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

Now it chanced that I had spent some part of my vacations climbing among the peaks about Promontonio. There I had taken, more as companion than as guide, a Swiss-Italian, or to be exact "Ladin" – of my own age or a little older, by the name of Victor Dor. He was a pleasant lad, and we talked of many things as we shared the contents of our rük-sacks on the perilous shoulder of some mountain just a few feet removed from the overhang of the glacier.

And here and now, with the chevrons of a sergeant, was this same Victor Dor, who embraced me as if he had been my brother.

"Oh, the happiness to see you!" he cried. "And among the children of our father. I know you do not come to save the French who shot us down at Mentana. You are like us. You come because our father calls, and yet to think of those long days in the Val Bergel when we never knew that we were brothers. And yet I do not know. You spoke of the Man who was a Carpenter at Nazareth, and who called his disciples to follow him. So our father came, and we followed him. Princes and Emperors scatter honours. Republics give decorations and offices. But look at our lads lying on the straw yonder. Where will they be in a week? In the hospital or in the grave? Some of these men are well off at home, others are poor. No matter! All share alike, and all are equal before our father. Ah, that is it! You see there is nothing to be gained except the joy of following him. Our poor dear father Garibaldi, what has he to offer? He has nothing for himself but a barren isle, and even that he owes to you English.[1 - See Hamerton's "Round my House."] The liberty of following him, of seeing his face when he passes by, of hearing his voice as he calls us his children, the pride of being his very own chosen, who have shared his perils and never deserted him to the last. These are our rewards. Tell me if they are of this world?"

CHAPTER XV

FIRST BLOOD

On the third morning after our entry into the Ricciotti's first foreign legion, both Hugh and I awoke stiff and chilled by the frost. The lucky among us had early found quarters in byres and cattle-sheds, where the closely packed animals kept the place warm. We had to make the best of it on a floor of beaten earth, still sparsely strewn with heads of wheat and flecks of straw. The fodder had been requisitioned to the last armful, and not enough was left to build a nest for a sparrow. The barn was doorless, and, except for the shelter of the roof, we might as well have slept in the open air. At least so we thought, but next day men on the outposts told us a different tale. That night the head-quarters thermometers had showed twenty below zero, and many men slept never again to waken, under the open sky – slept leaning on their chassepots, and so died standing up, no one guessing they were dead till they fell over all in one piece like an icicle snapped.

But even Hugh Deventer and I were sorely tried in our open barn. We had lain soft and fed well all our lives. We were not yet broken to the work like the campaigners of Sicily, or even like those who had passed through the war since the autumn.

"If I bored a hole or two where the joints are," groaned Hugh, "one of Jack Jaikes's oil cans might easy my bearings greatly this morning!"

"From what I can guess," said Victor Dor, "you will find it warm enough in an hour or two. Manteuffel is going to make a push for it to-day. Ricciotti managed to capture a couple of Werder's Uhlans, and one of our franc-tireurs says that the whole Pomeranian army corps is coming upon us as fast as the men can march."

"A franc-tireur always lies," said another Valtelline man, Marius Girr, scornfully, but enunciating a principle generally received in the army.

"Still, it is possible that this one told the truth by mistake – at any rate, it is not a safe thing to lie to Ricciotti about a matter which, in a few days, will prove itself true or untrue. Ricciotti knows the use of a firing party at twelve yards just as well as Bordone."

The morning grew more and more threatening as time passed. The chill tang of coming snow clung to the nostrils. We had breakfasted meagrely on the last rinds of bacon and scraps of sausage in our haversacks. We longed for hot coffee till we ached, but had to content ourselves with sucking an icicle or two from the roof of the barn, good for the thirst, but very afflicting to the tongue at a temperature of minus twenty.

Presently the inexorable bugles called us forward to the trenches, which extended in a vast hollow crescent from the Arroux bank opposite Autun to the hills above St. Leger on the borders of the Nièvre. We could see against the snow dark masses of overcoated Prussians defiling this way and that among the valleys, and at sight of them our field-guns began to speak. With eyes that hardly yet understood we watched the shells bursting and the marching columns shred suddenly apart to be reformed automatically only an instant after, as the narrow strips of dark blue uncoiled themselves towards the plain.

Hugh and I lay close against a railway embankment from which the rails had been ruthlessly torn up. I was inclined to make an additional shelter of these, and indeed Hugh and I had begun the work when Victor Dor stopped us.

