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

Toward evening, by five o'clock, we had only gone about three leagues from Droulingen, when, instead of continuing on their way, the commander gave the battalion orders to turn out of it into a parish road on the left. Whether it was to avoid the lodgings by the way, which were all exhausted, or for some other reason, I cannot say.

Seeing this, I ran to the commanding officer in the greatest distress.

"But in the name of heaven, captain," said I, "are you not going on to Sarreguemines? We are fathers of families; we have wives and children! You promised that at Sarreguemines we might unload and return home."

George was coming, too, to complain; but he had not yet reached us, when the commander, from on horseback, roared at us with a voice of rage: "Will you return to your carts, or I will have you beaten till all is blue? Will you make haste back?"

Then we returned to take hold of our bridles, with our heads hanging down. Three hours after, at nightfall, we came into a miserable village, full of small crosses along the road, and where the people had nothing to give us; for famine had overtaken them.

We had scarcely halted, when a convoy of bread, meat, and wine arrived, escorted by a few hussars. No doubt it came from Alberstoff. Every soldier received his ration, but we got not so much as an onion: not a crust of bread – nothing – nor our horses either.

That night George and I alone rested under the shelter of a deserted smithy, while the Prussians were asleep in every hut and in the barns, and the sentinels paced their rounds about our carts, with their muskets shouldered; we began to deliberate what we ought to do.

George, who already foreboded the miseries which were awaiting us, would have started that moment, leaving both horses and carts; but I could not entertain such an idea as that. Give up my pair of beautiful dappled gray horses, which I had bred and reared in my own orchard at the back of the mill! It was impossible.

"Listen to me," said George. "Remember the Alsacians who have been passing by us the last fortnight: they look as if they had come out of their graves; they had never received the smallest ration: they would have been carried even to Paris if they had not run away. You see that these Germans have no bowels. They are possessed with a bitter hatred against the French, which makes them as hard as iron; they have been incited against us at their schools; they would like to exterminate us to the last man. Let us expect nothing of them; that will be the safest. I have only six francs in my pocket; what have you?"

"Eight livres and ten sous."

"With that, Christian, we cannot go far. The nearer we get to Metz, the worse ruin we shall find the country in. If we were but able to write home, and ask for a little money! but you see they have sentinels on every road, at all the lane ends: they allow neither foot-passengers, nor letters, nor news to pass. Believe me, let us try to escape."

All these good arguments were useless. I thought that, with a little patience, perhaps at the next village, other horses and other carriages might be found to requisition, and that we might be allowed quietly to return home. That would have been natural and proper; and so in any country in the world they would have done.

George, seeing that he was unable to shake my resolution, lay down upon a bench and went to sleep. I could not shut my eyes.

Next day, at six o'clock, we had to resume the march; the Silesians well-refreshed, we with empty stomachs.

We were moving in the direction of Gros Tenquin. The farther we advanced, the less I knew of the country. It was the country around Metz, le pays Messin, an old French district, and our misery increased at every stage. The Prussians continued to receive whatever they required, and took no further trouble with us than merely preventing us from leaving their company: they treated us like beasts of burden; and, in spite of all our economy, our money was wasting away.

Never was so sad a position as ours; for, on the fourth or fifth day, the officer, guessing from our appearance that we were meditating flight, quite unceremoniously said in our presence to the sentinels: "If those people stir out of the road, fire upon them."

We met many others in a similar position to ours, in the midst of these squadrons and these regiments, which were continually crossing each other and were covering the roads. At the sight of each other, we felt as if we could burst into tears.

George always kept up his spirits, and even from time to time he assumed an air of gayety, asking a light of the soldiers to light his pipe, and singing sea-songs, which made the Prussian officers laugh. They said: "This fellow is a real Frenchman: he sees things in a bright light."

I could not understand that at all: no, indeed! I said to myself that my cousin was losing his senses.

