Together we looked down into the street.
Under the window the flat, high-pitched drums began to rattle; deep voices shouted; the whole street undulated with masses of gray-and-black uniforms, moving forward through the smoke. A superb regimental band began to play; the troops broke out into heavy cheering.
Vorwärts! Vorwärts! came the steady commands. The band passed with a dull flash of instruments; a thousand brass helmet-spikes pricked the smoke; the tread of the Prussian infantry shook the earth.
The invasion has begun, I said.
Her face was expressionless, save for the brightness of her eyes.
And now another band sounded, playing I Had a Comrade! and the whole street began to ring with the noble marching-song of the coming regiment.
Bavarian infantry, I whispered, as the light-blue columns wheeled around the curve and came swinging up the street; for I could see the yellow crown on the collars of their tunics, and the heavy leather helmets, surmounted by chenille rolls.
Behind them trotted a squadron of Uhlans on their dainty horses, under a canopy of little black-and-white flags fluttering from the points of their lances.
Uhlans, I murmured. I heard the faint click of her teeth closing tightly.
Hussars in crimson tunics, armed with curious weapons, half carbine, half pistol, followed the Uhlans, filling the smoky street with a flood of gorgeous color.
Suddenly a company of Saxon pioneers arrived on the double-quick, halted, fell out, and began to break down the locked doors of the houses on either side of the street. At the same time Prussian infantry came hurrying past, dragging behind them dozens of vehicles, long hay-wagons, gardeners carts, heavy wheelbarrows, even a dingy private carriage, with tarnished lamps, rocking crazily on rusty springs.
The soldiers wheeled these wagons into a double line, forming a complete chain across the street, where the Turcos had commenced to dig their ditch and breastworks a barricade high enough to check a charge, and cunningly arranged, too, for the wooden abatis could not be seen from the eastern end of the street, where a charge of French infantry or cavalry must enter Morsbronn if it entered at all.
We watched the building of the barricade, fascinated. Soldiers entered the houses on either side of the street, only to reappear at the windows and thrust out helmeted heads. More soldiers came, running heavily the road swarmed with them; some threw themselves flat under the wagons, some knelt, thrusting their needle-guns through the wheel-spokes; others remained standing, rifles resting over the rails of the long, skeleton hay-wagons.
Something is going to happen, I said, as a group of smartly uniformed officers appeared on the roof of the opposite house and hastily scrambled to the ridge-pole.
Something was surely going to happen; the officers were using their field-glasses and pointing excitedly across the roof-tops; the windows of every house as far as I could see were black with helmets; a regiment in column came up on the double, halted, disintegrated, melting away behind walls, into yards, doorways, gardens.
A colonel of infantry, splendidly mounted, drew bridle under our loop-hole and looked up at the officers on the roof across the way.
Attention, you up there! he shouted. Is it infantry?
No! bawled an officer, hollowed hand to his cheek. Its their brigade of heavy cavalry coming like an earthquake!
The cuirassiers! I cried, electrified. Its Michels cuirassiers, madame! And oh, the barricade! I groaned, twisting my fingers in helpless rage. Theyll be caught in a trap; theyll die like flies in that street.
This is horrible! muttered the girl. Dont they know the street is blocked? Cant they find out before they ride into this ravine below us? Will they all be killed here under our windows?
She sprang to her feet, stood a moment, then stepped swiftly forward into the angle of the tower.
Look there! she cried, in terror.
Push my chair quick! I said. She dragged it forward.
An old house across the street, which had been on fire, had collapsed into a mere mound of slate, charred beams, and plaster. Through the brown heat which quivered above the ruins I could see out into the country. And what I saw was a line of hills, crowned with smoke, a rolling stretch of meadow below, set here and there with shot-torn trees and hop-poles; and over this uneven ground two regiments of French cuirassiers and two squadrons of lancers moving slowly forward as though on parade.
Above them, around them, clouds of smoke puffed up suddenly and floated away the shells from Prussian batteries on the heights. Long, rippling crashes broke out, belting the fields with smoky breastworks, where a Prussian infantry regiment, knee-deep in smoke, was firing on the advancing cavalry.
The cuirassiers moved on slowly, the sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor; now and then a horse tossed his beautiful head, now and then a steel helmet turned, flashing.
Grief-stricken, I groaned aloud: Madame, there rides the finest cavalry in the world! to annihilation.
How could I know that they were coming deliberately to sacrifice themselves? that they rode with death heavy on their souls, knowing well there was no hope, understanding that they were to die to save the fragments of a beaten army?
