CHAPTER VIII

A political chronology--Trouble follows trouble--The fire at the farm at Noue--Death of Stanislas Picot--The hiding-place for the louis d'or--The Cossacks--The haricot mutton.

It would be indeed too preposterous of me to take up public attention with the feats and performances of an urchin of twelve, when, for two years, we were to pass through such grave events.

The decline of the Man of Destiny was rapid: he was sustained for a brief while by the victories of Lutzen, Bautzen, and Wurschen, but he left behind him two of his most faithful lieutenants--the dukes of Istria and Duroc. There was no danger of bullets striking down those who intended to betray him.

He was doomed--England had bought his ruin.

Will you learn at what price? On 14th June, 1813, she paid Prussia 660,660 livres sterling; on the 15th, 1,333,334 livres sterling to Russia; and finally, on 12th August, 500,000 livres sterling to Austria.

We see how scrupulous in this matter was his father-in-law, François; he refrained from selling his son-in-law until two months after the others, and for 160,000 livres sterling less than Prussia.

But what did that matter? Bonaparte could note down in his red-letter book that he became the son-in-law of a Cæsar and the nephew of King Louis XVI.

That was the height of his ambition. What was there to be sorry for when that ambition was once satisfied?

On the 16th and 18th of October, 117,000 rounds of cannon were fired off at Leipzig, 111,000 more at Malplaquet.

Each round cost two louis.

They celebrated the death service of the Empire in right regal style!

It was in this way that Napoleon lost another of his faithful followers, Poniatowski, who had been made a marshal on the 16th and who was drowned on the 19th, in the river Elster.

On the 1st of November the emperor sent twenty standards to Paris.

On the 8th the battle of Mochest took place, the last of the campaign.

On the 9th the emperor returned to Saint-Cloud.

On the 12th the allied armies entered Dusseldorf.

On the 13th the kings of Prussia and of Bavaria reached Frankfort.

On the 15th, 300,000 conscripts were mobilised.

On the 16th the emperor went hunting on foot on the plains of Satory.

On the 22nd he was present at a representation at the Opera, while the Russians were entering Amsterdam.

On the 2nd December the emperor witnessed a performance at the Odéon, while the allied armies were crossing the Rhine at Dusseldorf.

On the 6th the Prince of Orange, who had landed in Holland on the 30th November, issued a proclamation to the Dutch.

On the 17th the Allies crossed the Rhine at different points in Alsace.

On the 23rd they occupied Neuchâtel.

On the 31st they entered Geneva.

And with this news closed the year 1813.

The year 1814 was to see a continuation of these reverses and the beginning of defections.

On the 3rd January the Allies took Colmar.

On the 6th they invested Besançon; and Murat, who had re-conquered Naples, signed an armistice with England.

On the 7 h the Allies entered Dôle.

On the 8th Murat concluded a treaty of alliance with Austria.

On the 10th the Allies invested Landau and took Forbach.

On the 12th Murat signed a treaty of alliance with England.

On the 16th the Allies seized Langres.

On the 17th Murat declared war against France.

On the 21st the Allies took Châlons-sur-Saône.

On the 22nd Murat entered Rome.

Finally, on the 24th, the emperor left Paris to return to his army, on the 27th he took up the offensive again, and began that wonderful campaign of 1814, which lasted sixty-seven days, and during which, the end being the abdication at Fontainebleau, he showed his marvellous genius to greater effect than in taking Milan or Cairo, Berlin, Vienna, or Moscow.

None the less his hour had come; in vain had the Titan heaped Pelion upon Ossa, Champaubert on Montmirail--his hour had come, and he was to fall overwhelmed....

The sound of cannon boomed in my hearing for the first time.

I heard it in the foldyard of a farm belonging to M. Picot of Noue--a quarter of a league off Villers-Cotterets.

"Misfortunes come in flocks," says a Russian proverb; and a host of misfortunes had flown over and beaten against the head of that good man. The farm at Noue had been one of the finest in Villers-Cotterets, and M. Picot one of the most prosperous farmers.

But in 1812, I think it was, they stacked a damp crop in his barns, and one night the straw kindled, and we were awakened by the tocsin and by cries of "Fire!"

Everybody realises the dreadfulness of that cry in the middle of the night and in a little town: all Villers-Cotterets got up instantly and rushed to the burning farm.

I do not know a more splendid sight than a tremendous fire, such as that one. The farm blazed the whole length of its barns and stables, presenting a curtain three or four hundred paces in extent, from behind which came the lowing of cattle, the whinnying of horses, the bleating of sheep.

