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

We had as yet had no fires; but our outposts had fallen back, and the allies drew closer and closer around the city. They occupied the Ozillo farm, Pernette's tile-kiln, and the Maisons-Rouges, which had been abandoned by our troops. Here they intended to pass the winter pleasantly. These were Wurtemburg, Bavarian, and Baden troops, and other landwehr, who replaced in Alsace the regular troops that had left for the interior.

We could plainly see their sentinels in long, grayish-blue coats, flat helmets, and muskets on their shoulders, walking slowly in the poplar alley which leads to the tile-kiln.

From thence these troops could any moment, on a dark night, enter the trenches, and even attempt to force a postern.

They were in large numbers and denied themselves nothing, having three or four villages around them to furnish their provisions, and the great fires of the tile-kiln to keep them warm.

Sometimes a Russian battalion relieved them, but only for a day or two, being obliged to continue its route. These Russians bathed in the little pond behind the building, in spite of the ice and snow which filled it.

All of them, Russians, Wurtemburgers, and Baden men, fired upon our sentinels, and we wondered that our governor had not stopped them with our balls. But one day the sergeant came in joyfully, and whispered to me, winking:

"Get up early to-morrow morning, Father Moses; don't say a word to any one, and follow me. You will see something that will make you laugh."

"All right, sergeant!" said I.

He went to bed at once, and long before day, about five o'clock, I heard him jump out of bed, which astonished me the more, as I had not heard the call.

I rose softly. Sorlé sleepily asked me: "What is it, Moses?"

"Go to sleep again, Sorlé," I replied; "the sergeant told me that he wanted to show me something."

She said no more, and I finished dressing myself.

Just then the sergeant knocked at the door; I blew out the candle, and we went down. It was very dark.

We heard a faint noise in the direction of the barracks; the sergeant went toward it, saying: "Go up on the bastion; we are going to attack the tile-kiln."

I ran up the street at once. As I came upon the ramparts I saw in the shadow of the bastion on the right our gunners at their pieces. They did not stir, and all around was still; matches lighted and set in the ground gave the only light, and shone like stars in the darkness.

Five or six citizens, in the secret, like myself, stood motionless at the entrance of the postern. The usual cries, "Sentries, attention!" were answered around the city; and without, from the part of the enemy, we heard the cries "Verdâ!" and "Souïda!"[3 - Who goes there?]

It was very cold, a dry cold, notwithstanding the fog.

Soon, from the direction of the square in the interior of the city, a number of men went up the street; if they had kept step the enemy would have heard them from the distance upon the glacis; but they came pell-mell, and turned near us into the postern stair-way. It took full ten minutes for them to pass. You can imagine whether I watched them, and yet I could not recognize our sergeant in the darkness.

The two companies formed again in the trenches after their defiling, and all was still.

My feet were perfectly numb, it was so cold; but curiosity kept me there.

At last, after about half an hour, a pale line stretched behind the bottom-land of Fiquet, around the woods of La Bonne-Fontaine. Captain Rolfo, the other citizens, and myself, leaned against the rampart, and looked at the snow-covered plain, where some German patrols were wandering in the fog, and nearer to us, at the foot of the glacis, the Wurtemburg sentinel stood motionless in the poplar alley which leads to the large shed of the tile-kiln.

Everything was still gray and indistinct; though the winter sun, as white as snow, rose above the dark line of firs. Our soldiers stood motionless, with grounded arms, in the covered ways. The "Verdâs!" and "Souïdas!" went their rounds. It grew lighter every moment.

No one would have believed that a fight was preparing, when six o'clock sounded from the mayoralty, and suddenly our two companies, without command, started, shouldering their arms, from the covered ways, and silently descended the glacis.

In less than a minute, they reached the road which stretches along the gardens, and defiled to the left, following the hedges.

You cannot imagine my fright when I found that the fight was about to begin. It was not yet clear daylight, but still the enemy's sentinel saw the line of bayonets filing behind the hedges, and called out in a terrible way: "Verdâ!"

"Forward!" replied Captain Vigneron, in a voice like thunder, and the heavy soles of our soldiers sounded on the hard ground like an avalanche.

The sentinel fired, and then ran up the alley, shouting I know not what. Fifteen of the landwehr, who formed the outpost under the old shed used for drying bricks, started at once; they did not have time for repentance, but were all massacred without mercy.

We could not see very well at that distance, through the hedges and poplars, but after the post was carried, the firing of the musketry and the horrible cries were heard even in the city.

All the unfortunate landwehr who were quartered in the Pernette farm-house – a large number of whom were undressed, like respectable men at home, so as to sleep more comfortably – jumped from the windows in their pantaloons, in their drawers, in their shirts, with their cartridge-boxes on their backs, and ranged themselves behind the tile-kiln, in the large Seltier meadow. Their officers urged them on, and gave their orders in the midst of the tumult.

