The Plébiscite; or, A Miller's Story of the War. Erckmann-Chatrian
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for war.
Well, this was the commencement of our calamities; and; for my part, I find that this did not present a cheerful prospect. No! After having endured such miseries, it is not pleasant to remember that we owe them all to M. Emile Ollivier, to Monsieur Leboeuf, to Monsieur Bonaparte, and to other men of that stamp, who are living at this moment comfortably in their country-houses in Italy, in Switzerland, in England; whilst so many unhappy creatures have had their lives sacrificed, or have been utterly ruined; have lost father, children, and friends: but we Alsacians and Lorrainers have lost more than all – our own mother-country.
CHAPTER IV
The day following this declaration, Cousin George, who could never look upon anything cheerfully, started for Belfort. He had ordered some wine at Dijon, and he wished to stop it from coming. It was the 22d July. George only returned five days later, on the 27th, having had the greatest difficulty in getting there in time.
During these five days I had a hard time. Orders were coming every hour to hurry on the reserves and the Gardes Mobiles, and to cancel renewable furloughs; the gendarmerie had no rest. The Government gazette was telling us of the enthusiasm of the nation for the war. It was pitiable; can you imagine young men sitting quietly at home, thinking: "In five or six months I shall be exempt from service, I may marry, settle, earn money," all at once, without either rhyme or reason, becoming enthusiastic to go and knock over men they know nothing of, and to risk their own bones against them. Is there a shadow of good sense in such notions?
And the Germans! Will any one persuade us that they were coming for their own pleasure – all these thousands of workmen, tradesmen, manufacturers, good citizens, who were living in peace in their towns and their villages? Will any one maintain that they came and drew up in lines facing our guns for their private satisfaction, with an officer behind them, pistol in hand, to shoot them in the back if they gave way? Do you suppose they found any amusement in that? Come now, was not his excellency Monsieur Ollivier the only man who went into war, as he himself said, "with a light heart?" He was safe to come back, he was: he had not much to fear; he is quite well; he made a fortune in a very short time! But the lads of our neighborhood, Mathias Heitz, Jean Baptiste Werner, my son Jacob, and hundreds of others, were in no such hurry: they would much rather have stayed in their villages.
Later on it was another matter, when you were fighting for your country; then, of course, many went off as a matter of duty, without being summoned, whilst Monsieur Ollivier and his friends were hiding, God knows where! But at that particular moment when all our misfortunes might have been averted, it is a falsehood to say that we went enthusiastically to have ourselves cut to pieces for a pack of intriguers and stage-players, whom we were just beginning to find out.
When we saw our son Jacob, in his blouse, his bundle under his arm, come into the mill, saying, "Now, father, I am going; you must not forget to pull up the dam in half an hour, for the water will be up: " when he said this to me, I tell you my heart trembled; the cries of his mother in the room behind made my hair stand on end. I could have wished to say a few words, to cheer up the lad, but my tongue refused to move; and if I had held his excellency, M. Ollivier, or his respected master, by the throat in a corner, they would have made a queer figure: I should have strangled them in a moment! At last Jacob went.
All the young men of Sarrebourg, of Château Salins, and our neighborhood, fifteen or sixteen hundred in number, were at Phalsbourg to relieve the 84th, who at any moment might expect to be called away, and who were complaining of their colonel for not claiming the foremost rank for his regiment. The officers were afraid of arriving too late; they wanted promotion, crosses, medals: fighting was their trade.
What I have said about enthusiasm is true; it is equally true of the Germans and the French; they had no desire to exterminate one another. Bismarck and our honest man alone are responsible: at their door lies all the blood that has been shed.
Cousin George returned from Belfort on the 27th, in the evening. I fancy I still see him entering our room at nightfall; Grédel had returned to us the day before, and we were at supper, with the tin lamp upon the table; from my place, on the right, near the window, I was able to watch the mill-dam. George arrived.
"Ah! cousin, here you are back again! Did you get on all right?"
"Yes, I have nothing to complain of," said he, taking a chair. "I arrived just in time to countermand my order; but it was only by good luck. What confusion all the way from Belfort to Strasbourg! the troops, the recruits, the guns, the horses, the munitions of war, the barrels of biscuits, all are arriving at the railway in heaps. You would not know the country. Orders are asked for everywhere. The telegraph-wires are no longer for private use. The commissaries don't know where to find their stores, colonels are looking for their regiments, generals for their brigades and divisions. They are seeking for salt, sugar, coffee, bacon, meat, saddles and bridles – and they are getting charts of the Baltic for a campaign in the Vosges! Oh!" cried my cousin, uplifting his hands, "is it possible? Have we come to that – we! we! Now it will be seen how expensive a thing is a government of thieves! I warn you, Christian, it will be a failure! Perhaps there will not even be found rifles in the arsenals, after the hundreds of millions voted to get rifles. You will see; you will see!"
He had begun to stride to and fro excitedly, and we, sitting on our chairs, were looking at him open-mouthed, staring first right and then left. His anger rose higher and higher, and he said, "Such is the genius of our honest man, he conducts everything: he is our commander-in-chief! A retired artillery captain, with whom I travelled from Schlestadt to Strasbourg, told me that in consequence of the bad organization of our forces, we should be unable to place more than two hundred and fifty thousand men in line along our frontier from Luxembourg to Switzerland; and that the Germans, with their superior and long-prepared organization, could oppose to us, in eight days, a force of five to six hundred thousand men; so that they will be more than two to one at the outset, and they will crush us in spite of the valor of our soldiers. This old officer, full of good sense, and who has travelled in Germany, told me, besides, that the artillery of the Prussians carries farther and is worked more rapidly than ours; which would enable the Germans to dismount our batteries and our mitrailleuses without getting any harm themselves. It seems that our great man never thought of that."
Then George began to laugh, and, as we said nothing, he went on: "And the enemy – the Prussians, Bavarians, Badeners, Wurtembergers, the Courrier du Bas-Rhin declares that they are coming by regiments and divisions from Frankfort and Munich to Rastadt, with guns, munitions, and provisions in abundance; that all the country swarms with them, from Karlsruhe to Baden; that they have blown up the bridge of Kehl, to prevent us from outflanking them; that we have not troops enough at Wissembourg. But what is the use of complaining? Our commander-in-chief knows better than the Courrier du Bas-Rhin; he is an iron-clad fellow, who takes no advice: a man must have some courage to offer him advice!"
And all at once, stopping short, "Christian," he said, "I have come to give you a little advice."
"What?"
"Hide all the money you have got; for, from what I have seen down there, in a few days the enemy will be in Alsace."
Imagine my astonishment at hearing these words. George was not the man to joke about serious matters, nor was he a timid man: on the contrary, you would have to go far to find a braver man. Therefore, fancy my wife's and Grédel's alarm.
"What, George," said I, "do you think that possible?"
"Listen to me," said he. "When on the one side you see nothing but empty beings, without education, without judgment, prudence, or method; and on the other, men who for fifty years have been preparing a mortal blow – anything is possible. Yes, I believe it; in a fortnight the Germans will be in Alsace. Our mountains will check them; the fortresses of Bitche, of Petite Pierre, of Phalsbourg and Lichtenberg; the abatis, and the intrenchments which will be formed in the passes; the ambuscades of every kind which will be set, the bridges and the railway tunnels that they will blow up – all this will prevent them from going farther for three or four months until winter; but, in the meantime, they will send this way reconnoitring parties – Uhlans, hussars, brigands of every kind – who will snap up everything, pillage everywhere – wheat, flour, hay, straw, bacon, cattle, and principally money. War will be made