A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

Quite suddenly we topped the crest, and saw beneath us the lights of Autun gleaming hazily through a kind of misty drizzle. But that which struck our faces was in no wise wetting. It only struck a chill through us, making our greatcoats welcome. We had so far carried them en bandoulière.

The west side of the ridge was, in fact, already spotted with fine sifted snow, which blew in our faces and sought a way down our necks. Its coming had caused the fluorescent light we had seen as we were mounting the eastern slopes, and now with bowed heads and our rifles as well "happed" as possible, we strode downhill in the direction of the town.

At the limits of the chestnut woods the vineyards began again, and our troubles threatened to be as great as they had been after we left the convoy. But though fine snow fell steadily, its clinging whiteness showed up the stone-dykes and terraces as black objects to be avoided. There was, therefore, less tumbling about among the ledges of loose stones, and presently we came out upon a regular "departmental" road, with drainage ditches on either side, rows of pollarded willows and poplars, and kilometric pillars, with numbers on them which it was too dark to see.

Along this we made all haste, for we were bent on getting to Autun as soon as possible, and indeed it was not long before we were in the way of getting our wish.

"Halt! Who goes there?" came a challenge out of the unseen. Well was it for us that we had attempted no stealthy approach upon the town, but serenely clattered down the middle of the turnpike. Luckier still that we fell into the hands of regular mobiles of the army of the Vosges, instead of a stray company of franc-tireurs, who as like as not, would have cut our throats for the sake of our rifles, the stores of ammunition, and the few silver coins we carried.

We had come upon a picket of men of the regiment of Gray on the borders of the Haute Saône. It was like one of Napoleon's levies after Moscow – young lads of sixteen and men of forty or fifty standing by each other cheerfully, and without distinction of age or previous occupation.

We stated our purpose and asked to be taken to head-quarters. Like most of such casual recruits, we thought we would be taken directly into the presence of Garibaldi, but the Gray men astonished us by the information that the great soldier was almost a recluse, and indeed so much of an invalid that he could only review his troops from a carriage. His sons, Menotti and Ricciotti, were his fighting generals, but all directing power was centred in Colonel Bordone, through whom all orders came to the army.

In the meantime we were conveyed amicably to the temporary head-quarters of the 14th Mobiles of the Haute Saône. Here we found several officers, but after a look at us and a civil enough demand for the production of our papers, we were permitted to betake ourselves to the snug kitchen of an ancient monastery, where the soldiers of the outpost guard were sitting around a huge fire, or lying extended on couches of straw, sleeping the sleep of men who had marched far the day before, and expected to do as much more on the morrow.

Our clothes were soon dry, and our overcoats spread out to the blaze, after being well shaken and thumped to get rid of the clinging snow. The morning began to come tardily, and as if reluctantly. The snow had ceased, but a thin whitish mist had been left behind, softening and dimming all outlines.

The town of Autun bethought itself of waking up. A few shopkeepers took down their shutters in a leisurely fashion, the first of these being a couple of ladies, venders of sweet cakes, both pretty and apparently exceedingly attractive to the young Italian officers, all of whom had the racial sweet tooth as well as the desire to rival each other in the eyes of beauty.

Our men of Gray were rather contemptuous, but could not deny that these young sweet-suckers fought well and bravely whenever it came to blows.

"And I dare say, after all," said a tall brigadier, "it is better to munch sugar cakes flavoured with cinnamon than to swallow the filth they serve out to you in the cafés."

The others agreed, but we did not observe that their teetotal sentiments were more than platonic. At least, during all our stay with the 3rd Corps in the town of Autun, the Frenchmen went to the café and the Italians to the pâtissière.

It was nine o'clock when the brigadier of the post detailed two men to accompany us to the Cadran Bleu, the inn where the army head-quarters was established. We had a short time to wait, for the officers within were judging the case of a spy, a dull heavy-witted fellow who had formerly served in a line regiment, but who had had the ill thought to turn his knowledge of the army of the Vosges to account by compiling a careful estimate of the strength of Garibaldi's command, and offering it by ordinary letter post to General Werder of the Prussian service. The letter was addressed to his brother-in-law at Macon, who was to arrange terms. He, however, preferred patriotism (and the chance of a possible heritage) to his relative's life. So the officer of the day was already picking out the firing-party, for, as was the way of the army of the Vosges under Garibaldi, a very short shrift was given to any traitor. Though the supreme judges were Italian and the man a Frenchman, the good sense of the soldiers supported them in the certainty and rapidity of such military punishments. I saw the man come out between a couple of Mobiles with fixed bayonets. His hair fell in an unkempt mass over his brow. His face was animal and stupid, but he had little pig's eyes that glanced rapidly from one side to the other as if seeking for any way of escape. But there was none for him, as the rattle of musketry testified almost before we had reached the antechamber.