There must have been six or seven hundred of them there, almost naked in the snow, and, notwithstanding their being thus surprised, they opened a running fire which was well sustained, when our two pieces on the bastion began to take part in the contest.

Oh! what carnage!

Looking down upon them, you should have seen the bullets hit, and the shirts fly in the air! And, what was worst for these poor wretches, they had to close ranks, because, after destroying everything in the tile-kiln, our soldiers went out to make an attack with their bayonets!

What a situation! – just imagine it, Fritz, for respectable citizens, merchants, bankers, brewers, innkeepers – peaceable men who wanted nothing but peace and quietness.

I have always thought, since then, that the landwehr system is a very bad one, and that it is much better to pay a good army of volunteers, who are attached to the country, and know that their pay, pensions, and decorations come from the nation and not from the government; young men devoted to their country like those of '92, and full of enthusiasm, because they are respected and honored in proportion to their sacrifices. Yes, this is what they ought to be – and not men who are thinking of their wives and children.

Our balls struck down these poor fathers and husbands by the dozen. To add to all these abominations, two other companies, sent out with the greatest secrecy by the council of defence from the posterns of the guard and of the German gate, and which came up, one by the Saverne road, and the other by the road of Petit-Saint-Jean, now began to outflank them, and forming behind them, fired upon them in the rear.

It must be confessed that these old soldiers of the Empire had a diabolical talent for stratagem! Who would ever have imagined such a stroke!

On seeing this, the remnant of the landwehr disbanded on the great white plain like a whirlwind of sparrows. Those who had not had time to put on their shoes did not mind the stones or briers or thorns of the Fiquet bottom; they ran like stags, the stoutest as fast as the rest.

Our soldiers followed them as skirmishers, stopping not a second except to make ready and fire. All the ground in front, up to the old beech in the middle of the meadow of Quatre-Vents, was covered with their bodies.

Their colonel, a burgomaster doubtless, galloped before them on horseback, his shirt flying out behind him.

If the Baden soldiers, quartered in the village, had not come to their assistance, they would all have been exterminated. But two battalions of Baden men being deployed at the right of Quatre-Vents, our trumpets sounded the recall, and the four companies formed in the alley des Dames to await them.

The Baden soldiers then halted, and the last of the Wurtemburgers passed behind them, glad to escape from such a terrible destruction. They could well say: "I know what war is – I have seen it at the worst!"

It was now seven o'clock – the whole city was on the ramparts. Soon a thick smoke rose above the tile-kiln and the surrounding buildings; some sappers had gone out with fagots and set it on fire. It was all burned to cinders; nothing remained but a great black space, and some rubbish behind the poplars.

Our four companies, seeing that the Baden soldiers did not mean to attack them, returned quietly, the trumpeter leading.

Long before this, I had gone down to the square, near the German gate, to meet our troops as they came back. It was one of the sights which I shall never forget; the post under arms, the veterans hanging by the chains of the lowered drawbridge; the men, women, and children pushing in the street; and outside, on the ramparts, the trumpets sounding, and answered from the distance by the echoes of the bastions and half-moon; the wounded, who, pale, tattered, covered with blood, came in first, supported on the shoulders of their comrades; Lieutenant Schnindret, in one of the tile-kiln armchairs, his face covered with sweat, with a bullet in his abdomen, shouting with thick voice and extended hand, "Vive l'Empereur!"; the soldiers who threw the Wurtemburg commander from his litter to put one of our own in it; the drums under the gate beating the march, while the troops, with arms at will, and bread and all kinds of provisions stuck on their bayonets, entered proudly in the midst of the shouts: "Hurra for the Sixth Light Infantry!" These are things which only old people can boast of having seen!

Ah, Fritz, men are not what they once were! In my time, foreigners paid the cost of war. The Emperor Napoleon had that virtue; he ruined not France, but his enemies. Nowadays we pay for our own glory.

And, in those times, the soldiers brought back booty, sacks, epaulettes, cloaks, officers' sashes, watches, etc., etc.! They remembered that General Bonaparte had said to them in 1796: "You need clothes and shoes; the Republic owes you much, she can give you nothing. I am going to lead you into the richest country in the world; there you will find honors, glory, riches!" In fine, I saw at once that we were going to sell glasses of wine at a great rate.

As the sergeant passed I called to him from the distance, "Sergeant!"

He saw me in the crowd, and we shook hands joyfully. "All right, Father Moses! All right!" he said.

Everybody laughed.

Then, without waiting for the end of the procession, I ran to the market to open my shop.