The Plébiscite; or, A Miller's Story of the War

Then, with heads bowed down, we passed through the little wood on our left, full of dead leaves, and we saw our little village of Rothalp, three hundred paces behind the orchards and the fields; it looked dead too: ruin had passed over it – the requisitions had utterly exhausted it; winter, with its snow and ice, was waiting at every door.

The mill was working; which astonished me.

George and I, without speaking, clasped each other's hands; then he strode toward his house, and I passed rapidly to mine, with a full heart.

Prussian soldiers were unloading a wagon-load of corn under my shed; fear laid hold of me, and I thought, "Have the wretches driven away my wife and daughter?"

Happily Catherine appeared at the door directly; she had seen me coming, and extended her arms, crying, "Is it you, Christian? Oh! what we have suffered!"

She hung upon my neck, crying and sobbing. Then came Grédel; we all clung together, crying like children.

The Prussians, ten paces off, stared at us. A few neighbors were crying, "Here is the old mayor come back again!"

At last we entered our little room. I sat facing the bed, gazing at the old bed-curtains, the branch of box-tree at the end of the alcove, the old walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the little window-panes, and my good wife and my wayward daughter, whom I love. Everything seemed to me so nice. I said to myself, "We are not all dead yet. Ah! if now I could but see Jacob, I should be quite happy."

My wife, with her face buried in her apron between her knees, never ceased sobbing, and Grédel, standing in the middle of the room, was looking upon us. At last she asked me: "And the horses, and the carts, where are they?"

"Down there, somewhere near Montmédy."

"And Cousin George?"

"He is with Marie Anne. We have had to abandon everything – we escaped together – we were so wretched! The Germans would have let us die with hunger."

"What! have they ill-used you, father?"

"Yes, they have beaten me."

"Beaten you?"

"Yes, they tore my beard – they struck me in the face."

Grédel, hearing this, went almost beside herself; she threw a window open, and shaking her fist at the Germans outside, she screamed to them, "Ah, you brigands! You have beaten my father – the best of men!"

Then she burst into tears, and came up to kiss me, saying, "They shall be paid out for all that!" I felt moved.

My wife, having become calmer, began to tell me all they had suffered: their grief at receiving no news of us since the third day after the passage of the pedler; then the appointment of Placiard in my place, and the load of requisitions he had laid upon us, saying that I was a Jacobin.

He associated with none but Germans now; he received them in his house, shook hands with them, invited them to dinner, and spoke nothing but Prussian German. He was now just as good a servant of King William as he had been of the Empire. Instead of writing letters to Paris to get stamp-offices and tobacco-excise-offices, he now wrote to Bismarck-Bohlen, and already the good man had received large promises of advancement for his sons, and son-in-law. He himself was to be made superintendent of something or other, at a good salary.

I listened without surprise; I was sure of this beforehand.

One thing gave me great pleasure, which was to see the mill-dam full of water: so the chest was still at the bottom. And Grédel having left the room to get supper, that was the first thing I asked Catherine.

She answered that nothing had been disturbed: that the water had never sunk an inch. Then I felt easy in my mind, and thanked God for having saved us from utter ruin.

The Germans had been making their own bread for the last fortnight; they used to come and grind at my mill, without paying a liard. How to get through our trouble seemed impossible to find out. There was nothing left to eat. Happily the Landwehr had quickly become used to our white bread, and, to get it, they willingly gave up a portion of their enormous rations of meat. They would also exchange fat sheep for chickens and geese, being tired of always eating joints of mutton, and Catherine had driven many a good bargain with them. We had, indeed, one cow left in the Krapenfelz, but we had to carry her fodder every day among these rocks, to milk her, and come back laden.

Grédel, ever bolder and bolder, went herself. She kept a hatchet under her arm, and she told me smiling that one of those drunken Germans having insulted her, and threatened to follow her into the wood, she had felled him with one blow of her hatchet, and rolled his body into the stream.

Nothing frightened her: the Landwehr who lodged with us – big, bearded men – dreaded her like fire; she ordered them about as if they were her servants: "Do this! do that! Grease me those shoes, but don't eat the grease, like your fellows at Metting; if you do, it will be the worse for you! Go fetch water! You sha'n't go into the store-room straight out of the stable! your smell is already bad enough without horse-dung! You are every one of you as dirty as beggars, and yet there is no want of water: go and wash at the pump."

And they obediently went.

She had forbidden them to go upstairs, telling them, "I live up there! that's my room. The first man who dares put his foot there, I will split his head open with my hatchet."

And not a man dared disobey.

