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+Project Gutenberg's "A Soldier Of The Empire", by Thomas Nelson Page
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: "A Soldier Of The Empire"
+       1891
+
+Author: Thomas Nelson Page
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE."
+
+By Thomas Nelson Page
+
+1891
+
+It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier--a soldier
+of the empire. (He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is probable
+that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a
+child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant
+with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two
+sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all knew, had been received the summer
+day when he had stood, a mere boy, in the hollow square at Waterloo,
+striving to stay the fierce flood of the "men on the white horses"; the
+other, tradition said, was of even more ancient date.)
+
+Yes, they all knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen, just
+the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as Pauline, he
+had received the cross which he always wore over his heart sewed in the
+breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself, for standing
+on the hill at Wagram when his regiment broke, and beating the
+long-roll, whilst he held the tattered colors resting in his arm, until
+the men rallied and swept back the left wing of the enemy. This the
+children knew, as their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
+grandmothers before them had known it, and rarely an evening passed that
+some of the gamins were not to be found in the old man's kitchen,
+which was also his parlor, or else on his little porch, listening with
+ever-new delight to the story of his battles and of the emperor. They
+all knew as well as he the thrilling part where the emperor dashed by
+(the old Sergeant always rose reverently at the name, and the little
+audience also stood,--one or two nervous younger ones sometimes bobbing
+up a little ahead of time, but sitting down again in confusion under
+the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the rest),--where the emperor
+dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer what regiment that was
+that had broken, and who was that drummer that had been promoted
+to ensign;--they all knew how, on the grand review afterwards, the
+Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other, which had
+been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his company
+before the emperor, and had been recognized by him. They knew how he had
+been called up by a staff-officer (whom the children imagined to be
+a fine gentleman with a rich uniform, and a great shako like Marie's
+uncle, the drum-major), and how the emperor had taken from his own
+breast and with his own hand had given him the cross, which he had never
+from that day removed from his heart, and had said, "I would make you a
+colonel if I could spare you."
+
+This was the story they liked best, though there were many others which
+they frequently begged to be told--of march and siege and battle, of
+victories over or escapes from red-coated Britishers and fierce German
+lancers, and of how the mere presence of the emperor was worth fifty
+thousand men, and how the soldiers knew that where he was no enemy could
+withstand them. It all seemed to them very long ago, and the soldier of
+the empire was the only man in the Quarter who was felt to be greater
+than the rich nobles and fine officers who flashed along the great
+streets, or glittered through the boulevards and parks outside. More
+than once when Paris was stirred up, and the Quarter seemed on the eve
+of an outbreak, a mounted orderly had galloped up to his door with
+a letter, requesting his presence somewhere (it was whispered at the
+prefect's), and when he returned, if he refused to speak of his visit
+the Quarter was satisfied; it trusted him and knew that when he advised
+quiet it was for its good. He loved France first, the Quarter next. Had
+he not been offered--? What had he not been offered! The Quarter knew,
+or fancied it knew, which did quite as well. At least, it knew how he
+always took sides with the Quarter against oppression. It knew how he
+had gone up into the burning tenement and brought the children down out
+of the garret just before the roof fell. It knew how he had jumped into
+the river that winter when it was full of ice, to save Raoul's little
+lame dog which had fallen into the water; it knew how he had reported
+the gendarmes for arresting poor little Aimée just for begging a man in
+the Place de L'Opéra for a franc for her old grandmother, who was blind,
+and how he had her released instead of being sent to ------. But what
+was the need of multiplying instances! He was "the Sergeant," a soldier
+of the empire, and there was not a dog in the Quarter which did not feel
+and look proud when it could trot on the inside of the sidewalk by him.
+
+Thus the old Sergeant came to be regarded as the conservator of order in
+the Quarter, and was worth more in the way of keeping it quiet than all
+the gendarmes that ever came inside its precincts. And thus the children
+all knew him.