What grieved me still more was to see my fine horses perishing – my poor horses, so sleek, so spirited, so steady; the best horses in the commune, and which I had reared with so much satisfaction. Oh, how deplorable! … Passing along the hedges, by the roadside, I pulled here and there handfuls of grass, to give them a taste of something green, and in a moment they would stare at it, toss up their heads, and devour this poor stuff. The poor brutes could be seen wasting away, and this pained me more than anything.

Then the thoughts of my wife and Grédel, and their uneasiness, what they were doing, what was becoming of the mill and our village – what the people would say when they knew that their mayor was gone, and then the town, and Jacob – everything overwhelmed me, and made my heart sink within me.

But the worst of all, and what I shall never forget, was in the neighborhood of Metz.

For a fortnight or three weeks there had been no more fighting; the city and Bazaine's army were surrounded by huge earthworks, which the Prussians had armed with guns. We could see that afar off, following the road on our right. We could see many places, too, where the soil had been recently turned over; and George said they were pits, in which hundreds of dead lay buried. A few burnt and bombarded villages, farms, and castles in ruins, were also seen in the neighborhood. There was no more fighting; but there was a talk of francs-tireurs, and the Silesians looked uncomfortable.

At last, on the tenth day since our departure, after having crossed and recrossed the country in all directions, we arrived about three o'clock at a large village on the Moselle, when the battalion came to a halt. Several detachments from our battalion had filled up the gaps in other battalions, so that there remained with us only the third part of the men who had come from Droulingen.

After the distribution of provender, seeing that the officers' horses had been fed, and that they were putting their bridles on, I just went and picked up a few handfuls of hay and straw which were lying on the ground, to give to mine. I had collected a small bundle, when a corporal on guard in the neighborhood, having noticed what I was doing, came and seized me by the whiskers, shaking me, and striking me on the face.

"Ah! you greedy old miser! Is that the way you feed your beasts?"

I was beside myself with rage, and had already lifted my whip-handle to send the rascal sprawling on the earth, when Cousin George precipitated himself between us, crying: "Christian! what are you dreaming of?"

He wrested the whip from me, and whilst I was quivering in every limb, he began to excuse me to the dirty Prussian; saying that I had acted hastily, that I had thought the hay was to be left, that it ought to be considered that our horses too followed the battalion, etc.

The fellow listened, drawn up like a gendarme, and said: "Well, then, I will pass it over this time; but if he begins his tricks again, it will be quite another thing."

Then I went into the stable and stretched myself in the empty rack, my hat drawn over my face, without stirring for a couple of hours.

The battalion was going to march again. George was looking for me everywhere. At last he found me. I rose, came out, and the sight of all these soldiers dressed in line, with their rifles and their helmets, made my blood run cold: I wished for death.

George spoke not a word, and we moved forward; but from that moment I had resolved upon flight, at any price, abandoning everything.

The same evening, an extraordinary event happened; we received a little straw! We lay in the open air, under our carts, because the village at which we had just arrived was full of troops. I had only twelve sous left, and George but twenty or thirty. He went to buy a little bread and eau-de-vie in a public-house; we dipped our bread in it, and in this way we were just able to sustain life.

Every time the corporal passed, who had laid his hand upon me, my knife moved of its own accord in my pocket, and I said to myself: "Shall an Alsacian, an old Alsacian, endure this affront without revenge? Shall it be said that Alsacians allow themselves to be knocked about by such spawn as these fellows, whom we have thrashed a hundred times in days gone by, and who used to run away from us like hares?"

George, who could see by my countenance what I was thinking of, said: "Christian! Listen to me. Don't get angry. Set down these blows to the account of the Plébiscite, like the bonds for bread, flour, hay, meat, and the rest. It was you who voted all that: the Germans are not the causes! They are brute beasts, so used to have their faces slapped, that they catch every opportunity to give others the like, when there is no danger, and when they are ten to one. These slaps don't produce the same effect on them as on us; they are felt only on the surface, no farther! So comfort yourself; this monstrous beast never thought he was inflicting any disgrace upon you: he took you for one of his own sort."

