Besides this, nothing could be heard or seen. Buche said to me in a low voice, "I like the smell of the wood, it is like Harberg."
"I despise the smell of the wood," I thought; "and if we do not get a musket-shot, I shall be satisfied."
At the end of two hours the light appeared again through the underwood, and we reached the other side, fortunately without encountering either enemy or obstacle. The hussars who had accompanied us returned immediately, and the battalion stacked arms.
We were in a grain country, the like of which I had never seen. Some of the grain was in flower, a little green still, though the barley was almost ripe. The fields extended as far as the eye could reach. We looked around in perfect silence, and I saw that the old man had not deceived us. Two thousand paces in front of us, in a hollow, we saw the top of an old church spire and some slated gables, lighted up by the moon. That was Fleurus. Nearer to us on our right were some thatched cottages, and a few houses; this was without doubt Lambusart. At the end of the plain, more than a league distant and in the rear of Fleurus, the surface of the country was broken into little hills, and on these hills innumerable fires were burning. Three large villages were easily recognized extending over the heights from left to right. The one nearest to us, we afterward found, was St. Amand, Ligny in the middle, and two leagues beyond, was Sombref. We could see them more distinctly, even, than in the day-time, on account of the fires of the enemy. The Prussians were in the houses and the orchards and the fields; and beyond these three villages in a line, was another, lying still higher and farther away, where fires were burning also. This was Bry, where the rascals had their reserves.
As we looked at this grand spectacle, I understood the disposition and the plan, and saw too that it would be very difficult to take the position. On the plain at our left there were fires also, but it was the camp of the Third corps, which had turned the corner of the forest after having repulsed the Prussians, and had halted in some village this side of Fleurus. There were a few fires along the edge of the forest, on a line with us; these were the fires of our own soldiers. I believe there were some on both sides of us, but the great mass were at the left.
We posted our sentinels immediately, and without lighting our fires laid down at the border of the wood to wait for further orders. General Schoeffer came again during the night with several hussar officers, and talked a long time with our commandant, Gémeau, who was watching under arms. Their conversation was quite distinct at twenty paces from us. The general said that our army corps continued to arrive, but that they were very late, and would not all reach here the next day. I saw at once that he was right; for our fourth battalion, which should have joined us at Chatelet, did not come till the day after the battle, when we were almost exterminated by those rascals at Ligny, having only four hundred men left. If they had been there they would have had their share of the combat and of the glory.
As I had been on guard the night before, I quietly stretched myself at the foot of a tree by the side of Buche, with my comrades. It was about one o'clock in the morning of the day of the terrible battle of Ligny. Nearly half of those men who were sleeping around me left their bodies on the plain and in the villages which we saw, to be food for the grain, such as was growing so beautifully around us, for the oats and the barley for ages to come. If they had known that, there was more than one of them who would not have slept so well, for men cling to life, and it is a sad thing to think, "to-day I draw my last breath!"
XVIII
During the night the air was heavy, and I wakened every hour in spite of my great fatigue, but my comrades slept on, some talking in their sleep. Buche did not stir.