+
+One story that the Sergeant sometimes told, the girls liked to hear,
+though the boys did not, because it had nothing about war in it, and
+Minette and Clarisse used to cry so when it was told, that the Sergeant
+would stop and put his arms around them and pet them until they only
+sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+It was of how he had, when a lonely old man, met down in Lorraine his
+little Camille, whose eyes were as blue as the sky, and her hand as
+white as the flower from which she took her name, and her cheeks as pink
+as the roses in the gardens of the Tuileries. He had loved her, and she,
+though forty years his junior, had married him and had come here to live
+with him; but the close walls of the city had not suited her, and she
+had pined and languished before his eyes like a plucked lily, and, after
+she bore him Pierre, had died in his arms, and left him lonelier than
+before. And the old soldier always lowered his voice and paused a moment
+(Raoul said he was saying a mass), and then he would add consolingly:
+"But she left a soldier, and when I am gone, should France ever need
+one, Pierre will be here." The boys did not fancy this story for the
+reasons given, and besides, although they loved the Sergeant, they did
+not like Pierre. Pierre was not popular in the Quarter,--except with the
+young girls and a few special friends. The women said he was idle and
+vain like his mother, who had been, they said, a silly lazy thing with
+little to boast of but blue eyes and a white skin, of which she was too
+proud to endanger it by work, and that she had married the Sergeant for
+his pension, and would have ruined him if she had lived, and that Pierre
+was just like her.
+
+The children knew nothing of the resemblance. They disliked Pierre
+because he was cross and disagreeable to them, and however their older
+sisters might admire his curling brown hair, his dark eyes, and delicate
+features, which he had likewise inherited from his mother, they did not
+like him; for he always scolded when he came home and found them there;
+and he had several times ordered the whole lot out of the house; and
+once he had slapped little Raoul, for which Jean Maison had beaten him.
+Of late, too, when it drew near the hour for him to come home, the old
+Sergeant had two or three times left out a part of his story, and had
+told them to run away and come back in the morning, as Pierre liked to
+be quiet when he came from his work--which Raoul said was gambling.
+
+Thus it was that Pierre was not popular in the Quarter.
+
+He was nineteen years old when war was declared.
+
+They said Prussia was trying to rob France,--to steal Alsace and
+Lorraine. All Paris was in an uproar. The Quarter, always ripe for any
+excitement, shared in and enjoyed the general commotion. It struck off
+from work. It was like the commune; at least, so people said. Pierre was
+the loudest declaimer in the district. He got work in the armory.
+
+Recruiting officers went in and out of the saloons and cafés, drinking
+with the men, talking to the women, and stirring up as much fervor as
+possible. It needed little to stir it. The Quarter was seething. Troops
+were being mustered in, and the streets and parks were filled with the
+tramp of regiments; and the roll of the drums, the call of the bugles,
+and the cheers of the crowds as they marched by floated into the
+Quarter. Brass bands were so common that although in the winter a couple
+of strolling musicians had been sufficient to lose temporarily every
+child in the Quarter, it now required a full band and a grenadier
+regiment, to boot, to draw a tolerable representation.
+
+Of all the residents of the Quarter, none took a deeper interest than
+the soldier of the empire. He became at once an object of more than
+usual attention. He had married in Lorraine, and could, of course, tell
+just how long it would take to whip the Prussians. He thought a single
+battle would decide it. It would if the emperor were there. His little
+court was always full of inquirers, and the stories of the emperor were
+told to audiences now of grandfathers and grandmothers.
+
+Once or twice the gendarmes had sauntered down, thinking, from seeing
+the crowd, that a fight was going on. They had stayed to hear of the
+emperor. A hint was dropped by the soldier of the empire that perhaps
+France would conquer Prussia, and then go on across to Moscow to settle
+an old score, and that night it was circulated through the Quarter that
+the invasion of Russia would follow the capture of Berlin. The emperor
+became more popular than he had been since the _coup d'état_. Half the
+Quarter offered its services.
+
+The troops were being drilled night and day, and morning after morning
+the soldier of the empire locked his door, buttoned his coat tightly
+around him, and with a stately military air marched over to the park to
+see the drill, where he remained until it was time for Pierre to have
+his supper.
+
+The old Sergeant's acquaintance extended far beyond the Quarter. Indeed,
+his name had been mentioned in the papers more than once, and his
+presence was noted at the drill by those high in authority; so that he
+was often to be seen surrounded by a group listening to his accounts of
+the emperor, or showing what the _manuel_ had been in his time. His air,
+always soldierly, was now imposing, and many a visitor of distinction
+inquiring who he might be, and learning that he was a soldier of the
+empire, sought an introduction to him. Sometimes they told him that they
+could hardly believe him so old, could hardly believe him much older
+than some of those in the ranks, and although at first he used to
+declare he was like a rusty flint-lock, too old and useless for service,
+their flattery soothed his vanity, and after a while, instead of shaking
+his head and replying as he did at first that France had no use for old
+men, he would smile doubtfully and say that when they let Pierre go,
+maybe he would go too, "just to show the children how they fought then."
+
+The summer came. The war began in earnest. The troops were sent to the
+front, the crowds shouting, "On to Berlin." Others were mustered in
+and sent after them as fast as they were equipped. News of battle
+after battle came; at first, of victory (so the papers said), full and
+satisfying, then meagre and uncertain, and at last so scanty that only
+the wise ones knew there had been a defeat. The Quarter was in a fever
+of patriotism.
