1.C.1.19. THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT
LET us return— it is a necessity in this book— to that fatal
battle-field.
On the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored
Blucher's ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives,
delivered up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian
cavalry, and aided the massacre. Such tragic favors of the
night do occur sometimes during catastrophes.
After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of
Mont-Saint-Jean remained deserted.
The English occupied the encampment of the French; it is
the usual sign of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished.
They established their bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians,
let loose on the retreating rout, pushed forward. Wellington
went to the village of Waterloo to draw up his report to
Lord Bathurst.
If ever the sic vos non vobis was applicable, it certainly is
to that village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay
half a league from the scene of action. Mont-Saint-Jean was
cannonaded, Hougomont was burned, La Haie-Sainte was taken
by assault, Papelotte was burned, Plancenoit was burned, La
Belle-Alliance beheld the embrace of the two conquerors; these
names are hardly known, and Waterloo, which worked not in
the battle, bears off all the honor.
We are not of the number of those who flatter war; when
the occasion presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War
has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has
also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most
surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead
after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always
rises on naked corpses.
Who does this? Who thus soils the triumph? What hideous,
furtive hand is that which is slipped into the pocket of
victory? What pickpockets are they who ply their trade in
the rear of glory? Some philosophers— Voltaire among the
number— affirm that it is precisely those persons have made the
glory. It is the same men, they say; there is no relief corps;
those who are erect pillage those who are prone on the earth.
The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. One has
assuredly the right, after all, to strip a corpse a bit when one
is the author of that corpse. For our own part, we do not
think so; it seems to us impossible that the same hand should
pluck laurels and purloin the shoes from a dead man.
One thing is certain, which is, that generally after conquerors
follow thieves. But let us leave the soldier, especially the
contemporary soldier, out of the question.
Every army has a rear-guard, and it is that which must be
blamed. Bat-like creatures, half brigands and lackeys; all the
sorts of vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders;
wearers of uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended
invalids; formidable limpers; interloping sutlers, trotting
along in little carts, sometimes accompanied by their
wives, and stealing things which they sell again; beggars
offering themselves as guides to officers; soldiers' servants;
marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,— we are
not speaking of the present,— dragged all this behind them, so
that in the special language they are called "stragglers." No
army, no nation, was responsible for those beings; they spoke
Italian and followed the Germans, then spoke French and followed
the English. It was by one of these wretches, a Spanish
straggler who spoke French, that the Marquis of Fervacques,
deceived by his Picard jargon, and taking him for one of our
own men, was traitorously slain and robbed on the battle-field
itself, in the course of the night which followed the victory of
Cerisoles. The rascal sprang from this marauding. The detestable
maxim, Live on the enemy! produced this leprosy,
which a strict discipline alone could heal. There are reputations
which are deceptive; one does not always know why certain
generals, great in other directions, have been so popular.
Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated pillage;
evil permitted constitutes part of goodness. Turenne
was so good that he allowed the Palatinate to be delivered
over to fire and blood. The marauders in the train of an
army were more or less in number, according as the chief was
more or less severe. Hoche and Marceau had no stragglers;
Wellington had few, and we do him the justice to mention it.
Nevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of
June, the dead were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave
orders that any one caught in the act should be shot; but
rapine is tenacious. The marauders stole in one corner of the
battlefield while others were being shot in another.
The moon was sinister over this plain.
Towards midnight, a man was prowling about, or rather,
climbing in the direction of the hollow road of Ohain. To all
appearance he was one of those whom we have just described,
— neither English nor French, neither peasant nor soldier,
less a man than a ghoul attracted by the scent of the dead
bodies having theft for his victory, and come to rifle Waterloo.
He was clad in a blouse that was something like a great
coat; he was uneasy and audacious; he walked forwards and
gazed behind him. Who was this man? The night probably
knew more of him than the day. He had no sack, but evidently
he had large pockets under his coat. From time to
time he halted, scrutinized the plain around him as though
to see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed
something silent and motionless on the ground, then rose
and fled. His sliding motion, his attitudes, his mysterious
and rapid gestures, caused him to resemble those twilight
larvae which haunt ruins, and which ancient Norman legends
call the Alleurs.
Certain nocturnal wading birds produce these silhouettes
among the marshes.
A glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have
perceived at some distance a sort of little sutler's wagon with
a fluted wicker hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was
cropping the grass across its bit as it halted, hidden, as it
were, behind the hovel which adjoins the highway to Nivelles,
at the angle of the road from Mont-Saint-Jean to Braine
l'Alleud; and in the wagon, a sort of woman seated on coffers
and packages. Perhaps there was some connection between
that wagon and that prowler.
The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What
matters it if the earth be red! the moon remains white;
these are the indifferences of the sky. In the fields, branches
of trees broken by grape-shot, but not fallen, upheld by their
bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night. A breath, almost
a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which resembled
the departure of souls ran through the grass.
In the distance the coming and going of patrols and the
general rounds of the English camp were audible.
Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, forming,
one in the west, the other in the east, two great flames
which were joined by the cordon of bivouac fires of the
English, like a necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at the
extremities, as they extended in an immense semicircle over
the hills along the horizon.
