Maurice was completely thunderstruck when he saw coming along the Monthois road the Margueritte division – all the reserve cavalry whose job was to support the 7th corps and scout for the left flank of the army. It was rumoured that it was making for Le Chêne-Populeux. Why leave unprotected the one wing that was threatened? Why take these two thousand horsemen, who should have been deployed as scouts many leagues away, and move them to the centre where they must be absolutely useless? The worst of it was that as they blundered right into the manoeuvres of the 7th they nearly cut up its columns into an inextricable muddle of men, guns and horses. Some of the Chasseurs d’Afrique had to wait nearly two hours outside Vouziers.
By sheer chance Maurice caught sight of Prosper, who had taken his horse to a pond, and they could talk for a moment. He seemed quite lost and dazed, knowing nothing and having seen nothing since Rheims. Oh, but yes, he had seen two Uhlans, chaps who appeared and disappeared and nobody knew where they came from or where they went. Stories were already going round about four Uhlans galloping into a town with revolvers in their hands, dashing through it, conquering it, and twenty kilometres away from their own army corps at that. They were everywhere, they preceded the enemy columns like a swarm of buzzing bees, a moving curtain behind which the infantry could disguise its movements, marching with complete security as in peace time. Maurice felt sick at heart as he saw the road jammed with cavalry and hussars being so badly employed.
‘Oh well, so long,’ he said, shaking Prosper’s hand. ‘Perhaps they’ll still need you up there.’
But the cavalryman seemed to be exasperated at the job they were making him do. He patted Zephir sorrowfully and said:
‘Don’t you believe it! They work the horses to death and do nothing with the men. It’s disgusting.’
That evening when Maurice went to take off his boot to look at his heel which was throbbing and burning hot, he tore away the skin. The blood came and he uttered a cry of pain. Jean was close by and seemed full of anxious sympathy.
‘Look here, this is getting bad, you’ll find yourself laid up… must look after it. Let me have a go.’
He knelt down, washed the place himself and dressed it with some clean material from his knapsack. And his movements were like a mother’s, he had the gentleness of a man of long experience whose big hands can be delicate when need arises.
Maurice could not help being overcome by a great tenderness, his eyes went misty, and the language of friendship rose from his heart to his lips in an immense longing for affection, as though in this clodhopper he had loathed some time ago and despised only yesterday he had found a lost brother.
‘You’re a bloody good chap, you are… thank you, mate.’
Jean, beaming with pleasure, answered with his serene smile:
‘And now look here, boy, I’ve still got some tobacco left. What about a cigarette?’
5
ON the next day, the 26th, Maurice woke up all aches and pains, with his shoulders hurting after a night in the tent. He still had not got used to the hard ground, and as the previous night the men had been ordered not to take off their boots, and sergeants had come round in the dark, feeling to make sure that everybody was booted and gaitered, his foot was not much better and was painful and burning, to say nothing of the fact that he must have got a thorough chill in his legs from being unwise enough to stick them out of the tent to stretch them.
Jean said at once:
‘Look, my boy, if we’ve got to march today you’d do well to see the M.O. and get yourself bunged in a van.’
But nobody knew anything and the most contradictory tales were going round. At one time they thought they were going on, camp was struck and the whole army corps began moving and went through Vouziers, leaving only one brigade of the second division on the left bank of the Aisne to keep an eye on the Monthois road. Then suddenly, at the other side of the town, on the right bank, they halted and piled arms in the fields and meadows stretching along on both sides of the Grand-Pré road. At that moment the departure of the 4th hussars, cantering away along that road, gave rise to all sorts of conjectures.
‘If we’re stopping here I shall stay with you,’ declared Maurice, who hated the thought of the M.O. and the ambulance.