+
+Jean Maison and nearly all the young men had enlisted and gone, leaving
+their sweethearts by turns waving their kerchiefs and wiping their
+eyes with them. Pierre, however, still remained behind. He said he was
+working for the Government. Raoul said he was not working at all; that
+he was skulking.
+
+Suddenly the levy came. Pierre was conscripted.
+
+That night the Sergeant enlisted in the same company. Before the week
+was out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for
+the news came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that
+France needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not
+what she needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion
+of this by some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew from
+him the rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called out a
+corporal and a file of grenadiers."
+
+The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him
+and bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve. The
+order had come from the colonel, some even said from the marshal. In
+the Quarter it was said that it 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 there by Pierre. And he saw in his imagination Pierre climbing
+at a stride from a private to a captain, a colonel, a--! who could
+tell?--had not the _baton_ been won in a campaign? As to dreaming that a
+battle could bring any other result than victory!--It was impossible!
+
+"Where are you going?" shouted derisively the men of a regiment at rest,
+to the Sergeant's command as they marched past.
+
+"To Berlin," replied the Sergeant.
+
+The reply evoked cheers, and that regiment that day stood its ground
+until a fourth of its men fell. The old soldier's enthusiasm infected
+the new recruits, who were pale and nervous under the strain of waiting.
+His eye rested on Pierre, who was standing down near the other end of
+the company, and the father's face beamed as he thought he saw there
+resolution and impatience for the fight. Ha! France should ring with his
+name; the Quarter should go wild with delight.
+
+Just then the skirmishers ahead began to fire, and in a few moments it
+was answered by a sullen note from the villages beyond the plain, and
+the battle had begun. The dropping fire of the skirmish line increased
+and merged into a rattle, and suddenly the thunder broke from a hill
+to their right, and ran along the crest until the earth trembled under
+their feet. Bullets began to whistle over their heads and clip the
+leaves of the trees beyond them, and the long, pulsating scream of
+shells flying over them and exploding in the park behind them made the
+faces of the men look gray in the morning twilight. Waiting was worse
+than fighting. It told on the young men.
+
+In a little while a staff-officer galloped up to the colonel, who was
+sitting on his horse in the road, quietly smoking a cigar, and a moment
+later the whole line was in motion. They were wheeled to the right, and
+marched under shelter of the knoll in the direction of the firing. As
+they passed the turn of the road, they caught a glimpse of the hill
+ahead where the artillery, enveloped in smoke, was thundering from an
+ever-thickening cloud. A battery of eight guns galloped past them, and
+turning the curve disappeared in a cloud of dust. To the new recruits it
+seemed as if the whole battle was being fought right there. They could
+see nothing but their own line, and only a part of that; smoke and dust
+hid everything else; but the hill was plainly an important point, for
+they were being pushed forward, and the firing on the rise ahead of them
+was terrific. They were still partly protected by the ridge, but shells
+were screaming over them, and the earth was rocking under their feet.
+More batteries came thundering by,--the men clinging to the pieces and
+the drivers lashing their horses furiously,--and disappearing into
+the smoke on the hill, unlimbered and swelled the deafening roar; they
+passed men lying on the ground dead or wounded, or were passed by others
+helping wounded comrades to the rear. Several men in the company fell,
+some crying out or groaning with pain, and two or three killed outright.
+
+The men were dodging and twisting, with heads bent forward a little as
+if in a pelting rain. Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger ones
+were perfectly erect.
+
+"Why don't you dodge the balls?" asked a recruit of the Sergeant.
+
+"A soldier of the empire never dodges," was the proud reply.
+
+Some change occurred on the hills; they could not see what. Just then
+the order came down the line to advance at a double-quick and support
+the batteries. They moved forward at a run and passed beyond the shelter
+of the ridge. Instantly they were in the line of fire from the Prussian
+batteries, whose white puffs of smoke were visible across the plain, and
+bullets and shell tore wide spaces in their ranks. They could not see
+the infantrymen, who were in pits, but the bullets hissed and whistled
+by them. The men on both sides of Pierre were killed and fell forward on
+their faces with a thud, one of them still clutching his musket. Pierre
+would have stopped, but there was no time, the men in the rear pressed
+him on. As they appeared in the smoke of the nearest battery, the
+artillerymen broke into cheers at the welcome sight, and all down the
+line it was taken up. All around were dead and dying men increasing in
+numbers momentarily. No one had time to notice them. Some of them had
+blankets thrown over them. The infantry, who were a little to the side
+of the batteries, were ordered to lie down; most of them had already
+done so; even then they were barely protected; shot and shell ploughed
+the ground around them as if it had been a fallow field; men spoke to
+their comrades, and before receiving a reply were shot dead at their
+sides. The wounded were more ghastly than the dead; their faces growing
+suddenly deadly white from the shock as they were struck.