Here there were half a dozen young French officers and many Italians all talking together, who turned from their conversations to gaze at us. We had made what toilets we could, and the men of the Gray regiments had rolled up our overcoats in military style.

"Two English come from Aramon to enlist," we heard them say, with a certain resentment as if they had been offered an affront. "Do all the foreigners in the world think that France has need of them to fight her battles?"

However, one of the sub-lieutenants, a handsome lad, from a Protestant family in the Isère, came over to talk to us. The ice was at once broken, and the next moment we had quite a gathering round us admiring our Henry repeaters, and asking questions.

"That is the new Remington action!" said one who stated that he read English and American periodicals, but became appallingly unintelligible as soon as he attempted to speak a single sentence of the language.

"No," said Hugh Deventer, "the movement was invented by my father."

"And who may your father be? Are you travelling for the firm?"

"My father," said Hugh steadily, "is Monsieur Dennis Deventer, director-in-chief of the Arms Factory at Aramon-sur-Rhône, and he will supply as many of these repeaters as the Company is paid for. The Government have the matter under consideration, but if they do not hurry, the war will be over before their minds are made up."

An officer in the red cloak of the Italian corps pushed a door open, spoke an order in imperfect French, and the next moment we found ourselves in an apartment where two men were sitting rolling cigarettes at opposite sides of a long table. They were both tall, dark-bearded men with swarthy faces, clad in uniforms much the worse for wear. I knew them by instinct to be Menotti and Ricciotti Garibaldi. Both had a look of the common lithograph portraits of their father, but perhaps no more than one weather-beaten shepherd on a Scottish hill resembles his comrade on the next.

We stood at attention after the English manner instilled into us by Jack Jaikes and the numerous old soldiers who by Dennis Deventer's orders had taken us for drill during vacation time at the works.

The two grave men looked at one another and smiled. "We have seen something like this when the English lads came to us in Sicily eleven years ago, eh, brother? Tell us your names, little ones! Can you speak Italian?"

We could, and that made us, if not of the "children," at least something very different from the dull peasants whom Gambetta's conscription supplied, or the innumerable company of ne'er-do-weels who appeared from nowhere in particular, drawn by the mere sound of Garibaldi's name.

Hugh Deventer did not much like to be called a "little one," but the Italian speech is not like our English, which lends itself more easily to oaths and cursing than to the "little language" and the expression of emotion.

We presented the letters with which we had been furnished – one a personal epistle to Ricciotti from Dennis Deventer – the others for the most part addressed to the General himself.

That, however, made no difference. His sons opened them all without hesitation or apology. Indeed, we soon learned that, excepting the conduct of the campaign, Father Garibaldi was not allowed to concern himself with anything.

"Ah, Dennis Deventer," said Ricciotti, starting up and embracing Hugh on both cheeks. "I owe much to your father, more than I am likely to pay for some while. He took our word for it that the chassepots for the new troops would be paid for, even though he knows that the Government is likely to fall into the hands of those who hate us. Also the new twelve-pounders – Menotti, brother, what shall we do for this man's son?"

"I must stay with my comrade, Angus Cawdor," put in Hugh Deventer. "He is far more clever than I am, and I should be lost without him. I am only a boy, but he – "

"Has the thoughts of a man – I see," interrupted Menotti, who had been considering us from under his hand without speaking. "I think it would be no kindness to add two recruits of such mettle to the number of the admirably combed and pressed young gentlemen in the anteroom out there. You had better take them, Ricciotti. You will be sure to find old Manteuffel hammering away at you on your return to Dijon, and the lads can take bite and sup with the 'Enfants.' Since they speak Italian no explanations need be made. They can be fitted out by the commissariat adjutant."

"The favour is an unusual one, brother. There will be grumbling."

"The circumstances are unusual, and so are the lads. There is but one Dennis Deventer, and we must do the best we can for his son."

And in this manner we became part of the personal following of Ricciotti Garibaldi, and were destined to take part in the war game which he played out successfully against Manteuffel and Werder till the coming of the armistice stopped all fighting.

CHAPTER XIV

"THE CHILDREN"

"The Children" were young men, some of them hardly more than boys, who had followed the Dictator from Italy. They came from all parts of the Peninsula, but the wide windy Milanese plain supplied most of them. A curious exaltation reigned in the camp. It was like the mystic aura of a new religion. One became infected with it after a few hours among the troops.

They were already veterans in their own opinion, and, feeling that the eyes of their General was always upon them, they claimed as their monopoly all desperate ventures, the front rank in stubborn defences, the rear-guard in retreat, and they died with an "Evviva, Garibaldi!" upon their lips. One snatched the standard from a falling comrade that he might carry it closer to the Prussian lines, only in most cases to fall in his turn under the fatal steadiness of the needle-gun.

