As he spoke, I remembered that the Mayor of Phalsbourg had received the cross for having gone to meet the Empress Marie Louise in carriages garlanded with flowers, and I thought his method much preferable to that of Sergeant Pinto.
But I had not time to think more, for the drums beat on all sides, and each one ran to where the arms of his company were stacked and seized his musket. Our officers formed us, great guns came at a gallop from the village, and were posted on the brow of the hill a little to the rear, so that the slope served them as a species of redoubt. Further away, in the villages of Rahna, of Kaya, and of Klein-Gorschen, all was motion, but we were the first the Prussians would fall upon.
The enemy halted about twice a cannon-shot off, and the cavalry swarmed by hundreds up the hill to reconnoitre us. I was in utter despair as I gazed on their immense masses, and thought that all was ended; nothing remained for me but to sell my life as dearly as I could; to fight pitilessly, and die.
While these thoughts were passing through my head, General Chemineau galloped along our front, crying:
"Form squares."
The officers in the rear took up the word and it passed from right to left; four squares of four battalions each were formed. I found myself in the third, on one of the interior sides, a circumstance which in some degree reassured me; for I thought that the Prussians, who were advancing in three columns, would first attack those directly opposite them. But scarcely had the thought struck me when a hail of cannon-shot swept through us. They had thirty pieces of artillery playing on us, and the balls shrieked sometimes over our heads, sometimes through the ranks, and then again struck the earth, which they scattered over us.
Our heavy guns replied to their fire, but could not silence it, and the horrible cry of "Close up the ranks! Close up the ranks!" was ever sounding in our ears.
We were enveloped in smoke without having fired a shot, and I thought that in another quarter of an hour we should have been all massacred without having a chance to defend ourselves, when the head of the Prussian columns appeared between the hills, moving forward, with a deep, hoarse murmur, like the noise of an inundation. Then the three first sides of our square, the second and third obliquing to the right and left, fired. God only knows how many Prussians fell. But instead of stopping they rushed on, shouting "Vaterland! Vaterland!" and we fired again into their very bosoms.
Then began the work of death in earnest. Bayonet-thrust, sabre-stroke, blows from the butt-end of our pieces crashed on all sides. They tried to crush us by mere weight of numbers, and came on like furious bulls. A battalion rushed upon us, thrusting with their bayonets; we returned their blows without leaving the ranks, and they were swept away almost to a man by two cannon which were in position toward our rear.