+
+The gunners lay in piles around their guns, and still the survivors
+worked furiously in the dense heat and smoke, the sweat pouring down
+their blackened faces. The fire was terrific.
+
+Suddenly an officer galloped up, and spoke to the lieutenant of the
+nearest battery.
+
+"Where is the colonel?"
+
+"Killed."
+
+"Where is your captain?"
+
+"Dead, there under the gun."
+
+"Are you in command?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Well, hold this hill."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Forever." And he galloped off.
+
+His voice was heard clear and ringing in a sudden lull, and the old
+Sergeant, clutching his musket, shouted:
+
+"We will, forever."
+
+There was a momentary lull.
+
+Suddenly the cry was:
+
+"Here they are."
+
+In an instant a dark line of men appeared coming up the slope. The guns
+were trained down on them, but shot over their heads; they were double
+shotted and trained lower, and belched forth canister. They fell in
+swathes, yet still they came on at a run, hurrahing, until they were
+almost up among the guns, and the gunners were leaving their pieces. The
+old Sergeant's voice speaking to his men was as steady as if on parade,
+and kept them down, and when the command was given to fire kneeling,
+they rose as one man, and poured a volley into the Germans' faces which
+sent them reeling back down the hill, leaving a broken line of dead and
+struggling men on the deadly crest. Just then a brigade officer came
+along. They heard him say, "That repulse may stop them." Then he
+gave some order in an undertone to the lieutenant in command of the
+batteries, and passed on. A moment later the fire from the Prussian
+batteries was heavier than before; the guns were being knocked to
+pieces. A piece of shell struck the Sergeant on the cheek, tearing away
+the flesh badly. He tore the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around
+his head with perfect unconcern. The fire of the Germans was still
+growing heavier; the smoke was too dense to see a great deal, but they
+were concentrating or were coming closer. The lieutenant came back for
+a moment and spoke to the captain of the company, who, looking along the
+line, called the Sergeant, and ordered him to go back down the hill to
+where the road turned behind it, and tell General ------ to send them
+a support instantly, as the batteries were knocked to pieces, and they
+could not hold the hill much longer. The announcement was astonishing
+to the old soldier; it had never occurred to him that as long as a man
+remained they could not hold the hill, and he was half-way down the
+slope before he took it in. He had brought his gun with him, and he
+clutched it convulsively as if he could withstand alone the whole
+Prussian army. "He might have taken a younger man to do his trotting,"
+he muttered to himself as he stalked along, not knowing that his wound
+had occasioned his selection. "Pierre--" but, no, Pierre must stay where
+he would have the opportunity to distinguish himself.
+
+It was no holiday promenade that the old soldier was taking; for his
+path lay right across the track swept by the German batteries, and the
+whole distance was strewn with dead, killed as they had advanced in the
+morning. But the old Sergeant got safely across. He found the General
+with one or two members of his staff sitting on horseback in the road
+near the park gate, receiving and answering dispatches. He delivered his
+message.
+
+"Go back and tell him he _must_ hold it," was the reply. "Upon it
+depends the fate of the day; perhaps of France. Or wait, you are
+wounded; I will send some one else; you go to the rear." And he gave
+the order to one of his staff, who saluted and dashed off on his horse.
+"Hold it for France," he called after him.
+
+The words were heard perfectly clear even above the din of battle which
+was steadily increasing all along the line, and they stirred the old
+soldier like a trumpet. No rear for him! He turned and pushed back up
+the hill at a run. The road had somewhat changed since he left, but
+he marked it not; shot and shell were ploughing across his path more
+thickly, but he did not heed them; in his ears rang the words--"For
+France." They came like an echo from the past; it was the same cry he
+had heard at Waterloo, when the soldiers of France that summer day
+had died for France and the emperor, with a cheer on their lips. "For
+France": the words were consecrated; the emperor himself had used them.
+He had heard him, and would have died then; should he not die now for
+her! Was it not glorious to die for France, and have men say that he had
+fought for her when a babe, and had died for her when an old man!
+
+With these thoughts was mingled the thought of Pierre--Pierre also would
+die for France! They would save her or die together; and he pressed his
+hand with a proud caress over the cross on his breast. It was the emblem
+of glory.