Yet something of this I suspected, for already I saw the long, dark Prussian lines overlapping the French flank; I heard the French mitrailleuses rattling through the cannons thunder, and I saw an entire French division, which I did not then know to be Lartigues, falling back across the hills.
And straight into the entire Prussian army rode the grosse cavallerie and the lancers.
They are doomed, like their fathers, I muttered sons of the cuirassiers of Waterloo. See what men can do for France!
The young Countess started and stood up very straight.
Look, madame! I said, harshly look on the men of France! You say you do not understand the narrow love of country! Look!
It is too pitiful, too horrible, she said, hoarsely. How the horses fall in that meadow!
They will fall thicker than that in this street!
See! she cried; they have begun to gallop! They are coming! Oh, I cannot look! I I cannot!
Far away, a thin cry sounded above the cannon din; the doomed cuirassiers were cheering. It was the first charge they had ever made; nobody had ever seen cavalry of their arm on any battle-field of Europe since Waterloo.
Suddenly their long, straight blades shot into the air, the cuirassiers broke into a furious gallop, and that mass of steel-clad men burst straight down the first slope of the plateau, through the Prussian infantry, then wheeled and descended like a torrent on Morsbronn.
In the first ranks galloped the giants of the Eighth Cuirassiers, Colonel Guiot de la Rochere at their head; the Ninth Cuirassiers thundered behind them; then came the lancers under a torrent of red-and-white pennons. Nothing stopped them, neither hedges nor ditches nor fallen trees.
Their huge horses bounded forward, manes in the wind, tails streaming, iron hoofs battering the shaking earth; the steel-clad riders, sabres pointed to the front, leaned forward in their saddles.
Now among the thicket of hop-vines long lines of black arose; there was a flash, a belt of smoke, another flash then the metallic rattle of bullets on steel breastplates. Entire ranks of cuirassiers went down in the smoke of the Prussian rifles, the sinister clash and crash of falling armor filled the air. Sheets of lead poured into them; the rattle of empty scabbards on stirrups, the metallic ringing of bullets on helmet and cuirass, the rifle-shots, the roar of the shells exploding swelled into a very hell of sound. And, above the infernal fracas rose the heavy cheering of the doomed riders.
Into the deep, narrow street wheeled the horsemen, choking road and sidewalk with their galloping squadrons, a solid cataract of impetuous horses, a flashing torrent of armored men and then! Crash! the first squadron dashed headlong against the barricade of wagons and went down.
Into them tore the squadron behind, unable to stop their maddened horses, and into these thundered squadron after squadron, unconscious of the dead wall ahead.
In the terrible tumult and confusion, screaming horses and shrieking men were piled in heaps, a human whirlpool formed at the barricade, hurling bodily from its centre horses and riders. Men galloped headlong into each other, riders struggled knee to knee, pushing, shouting, colliding.
Posted behind the upper and lower windows of the houses, the Prussians shot into them, so close that the flames from the rifles set the jackets of the cuirassiers on fire: a German captain opened the shutters of a window and fired his pistol at a cuirassier, who replied with a sabre thrust through the window, transfixing the Germans throat.
Then a horrible butchery of men and horses began; the fusillade became so violent and the scene so sickening that a Prussian lieutenant went crazy in the house opposite, and flung himself from the window into the mass of writhing horsemen. Tall cuirassiers, in impotent fury, began slashing at the walls of the houses, breaking their heavy sabres to splinters against the stones; their powerful horses, white with foam, reared, fell back, crushing their riders beneath them.
In front of the barricade a huge fellow reined in his horse and turned, white-gloved hand raised, red epaulets tossing.
Halt! Halt! he shouted. Stop the lancers! And a trumpeter, disengaging himself from the frantic chaos, set his long, silver trumpet to his lips and blew the Halt!
A bullet rolled the trumpeter under his horses feet; a volley riddled the others horse, and the agonized animal reared and cleared the bristling abatis with a single bound, his rider dropping dead among the hay-wagons.
Then into this awful struggle galloped the two squadrons of the lancers. For a moment the street swam under their fluttering red-and-white lance-pennons, then a volley swept them another another and down they went.
Herds of riderless horses tore through the street; the road undulated with crushed, quivering creatures crawling about. Against the doorway of a house opposite a noble horse in agony leaned with shaking knees, head raised, lips shrinking back over his teeth.