But, instead of pacifying me, George only made me the more indignant; especially when he told me that the Germans, talking together, had told how Queen Augusta of Prussia had just sent her own cook to the Emperor Napoleon to cook nice little dishes for him, and her own band to play agreeable music under his balcony!

I had had enough! I lay under our cart, and all that night I had none but bad dreams.

We had always hoped that, on coming near a railway, the remains of the battalion would get in, and that we should be sent home; unhappily our men were intended to fill up gaps in other battalions: companies were detached right and left, but there were always enough left to want our conveyances, and to prevent us from setting off home.

We had not had clean shirts for a fortnight; we had not once taken off our shoes, knowing that we should have too much difficulty in getting them on again; we had been wetted through with rain and dried by the sun five and twenty times; we had suffered all the misery and wretchedness of hunger, we were reduced to scarecrows by weariness and suffering; but neither cousin nor I suffered from dysentery like those Germans; the poorest nourishment still sustained us; but the bacon, the fresh meat, the fruits, the raw vegetables, devoured by these creatures without the least discretion, worked upon them dreadfully: no experience could teach them wisdom; their natural voracity made them devoid of all prudence.

As a climax to our miseries, the officers of our battalion were talking of marching on Paris.

The Prussians knew a month beforehand that Bazaine would never come out of his camp, and that he would finally surrender after he had consumed all the provisions in Metz; they said this openly, and looked upon Marshal Bazaine as our best general: they praised and exalted him for his splendid campaign. The only fault they could find was, that he had not shut himself up sooner; because then things would have been settled much earlier. They complained, too, of our Emperor, and affirmed that the best thing we could do would be to set him on his throne again.

George and I heard these things repeated a hundred times at the inns and public-houses where we halted. The French innkeepers made us sit behind the stove, and for pity, passed us sometimes the leavings of the soup; but for this, we should have perished of hunger. They asked us in whispers what the Germans were saying, and when we repeated their sayings, the poor people said to us: "Really, how fond the Prussians are of us! Certainly they do owe some comfort to the men who have surrendered! Every brave deed deserves to be rewarded."

One of the Lorraine innkeepers said this to us; he was also the first to tell us that Gambetta, having escaped from Paris in a balloon, was now at Tours with Glais-Bizoin and several others, to raise a powerful army behind the Loire. In these parts they got the Belgian papers, and whenever we heard a bit of good news it screwed up our courage a little.

Quantities of provisions and stores were passing: immense flocks of sheep and herds of oxen, cases of sausages, barrels of bread, wine, and flour; sometimes regiments also. The trains for the East were carrying wounded in heaps, stretched one over another in the carriages upon mattresses, their pale faces seeking fresh air and coolness at all the windows. German doctors with the red cross upon their arms were accompanying them, and in every village there were ambulances.

The heavy rains and the first frosts had come. A thousand rumors were afloat of great battles under the walls of Paris. The Prussians were especially wroth with Gambetta: "that Gambetta! the bandit!" as they called him, who was preventing them from having peace and bringing back Napoleon. Never have I seen men so enraged with an enemy because he would not surrender. The officers and soldiers talked of nothing else.

"That Gambetta," said they, "is the cause of all our trouble. His francs-tireurs deserve to be strung up. But for him, peace would be made. We should already have got Alsace and Lorraine; and the Emperor Napoleon, at the head of the army of Metz, would have been on his way to restore order at Paris."

At every convoy of wounded their indignation mounted higher. They thought it perfectly natural and proper that they should set fire to us, devastate our country, plunder and shoot us; but for us to defend ourselves, was infamous!

Is it possible to imagine a baser hypocrisy? For they did not think what they were saying; they wanted to make us believe that our cause was a bad one; yet how could there be a holier and a more glorious one?

Of course every Frenchman, from the oldest to the youngest – and principally the women – prayed for Gambetta's success, and more than once tears of emotion dropped at the thought that, perhaps, he might save us. Crowds of young men left the country to join him, and then the Prussians burdened their parents with a war contribution of fifty francs a day. They were ruining them; and yet this did not prevent others from following in numerous bands.

