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

Orders had come to take the prisoners to Lützelbourg. On reaching the square, near the chemist Rèbe's shop, I saw them all in their ranks, moving by twos down the road. The inhabitants had closed their shutters, not to witness this humiliation; for Hessian soldiers, with arms shouldered, were escorting them: our poor boys were advancing between them, their heads hanging sorrowfully down.

I stopped at the chemist's corner, and waited, being unable to discern Jacob in the midst of that crowd. All at once I recognized him, and I cried, "Jacob!" He was going to throw himself into my arms; but the Hessians repulsed me. We both burst into tears, and I went on walking by the side of the escort, crying, "Courage! … Write to us… Your mother is not quite well… She could not come… It is not much!"

He answered nothing; and many others who were there had their friends and relations before or behind them.

We wanted to accompany them to Lützelbourg; unhappily, at the gate the Prussians had posted sentinels, who stopped us, pointing their bayonets at us. They would not even allow us to press our children's hands.

On all sides were cries: "Adieu, Jean!" "Adieu, Pierre!" and they replied: "Adieu! Farewell, father!" "Adieu! Farewell, mother!" and then the sighs, the sobs, the tears…

Ah! the Plébiscite, the Plébiscite!

I was compelled to stay there an hour; at last they allowed me to pass. I resumed my way home, my heart rent with anguish. I could see, hear nothing but the cry, "Adieu! Adieu!" of all that crowd; and I thought that men were made to make each other miserable; that it was a pity we were ever born; that for a few days' happiness, acquired by long and painful toil, we had years of endless misery; and that the people of the earth, through their folly, their idleness, their wickedness, their trust in consummate rogues, deserved what they got.

Yes, I could have wished for another deluge: I should have cared less to see the waters rise from the ends of Alsace and cover our mountains, than to be bound under the yoke of the Germans.

In this mood I reached home.

I took care not to tell my wife all that had happened; on the contrary I told her that I had embraced Jacob in my arms for her and for us all; that he was full of spirits, and that he would soon write to us.

CHAPTER XIII

We were now rid of our Landwehr, who were garrisoned at Phalsbourg, but a part of whom were sent off into the interior. They were indignant, and declared that if they had known that they were to be sent farther, the blockade would have lasted longer; that they would have let the cows, the bullocks, and the bread find their way in, many a time, in spite of their chiefs; and that it was infamous to expose them to new dangers when every man had done his part in the campaign.

There was no enthusiasm in them; but, all the same, they marched in step in their ranks, and were moved some on Belfort, some on Paris.

We learned, through the German newspapers, that they had severer sufferings to endure round Belfort than with us; that the garrison made sorties, and drove them several leagues away; that their dead bodies were rotting in heaps, behind the hedges, covered with snow and mud; that the commander, Denfert, gave them many a heavy dig in the ribs; and every day people coming from Alsace told us that such an one of the poor fellows whom we had known had just been struck down by a ball, maimed by a splinter or a shell, or bayoneted by our Mobiles. We could not help pitying them, for they all had five or six children each, of whom they were forever talking; and naturally, for when the parent-bird dies the brood is lost.

And all this for the honor and glory of the King of Prussia, of Bismarck, of Moltke, and a few heroes of the same stamp, not one of whom has had a scratch in the chances of war.

How can one help shrugging one's shoulders and laughing inwardly at seeing these Germans, with all their education, greater fools than ourselves? They have won! That is to say, the survivors; for those who are buried, or who have lost their limbs, have no great gain to boast of, and can hardly rejoice over the success of the enterprise. They have gained – what? The hatred of a people who had loved them; they have gained that they will be obliged to fight every time their lords or masters give the order; they have gained that they can say Alsace and Lorraine are German, which is absolutely no gain whatever; and besides this they have gained the envy of a vast number of people, and the distrust of a vast many more, who will end by agreeing together to fall upon them in a body, and treat them to fire and slaughter and bombardment, of which they have set us the example.

This is what the peasants, the artisans, and the bourgeois have gained: as for the chiefs, they have won some a title, some a pension or an épaulette: others have the satisfaction of saying, "I am the great So-and-So! I am William, Emperor of Germany; a crown was set on my head at Versailles, whilst thousands of my subjects were biting the dust!"