Bewildered, stupefied, exhausted, the cuirassiers sat in their saddles, staring up at the windows where the Prussians stood and fired. Now and then one would start as from a nightmare, turn his jaded horse, and go limping away down the street. The road was filled with horsemen, wandering helplessly about under the rain of bullets. One, a mere boy, rode up to a door, leaned from his horse and began to knock for admittance; another dismounted and sat down on a doorstep, head buried in his hands, regardless of the bullets which tore the woodwork around him.
The street was still crowded with entrapped cuirassiers, huddled in groups or riding up and down the walls mechanically seeking shelter. A few of these, dismounted, were wearily attempting to drag a heavy cart away from the barricade; the Prussians shot them, one at a time, but others came to help, and a few lancers aided them, and at length they managed to drag a hay-wagon aside, giving a narrow passage to the open country beyond. Instantly the Prussian infantry swarmed out of the houses and into the street, shouting, Prisoners! pushing, striking, and dragging the exhausted cuirassiers from their saddles. But contact with the enemy, hand to hand, seemed to revive the fury of the armored riders. The débris of the regiments closed up, long, straight sabres glittered, trembling horses plunged forward, broke into a stiff gallop, and passed through the infantry, through the rent in the barricade, and staggered away across the fields, buried in the smoke of a thousand rifles.
So rode the Cuirassiers of Morsbronn, the flower of an empires chivalry, the elect of France. So rode the gentlemen of the Sixth Lancers to shiver their slender spears against stone walls for the honor of France.
Death led them. Death rode with them knee to knee. Death alone halted them. But their shining souls galloped on into that vast Valhalla where their ancestors of Waterloo stood waiting, and the celestial trumpets pealed a last Dismount!
VI
THE GAME BEGINS
The room in the turret was now swimming in smoke and lime dust; I could scarcely see the gray figure of the Countess through the powder-mist which drifted in through shutters and loop-hole, dimming the fading daylight.
In the street a dense pall of pungent vapor hung over roof and pavement, motionless in the calm August air; two houses were burning slowly, smothered in smoke; through a ruddy fog I saw the dead lying in mounds, the wounded moving feebly, the Prussian soldiery tossing straw into the hay-carts that had served their deadly purpose.
But oh, the dreadful murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous, ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures, tenacious of life, who are dying and who die hard.
Helmeted figures swarmed through the smoke; wagon after wagon, loaded deep with dead cavalrymen, was drawn away by heavy teams of horses now arriving from the regimental transport train, which had come up and halted just at the entrance to the village.
And now wagon-loads of French wounded began to pass, jolting over crushed helmets, rifles, cuirasses, and the carcasses of dead horses.
A covey of Uhlans entered the shambles, picking their way across the wreckage of the battle, a slim, wiry, fastidious company, dainty as spurred gamecocks, with their helmet-cords swinging like wattles and their schapskas tilted rakishly.
Then the sad cortège of prisoners formed in the smoke, the wounded leaning on their silent comrades, bandaged heads hanging, the others erect, defiant, supporting the crippled or standing with arms folded and helmeted heads held high.
And at last they started, between two files of mounted Uhlans Turcos, line infantrymen, gendarmes, lancers, and, towering head and shoulders above the others, the superb cuirassiers.
A German general and his smartly uniformed staff came clattering up the slippery street and halted to watch the prisoners defile. And, as the first of the captive cuirassiers came abreast of the staff, the general stiffened in his saddle and raised his hand to his helmet, saying to his officers, loud enough for me to hear:
Salute the brave, gentlemen!
And the silent, calm-eyed cuirassiers passed on, heads erect, uniforms in shreds, their battered armor foul with smoke and mud, spurs broken, scabbards empty.
Troops of captured horses, conducted by Uhlans, followed the prisoners, then wagons piled high with rifles, sabres, and saddles, then a company of Uhlans cantering away with the shot-torn guidons of the cuirassiers.
Last of all came the wounded in their straw-wadded wagons, escorted by infantry; I heard them coming before I saw them, and, sickened, I closed my ears with my hands; yet even then the deep, monotonous groaning seemed to fill the room and vibrate through the falling shadows long after the last cart had creaked out of sight and hearing into the gathering haze of evening.
The deadened booming of cannon still came steadily from the west, and it needed no messenger to tell me that the First Corps had been hurled back into Alsace, and that MacMahons army was in full retreat; that now the Rhine was open and the passage of the Vosges was clear, and Strasbourg must stand siege and Belfort and Toul must man their battlements for a struggle that meant victory, or an Alsace doomed and a Lorraine lost to France forever.