A Soldier Of The Empire | Page 4

came from the emperor. The Sergeant
suggested that Pierre was the man for the place; but the captain simply
repeated the order. The Quarter approved the selection, and several
fights occurred among the children who had gotten up a company as to
who should be the sergeant. It was deemed more honorable than to be
the captain.
The day the regiment left Paris, the Sergeant was ordered to report
several reliable men for special duty; he detailed Pierre among the
number. Pierre was sick, so sick that when the company started he
would have been left behind but for his father. The old soldier was too
proud of his son to allow him to miss the opportunity of fighting for
France. Pierre was the handsomest man in the regiment.
The new levies on arrival in the field went into camp, in and near some
villages and were drilled,--quite needlessly, Pierre and some of the
others declared. They were not accustomed to restraint, and they could
not see why they should be worked to death when they were lying in
camp doing nothing. But the soldier of the empire was a strict
drill-master, and the company was shortly the best-drilled one in the
regiment.
Yet the army lay still: they were not marching on to Berlin. The sole
principle of the campaign seemed to be the massing together of as

many troops as possible. What they were to do no one appeared very
clearly to know. What they were doing all knew: they were doing
nothing. The men, at first burning for battle, became cold or lukewarm
with waiting; dissatisfaction crept in, and then murmurs: "Why did they
not fight?" The soldier of the empire himself was sorely puzzled. The
art of war had clearly changed since his day. The emperor would have
picked the best third of these troops and have been at the gates of the
Prussian capital in less time than they had spent camped with the
enemy right before them. Still, it was not for a soldier to question, and
he reported for a week's extra guard duty a man who ventured to
complain in his presence that the marshal knew as little as the men.
Extra guard duty did no good. The army was losing heart.
Thus it was for several weeks. But at last, one evening, it was apparent
that some change was at hand: the army stirred and shook itself as a
great animal moves and stretches, not knowing if it will awake or drop
off to sleep again.
During the night it became wide awake. It was high time. The Prussians
were almost on them. They had them in a trap. They held the higher
grounds and hemmed the French in. All night long the tents were being
struck, and the army was in commotion. No one knew just why it was.
Some said they were about to be attacked; some said they were
surrounded. Uncertainty gave place to excitement. At length they
marched.
When day began to break, the army had been tumbled into line of battle,
and the regiment in which the old Sergeant and Pierre were was drawn
up on the edge of a gentleman's park outside of the villages. The line
extended beyond them farther than they could see, and large bodies of
troops were massed behind them, and were marching and
countermarching in clouds of dust. The rumor went along the ranks that
they were in the advanced line, and that the Germans were just the
other side of the little plateau, which they could dimly see in the gray
light of the dawn. The men, having been marching in the dark, were
tired, and most of them lay down, when they were halted, to rest. Some
went to sleep; others, like Pierre, set to work and with their bayonets

dug little trenches and threw up a slight earthwork before them, behind
which they could lie; for the skirmishers had been thrown out, looking
vague and ghostly as they trotted forward in the dim twilight, and they
supposed that the battle would be fought right there. By the time,
however, that the trenches were dug, the line was advanced, and the
regiment was moved forward some distance, and was halted just under
a knoll along which ran a road. The Sergeant was the youngest man in
the company; the sound of battle had brought back all his fire. To him
numbers were nothing. He thought it now but a matter of a few hours,
and France would be at the gates of Berlin. He saw once more the field
of glory and heard again the shout of victory; Lorraine would be saved;
he beheld the tricolor floating over the capital of the enemies of France.
Perhaps, it would be planted