It was soon known that they were to camp there until General Douay had had definite information about the movements of the enemy. Since the moment on the previous day when he had seen the Margueritte division going back towards Le Chêne, he had felt increasingly anxious, knowing that he was no longer covered and that there was not a single man guarding the defiles through the Argonne, so that he could be attacked at any moment. He had therefore dispatched the 4th hussars to reconnoitre as far as the defiles of Grand-Pré and La Croix-aux-Bois, with orders to bring back news at all costs.
On the previous day, thanks to the energy of the mayor of Vouziers, there had been an issue of bread, meat and forage, and that morning at about ten the men had just been authorized to make some stew for fear they might never have time later, when a second departure of troops, the Bordas brigade, which set off down the road taken by the hussars, once again set everyone speculating. What now? Were they off again? Weren’t they going to be left to eat in peace now that the pot was on the fire? But the officers explained that the Bordas brigade was detailed to occupy Buzancy, a few kilometres away. But others, to be sure, said that the hussars had run into a large number of enemy detachments and that the brigade was being sent to relieve them.
These were a few delightful hours of rest for Maurice. He stretched himself out on the grass half way up the hill on which his regiment was camping, and in his listless, exhausted state he looked at the green valley of the Aisne, with the fields and clumps of trees through which the river meanders lazily. In front of him and at the head of the valley Vouziers rose up in an amphitheatre, its terraces of roofs dominated by the church with its narrow spire and domed tower. Down by the river the high chimneys of the tanneries were smoking and at the other end could be seen the buildings of a big flourmill white amid the greenery at the water’s edge. This view of a little town nestling in the green grass seemed full of a gentle charm to him, as though he had recovered his former vision as a sensitive dreamer. His boyhood came back, and the excursions he used to make to Vouziers in the old days when he lived at Le Chêne, his birthplace. For an hour he was lost to the world.
The stew had been eaten a long time ago and still they were waiting about when, at nearly half past two, the whole camp was permeated by a vague but increasing restlessness. Orders flew hither and thither, the fields were evacuated and all the troops climbed up and took positions on the ridges between two villages, Chestres and Falaise, about four or five kilometres apart. Already the sappers were digging trenches and throwing up ramparts while to the left the reserve artillery was on top of a mound. The tale went round that General Bordas had sent a dispatch rider to report that having met superior forces at Grand-Pré he was obliged to fall back on Buzancy, and that gave rise to fears that his line of retreat to Vouziers might soon be cut. That was why the commander of the 7th corps, thinking an attack was imminent, had moved his men into combat positions to sustain the first shock until the rest of the army could come to his support, and one of his aides-de-camp had gone off with a letter to the marshal, warning him about the situation and asking for help. So as he was frightened of being obstructed by the interminable supply column which had rejoined the corps during the night and which was now dragging after him again, he had made that set off at once, sending it any old where in the Chagny direction. It was battle order.
‘So this is really it this time, sir?’ Maurice ventured to ask Rochas.
‘Yes, it bloody well is!’ he answered, waving his long arms. ‘You’ll see whether it’s hot enough in a minute.’
All the men were thrilled. Since the battle line had been drawn from Chestres to Falaise the excitement of the camp had heightened still more and the men were becoming feverishly impatient. So they were go
ing to see them at last, these Prussians the papers said were so exhausted with marches, so undermined by diseases, famished and in rags! And the hope of bowling them over at the first go revived everyone’s spirits.
‘It’s a good job we’ve found each other!’ declared Jean. ‘We’ve been playing hide and seek long enough since losing each other over there on the frontier after their battle… But are these the ones who beat MacMahon?’
Maurice could not answer him, for he wasn’t sure. From what he had read at Rheims it seemed very unlikely that the IIIrd army, commanded by the Prussian Crown Prince, could be at Vouziers when only two days before it could scarcely have camped nearer than Vitry-le-François. There had of course been talk of a IVth army put under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony which was to operate on the Meuse; it must be that one, although such an early occupation of Grand-Pré astonished him because of the distances. But what finally muddled him was his amazement when he heard General Bourgain-Desfeuilles interrogating a peasant from Falaise to find out whether or not the Meuse flowed through Buzancy and if there were some strong bridges there. Moreover in his fool’s paradise the general declared that they would be attacked by a force of a hundred thousand men from Grand-Pré whilst another sixty thousand were coming via Sainte-Ménehould.
