The horror of the scene even struck the peasantry, and whether through fear of the contagion, or through the uselessness of hunting down men who were treading to the grave by thousands, the peasantry ceased to follow us. Yet such was the wretchedness of that hideous progress, that this cessation of hostility was scarcely a relief. The animation of the skirmishes, though it often cost life, yet kept the rest more alive; the strategem, the adventure, the surprise, nay, even the failure and escape, relieved us from the dreadful monotony of the life, or rather the half-existence, to which we were now condemned. Our buoyant and brilliant career was at an end; we were now only the mutes and mourners of a funeral procession of seventy thousand men.
I still look back with an indescribable shudder at the scenes which we were compelled to witness from day to day during that month of misery; for the march, which began in the first days of October, was protracted till its end. I had kept up my spirits when many a more vigorous frame had sunk, and many a maturer mind had desponded; but the perpetual recurrence of the same dreary spectacles, the dying, and the more fortunate dead, covering the highways, the fields, and the village streets, at length sank into my soul. Some recollections of earlier principles, and the memory of my old friend Vincent, prevented my taking the summary and unhappy means of ridding myself of my burden, which I saw daily resorted to among the soldiery—a bullet through the brain, or a bayonet through the heart, cured all. But, thanks to early impressions, I was determined to wait the hand of the enemy, or the course of nature. Many a night I lay down beside my starving charger, with something of a hope that I should never see another morning; and many a morning, when I dragged my feeble limbs from the cold and wet ground, I looked round the horizon for the approach of some enemy's squadron, or peasant band, which might give me an honourable chance of escape from an existence now no longer endurable. But all was in vain. For leagues round no living object was visible, except that long column, silently and slowly winding on through the distance, like an army of spectres.
My diminished squadron had at length become almost the only rear-guard. From a hundred and fifty as fine fellows as ever sat a charger, we were now reduced to a third. All its officers, youths of the first families of Prussia, had either been left behind dying in the villages, or had been laid in the graves by the road-side, and I was now the only commandant. Perhaps even this circumstance was the means of saving my life. My new responsibility compelled me to make some exertion; and I felt that, live or die, I might still earn an honourable name. Even in those darkest hours, the thought that Clotilde might ask where and how I finished my ill-fortuned career, and perhaps give a moment's sorrow to one who remembered her to the last, had its share in restoring me to a sense of the world. In that sort of fond frenzy, which seems so fantastic when it is past, but so natural, and is actually so irresistible while it is in the mind, I wrote down my feelings, wild as they were—my impossible hopes, and a promise never to forget her while I remained in this world, and, if there could be an intercourse between the living and the dead, in that world to which I felt myself hastening. I then bade her a solemn and heartfelt farewell. Placing the paper in my bosom, with a locket containing a ringlet of her beautiful hair, which Marianne had contrived to obtain for me, the only legacy I had to offer, I felt as if I had done my last duty among mankind.
Still we wandered on, through a country which had the look of a boundless cemetery. Not a peasant was met; not a sound of human labour, joy or sorrow, reached the ear; not a smoke rose from mansion or cottage; all was still, except when the wind burst in bitter gusts over the plain, or the almost ceaseless rain swelled into sheets, and sent the rivers roaring down before us. If the land had never been inhabited, or had been swept of its inhabitants by an avenging Providence, it could not have been more solitary. I never conceived the idea of the wilderness before. It was the intensity of desolation.
We seemed even to make no progress. We began to think that the scene would never change. But one evening, when the troop had lain down under the shelter of a knoll, my sergeant, a fine Hungarian, whose eyes had been sharpened by hussar service on the Turkish border, aroused me, saying that he had discovered French horse-tracks in advance of us. We were all instantly on the alert, the horse-tracks were found to be numerous, and it was evident that a strong body of the enemy's cavalry had managed to get in between us and the army. It is true that there was a treaty, in which the unmolested movement of the duke was an article. But, it might have been annulled; or the French general might have been inclined to make a daring experiment on our worn-down battalions; or, at all events, it was our business to keep him as far off as we could. We were on horseback immediately. The track led us along the high-road for one or two leagues and then turned off towards a village on a height at some distance. We now paused, and the question was, whether to follow the enemy, or to dismount and try to rest ourselves, and our tired horses, for the night. We had scarcely come to the decision of unloosing girths, when the sky above the village showed a sudden glow; and a confused clamour of voices came upon the wind. Dispatching an orderly to the duke, to inform him of the French movement, we rode towards the village. We found the road in its immediate neighbourhood covered with fugitives; who, however, instead of flying from us with the usual horror of the peasantry, threw themselves beside our stirrups, hung on our bridles, and implored us with every wild gesticulation to hasten to the gates. All that I could learn from the outcries of men, women, and children, was, that their village, or rather town—for we found it of considerable size—had been the quarters of some of the Austrian cavalry, and that the officers had given a ball, to which the leading families had been invited. The ball was charged as a national crime by the democrats in Paris, and a regiment of horse had been sent to punish the unfortunate town.
To attack such a force with fifty worn-out men, was obviously hopeless, and my hulans, brave as they were, hung down their heads; but a fresh concourse came rushing from the gates with even louder outcries than before, and the words, massacre and conflagration, were heard with fearful emphasis. While I pondered for a moment on our want of means, a fine old man, with his white hair stained with blood from a sabre wound in his forehead, clung to my charger's neck, and implored me, by the honour of soldiership, to make but one effort against the revolutionary brigands, as he termed them. "I am a French officer and noble!" he exclaimed—"I have served my king, I have a son in the army of Condé, and now the wretches have seized on my only daughter, my Amalia, and they are carrying her to their accursed guillotine." I could resist no longer; yet I looked round despairingly at my force. "Follow me," said the agonized old man; "one half of the villains are drunk in the cafes already, the other half are busy in that horrid procession to the axe. I shall take you by a private way, and you may fall upon them by surprise. You shall find me, and all who belong to me, sword in hand by your side. Come on; and the God of battles, and protector of the unhappy, will give you victory." He knelt at my feet, with his hands upraised.—"For my child's sake!"—he continued faintly to exclaim—"for my innocent child's sake!" I saw tears fall down some of our bronzed faces, and I had but one word to utter; but that was—"Forward!" We followed our guide swiftly and silently through the narrow streets; and then suddenly emerging into the public square, saw such a sight of terror as never before met my eyes.