+
+He was almost back with his men now; he knew it by the roar, but the
+smoke hid everything. Just then it shifted a little. As it did so, he
+saw a man steal out of the dim line and start towards him at a run. He
+had on the uniform of his regiment. His cap was pulled over his eyes,
+and he saw him deliberately fling away his gun. He was skulking. All
+the blood boiled up in the old soldier's veins. Desert!--not fight for
+France! Why did not Pierre shoot him! Just then the coward passed close
+to him, and the old man seized him with a grip of iron. The deserter,
+surprised, turned his face; it was pallid with terror and shame; but no
+more so than his captor's. It was Pierre.
+
+"Pierre!" he gasped. "Good God! where are you going?"
+
+"I am sick," faltered the other.
+
+"Come back," said the father sternly.
+
+"I cannot," was the terrified answer.
+
+"It is for France, Pierre," pleaded the old soldier.
+
+"Oh! I cannot," moaned the young man, pulling away. There was a
+pause--the old man still holding on hesitatingly, then,--"Dastard!" he
+hissed, flinging his son from him with indescribable scorn.
+
+Pierre, free once more, was slinking off with averted face, when anew
+idea seized his father, and his face grew grim as stone. Cocking his
+musket, he flung it up, took careful and deliberate aim at his son's
+retreating figure, and brought his finger slowly down upon the trigger.
+But, before he could fire, a shell exploded directly in the line of his
+aim, and when the smoke blew off, Pierre had disappeared. The Sergeant
+lowered his piece, gazed curiously down the hill, and then hurried to
+the spot where the shell had burst. A mangled form marked the place. The
+coward had in the very act of flight met the death he dreaded. Pierre
+lay dead on his face, shot in the back. The back of his head was
+shattered by a fragment of shell. The countenance of the living man
+was more pallid than that of the dead. No word escaped him, except that
+refrain, "For France, for France," which he repeated mechanically.
+
+Although this had occupied but a few minutes, momentous changes had
+taken place on the ridge above. The sound of the battle had somewhat
+altered, and with the roar of artillery were mingled now the continuous
+rattle of the musketry and the shouts and cheers of the contending
+troops. The fierce onslaught of the Prussians had broken the line
+somewhere beyond the batteries, and the French were being borne back.
+Almost immediately the slope was filled with retreating men hurrying
+back in the demoralization of panic. All order was lost. It was a rout.
+The soldiers of his own regiment began to rush by the spot where the
+old Sergeant stood above his son's body. Recognizing him, some of his
+comrades seized his arm and attempted to hurry him along; but with a
+fierce exclamation the old soldier shook them off, and raising his voice
+so that he was heard even above the tumult of the rout, he shouted, "Are
+ye all cowards? Rally for France--For France----"
+
+They tried to bear him along; the officers, they said, were dead; the
+Prussians had captured the guns, and had broken the whole line. But it
+was no use; still he shouted that rallying cry, For France, for France,
+"Vive la France; Vive l'Empereur"; and steadied by the war-cry, and
+accustomed to obey an officer, the men around him fell instinctively
+into something like order, and for an instant the rout was arrested. The
+fight was renewed over Pierre's dead body. As they had, however, truly
+said, the Prussians were too strong for them. They had carried the line
+and were now pouring down the hill by thousands in the ardor of hot
+pursuit, the line on either side of the hill was swept away, and whilst
+the gallant little band about the old soldier still stood and fought
+desperately, they were soon surrounded. There was no thought of quarter;
+none was asked, none was given. Cries, curses, cheers, shots, blows,
+were mingled together, and clear above all rang the old soldier's
+war-cry, For France, for France, "Vive la France, Vive l'Empereur." It
+was the refrain from an older and bloodier field. He thought he was at
+Waterloo.
+
+Mad with excitement, the men took up the cry, and fought like tigers;
+but the issue could not be doubtful.
+
+Man after man fell, shot or clubbed down, with the cry "For France"
+on his lips, and his comrades, standing astride his body, fought with
+bayonets and clubbed muskets till they too fell in turn. Almost the last
+one was the old Sergeant. Wounded to death, and bleeding from numberless
+gashes, he still fought, shouting his battle-cry, "For France," till
+his musket was hurled spinning from his shattered hand, and staggering
+senseless back, a dozen bayonets were driven into his breast, crushing
+out forever the brave spirit of the soldier of the empire.
+
+It was best, for France was lost.
+
+A few hours later the Quarter was in mourning over the terrible defeat.
