The Blockade of Phalsburg: An Episode of the End of the Empire

I wanted to thank him. "Good!" said he, "that is all understood. I cannot give you a pike, or a fat goose, but a good soup in blockade times is worth something, too."

As they reached the foot of the glacis, suddenly a large mass of Cossacks, seeing that they were escaping, galloped up in two files, to cut off their retreat. It was a dangerous...

"Ah!" exclaimed Burguet, "it was not very pleasant for the Germans, I am sure. But it is time to go and read the newspaper. God grant that the time for paying our old debts may...

To send fathers of families roaming about through the mud, in danger, at every step, of being struck by bursting shells, tiles, and whole chimneys falling on their backs, is som...

I have often reproached myself for having caused this sorrow, but who can answer for his own wisdom? Has not the wise man himself said: "I turned myself to behold wisdom, and ma...

Long before this, I had gone down to the square, near the German gate, to meet our troops as they came back. It was one of the sights which I shall never forget; the post under...

"Lord, take from me all weakness! Thou seest that I need to live for the sake of these little ones. Therefore be thou my strength, and let me not be cast down!"

The more gently he spoke, the more did the poor fellow weep. At last, however, he said that his family lived near Gerarmer, in the Vosges; that his father's name was Mathieu Bel...

"Now I am among honest people! We shall have no difficulty in getting along together. You do not trouble me, I do not trouble you; I come in and go out, by day or night; it is S...

Thus it is that men of great talents often bury themselves in small places, where nobody values them at their true worth; they fall gradually into their own ruts, and disappear...

"These things are dreadful," said Brestel, "but they must come. There has been no business these two years; I have back here, in my court, three thousand pounds' worth of planks...

From this time public notices, requisitions, forced labors, domiciliary visits for tools and wheelbarrows, came one after another, incessantly. A man was nothing in his own hous...

I saw all this under the great dark roof, through which a little light came, in the holes made by the shells. In the distance, among the worm-eaten pillars, some soldiers, under...

"The Blockade of Phalsburg" contains one of the happiest portraits in the Erckmann-Chatrian gallery--that of the Jew Moses who tells the story and who is always in character, ho...

Not a murmur was heard from the ranks; all was quiet, terrible, frightful! Those old soldiers, their teeth set, their mustaches shaking, their brows scowling fiercely, presentin...