The Prussians threatened with the galleys whosoever should connive at the flight, as they called it, of these volunteers, whether by giving them money, or supplying them with guides, or by any other means. Violence, cruelty, falsehood – all sorts of means seemed good to the Germans to reduce us to submission; but arms were the least resorted to of all these means, because they did not wish to lose men, and in fighting they might have done so.

We had stopped three days at the village of Jametz, in the direction of Montmédy. It was in the latter part of October; the rain was pouring; George and I had been received by an old Lorraine woman, tall and spare, Mother Marie-Jeanne, whose son was serving in Metz. She had a small cottage by the roadside, with a little loft above which you reached by a ladder, and a small garden behind, entirely ravaged. A few ropes of onions, a few peas and beans in a basket, were all her provisions. She concealed nothing; and whenever a Prussian came in to ask for anything she feigned deafness and answered nothing. Her misery, her broken windows, her dilapidated walls and the little cupboard left wide open, soon induced these greedy gluttons to go somewhere else, supposing there was nothing for them there.

This poor woman had observed our wretched plight; she had invited us in, asking us where we were from, and we had told her of our misfortunes. She herself had told us that there remained a few bundles of hay in the loft and that we might take them, as she had no need for them; the Germans having eaten her cow.

We climbed up there to sleep by night and drew up the ladder after us, listening to the rain plashing on the roof and running off the tiles.

George had but ten sous left and I had nothing, when, on the third day, as we were lying in the hayloft, about two in the morning, the bugle sounded. Something had happened: an order had come – I don't know what.

We listened attentively. There were hurrying footsteps; the butts of the muskets were rattling on the pavement: they were assembling, falling in, and in all directions were cries:

"The drivers! the drivers! where are they?"

The commander was swearing: he shouted furiously,

"Fetch them here! find them! shoot the vagabonds."

We did not stir a finger.

Suddenly the door burst open. The Prussians demanded in German and in French: "Where are the drivers – those Alsacian drivers?"

The aged dame answered not a word; she shook her head, and looked as deaf as a post, just as usual. At last, out they rushed again. The rascals had indeed seen the trap-door in the ceiling, but it seems they were in a hurry and could not find a ladder without losing time. At last, whether they saw it or not, presently we heard the tramping of the men in the mud, the cracking of the whips, the rolling of the carts, and then all was silent.

The battalion had disappeared.

Then only, after they had left half an hour, the kind old woman below began to call us. "You can come down," she said; "they are gone now."

And we came down.

The poor woman said, laughing heartily, "Now you are safe! Only you must lose no time; there might come an order to catch you. There, eat that."

She took out of the cupboard a large basin full of soup made of beans – for she used to cook enough for three or four days at a time – and warmed it over the fire.

"Eat it all; never mind me! I have got more beans left."

There was no need for pressing, and in a couple of minutes the basin was empty.

The good woman looked on with pleasure, and George said to her: "We have not had such a meal for a week."

"So much the better! I am glad to have done you any service! And now go. I wish I could give you some money; but I have none."

"You have saved our lives," I said. "God grant you may see your son again. But I have another request to make before we go."

"What is it, then?"

"Leave to give you a kiss."

"Ah, gladly, my poor Alsacians, with all my heart! I am not pretty as I used to be; but it is all the same."

And we kissed her as we would a mother.

When we went to the door, the daylight was breaking.

"Before you lies the road to Dun-sur-Meuse," she said, "don't take that; that is the road the Prussians have taken: no doubt the commander has given a description of you in the next village. But here is the road to Metz by Damvillers and Etain; follow that. If you are stopped say that your horses were worked to death, and you were released."

This poor old woman was full of good sense. We pressed her hand again, with tears in our eyes, and then we set off, following the road she had pointed out to us.