We have described the catastrophe of the road of Ohain.
The heart is terrified at the thought of what that death must
have been to so many brave men.
If there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which
surpasses dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun; to be in
full possession of virile force; to possess health and joy; to
laugh valiantly; to rush towards a glory which one sees
dazzling in front of one; to feel in one's breast lungs which
breathe, a heart which beats, a will which reasons; to speak,
think, hope, love; to have a mother, to have a wife, to have
children; to have the light— and all at once, in the space of a
shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss; to fall,
to roll, to crush, to be crushed; to see ears of wheat, flowers,
leaves, branches; not to be able to catch hold of anything; to
feel one's sword useless, men beneath one, horses on top of
one; to struggle in vain, since one's bones have been broken
by some kick in the darkness; to feel a heel which makes one's
eyes start from their sockets; to bite horses' shoes in one's
rage; to stifle, to yell, to writhe; to be beneath, and to say to
one's self, "But just a little while ago I was a living
man!"
There, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death-rattle,
all was silence now. The edges of the hollow road
were encumbered with horses and riders, inextricably heaped
up. Terrible entanglement! There was no longer any slope,
for the corpses had levelled the road with the plain, and
reached the brim like a well-filled bushel of barley. A heap
of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower
part— such was that road on the evening of the 18th of June,
1815. The blood ran even to the Nivelles highway, and there
overflowed in a large pool in front of the abatis of trees which
barred the way, at a spot which is still pointed out.
It will be remembered that it was at the opposite point,
in the direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of
the cuirassiers had taken place. The thickness of the layer of
bodies was proportioned to the depth of the hollow road.
Towards the middle, at the point where it became level, where
Delort's division had passed, the layer of corpses was thinner.
The nocturnal prowler whom we have just shown to the
reader was going in that direction. He was searching that
vast tomb. He gazed about. He passed the dead in some
sort of hideous review. He walked with his feet in the blood.
All at once he paused.
A few paces in front of him, in the hollow road, at the point
where the pile of dead came to an end, an open hand, illumined
by the moon, projected from beneath that heap of men.
That hand had on its finger something sparkling, which was
a ring of gold.
The man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a
moment, and when he rose there was no longer a ring on the
hand.
He did not precisely rise; he remained in a stooping and
frightened attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead,
scanning the horizon on his knees, with the whole upper
portion of his body supported on his two forefingers, which
rested on the earth, and his head peering above the edge of
the hollow road. The jackal's four paws suit some actions.
Then coming to a decision, he rose to his feet.
At that moment, he gave a terrible start. He felt some one
clutch him from behind.
He wheeled round; it was the open hand, which had closed,
and had seized the skirt of his coat.
An honest man would have been terrified; this man burst
into a laugh.
"Come," said he, "it's only a dead body. I prefer a spook
to a gendarme."
But the hand weakened and released him. Effort is quickly
exhausted in the grave.
"Well now," said the prowler, "is that dead fellow alive?
Let's see."
He bent down again, fumbled among the heap, pushed aside
everything that was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the
arm, freed the head, pulled out the body, and a few moments
later he was dragging the lifeless, or at least the unconscious,
man, through the shadows of hollow road. He was a cuirassier,
an officer, and even an officer of considerable rank; a
large gold epaulette peeped from beneath the cuirass; this
officer no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut had
scarred his face, where nothing was discernible but blood.
However, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and,
by some happy chance, if that word is permissible here, the
dead had been vaulted above him in such a manner as to
preserve him from being crushed. His eyes were still closed.
On his cuirass he wore the silver cross of the Legion of
Honor.
The prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one
of the gulfs which he had beneath his great coat.
Then he felt of the officer's fob, discovered a watch there,
and took possession of it. Next he searched his waistcoat,
found a purse and pocketed it.
When he had arrived at this stage of succor which he was
administering to this dying man, the officer opened his eyes.
"Thanks," he said feebly.
The abruptness of the movements of the man who was
manipulating him, the freshness of the night, the air which
he could inhale freely, had roused him from his lethargy.
The prowler made no reply. He raised his head. A sound
of footsteps was audible in the plain; some patrol was probably
approaching.
The officer murmured, for the death agony was still in his
voice:—
"Who won the battle?"
"The English," answered the prowler.
The officer went on:—
"Look in my pockets; you will find a watch and a purse.
Take them."
It was already done.
The prowler executed the required feint, and said:—
"There is nothing there."
"I have been robbed," said the officer; "I am sorry for
that. You should have had them."
The steps of the patrol became more and more distinct.
"Some one is coming," said the prowler, with the movement
of a man who is taking his departure.
The officer raised his arm feebly, and detained him.
"You have saved my life. Who are you?"
The prowler answered rapidly, and in a low voice:—
"Like yourself, I belonged to the French army. I must
leave you. If they were to catch me, they would shoot me. I
have saved your life. Now get out of the scrape yourself."
"What is your rank?"
"Sergeant."
"What is your name?"
"Thenardier."
"I shall not forget that name," said the officer; "and do
you remember mine. My name is Pontmercy."