+
+* * * * *
+
+That night a group of Prussian officers going over the field with
+lanterns looking after their wounded, stopped near a spot remarkable
+even on that bloody slope for the heaps of dead of both armies literally
+piled upon each other.
+
+"It was just here," said one, "that they got reinforcements and made
+that splendid rally."
+
+A second, looking at the body of an old French sergeant lying amidst
+heaps of slain, with his face to the sky, said simply as he saw his
+scars:
+
+"There died a brave soldier."
+
+Another, older than the first, bending closer to count the bayonet
+wounds, caught the gleam of something in the light of the lantern,
+and stooping to examine a broken cross of the Legion on the dead man's
+breast, said reverently:
+
+"He was a _soldier of the empire_."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's "A Soldier Of The Empire", by Thomas Nelson Page
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      'A Soldier of the Empire', by Thomas Nelson Page
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's "A Soldier Of The Empire", by Thomas Nelson Page
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: "A Soldier Of The Empire"
+       1891
+
+Author: Thomas Nelson Page
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23014]
+Last Updated: January 9, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      "A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE."
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Nelson Page <br /> <br /> 1891
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier&mdash;a
+      soldier of the empire. (He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is
+      probable that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not
+      a child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant
+      with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two
+      sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all knew, had been received the summer day
+      when he had stood, a mere boy, in the hollow square at Waterloo, striving
+      to stay the fierce flood of the "men on the white horses"; the other,
+      tradition said, was of even more ancient date.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, they all knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen, just
+      the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as Pauline, he
+      had received the cross which he always wore over his heart sewed in the
+      breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself, for standing on
+      the hill at Wagram when his regiment broke, and beating the long-roll,
+      whilst he held the tattered colors resting in his arm, until the men
+      rallied and swept back the left wing of the enemy. This the children knew,
+      as their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers before them
+      had known it, and rarely an evening passed that some of the gamins were
+      not to be found in the old man's kitchen, which was also his parlor, or
+      else on his little porch, listening with ever-new delight to the story of
+      his battles and of the emperor. They all knew as well as he the thrilling
+      part where the emperor dashed by (the old Sergeant always rose reverently
+      at the name, and the little audience also stood,&mdash;one or two nervous
+      younger ones sometimes bobbing up a little ahead of time, but sitting down
+      again in confusion under the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the
+      rest),&mdash;where the emperor dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer
+      what regiment that was that had broken, and who was that drummer that had
+      been promoted to ensign;&mdash;they all knew how, on the grand review
+      afterwards, the Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other,
+      which had been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his
+      company before the emperor, and had been recognized by him. They knew how
+      he had been called up by a staff-officer (whom the children imagined to be
+      a fine gentleman with a rich uniform, and a great shako like Marie's
+      uncle, the drum-major), and how the emperor had taken from his own breast
+      and with his own hand had given him the cross, which he had never from
+      that day removed from his heart, and had said, "I would make you a colonel
+      if I could spare you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the story they liked best, though there were many others which
+      they frequently begged to be told&mdash;of march and siege and battle, of
+      victories over or escapes from red-coated Britishers and fierce German
+      lancers, and of how the mere presence of the emperor was worth fifty
+      thousand men, and how the soldiers knew that where he was no enemy could
+      withstand them. It all seemed to them very long ago, and the soldier of
+      the empire was the only man in the Quarter who was felt to be greater than
+      the rich nobles and fine officers who flashed along the great streets, or
+      glittered through the boulevards and parks outside. More than once when
+      Paris was stirred up, and the Quarter seemed on the eve of an outbreak, a
+      mounted orderly had galloped up to his door with a letter, requesting his
+      presence somewhere (it was whispered at the prefect's), and when he
+      returned, if he refused to speak of his visit the Quarter was satisfied;
+      it trusted him and knew that when he advised quiet it was for its good. He
+      loved France first, the Quarter next. Had he not been offered&mdash;? What
+      had he not been offered! The Quarter knew, or fancied it knew, which did
+      quite as well. At least, it knew how he always took sides with the Quarter
+      against oppression. It knew how he had gone up into the burning tenement
+      and brought the children down out of the garret just before the roof fell.
