reaching the guard-house. The cannon of the arsenal were firing all the time; as we were starting to leave the market, one of the flashes lighted up the arch in front of us; the prisoner saw the door of the jail at the left, with its great locks, and the sight gave him terrible strength; he tore off his collar, and threw himself from us with both arms stretched out behind.

Winter had been almost thrown down, but he threw himself at once upon the deserter, exclaiming, "Ah, scoundrel, you want to run away!"

We saw no more, for the lantern fell to the ground.

"Guard! guard!" cried Chevreux.

All this took but a moment, and half of the infantry post were already there under arms. Then we saw the prisoner again; he was sitting on the edge of the stairway among the pillars; blood was running from his mouth; not more than half his waistcoat was left, and he was bent forward, trembling from head to foot.

Winter held him by the nape of the neck, and said to Lieutenant Schnindret, who was looking on: "A deserter, lieutenant! He has tried to escape twice, but Winter was on hand."

"That is right," said the lieutenant. "Let them find the jailer."

Two soldiers went away. A number of our comrades of the National Guard had come down, but nobody spoke. However hard men may be, when they see a wretch in such a condition, and think, "the day after to-morrow he will be shot!" everybody is silent, and a good many would even release him if they could.

After some minutes Harmantier arrived with his woollen jacket and his bunch of keys.

The lieutenant said to him, "Lock up this man!"

"Come, get up and walk!" he said to the deserter, who rose and followed Harmantier, while everybody crowded round.

The jailer opened the two massive doors of the prison; the prisoner entered without resistance, and then the large locks and bolts fastened him in.

"Every man return to his post!" said the lieutenant to us. And we went up the steps of the mayoralty.

All this had so upset me that I had not thought of my wife and children. But when once above, in the large warm room, full of smoke, with all that set who were laughing and boasting at having taken a poor, unresisting deserter, the thought that I was the cause of this misery filled my soul with anguish; I stretched myself on the camp-bed, and thought of all the trouble that is in the world, of Zeffen, of Sâfel, of my children, who might, perhaps, some day be arrested for not liking war. And the words of the Lord came to my mind, which He spake to Samuel, when the people desired a king:

"Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself; and some shall run before his chariots. He will set them to make his instruments of war. And he will take your daughters to be cooks and bakers. And he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. He will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men. He will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day, and the Lord will not hear you."

These thoughts made me very wretched; my only consolation was in knowing that my sons Frômel and Itzig were in America. I resolved to send Sâfel, David, and Esdras there also, when the time should come.

These reveries lasted till daylight. I heard no longer the shouts of laughter or the jokes of the ragamuffins. Now and then they would come and shake me, and say, "Go, Moses, and fill your brandy jug! The sergeant gives you leave."

But I did not wish to hear them.

About four o'clock in the morning, our arsenal cannon having dismounted the Russian howitzers on the Quatre-Vents hill, the patrols ceased.

Exactly at seven we were relieved. We went down, one by one, our muskets on our shoulders. We were ranged before the mayoralty, and Captain Vigneron gave the orders: "Carry arms! Present arms! Shoulder arms! Break ranks!"

We all dispersed, very glad to get rid of glory.

I was going to run at once to the casemates when I had laid aside my musket, to find Sorlé, Zeffen, and the children; but what was my joy at seeing little Sâfel already at our door! As soon as he saw me turn the corner, he ran to me, exclaiming: "We have all come back! We are waiting for you!"

I stooped to embrace him. At that moment Zeffen opened the window above, and showed me her little Esdras, and Sorlé stood laughing behind them. I went up quickly, blessing the Lord for having delivered us from all our troubles, and exclaiming inwardly: "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. Let the glory of the Lord endure forever! Let the Lord rejoice in his works!"