"As much earth as you like," he said; "earth or sand stops bullets, but iron only makes them glance off, and often kill two in place of one. Scatter all the rails, plates, and ties down our side of the slope. I will show you something that is far better!"

And with the edge of the shallow iron saucepan which he carried like a targe at his back, he scooped up the earth so that we soon had in front of us a very competent breastwork, giving sufficient cover for our heads and shoulders as well as a resting-place for our rifles.

During the next hour we heard the roar of the German artillery away in the direction of St. Léger, and the resounding "boom-boom" of our heavy mortars and twelve-pounders answering them.

"What would Jack Jaikes give to see these in action," I said in Hugh's ear.

"And still more my father," he answered.

Our outposts began to be driven in, but they had stubbornly defended our front, nor did they yield till the masses of blue battalions showed thickly, and then only to give the artillery free play.

It was in waiting behind us, and the first crash as the shells hurtled over our heads made Hugh and I feel very strange in the pits of our stomachs – something like incipient sea-sickness. The veterans never once looked aloft, but only cuddled their rifles and wriggled their bodies to find a comfortable niche from which to fire.

"Dig your toes into the embankment, you English," Marius Girr of our company called to us; "if you don't, the first recoil of the rifle will send you slipping down into the ditch."

It was good advice, and with a few kicks we dug solid stances for our feet, in which our thick marching shoes were ensconced to the heels. We excavated also hollow troughs for our knees, and, as Hugh said, we behaved generally like so many burying beetles instead of gallant soldiers. All this was not done easily, for the ground was frozen hard, and in the river behind us we could hear the solid blocks of ice clinking and crunching together as the sullen grey-green current swept them along.

It was Sunday, and upon the town road a little behind our line, but quite within the zone of fire, comfortable mammas and trim little daughters were trotting to Mass with their service books wrapped in white napkins. Hugh and I yelled at them to go home, but it was no use. Luckily I remembered their fear of the Iron Chancellor, and assured them by all the saints that "Bismarck was coming," whereupon they kilted their petticoats and made off homeward, their fat white-stockinged legs twinkling in the pearl-grey twilight. It was like a Dutch picture – trampled snow, low brooding sky, white-capped matrons and little girls wrapped in red shawls.

But in a few moments we had other matters to occupy us. The Tanara regiment was on our right, and the sweep of the crescent being farther advanced than at our position, they received the first rush of the Pomeranians.

But there was no waiting, for suddenly out of the woods in front of us stiff lines of blue emerged and began moving forward with the Noah's Ark regularity of marionettes. It seemed impossible that these could be soldiers charging. But we were soon convinced. The dip of the ground hid them for a long time, and then suddenly they appeared not four hundred yards off, no longer in column, but in two lines close together, with a supporting third some distance in the rear.

We could see them extending companies far away on either side. But this we knew to be in vain, for the river protected us on the right, while on the left our entrenchments reached as far as the St. Leger hills which were crowned with our forts.

Then came the splitting growl of the mitrailleuses behind us. These were still held to be rather uncertain weapons. Men familiarly called them pepper-pots, and it was as likely as not that a few bullets might come spattering our way, spread-eagled as we were on the railway embankment, and offering a far more practicable target than the advancing Germans.

But there were no casualties, at least near us, and in a moment the Germans fired a volley which swept the embankment like hail. The rifles of the first Milanese cracked on every side, but I bade Hugh hold his fire till the charging enemy was only a hundred yards away. Our Henry rifles gave us an immense advantage in speed of firing. They came on, breaking at last through a dark barrier of yew and poplar hedge, and as they came we could see their bayonets flash like silver in the dull light. Their colonel was mounted on a black charger, a tall fine-looking man who pushed his horse up every knoll in order the better to see whom and what he was attacking.

But he dropped a little way from the yew hedge, and almost before he reached the ground two men with a stretcher were lifting up their officer, while a third had taken the horse by the bridle and was leading him to the rear, as composedly as a groom in a stable-yard.

"Now, then, Hugh," I cried, "you take the right of the line and I will take the left. But sight carefully and don't aim high."

"Crack—crack—crack!!" went our magazine rifles, and the big Pomeranians went down as if an invisible sickle had mown them. As I expected, Hugh was finished before me, but we had scarcely time to adjust our new cartridge holders before the line broke and the blue coats turned and ran. A few officers and a man or two immediately in their wake got as far as the curve of the embankment – only, however, to be shot down.

