I saw Jean Buche hurrying back with his bayonet red with blood. He took his place beside me without saying a word, and commenced to reload.
Captain Grégoire, Lieutenant Certain, and several sergeants and corporals, and more than a hundred men were left behind in the orchards; and the first two battalions of the column had suffered as much as we.
Zébédé, with his great crooked nose, white as snow, seeing me at some distance, shouted, "Joseph—no quarter!"
Great masses of white smoke rose over the sides of the road. The whole hill-side from Ligny to St. Amand was on fire behind the willows and aspens and poplars.
As I crept up on my hands and knees, and looked over the surface of the grain and saw this terrible spectacle, and saw the long black lines of infantry on the top of the hill and near the windmills, and the innumerable cavalry on their flanks ready to fall upon us, I went back thinking:
"We shall never rout that army. It fills the villages, and guards the roads, and covers the hill as far as the eye can reach, there are guns everywhere, and it is contrary to reason to persist in such an enterprise."
I was indignant and even disgusted with the generals.
All this did not take ten minutes. God only knew what had become of our other two columns. The terrible musketry fire on the left, and the volleys of grape and canister which we heard rushing through the air, were no doubt intended for them.
I thought we had had our full share of troubles, when Generals Gérard, Vichery, and Schoeffer came riding up at full speed on the road below us, shouting like madmen, "Forward! Forward!"
They drew their swords, and there was nothing to do but go.