Everything was burnt, buildings and live-stock; for animals will not stir when they smell fire.

That fire was the first serious catastrophe I was ever present at, and it left a deep impression on my memory.

They did not get the mastery over the fire till next day, and the loss was enormous. Fortunately, as we have said, M. Picot was very rich.

The following year came another misfortune. M. Picot had two sons and a daughter. The eldest of his sons was eight or ten years, the younger only two or three, my senior.

Consequently I had scarcely anything to do with the eldest, who treated me like a little boy, but I was extremely friendly with the younger, whose name was Stanislas.

One day, my mother came into my room, in a great state of mind.

"There, now," she said, "never ask me to let you play with firearms again."

"Why not, mother?"

"Stanislas has just wounded himself, perhaps mortally."

"Oh! my goodness, where is he?"

"At his father's. Go and see him."

I set off running, and covered the quarter of a league in six or seven minutes. When I reached the farm, I saw a long trail of blood.

Everybody was in such a state of consternation that no one asked me where I was going. I crossed the yards, I went through the kitchen and I slipped into the room where Stanislas was. They were just putting the first bandage on the wound; the surgeon was there, with his surgical case open, his hands covered with blood. The poor sufferer was leaning back, clasping his mother's neck with both his arms as she bent over him.

They saw me, and told me to approach the bed. Stanislas kissed me, and thanked me for coming to see him. He was horribly pale.

He was ordered quiet before everything, so everybody, myself among the number, was told to go away.

This is how the accident happened: Stanislas was out shooting with his father, and had nearly done; he was nearing the farm, which he was just going to enter, when he heard a gun-shot.

The better to see who had fired it, and whether the shooter had killed anything, Stanislas climbed a post at the corner of a wall; but he forgot to unload his gun first, and unconsciously he leant his thigh against the barrel. His dog seeing him on the post, tried to reach him, standing on his hind legs, and with his fore paws leant on the gun-lock. The gun went off, and Stanislas received the full charge of partridge-shot in the neck of the femur.

It was this ghastly wound which the surgeon had just dressed when I arrived. For two days they were hopeful, but lockjaw set in on the third day, and Stanislas died.

The manner in which he met his death was an unending source of exhortation on my mother's part: she declared she should never be easy until I gave up hunting altogether. But, in spite of the impression which this death made upon me, I would not give up anything.

Whenever I met Madame Picot, after the death of Stanislas, she showed great kindness to me, no doubt on account of my boyish friendship with her son.

Her daughter, too, who was very friendly with my sister, was most cordial to me, and was the only one among grown-up people who never made fun of my absurdities.

This excellent and good-looking lady was called Éléonore Picot, or, more often, _Picote._

Now to return to account for my being in the farmyard at Noue when I heard the firing of cannon for the first time. I have been sent far afield in what I have just related, and I must return.

Since the battle of Leipzig, one idea had been in everybody's mind, namely, that what had not happened in 1792 or in 1793 was now about to take place--there would be an invasion of France.

Those who did not live through that period can have no idea to what a pitch of execration the name of Napoleon had reached in the hearts of the mothers of France.

During 1813 and 1814 the old enthusiasm died down; for it was not for the sake of France, our common mother, nor for Liberty, the goddess of us all, that the mothers were sacrificing their children: it was to the ambition, the selfishness, the pride of one man.

Thanks to the successive levies, made in 1811 to 1814, thanks to the million of men squandered in the valleys and on the mountains of Spain, in the snows and in the rivers of Russia, in the swamps of Saxony and on the sands of Poland, the generation of men between twenty and twenty-two years of age had disappeared.

The very wealthiest people had fruitlessly purchased one, two, or even three substitutes, for which they had paid as much as 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 francs. But Napoleon had invented his Guard of Honour, a relentless and fatal organisation for recruiting his army, which allowed of no substitutes, so that the wealthiest and therefore the most privileged classes were compelled to go to war with the rest.

Conscription began at sixteen, and men remained liable to service to the age of forty.

Mothers counted up the ages of their boys with alarm, and most gladly would they have wrestled with time to stop the days which were flying by all too quickly for them.

More than once my mother pressed me to her breast suddenly, with a suppressed sigh, and tears came into her eyes.

"What is the matter, mother?" I would ask.

"Oh! when I think," she exclaimed, "that in four years you will have to be a soldier, that that man will snatch you from me, he who has always taken away and never given anything in return, and that he will send you to be killed on a field of battle like Moskova or Leipzig!... Oh, my child! my poor child!"