Those people, from the time they had set over us their governor Bismarck-Bohlen, had no doubt received orders to be careful with us, to treat us kindly, to promise us indemnities. Captain Floegel went on drinking from morning till night, from night till morning; but instead of calling us rascals, wretches! he called us "his good Germans, his dear Alsacian and Lorraine brothers," promising us all the prosperity in the world, as soon as we should have the happiness of living under the old laws of Fatherland.

They were already talking of dismissing all French school-masters, and then we began to see the abominable carelessness of our government in the matter of public education. Half of our unhappy peasants did not know a word of French: for two hundred years they had been left grovelling in ignorance!

Now the Germans have laid hands upon us, and are telling them that the French are enemies of their race; that they have kept them in bondage to get all they could out of them, to live at their cost, and to use their bodies for their own protection in time of danger. Who can say it is not so? Are not all appearances against us? And if the Germans bestow on the peasants the education which all our governments have denied them, will not these people have reason to attach themselves to their new country?

The Germans having altered their bearing toward us, and seeking to win us over, lodged in our houses. They were Landwehr, who thought only of their wives and children, wishing for the end of the war, and much fearing the appearance of the francs-tireurs.

The arrival of Garibaldi in the Vosges with his two sons was announced, and often George, pointing from his door at the summit of the Donon and the Schneeberg, already white with snow, would say: "There is fighting going on down there! Ah, Christian, if we were young again, what a fine blow we might deliver in our mountain passes!"

Our greatest sorrow was to know that famine was prevailing in the town, as well as small-pox. More than three hundred sick, out of fifteen hundred inhabitants, were filling the College, where the hospital had been established. There was no salt, no tobacco, no meat. The flags of truce which were continually coming and going on the road to Lützelbourg, reported that the place could not hold out any longer.

There had been a talk of bringing heavy guns from Strasbourg and from Metz, after the surrender of these two places; but I remember that the Hauptmann who was lodging with the curé, M. Daniel, declared that it was not worth while; that a fresh bombardment would cost his Majesty King William at least three millions; and that the best way was to let these people die their noble death quietly, like a lamp going out for want of oil. With these words the Hauptmann put on airs of humanity, continually repeating that we ought to save human life, and economize ammunition.

And what had become of Jacob in the midst of this misery? And Jean Baptiste Werner? I am obliged to mention him too, for God knows what madness was possessing Grédel at the thought that he might be suffering hunger: she was no longer human; she was a mad creature without control over herself, and she often made me wonder at the meek patience of the Landwehr. When one or another wanted to ask her for anything, she would show them the door, crying: "Go out; this is not your place!"

She even openly wished them all to be massacred; and then she would say to them, in mockery: "Go, then! attack the town! … go and storm the place! … You don't dare! … You are afraid for your skin! You had rather starve people, bombard women and children, burn the houses of poor creatures, hiding yourselves behind your heaps of clay! You must be cowards to set to work that way. If ours were out, and you were in, they would have been a dozen times upon the walls: but you are afraid of getting your ribs stove in! You are prudent men!"

And they, seated at our door, with their heads hanging down, spoke not a word, but went on smoking, as if they did not hear.

Yet one day these peaceable men showed a considerable amount of indignation, not against Grédel or us, but against their own generals.

It was some time after the capture of Metz. The cold weather had set in. Our Landwehr returning from mounting guard were squeezed around the stove, and outside lay the first fall of snow. And as they were sitting thus, thinking of nothing but eating and drinking, the bugle blew outside a long blast and a loud one, the echoes of which died far away in the distant mountains.

An order had arrived to buckle on their knapsacks, shoulder their rifles, and march for Orleans at once.

You should have seen the long, dismal faces of these fellows. You should have heard them protesting that they were Landwehr, and could not be made to leave German provinces. I believe that if there had been at that moment a sortie of fifty men from Phalsbourg, they would have given themselves up prisoners, every one, to remain where they were.

But Captain Floegel, with his red nose and his harsh voice, had come to give the word of command, "Fall in!"

They had to obey. So there they stood in line before our mill, three or four hundred of them, and were then obliged to march up the hill to Mittelbronn, whilst the villagers, from their windows, were crying, "A good riddance!"

It was supposed, too, that the blockade of Phalsbourg would be raised, and everybody was preparing baskets, bags, and all things needful to carry victuals to our poor lads. Grédel, who was most unceremonious, had her own private basket to carry. It was quite a grand removal.

But where did this order to march come from? What was the meaning of it all?

I was standing at our door, meditating upon this, when Cousin Marie Anne came up, whispering to me, "We have won a great battle: all the men at Metz are running to the Loire."

"How do you know that, cousin?"

"From an Englishman who came to our house last night."