Alas! notwithstanding all this, these people will die, and in a hundred years will be recognized as barbarians; their names will be inscribed on the roll of the plagues of the human race, and there they will remain to the end of time.

But what is the use of reasoning with such philosophers as these? In time they will acknowledge the truth of what I say!

Now to our story again.

They were fighting furiously round Belfort; our men did not drop off asleep in casements; they occupied posts at a distance all round the place: their sortie from Bourcoigne, and their slaughter of the Bavarians at Haute-Perche, were making a great noise in Alsace.

We learned from the Indépendance the battles of Chanzy at Vendôme against the army of Mecklenburg; the fight by General Crémer at Nuits against the army of Von Werder; the retreat of Manteuffel toward Amiens, after having overwhelmed Rouen with forced contributions; the bayonet attack upon the villages around Pont-Noyelles, in which Faidherbe had defeated the enemy; and especially the grand measures of Gambetta, who had at last dissolved the Councils-General named by the Prefects of the Empire, and replaced them by really Republican departmental commissions.

Cousin George highly approved of this step. This was of more importance in his eyes than the decrees of our Prussian Préfet Henckel de Bonnermark; though he had inflicted heavy fines upon the fathers and mothers of the young men who had left home to join the French armies, and had laid Lorraine, already ruined by the invasion, under a contribution of 700,000 livres to compensate the losses suffered by the German mercantile marine; plundering decrees which went nigh to tearing the bread out of our mouths.

Then George passed on to the campaign of Chanzy; for what could be grander than this struggle of a young, inexperienced army, scarcely organized, against forces double their number, commanded by the great Prussian general who had been victorious at Woerth, Sedan, and Metz, over the whole of the Imperial troops?

George especially admired the noble protest of Chanzy, proclaiming to the world the ferocity of the Germans, and pointing out with pride the falsehoods of their generals, who invariably claimed the victory.

"The Commander-in-Chief lays before the army the subjoined protest, which he transmits, under a flag of truce, to the commander of the Prussian troops at Vendôme, with the assurance that his indignation will be shared by all, as well as his desire to take signal revenge for such insults.

"To the Prussian commander at Vendôme:

"I am informed that unjustifiable acts of violence have been committed by troops under your orders upon the unoffending inhabitants of St. Calais. In spite of our humane treatment of your sick and wounded, your officers have exacted money and commanded pillage. Such conduct is an abuse of power, which will weigh heavily upon your consciences, and which the patriotism of our people will enable them to endure; but what I cannot permit is, that you should add to these injuries insults which you know full well to be entirely gratuitous.

"You have asserted that we were defeated; that assertion is false. We have beaten you and held you in check since the 4th of this month. You have presumed to attach the name of coward to men who are prevented from answering you; pretending that they were coerced by the Government of National Defence, which, as you said, compelled them to resist when they wanted peace, and you were offering it. I deny this: I deny it by the right given me by the resistance of entire France and this army which confronts you, and which you have been hitherto unable to vanquish. This communication reaffirms what our resistance ought already to have taught you. Whatever may be the sacrifices still left us to endure, we will struggle to the very end, without truce or pity; since now we are resisting the attacks not of loyal and honorable enemies but of devastating bands who aim solely at the ruin and disgrace of a nation, which itself is striving to maintain its honor, rank, and independence. To the generous treatment we have accorded to your prisoners and wounded, your reply is insolence, fire, and plunder. I therefore protest, with deep indignation, in the name of humanity and the rights of men, which you will trample underfoot.

"The present order will be read before the troops at three consecutive muster-calls.

"CHANZY, Commander-in-Chief, "HEAD-QUARTERS, Le Mans, 26th December, 1870."

These are the words of an honorable man and a patriot, words to make a man lift up his head.

And as Manteuffel, whose only merit consists in having been during his youth the boon companion of the pious William; as this old courtier followed the same system as Frederick Charles and Mecklenburg, of lowering us to raise themselves, and to get their successes cheap; General Faidherbe also obliged him to abate his pride after the affair of Pont-Noyelles.