I should be very much puzzled now to tell you all the villages we passed between Jametz and Rothalp. All that country between Metz, Montmédy and Verdun was swarming with cavalry and infantry, living at the expense of the people, and keeping them, as it were, in a net, to eat them as they were wanted. The troops of the line, and especially the gunners, kept around the fortresses; the rest, the Landwehr in masses, occupied even the smallest hamlets and made requisitions everywhere.

In one little village between Jametz and Damvillers, we heard on our right a sharp rattle of musketry along a road, and George said to me: "Behind there our battalion is engaged. All I hope is that the brave commander who talked of shooting us may get a ball through him, and your corporal too."

The village people standing at their doors said, "It is the francs-tireurs!"

And joy broke out in every countenance, especially when an old man ran up from the path by the cemetery, crying: "Two carriages, full of wounded, are coming – two large Alsacian wagons; they are escorted by hussars."

We had just stopped at a grocer's shop in the market square, and were asking the woman who kept this little shop if there was no watchmaker in the place – for my cousin wished to sell his watch, which he had hidden beneath his shirt, since we had left Droulingen – and the woman was coming down the steps to point out the spot, when the old man began to cry, "Here come the Alsacian carts!"

Immediately, without waiting for more, we set off at a run to the other end of the village; but near to a little river, whose name I cannot remember, just over a clump of pollard willows, we caught the glitter of a couple of helmets, and this made us take a path along the river-side, which was then running over in consequence of the heavy rains. We went on thus a considerable distance, having sometimes the water up to our knees.

In about half an hour we were getting out of these reed beds, and had just caught sight, above the hill on our left, of the steeple of another village, when a cry of "Wer da!"7 stopped us short, near a deserted hut two or three hundred paces from the first house. At the same moment a Landwehr started out of the empty house, his rifle pointed at us; and his finger on the trigger.

George seeing no means of escape, answered, "Guter freund!"8

"Stand there," cried the German: "don't stir, or I fire."

We were, of course, obliged to stop, and only ten minutes afterward, a picket coming out of the village to relieve the sentinel, carried us off like vagrants to the mayoralty-house. There the captain of the Landwehr questioned us at great length as to who we were, whence we came, the cause of our departure, and why we had no passes.

We repeated that our horses were dead of overwork, and that we had been told to return home; but he refused to believe us. At last, however, as George was asking him for money to pursue our journey, he began to exclaim: "To the – with you, scoundrels! Am I to furnish you with provisions and rations! Go; and mind you don't come this way again, or it will be worse for you!"

We went out very well satisfied.

At the bottom of the stairs, George was thinking of going up again to ask for a pass; but I was so alarmed lest this captain should change his mind, that I obliged my cousin to put a good distance between that fellow and ourselves with all possible speed; which we did, without any other misadventure until we came to Etain. There George sold his gold watch and chain for sixty-five francs; making, however, the watchmaker promise that if he remitted to him seventy-five francs before the end of the month, the watch and chain should be returned to him.

The watchmaker promised, and cousin then taking me by the arm, said: "Now, Christian, come on; we have fasted long enough, let us have a banquet."

And a hundred paces farther on, at the street corner, we went into one of those little inns where YOU may have a bed for a few sous.

The men there, in a little dark room, were not gentlemen; they were taking their bottles of wine, with their caps over one ear, and shirt collars loose and open; but seeing us at the door, ragged as we were, with three-weeks' shirts, and beards and hats saturated and out of all shape and discolored with rain and sun, they took us at first for bear-leaders, or dromedary drivers.

The hostess, a fat woman, came forward to ask what we wanted.

"Your best strong soup, a good piece of beef, a bottle of good wine, and as much bread as we can eat," said George.

The fat woman gazed at us with winking eyes, and without moving, as if to ask: "All very fine! but who is going to pay me?"

George displayed a five-franc piece, and at once she replied, smiling: "Gentlemen, we will attend to you immediately."

Around us were murmurings: "They are Alsacians! they are Germans! they are this, they are that!"