The Blockade of Phalsburg: An Episode of the End of the Empire

"Go to sleep!" said he, and he went down the stairs.

The door of the alley below slammed to. Then the children, who had waked up, began to cry. Zeffen came in, very pale, with her baby in her arms, exclaiming, "Mercy! What is the matter?"

"It is nothing, Zeffen," said Sorlé. "It is nothing, my child: they are beating the call for the soldiers."

At the same moment the battalion came down the main street. We heard them march as far as to the Place d'Armes, and beyond it toward the German gate.

We shut the windows, Zeffen went back to her room, and I lay down again.

But how could I sleep after such a start? My head was full of a thousand thoughts: I fancied the arrival of the Russians on the hill this cold night, and our soldiers marching to meet them, or manning the ramparts. I thought of all the blindages and block-houses, and batteries inside the bastions, and that all these great works had been made to guard against bombs and shells, and I exclaimed inwardly: "Before the enemy has demolished all these works, our houses will be crushed, and we shall be exterminated to the last man."

I took on in this way for about half an hour, thinking of all the calamities which threatened us, when I heard outside the city, toward Quatre-Vents, a kind of heavy rolling, rising and falling like the murmur of running water. This was repeated every second. I raised myself on my elbow to listen, and I knew that it was a fight far more terrible than that at Mittelbronn, for the rolling did not stop, but seemed rather to increase.

"How they are fighting, Sorlé, how they are fighting!" I exclaimed, as I pictured to myself the fury of those men murdering each other at the dead of night, not knowing what they were doing. "Listen! Sorlé, listen! If that does not make one shudder!"

"Yes," said she. "I hope our sergeant will not be wounded; I hope he will come back safe!"

"May the Lord watch over him!" I replied, jumping from my bed, and lighting a candle.

I could not control myself. I dressed myself as quickly as if I were going to run away; and afterward I listened to that terrible rolling, which came nearer or died away with every gust of wind.

When once dressed, I opened a window, to try to see something. The street was still black; but toward the ramparts, above the dark line of the arsenal bastions, was stretched a line of red.

The smoke of powder is red on account of the musket shots which light it up. It looked like a great fire. All the windows in the street were open: nothing could be seen, but I heard our neighbor the armorer say to his wife, "It is growing warm down there! It is the beginning of the dance, Annette; but they have not got the big drum yet; that will come, by and by!"

The woman did not answer, and I thought, "Is it possible to jest about such things! It is against nature."

The cold was so severe that after five or six minutes I shut the window. Sorlé got up and made a fire in the stove.

The whole city was in commotion; men were shouting and dogs barking. Sâfel, who had been wakened by all these noises, went to dress himself in the warm room. I looked very tenderly on this poor little one, his eyes still heavy with sleep; and as I thought that we were to be fired upon, that we must hide ourselves in cellars, and all of us be in danger of being killed for matters which did not concern us, and about which nobody had asked our opinion, I was full of indignation. But what distressed me most was to hear Zeffen sob and say that it would have been better for her and her children to stay with Baruch at Saverne and all die together.

Then the words of the prophet came to me: "Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?

"Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent, or where were the righteous cut off.

"No, they that plough iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same.

"By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.

"But thee, his servant, he shall redeem from death.

"Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season."

In this way I strengthened my heart, while I heard the great tumult of the panic-stricken crowd, running and trying to save their property.

About seven o'clock it was announced that the casemates were open, and that everybody might take their mattresses there, and that there must be tubs full of water in every house, and the wells left open in case of fire.

Think, Fritz, what ideas these orders suggested.

Some of our neighbors, Lisbeth Dubourg, Bével Ruppert, Camus's daughters, and some others, came up to us exclaiming, "We are all lost!"

Their husbands had gone out, right and left, to see what they could see, and these women hung on Zeffen and Sorlé's necks, repeating again and again, "Oh, dear! oh, dear! what misery!"

I could have wished them all to the devil, for instead of comforting us they only increased our fears; but at such times women will get together and cry out all at once; you can't talk reason to them; they like these loud cryings and groanings.

Just as the clock struck eight, Bailly the armorer came to find his wife: he had come from the ramparts. "The Russians," he said, "have come down in a mass from Quatre-Vents to the very gate, filling the whole plain – Cossacks, Baskirs, and rabble! Why don't they fire down upon them from the ramparts? The governor is betraying us."

"Where are our soldiers?" I asked.

"Retreating!" exclaimed he. "The wounded came back two hours ago, and our men stay yonder, with folded arms."

His bony face shook with rage. He led away his wife; then others came crying out, "The enemy has advanced to the lower part of the gardens, upon the glacis." I was astonished at these things.

The women had gone away to cry somewhere else, and just then a great noise of wheels was heard from the direction of the rampart. I looked out of the window, and saw a wagon from the arsenal, some citizen gunners; old Goulden, Holender, Jacob Cloutier, and Barrier galloped at its sides; Captain Jovis ran in front. They stopped at our door.

"Call the iron-merchant!" cried the captain. "Tell him to come down."

Baker Chanoine, the brigadier of the second battery, came up. I opened the door.

"What do you want of me?" I asked in the stairway.

"Come down, Moses," said Chanoine. And I went down.

Captain Jovis, a tall old man, with his face covered with sweat, in spite of the cold, said to me, "You are Moses, the iron-merchant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Open your storehouse. Your iron is required for the defence of the city."

So I had to lead all these people into my court, under the shed. The captain on looking round, saw some cast-iron bars, which were used at that time for closing up the backs of fireplaces. They weighed from thirty to forty pounds each, and I sold a good many in the vicinity of the city. There was no lack of old nails, rusty bolts, and old iron of all sorts.

"This is what we want," said he. "Break up these bars, and take away the old iron, quick!"

The others, with the help of our two axes, began at once to break up everything. Some of them filled a basket with the pieces of cast-iron, and ran with it to the wagon.

The captain looked at his watch, and said, "Make haste! We have just ten minutes!"

I thought to myself, "They have no need of credit; they take what they please; it is more convenient."

All my bars and old iron were broken in pieces – more than fifteen hundred pounds of iron.

As they were starting to run to the ramparts, Chanoine laughed, and said to me, "Capital grape-shot, Moses! Thou canst get ready thy pennies. We'll come and take them to-morrow."

The wagon started through the crowd which ran behind it, and I followed too.

As we came nearer the ramparts the firing became more and more frequent. As we turned from the curate's house two sentinels stopped everybody, but they let me pass on account of my iron, which they were going to fire.

You can never imagine that mass of people, the noise around the bastion, the smoke which covered it, the orders of the infantry officers whom we heard going up the glacis, the gunners, the lighted match, caissons with the piles of bullets behind! No, in all these thirty years I have not forgotten those men with their levers, running back the cannon to load them to their mouths; those firings in file, at the bottom of the ramparts; those volleys of balls hissing in the air; the orders of the gun-captains, "Load! Ram! Prime!"