+      It knew how he had jumped into the river that winter when it was full of
+      ice, to save Raoul's little lame dog which had fallen into the water; it
+      knew how he had reported the gendarmes for arresting poor little Aimée
+      just for begging a man in the Place de L'Opéra for a franc for her old
+      grandmother, who was blind, and how he had her released instead of being
+      sent to &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;. But what was the need of multiplying
+      instances! He was "the Sergeant," a soldier of the empire, and there was
+      not a dog in the Quarter which did not feel and look proud when it could
+      trot on the inside of the sidewalk by him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the old Sergeant came to be regarded as the conservator of order in
+      the Quarter, and was worth more in the way of keeping it quiet than all
+      the gendarmes that ever came inside its precincts. And thus the children
+      all knew him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One story that the Sergeant sometimes told, the girls liked to hear,
+      though the boys did not, because it had nothing about war in it, and
+      Minette and Clarisse used to cry so when it was told, that the Sergeant
+      would stop and put his arms around them and pet them until they only
+      sobbed on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of how he had, when a lonely old man, met down in Lorraine his
+      little Camille, whose eyes were as blue as the sky, and her hand as white
+      as the flower from which she took her name, and her cheeks as pink as the
+      roses in the gardens of the Tuileries. He had loved her, and she, though
+      forty years his junior, had married him and had come here to live with
+      him; but the close walls of the city had not suited her, and she had pined
+      and languished before his eyes like a plucked lily, and, after she bore
+      him Pierre, had died in his arms, and left him lonelier than before. And
+      the old soldier always lowered his voice and paused a moment (Raoul said
+      he was saying a mass), and then he would add consolingly: "But she left a
+      soldier, and when I am gone, should France ever need one, Pierre will be
+      here." The boys did not fancy this story for the reasons given, and
+      besides, although they loved the Sergeant, they did not like Pierre.
+      Pierre was not popular in the Quarter,&mdash;except with the young girls
+      and a few special friends. The women said he was idle and vain like his
+      mother, who had been, they said, a silly lazy thing with little to boast
+      of but blue eyes and a white skin, of which she was too proud to endanger
+      it by work, and that she had married the Sergeant for his pension, and
+      would have ruined him if she had lived, and that Pierre was just like her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children knew nothing of the resemblance. They disliked Pierre because
+      he was cross and disagreeable to them, and however their older sisters
+      might admire his curling brown hair, his dark eyes, and delicate features,
+      which he had likewise inherited from his mother, they did not like him;
+      for he always scolded when he came home and found them there; and he had
+      several times ordered the whole lot out of the house; and once he had
+      slapped little Raoul, for which Jean Maison had beaten him. Of late, too,
+      when it drew near the hour for him to come home, the old Sergeant had two
+      or three times left out a part of his story, and had told them to run away
+      and come back in the morning, as Pierre liked to be quiet when he came
+      from his work&mdash;which Raoul said was gambling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it was that Pierre was not popular in the Quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was nineteen years old when war was declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said Prussia was trying to rob France,&mdash;to steal Alsace and
+      Lorraine. All Paris was in an uproar. The Quarter, always ripe for any
+      excitement, shared in and enjoyed the general commotion. It struck off
+      from work. It was like the commune; at least, so people said. Pierre was
+      the loudest declaimer in the district. He got work in the armory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Recruiting officers went in and out of the saloons and cafés, drinking
+      with the men, talking to the women, and stirring up as much fervor as
+      possible. It needed little to stir it. The Quarter was seething. Troops
+      were being mustered in, and the streets and parks were filled with the
+      tramp of regiments; and the roll of the drums, the call of the bugles, and
+      the cheers of the crowds as they marched by floated into the Quarter.
+      Brass bands were so common that although in the winter a couple of
+      strolling musicians had been sufficient to lose temporarily every child in
+      the Quarter, it now required a full band and a grenadier regiment, to
+      boot, to draw a tolerable representation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the residents of the Quarter, none took a deeper interest than the
+      soldier of the empire. He became at once an object of more than usual
+      attention. He had married in Lorraine, and could, of course, tell just how
+      long it would take to whip the Prussians. He thought a single battle would
+      decide it. It would if the emperor were there. His little court was always
+      full of inquirers, and the stories of the emperor were told to audiences
+      now of grandfathers and grandmothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once or twice the gendarmes had sauntered down, thinking, from seeing the
+      crowd, that a fight was going on. They had stayed to hear of the emperor.
