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Updated: May 20, 2025
I said to myself, "They cannot all be dead;" and I said to Buche: "If I could only find Zébédé it would give me back my courage." But he replied: "Let us try to save ourselves, Joseph. As for me, if I ever see Harberg again, I will not complain because I have to eat potatoes. No, no. God has punished me. I shall be contented to work and go into the woods with my axe on my shoulder.
He fired, and several of us rushed for the ladder, but before we could think of climbing they were upon us. Zébédé, Buche, and all who had not had time to get up the ladder drove them back with their bayonets. It seems to me as if I could see those Prussians still, with their big mustaches, their red faces and flat shakos, furious at being checked. I never had such a shock as that.
Buche had returned among the first with his canteen and now stood behind us with his ears wide open like a fox on the alert. Files of cavalry came out of the woods and crossed the grain fields in the direction of St. Amand, the large village at the left of Fleurus. "Those," said Zébédé, "are the light horse of Pajol who will deploy as scouts. These are Exelman's dragoons.
Desertions began that very day, and I said to Buche, "Let us return to Phalsbourg and Harberg, and take up our work, and live like honest men." About fifty of us from Alsace-Lorraine were in the battalion, and we set off together on the road to Strasbourg. On July 8 we heard that Louis XVIII. was to come back, and already the white banner of the Bourbons was being displayed in the villages.
Farther on we met some peasants, who scowled at us from the road-side. We must have had ill-looking faces, especially Buche with his head bound up, and his beard eight days old, thick and hard as the bristles of a boar. About one o'clock in the afternoon we re-crossed the Sambre, by the bridge of Chatelet, but as the Prussians were still in pursuit we did not halt there.
Thousands and thousands of helmets glittered in the sun, and Buche who stood beside me, exclaimed: "Oh! oh! oh! look, Joseph, look! they come continually!" And we could see innumerable bayonets in the same direction as far as the eye could reach. The Prussians were spreading more and more over the hill-side near the windmills. This movement continued till eight o'clock.
We heard that the emperor had departed for Paris, and we struggled on, only hoping to escape with our lives. At Charleroi the inhabitants shut the city gates in our face, and Buche shared in the general rage, and proposed to destroy the town. But I thought we had had enough massacres, and that it was not right we should be killing our own countrymen, and I persuaded Buche to come on with me.
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