The air rang with the shouts of "Evivva Garibaldi!" And a few minutes afterwards the Tanara regiment, encouraged by our success, repulsed the enemy's bayonet charge, so that in an instant our whole line was disengaged. Only out in the open the trampled earth and the glistening crushed-sugar snow were starred here and there with spots and splotches of red and the contorted bodies of men, some still moving, but mostly stricken into the strange stiff attitudes of death.

It was our first battle in the service of Garibaldi. It was destined to be our last. For that night the news of the fall of Paris and the signing of the armistice stopped the fighting everywhere, except at Belfort and along the desperate rear-guard line of Bourbaki's army, which was being driven like a pack of famished wolves into the passes of the Jura.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF ALIDA

It was the evening of the 27th of January, and we were back in Autun. The Milanese were later than most in getting inside the gates. We had pushed far forward after the retreating Pomeranians, and now our lot was to bivouac in the square. The houses were full, and the churches with their damp floors did not tempt us. Besides, we were full of the glow of victory, and for that night a camp-fire in the middle of the square satisfied us. The evening had fallen mild and still – clear too, though rapidly growing misty under the red loom of camp-fire smoke. There was not much open rejoicing. The French would not believe that the end had come, and the Italians, still flushed with victory, felt that they had come a long way to do but little. Still, as we lay close to our camp-fires or threshed our arms about to keep warm, we could not keep out of our minds the hope of better days. I know not of what Hugh Deventer thought, but for me I was talking to Rhoda Polly, or lazily steering the ferry-boat across the river while before me Jeanne Félix bent lissomly to the oars. It was clear that I had not yet reached the age of the grand expulsive passion which ignores partage. Indeed, given a temperament like mine, no youth is worth his salt who at twenty-one cannot drive several teams abreast.

Hugh and I put in the night wandering up and down, rendered restless by the thoughts of peace, and unable to sleep about the camp-fires before which we had spread our blankets. Upon the advice of a stranger in a doorway we penetrated into a school, and from the first class-room brought out benches and desks enough to feed our camp-fires all night in the square of Autun. With a stroke or two of the axe Hugh smashed these across the middle, and we soon built up such a range of blaze that the heat drove back the sleepers, some of whom, caught betwixt two, were in peril of being roasted. Those who did not waken we dragged off by the shoulders, usually to be soundly cursed for our officiousness. Then we went back to find the man who had told us of the school-house treasure. He was standing at his door grimly regarding our bonfires. We thanked him courteously in the name of the regiment.

"At least the Jesuits will teach no more lies to poor children on those benches," he said. "You are true Garibaldians, though you do speak French like Linn and myself!"

He was a tall man with a grey beard that came half-way to his waistbelt, and when he invited us in we were wondering who Linn might be.

We found ourselves in a comfortable little kitchen, floored with red brick. On the walls, trophies of matchlocks and Dervish swords on a ground of palm leaves and alfa grass told us that we were in the dwelling of one who in his day had made the campaign of the Atlas.

Over the mantelshelf, and framed in oak in a rough but artistic manner, was a document which attracted me. One side was written in Arabic of the dashing and ornamental sort. I had seen many such in my father's library. The other side was ruled with a pencil, and there the writing was that of a schoolboy just beyond the stage of pot-hooks.

"Is it permitted to read?" I asked, for my curiosity was great.

The man with the long beard was talking to Hugh, but he turned to me with a courteous wave of the hand, and said with a ceremony that was never learned in Autun:

"Sir, this house and all that it contains are at your service."

I followed the ill-traced letters of the translation. It was dated "From my prison-house, in the fortress-city called Amboise," and was signed "Sheik Abd-el-Kader." It contained, after the usual compliments, greetings and affection to the brave fellow soldier and commander of his forces, Keller Bey – with a congratulation on his release from imprisonment.

So it became immediately evident to me that our host had indeed made the campaign of the Atlas, but that he had fought against and not for the tricolour.

He seemed to watch out of the corner of his eye the effect of the framed certificate.

"You are English," he said, "and though you have stolen much yourselves, you can still feel for a great man defending his country, and not condemn the little man who helped him."

"You are Keller Bey?" I asked, pointing to the name on the much crumpled sheet.