My mother only expressed a general feeling, but the hatred of her fellows was expressed in different ways, according to their different temperaments and characters; with my mother, as we have seen, it was in sighs and tears; with other mothers, it would be in fierce threats; with others, insulting epithets.

I remember, there lived on the place de la Fontaine the wife of a gunsmith, whose son was at the Abbé Grégoire's school with me; her name was Madame Montagnon. During the heat of summer afternoons, when the greatest heat of the day had declined, she sat at her threshold with her spinning-wheel, and all the time she was spinning she sang a song against Bonaparte.

I only remember the first four lines of it, which begun thus:--

"Le Corse de Madame Ango N'est pas le Corse de la Corse, Car le Corse de Marengo Est d'une bien plus dure écorce."

And--as Mademoiselle Pivert re-read the famous volume of _The Thousand and One Nights_, which contained the story of _The Wonderful Lamp_, every day in the week--so Madame Montagnon had scarcely finished the last couplet against the Corsican of Marengo when she began the first over again.

Now it will be readily understood that this hatred, which began to show itself after the Russian disasters, was aggravated by terror in proportion as the enemy drew nearer, step by step, town by town, narrowing the circle being drawn round France.

Finally, at the beginning of 1814, it suddenly became known that the enemy had set foot on French soil.

By that time all confidence in Napoleon's genius had disappeared. That stupendous adventurer's genius was his good fortune.

Now, God, in His inscrutable purposes, had designed his fall and had deserted him.

People not merely ceased to believe in him, but they ceased to hope.

Those who had anything to fear or to expect from a political movement, all those skin-changing serpents that live on different Governments as they come and go, already began to lay their plans--some to lessen their fears, others to augment their expectations. They began to feel, moreover, that Napoleon was not France; but that they had, so to speak, taken the heroic tenant on a lease, and the lease was up--France was prepared to bear the damages, but not to renew the lease.

You could still hear people saying: "Napoleon has beaten the enemy at Brienne; the Prussians are retreating to Bar"--but at the same time they said: "The Russians are marching on Troyes." We certainly read in the _Moniteur_ that we had beaten them at Rosnay and on the road to Vitry; but at the same time that this bulletin was published appeared the first Royalist manifesto. We were routing the Allies at Champaubert and at Montmirail, but the duc d'Angoulême was issuing a proclamation dated from Saint Jean-de-Luz.

At each victory, Napoleon was using up his men, and losing ten leagues of ground. Wherever he fought personally, the enemy was beaten, but he could not be in every place at once.

Every moment was bringing the roar of cannons nearer to us, though we had not actually heard them yet.

There had been fighting at Château-Thierry; and at Nogent; and Laon was occupied.

Everyone began hiding his valuables, burying what he considered most precious.

We had a cellar which was reached through a trap-door; my mother filled it with linen, furniture, mattresses, she had the trap-door taken away and the whole room re-floored; so no treasure-seekers could see the exact spot to fasten upon.

Then she put thirty old louis in a box, she put this box in a small leather bag, she drove a stake in the garden and in the hole made by the stake she slipped the box.

Who on earth would find a box planted vertically in the very middle of a garden? It would have required a wizard to find it there.

We could not have found it again ourselves if I had not made a guiding mark on the wall.

One fine day we saw some soldiers come past, flying at full speed. Soissons had just been taken; they had leapt their horses over the ramparts, and six or eight had been killed or badly injured; three or four had escaped.

My poor mother began now to be frightened in real earnest, and her fear took the form of cooking an enormous haricot of mutton. The reader may well ask why her fear took that peculiar form.

Fearful pictures had been spread over the country of Cossacks from the Don, the Volga and the Borysthenes: making them look as hideous as possible. They were depicted mounted on hideous scarecrows, wearing caps made of wild beasts' skins, armed with lances, bows and arrows. A combination of utter impossibilities, one would have said.

Yet there were optimists who, in spite of these awful pictures, said that the Cossacks were brave men at heart, much less wicked than they looked to be, and that, provided we fed them well enough and gave them plenty to drink, they would do us no manner of harm.

Hence my mother's huge stew of mutton--it was for them to eat.

In the matter of drink, we did not give them our cellar (for we have seen to what use my mother had put it), but we set them aside our wine-bin, and they could then draw what Soissons' wine they liked.

Then, finally, if, in spite of the haricot mutton and the Soissons' wine, they still proved too objectionable, we were to escape by way of the quarry.

We will now describe what this was.