‘How’s the foot?’ asked Jean.
‘Can’t even feel it now,’ Maurice laughed. ‘If there’s a fight it’ll be all right.’
It was true. He was upheld by such nervous excitement that he felt as if he were not touching the ground. To think that all through the campaign he hadn’t yet fired a single round. He had been to the frontier, he had spent the awful night of suspense outside Mulhouse, without setting eyes on a single Prussian or firing a shot, and he had had to retreat to Belfort, to Rheims, and once again he had been marching towards the enemy for five days with his rifle still virgin and useless. He was possessed by a growing need, a dull rage urging him to take aim and fire anyway, to steady his nerves. It was nearly six weeks since he had joined up in a burst of enthusiasm, dreaming of battle the next day, and all he had done was wear out his poor, delicate, civilian feet running away or marking time, miles from any battlefield. That was why, in this universal mood of expectation, he was one of the most impatient watchers of that main road to Grand-Pré stretching away dead straight between its fine trees. Beneath him the valley wound along, the Aisne making a kind of silver ribbon amid the willows and poplars, but his eyes could not help coming back to that road down there.
There was an alert at about four. The 4th hussars returned after a long detour, and tales of fights with Uhlans went the rounds, getting magnified as they went, and this endorsed everybody’s conviction that an attack was imminent. Two hours later another dispatch rider came in, explaining in scared tones that General Bordas daren’t leave Grand-Pré now because he was sure that the Vouziers road was cut. This was not yet the case, since the rider himself had come through freely, but at any minute it could be a fact, and General Dumont, in command of the division, left at once with the one brigade he had remaining, to relieve his other brigade in peril. The sun was going down behind Vouziers, whose line of roofs stood out black against a great cloud of red. For a long time the brigade could be seen moving between the double row of trees until in the end it was lost in the deepening shadows.
Colonel de Vineuil came to make sure that his regiment was in a good position for the night. He was astonished not to find Captain Beaudoin at his post; and as he came back at that very moment from Vouziers, giving the excuse that he had been to lunch with the Baroness de Ladicourt, he received a severe reprimand, which he heard in silence, looking the essence of the good officer.
‘My boys,’ the colonel kept saying as he moved about among the men, ‘we may be attacked tonight and certainly shall be tomorrow at dawn… Hold yourselves ready and remember that the 106th has never run away.’
They all applauded him, for in the mood of fatigue and discouragement that had been growing on them since their departure they all preferred a showdown to put an end to it. Rifles were checked and pins changed. As they had had a hot meal in the morning they made do with coffee and biscuit. The order had been not to go to bed. Outposts were placed at fifteen hundred metres, and sentries posted as far as the banks of the Aisne. All the officers sat up round camp fires. And every now and then the flickering light of one of these fires picked out against a low wall glimpses of the gaudy uniforms of the Commander-in-Chief and his staff – shadowy figures darting to and fro, running towards the road, listening out for the sound of horses’ hoofs in this intense anxiety about the fate of the third division.
