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Updated: June 6, 2025
Our friends in Phalsbourg, over their warm suppers, scarcely think of us lying here, with nothing but a piece of cow-beef to eat, a river flowing beside us, the damp earth beneath, and only the sky for a roof, without speaking of the sabre-cuts and bayonet-thrusts our friends yonder have in store for us." "Bah!" said Klipfel; "this is life. I would not pass my days otherwise.
On the day of the religious procession at Phalsbourg, half a dozen old veterans, restored prisoners, were set upon in our town by that rascal Pinacle and the people of Baraques, and knocked about. Pinacle did this to curry favour with Louis XVIII., and M. Goulden warned us that if ruffians like Pinacle got the upper hand it would open people's eyes.
Captain Vidal, to warm himself, had dismounted and marched with us on foot. The officers and sergeants hastened us on. Five or six Italians had fallen behind and remained in the villages, no longer able to advance. My feet wore sore and burning, and at the last halt I could scarcely rise to resume the march. The others from Phalsbourg, however, kept bravely on.
The man asked me whence I came. I told him from Phalsbourg in Lorraine. Then he told his wife to bring some bread, adding that, after we had taken a glass of wine together, he would leave me to the repose I needed so much. He pushed the table before me, as I sat with my feet in the bath, and we each drained a glass of good white wine.
She approached, trembling and sobbing, when again and again the cannon thundered. "What are those shots I hear?" I cried. "The guns of Phalsbourg," she answered. "The city is besieged." "Phalsbourg besieged! The enemy in France!" I could speak no more. Thus had so much suffering, so many tears, so many thousands of lives gone for nothing, ay, worse than nothing, for the foe was at our homes.
The other, hearing himself thus mockingly called "veteran," would have fallen upon my comrade in his bed; but two tall fellows who served him as seconds held him back, and, besides, the Phalsbourg men were there. "Quick, quick! Hurry!" cried the old hussar. But Zébédé dressed himself calmly, without any haste.
Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Féral's, who was called the "Standard-bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia, Jean, Louis, and George Féral.
Thionville was in flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desperate resistance that lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing cannonade. One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to be gone, Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight clasped in hers. "Ah, no!
The town-house of Phalsbourg, that Thursday morning, January 15, 1813, during the drawing of the conscription, was a sight to be seen. To-day it is bad enough to be drawn, to be forced to leave parents, friends, home, one's cattle and one's fields, to go and learn God knows where "One! two! one! two! halt! eyes left! eyes right! front! carry arms!" etc., etc.
I cried in my distress. "Bah! don't grieve at that," he answered; "your leg is sound. I'll answer for it." "But that," said Monsieur the Mayor, "does not prevent his being lame from birth; all Phalsbourg knows that." "The leg is too short," said the surgeon from the hospital; "it is doubtless a case for exemption."
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