The rest of the army of the Vosges fought under the tricolour of France, but for "Les Enfants" Garibaldi had devised his own emblem. It was sufficiently striking and characteristic of the man, but in France at least it only excited astonishment among the masses, and hatred and contempt among the clerical and aristocratic party, which was at that time in a great majority in the provinces. The flag was of a vivid crimson, darker a little than the "Tatter of Scarlet" I had seen go up at Aramon when the Communards expelled the troops from the town. There was no device upon it – only the one word in large letters:

"PATATRAC!"

I saw the rustics gazing open-mouthed upon it every day, yet it was a word admirably descriptive and one which I have heard in frequent use among the peasant folk of the South. "Patatrac!" or "Patatras!" the labourer will exclaim when he lets a bucket fall at a stair-head and hears it go rumbling down. "Patatrac!" a housewife will say when she describes how a careless maid drops a trayful of crockery. It is the crashing sound of the fall that is represented, and in this fashion Garibaldi had been so accustomed to bring down in thunderous earthquake ruin all the brood of century-old tyrannies.

It was his well-earned boast that he had made the device good against all comers (except his special bête noires of the Papacy) until the fell day at Mentana when the French chassepots rather belatedly gave him as we say at home "his kail through the reek!"

Yet here he was, only five years after, a broken man, fighting for that same France, just because she had shaken off the yoke of the tyrant and become a republic.

Wonderful always to hear the soldiers speak of their leader. They did not cheer him as did the French corps. They clustered close about his carriage as he moved slowly along, his thin hand, which had so long held a sword, touching their heads, and his feeble sick man's voice saying: "My children – oh, my children!"

Neither of his sons accompanied him on these pilgrimages in the shabby hired barouche in which he drove out every day, but Bordone was always with him – watchful, stern, and devoted, the real tyrant of the little army. Menotti and Ricciotti were always with their troops, perhaps from jealousy of Bordone, perhaps because they had enough to do licking their raw levies into some manner of fighting shape.

The winter was bitter even among bitter winters, and the snow soon began to be trampled hard. The troops, continually arriving, were quartered all over Autun, and in the villages about. Finally the churches had to be occupied, and though nothing was done there that would not have happened with any army of occupation, Garibaldi the polluter was cursed from one end of France to the other as if he had torn down the golden cross upon St. Peter's dome. Not that it mattered to the old Dictator. In silence and solitude he made his plans. He read the reports and dispatches as they came in. He issued his orders through Bordone, before driving out in the halting ramshackle barouche, sometimes with two horses, more often with only one. At every halt he spoke a word or two to the troops as he passed among them, words treasured by the true "Children" like the oracles of God. Then he would return to his lodgings, sit down to his bowl of soup, his loaf of bread, and his glass of water, exactly as if he were on his own island farm within hearing of the waves breaking on the rocks of Caprera.

We found ourselves among Ricciotti's fourth corps of Guides. We were sent to the outfitting captain whose quarters were established in a long hangar overlooking the river. There we found a little rotund man, very bright of eye and limber of tongue, who fitted us out with many compliments and bows. We had brought a letter from the commander himself.

Our first uniform was the gayest ever seen – too picturesque indeed for sober British tastes. It consisted of a red shirt, blue-grey riding breeches, and high boots with jingling silver spurs (for which last we paid from our own purses). On our heads we wore a fascinating "biretta," or cap with a tall feather. The captain of outfitting showed us how to sport it with a conquering air, and with what a grace to swing the short red cloak over one shoulder so that we should not be able to pass a girl in Autun who did not turn and look after us.

This was what the master of the stores said as he stood with his back against the rough pine door-post of his quarters and rubbed his shoulder-blades luxuriously. But in practice I looked like a carnival Mephistopheles, while Hugh Deventer's feather generally drooped over one eye in a drunken fashion. We were not long in suppressing these gauds, though we did our duty in them as gallopers for several days. Finally we went to Ricciotti and begged to be allowed to carry our rifles in one of the foot regiments. We did not want to leave the foreign troops, knowing something of the ostracism and persecution which would be our part among the French regiments. So we were allowed to return our chargers to the remounting officer, and make another visit to the small rotund outfitter in his wooden barrack by the river. There of all our gallant array we retained only our red shirts, and for the rest were rigged out in sober dark blue, a képi apiece, and a pair of stout marching shoes on our feet.

We mounted knapsack and haversack, shouldered our Henry rifles, and in an hour found ourselves established among the first "Etranger," a Milanese regiment with three or four mountain companies from Valtelline and the Bergel.