At about one in the morning Maurice was posted as an advance sentinel on the edge of a plum orchard between the road and the river. The night was as black as ink. As soon as he was alone in the crushing silence of the sleeping countryside he was conscious of a feeling of fear creeping over him, an awful fear he had never known before and could not overcome, and it made him shake with anger and humiliation. He turned round to reassure himself with the sight of the camp fires, but they must have been hidden by a little wood, and all he had behind him was a wall of blackness; the only lights were a few very distant ones still burning in Vouziers, where the inhabitants, who had no doubt been alerted, were terrified at the thought of a battle and were staying up. What really froze him with fear was to find out when he brought his rifle to his shoulder that he could not even see the sights. Then the most cruel period of waiting set in, with all the strength of his being concentrated on the sense of hearing alone, his ears straining for imperceptible sounds and ending by roaring in his head like thunder. Some distant running water, a light rustling of leaves, the flight of an insect, all became huge, reverberating noises. Was it a galloping of horses, an endless rumbling of artillery coming straight at him from over there? To his left had he heard a cautious whisper, voices being kept down, some advance column crawling through the darkness, preparing a surprise attack? Three times he was on the point of firing to raise the alarm. His uneasiness was increased by the fear of being mistaken and looking ridiculous. He had knelt down with his left shoulder propped against a tree, and it seemed to him that he had been there for hours and been forgotten. The army must have gone off without him. Then suddenly his fear vanished, he heard quite clearly the rhythmical step of soldiers matching along the road he knew was only a couple of hundred metres away. At once he felt sure that they were troops in distress, the ones who had been so impatiently waited for – General Dumont bringing back the Bordas brigade. Just then someone came and relieved him, his turn of duty had hardly lasted the regulation one hour.
It was indeed the third division returning to camp, and that was an immense relief. But precautions were redoubled because information received confirmed everything they thought they knew about the enemy’s approach. The few prisoners they brought back, sombre Uhlans in their long cloaks, refused to talk. Daybreak, the grey dawn of a rainy day, came up in the continuing expectancy which frayed everybody’s nerves. The men had not dared to sleep for fourteen hours. At about seven Lieutenant Rochas said that MacMahon was on the way with a whole army. The truth was that General Douay had had, by way of a reply to his dispatch sent the day before predicting the inevitable fight before Vouziers, a letter from the marshal telling him to hold on until he could send him some support: the advance had been stopped, the 1st corps was making for Terron, the 5th for Buzancy, while the 12th would stay at Le Chêne in reserve. So the wait took on an even greater significance, it was no longer a simple fight to come, but a great battle involving the whole of the army that had been headed away from the Meuse and was now on the march further south in the Aisne valley. So once again they dared not cook their hot stew but had to make do with coffee and biscuit, for the final reckoning was fixed for noon, everybody said without knowing why. An aide-de-camp had been sent off to the marshal to hasten the arrival of reinforcements, the approach of the two enemy armies being more and more certain. Three hours late
r a second officer galloped off for Le Chêne, where General Headquarters was, from which he was to bring back immediate orders, so much had anxiety increased following news from the mayor of some little country place who claimed to have seen a hundred thousand men at Grand-Pré while a hundred thousand more were coming up via Buzancy.
By noon still not a single Prussian. By one, by two, still nothing. Everybody was getting sick of it, and sceptical as well. Jeering voices began to poke fun at the generals. Perhaps they had seen their own shadows on the wall. They voted to get them some glasses. A fine lot of jokers to have upset everybody like this if nothing was coming! Some wag called out:
‘So it’s going to be Mulhouse all over again?’
This wrung Maurice’s heart with bitter memories. He recalled that idiotic flight and panic that had swept the 7th corps along without a single German being seen for ten leagues around. And now it was all starting again, he felt it quite clearly, with no mistake about it. Now that the enemy had not attacked twenty-four hours after the skirmish at Grand-Pré it must have been that the 4th hussars simply ran into some mounted reconnaissance. The main forces must still be a long way off, possibly even two days’ march. All at once this thought horrified him as he considered how much time had been lost. In three days they had not covered two leagues, from Contreuve to Vouziers. On the 25th and 26th the other army corps had gone northwards on the pretext that they had to restock with foodstuffs, whereas now, on the 27th, lo and behold they were going southwards to accept a challenge nobody was offering. Following the 4th hussars towards the abandoned passes in the Argonne, the Bordas brigade had thought it was lost and dragged in the whole division to help, then the 7th corps and then the whole army, all to no purpose. Maurice thought of the inestimable value of each hour in this wild scheme of joining up with Bazaine, a plan which none but a general of genius could have carried out, and with seasoned troops, on condition that he took everything by storm, straight ahead through every obstacle.