The Prussian cavalry passed us in files with drawn sabres, shouting, "Hurrah!" They seemed to be escorting us, but they sabred every one who straggled from the road, and took no prisoners, neither did they attack the column; a few musket-shots passed over us from the right and left.
Far in the rear we could see a red light: this was the farm-house at Caillou.
We hastened onward, borne down with fatigue, hunger, and despair; we were ready to die, but still the hope of escape sustained us. Buche said to me as we went along, "Joseph, let us help each other."
"I will never abandon you," I replied. "We will die together. I can hold out no longer, it is too terrible,—we might better lie down at once."
"No, let us keep on," said he. "The Prussians make no prisoners. Look! they kill without mercy, just as we did at Ligny."
We kept on in the same direction with thousands of others, sullen and discouraged, and yet we would turn round all at once and close our ranks and fire, when a squadron of Prussians came too near. We were still firm, still the stronger from time to time; we found abandoned gun-carriages, caissons, and cannons, and the ditches on either side were full of knapsacks, cartridge-boxes, guns, and sabres, which had been thrown away by the men to facilitate their flight.
But the most terrible thing of all was the great ambulances in the middle of the road filled with the wounded. The drivers had cut the traces and fled with the horses for fear of being taken prisoners. The poor half-dead wretches, with their arms hanging down, looked at us as we passed with despairing eyes.
When I think of all this now, it reminds me of the tufts of straw and hay which lodge among the bushes after an inundation. We say "That is our harvest, this is our crop, that is what the tempest has left us."
Ah! I have had many such reflections during fifty years!
What grieved me most and made my heart bleed in the midst of this rout was that I could not discover a single man of our battalion besides ourselves. I said to myself, "They cannot all be dead;" and I said to Buche: