London, April to September 1822
WALDECK’S Austrian corps now began its operations. Our maneuvers became livelier. It was a fine sight to see at night: incendiaries lit up the outworks swarming with soldiers; abrupt flashes illuminated the clouds or the dark blue sky whenever a cannon fired; and the cannonballs, crossing in midair, described parabolas of light. In the intervals between detonations, we heard drums roll, bursts of military music, and the voices of guards on the ramparts of Thionville and at our posts. Regrettably, in both camps the words shouted were French: Sentinelles, prenez garde à vous!
If the battles took place at dawn, the hymn of the lark followed the noise of the musketry, while the silent cannon, having ceased fire, regarded us with open mouths through their fortified embrasures. The birdsong, recalling memories of pastoral life, seemed to heap reproaches on mankind. It was the same when I stumbled over corpses in fields of flowering clover or on the banks of flowing streams that washed the dead men’s hair. In the woods, a few steps from the violence of war, I came upon little statues of the saints and the Virgin. A goatherd, a shepherd, or a beggar carrying his scrip kneeled before these peaceful figures and said their rosary to the distant sound of guns. I once saw a whole parish come with its pastor to offer flowers to the patron saint of a neighboring parish, whose shrine was in a grove that grew beside a spring. The priest was a blind man; a soldier in the army of God, he had lost his sight doing good works, as a grenadier loses his sight on the battlefield. The curate gave communion on behalf of this priest, because the latter could not see to place the sacred host on the lips of his communicants. During this ceremony, and out of the depths of darkness, this holy man blessed the light!
Our fathers believed that the patron saints of hamlets, Jean le Silentiaire, Dominique l’Encuirassé, Jacques l’Intercis, Paul le Simple, Basle l’Ermite, and so many others, were no strangers to those military triumphs that protected their harvests. On the day of the Battle of Bouvines, thieves entered a monastery in Auxerre that was under the patronage of Saint Germain and stole several sacramental vessels. When the sacristan presented himself before the blessed bishop’s shrine, he groaned aloud and said, “Germain, where were you when those brigands dared violate your sanctuary?” A voice issued from the shrine, saying, “I was near Cisoing, near the bridge of Bouvines; with the other saints, I was aiding the French and their King, to whom a splendid victory has been granted with our help”:
Cui fuit auxilio victoria praestita nostro.[30]
We beat a path across the plain, and we pushed them back all the way to the hamlets beneath the first entrenchments of Thionville. The village on the trans-Moselle highway was incessantly taken and retaken. Twice I took part in these attacks. The patriots called us “enemies of liberty,” “aristocrats,” and “Capet’s henchmen”; we called them “brigands,” “cutthroats,” “traitors,” and “revolutionaries.” Sometimes everything was called to a halt, and men fought duels in the presence of the combatants, who served as impartial witnesses.—Strange quirk of the French character, which not even passion can stifle!
One day I was on patrol in a vineyard. Twenty feet in front of me was an old gentleman chasseur who kept striking the vines with the butt of his gun, as though he were trying to drive out a hare, then looking brusquely around him in hopes of seeing a routed patriot. Everyone had his own peculiar ways.
Another day I went to visit the Austrian camp. Between this camp and the camp of the mounted marines there lay a curtain of woods against which the enemy directed no end of useless fire. They shot far too often, believing that we were more numerous than we were, which explains the pompous bulletins issued by the Commandant of Thionville. As I was crossing this wood, I caught sight of something moving in the weeds. I approached it and saw a man stretched out facedown on the ground. All that could be seen of him was his fat back. I assumed he was wounded, and I took him by the nape of the neck and half lifted his head. He opened his frightened eyes and raised himself a little upon his hands. I burst out laughing. It was my cousin Moreau! I hadn’t seen him since our visit to Madame de Chastenay!
Lying flat on his belly to avoid a falling bomb, my cousin had found it impossible to stand up again. I had all the trouble in the world getting him on his feet, for his belly had tripled in size. He informed me that he was serving in the commissary and had been on his way to offer the Prince de Waldeck a few head of cattle. What’s more, he was wearing a rosary! Hugues Métel tells the story of a wolf who, around the year 1203 or 1204, resolved to embrace the monastic state; but he couldn’t bear fasting, so he became a canon.[31]
I had nearly returned to camp when an officer of the engineers passed by me, leading his horse by the bridle. A cannonball struck the animal at the narrowest part of the neck and neatly severed it, so that the head and the neck remained hanging from the horseman’s hand and dragged him to the ground with their weight. I had already seen a bomb fall in the middle of a circle of naval officers at their mess: instantly the mess tin vanished, and the officers, knocked down and caked with mud, cried out like the old sea captain, “Fire to starboard! Fire to larboard! Fire everywhere! Fire in my wig!”
Such unusual calamities seem to belong to Thionville. In 1558, François de Guise laid siege to this place, and Marshal Strozzi was killed there in the trench, speaking with the aforementioned Sieur de Guise, who at that moment was resting his hand on Strozzi’s shoulder.