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Updated: July 19, 2025
In some poor outcasts; stranded by the wayside, she had recognized a family of honest weavers from Bazeilles, father, mother, and three little girls, of whom the largest was only nine years old. They were utterly disheartened and forlorn, and so weary and footsore that they could go no further, and had thrown themselves down at the foot of a wall.
The soldiers pointed at her with their fingers; she was the object of their witticisms. The captain, also, greatly amused by the incident, had to have his joke. "You should take us along with you, my little dear, if you are going to Bazeilles. We were there a short while ago, and I am in hope that we shall go back there, but I can tell you that the temperature of the place is none too cool."
There were the two arms of the gigantic vise, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, the Saxon Prince's army on the right, slowly, irresistibly closing on each other, while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.
Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having gone further than Givonne. At Bazeilles we met the King, accompanied by Bismarck and several of the staff.
At that moment, just as Henriette raised her head to listen to the cannonade, which was then roaring with increased viciousness, she was thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing only a few steps away in the middle of a group of men, to whom he was telling the story of the frightful dangers he had encountered in getting from Bazeilles to Sedan. How did he happen to be there?
"You would have all my gratitude, sir," faintly murmured Henriette, to whose memory suddenly rose the image of her husband, her dear Weiss, slaughtered down yonder at Bazeilles, filling her with invincible repugnance. Edmond, who had discreetly taken himself off on the arrival of the captain, now reappeared and whispered something in Gilberte's ear.
The men shoved her with their elbows, and the butts of their muskets made acquaintance with her ribs; when she had advanced a dozen paces there was a chorus of shouts and angry protests. A captain turned on her and roughly cried: "Hi, there, you woman! are you crazy? Where are you going?" "I am going to Bazeilles." "What, to Bazeilles?" There was a shout of laughter.
The guns, which were thundering more fiercely than ever in the direction of Bazeilles, now also began to make themselves heard at the eastward, in the valley of la Givonne, which was hid from view; it was the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, debouching from the Chevalier wood and attacking the 1st corps, in front of Daigny village; and now that the XIth Prussian corps, moving on Floing, had opened fire on General Douay's troops, the investment was complete at every point of the great periphery of several leagues' extent, and the action was general all along the line.
"Well, well," he murmured, "they are all going to have a hand in the business, it seems." The lieutenant of marines, who had turned his eyes in the same direction, spoke up confidently: "Oh! Bazeilles is the key of the position. This is the spot where the battle will be won or lost." "Do you think so?" Weiss exclaimed. "There is not the slightest doubt of it.
He knew nothing of tactics or strategy, had nothing but his common sense to guide him; but he looked with fear and trembling on that great triangle that had the Meuse for one of its sides, and for the other two the 7th and 1st corps on the north and east respectively, while the extreme angle at the south was occupied by the 12th at Bazeilles all the three corps facing outward on the periphery of a semicircle, awaiting the appearance of an enemy who was to deliver his attack at some one point, where or when no one could say, but who, instead, fell on them from every direction at once.
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