"The French army have left in the hands of the enemy only a few sailors, surprised in the village of Daours. It has kept its positions, and has waited in vain for the enemy until two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day."

This was plain speaking, and it was clear on which side good faith was to be looked for.

Thus, after having opposed a million of men to 300,000 conscripts, these Germans were even now obliged to lie in order not to discourage their armies.

Of course they could not but prevail in the end: France had had no time to prepare anew, to arm, and to recover herself after this disgraceful capitulation of the honest man and his friend Bazaine; but still she resisted with terrible energy, and the Prussians at last became anxious for peace too, and wished for it, perhaps, even more than ourselves.

The proof of this is the numberless petitions of the Germans entreating King William to bombard Paris.

Humane Germans, fathers of families, pious men, seated quietly by their counters at Hamburg, Cologne, or Berlin, in every town and village of Germany, eating and drinking heartily, warming their fat legs before the fire during this winter of unexampled severity, cried to their king at Christmas time to bombard Paris, and set fire to the houses – to kill and burn fathers and mothers of families like themselves, but reduced to famine in their own dwellings!

Have any but the Germans ever done the like?

We too have besieged German towns, but never have petitions been sent up like this under the Republic, or under the Empire, to ask our soldiers to do more injury than war between brave men requires. And since that period we have never uselessly shelled houses inhabited by inoffensive persons; and even when we have had to bombard walled towns, warning was given, as at Odessa and everywhere else, to give helpless people time to depart for the interior, if they did not want to run the risk of meeting with stray bullets; and permission was given to old men, women, and children to come out – a privilege never granted by the Prussians.

Ah! the French may not be so pious, so learned, and so good as the good German people, but they have better hearts and feelings of compassion; they have less of the Gospel upon their lips, but they have it in the bottoms of their souls. They are not hypocrites, and therefore we Alsacians and Lorrainers had rather remain French than belong to the good German people, and be like them.

Indignities without a precedent have been committed by them: "Shell – bombard – burn, in the name of Heaven! Set fire everywhere with petroleum bombs! – You are too gracious a king! – Your scruples betray too much weakness for this Babylon: Bombard quick: Bombardments have succeeded better than anything else. Sire, your good and faithful people entreat you to bombard everything – leave nothing standing!"

Oh! scoundrels! – rascals! – if you have so often played the saint for fifty years; if you have talked so edifyingly about friendship, brotherhood, and the alliance of nations, it was because you did not then think yourselves the strongest; now that you think you are, you piously bombard women, old men, and children, in the name of the Saviour! Faugh! it is simply disgusting!

Every time that Cousin George read these assassins' petitions, he would spring off his chair and cry: "Now I know what to think of fanatics of every religion. These men have no need to play the hypocrite: their religion does not oblige them to it. Well, they play the Jesuit for the love of it, better than we do by profession. May they be execrated and despised perpetually."

Then he dilated with much warmth of feeling upon the kind reception which the Parisians, in former days, used to accord to the Germans, for forty years and more. Men who came to seek a livelihood among us, without a penny, lean, humble, half-clad, with a little bundle of old rags under their arms, asking for credit, even in George's and Marie Anne's little inn, for a basin of broth, a bit of meat, and a glass of wine, were kindly received; they were cheered up, and situations found for them: everybody was anxious to put them in the right way, to explain to them what they did not know. Soon they grew fat and flourishing, and gained assurance; by servility they would win the confidence of the head-clerk, who showed them all about the business; and then some fine morning it was noised about that the head-clerk was discharged and the German was in his place. He had had a private interview with the head partner, and had proposed to do the work for half the salary. Of course the partners are always glad to have good workmen, humble and obsequious, and, above all, cheap. George had witnessed this fifty times.

But people did not get angry; they would say,

"The poor fellow must earn a living somehow. The other is a Frenchman: he will very soon secure another place."

And it was thus that the Germans slipped quietly into the shoes of those who had received them kindly and taught them their trade.

A few old clerks used to get angry; but they were always held to be in the wrong. "That good German" was justified! He had not meddled; everything had gone on simply and naturally.