I explained that everything had been taken from us—that we had nothing left to eat for ourselves; but they would not believe me, and my wife was obliged to turn the house topsy-turvy to find something for them to eat.
While eating and drinking enough for four, these two gentlemen found time to tell us that they had hung eleven peasants of Gunstedt on the day of the battle of Reichshoffen! They also told us, what was quite true, that next day provisions would arrive in our village. Unhappily, this long train of provisions, which seemed endless, passed on direct to Sarrebourg.
This was the 12th of August.
We had, then, this captain, his adjutant, their servants, and their horses on our shoulders; all of whom we had to feed to the full until the day of their departure.
The batteries of Phalsbourg had dismounted the German guns at the Quatre Vents. Sick and wounded in great numbers had been sent to the great military hospital at Saverne; there were a few left in the school-room of Pfalsweyer: this annoyed the Prussians. One would have thought that it was our duty to let them come and rob, pillage, and bombard and burn us, without defending ourselves; that we were guilty of crimes against them, and that they had rights over us, as a nation of valets.
They actually thought this.
And I have always heard these Germans making such complaints: whether they took us for fools, or were fools themselves, I do not know exactly which; but I think there was something of both.
After the passage of a convoy of provisions, which went past us for two hours, came cannon, powder-wagons, and shells. Never had our poor village heard such a noise; it was like a torrent roaring over the rocks.
The 11th corps was passing. There were twelve like it, each from eighty to ninety thousand men.
We now knew nothing whatever about our own troops, nor our relations and friends in the town. We were shut up as in an island, in the midst of this deluge of Prussians, Bavarians, Wurtemburgers, Badeners, who streamed through in long, interminable columns, and seemed to have no end.