+      A hint was dropped by the soldier of the empire that perhaps France would
+      conquer Prussia, and then go on across to Moscow to settle an old score,
+      and that night it was circulated through the Quarter that the invasion of
+      Russia would follow the capture of Berlin. The emperor became more popular
+      than he had been since the <i>coup d'état</i>. Half the Quarter offered
+      its services.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The troops were being drilled night and day, and morning after morning the
+      soldier of the empire locked his door, buttoned his coat tightly around
+      him, and with a stately military air marched over to the park to see the
+      drill, where he remained until it was time for Pierre to have his supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old Sergeant's acquaintance extended far beyond the Quarter. Indeed,
+      his name had been mentioned in the papers more than once, and his presence
+      was noted at the drill by those high in authority; so that he was often to
+      be seen surrounded by a group listening to his accounts of the emperor, or
+      showing what the <i>manuel</i> had been in his time. His air, always
+      soldierly, was now imposing, and many a visitor of distinction inquiring
+      who he might be, and learning that he was a soldier of the empire, sought
+      an introduction to him. Sometimes they told him that they could hardly
+      believe him so old, could hardly believe him much older than some of those
+      in the ranks, and although at first he used to declare he was like a rusty
+      flint-lock, too old and useless for service, their flattery soothed his
+      vanity, and after a while, instead of shaking his head and replying as he
+      did at first that France had no use for old men, he would smile doubtfully
+      and say that when they let Pierre go, maybe he would go too, "just to show
+      the children how they fought then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The summer came. The war began in earnest. The troops were sent to the
+      front, the crowds shouting, "On to Berlin." Others were mustered in and
+      sent after them as fast as they were equipped. News of battle after battle
+      came; at first, of victory (so the papers said), full and satisfying, then
+      meagre and uncertain, and at last so scanty that only the wise ones knew
+      there had been a defeat. The Quarter was in a fever of patriotism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean Maison and nearly all the young men had enlisted and gone, leaving
+      their sweethearts by turns waving their kerchiefs and wiping their eyes
+      with them. Pierre, however, still remained behind. He said he was working
+      for the Government. Raoul said he was not working at all; that he was
+      skulking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the levy came. Pierre was conscripted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the Sergeant enlisted in the same company. Before the week was
+      out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for the news
+      came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that France
+      needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not what she
+      needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion of this by
+      some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew from him the
+      rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called out a corporal and
+      a file of grenadiers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him and
+      bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve. The order
+      had come from the colonel, some even said from the marshal. In the Quarter
+      it was said that it 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new levies on arrival in the field went into camp, in and near some
+      villages and were drilled,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 there by Pierre. And he saw in his
+      imagination Pierre climbing at a stride from a private to a captain, a
+      colonel, a&mdash;! who could tell?&mdash;had not the <i>baton</i> been won
+      in a campaign? As to dreaming that a battle could bring any other result
+      than victory!&mdash;It was impossible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are you going?" shouted derisively the men of a regiment at rest,
+      to the Sergeant's command as they marched past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To Berlin," replied the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply evoked cheers, and that regiment that day stood its ground until
+      a fourth of its men fell. The old soldier's enthusiasm infected the new
+      recruits, who were pale and nervous under the strain of waiting. His eye
+      rested on Pierre, who was standing down near the other end of the company,
+      and the father's face beamed as he thought he saw there resolution and
+      impatience for the fight. Ha! France should ring with his name; the
+      Quarter should go wild with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the skirmishers ahead began to fire, and in a few moments it was
+      answered by a sullen note from the villages beyond the plain, and the
+      battle had begun. The dropping fire of the skirmish line increased and
+      merged into a rattle, and suddenly the thunder broke from a hill to their
+      right, and ran along the crest until the earth trembled under their feet.
+      Bullets began to whistle over their heads and clip the leaves of the trees
+      beyond them, and the long, pulsating scream of shells flying over them and
+      exploding in the park behind them made the faces of the men look gray in
+      the morning twilight. Waiting was worse than fighting. It told on the
+      young men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while a staff-officer galloped up to the colonel, who was
+      sitting on his horse in the road, quietly smoking a cigar, and a moment
+      later the whole line was in motion. They were wheeled to the right, and
+      marched under shelter of the knoll in the direction of the firing. As they
+      passed the turn of the road, they caught a glimpse of the hill ahead where
+      the artillery, enveloped in smoke, was thundering from an ever-thickening
+      cloud. A battery of eight guns galloped past them, and turning the curve
+      disappeared in a cloud of dust. To the new recruits it seemed as if the
+      whole battle was being fought right there. They could see nothing but
+      their own line, and only a part of that; smoke and dust hid everything
+      else; but the hill was plainly an important point, for they were being
+      pushed forward, and the firing on the rise ahead of them was terrific.
+      They were still partly protected by the ridge, but shells were screaming
+      over them, and the earth was rocking under their feet. More batteries came
+      thundering by,&mdash;the men clinging to the pieces and the drivers
+      lashing their horses furiously,&mdash;and disappearing into the smoke on
+      the hill, unlimbered and swelled the deafening roar; they passed men lying
+      on the ground dead or wounded, or were passed by others helping wounded
+      comrades to the rear. Several men in the company fell, some crying out or
+      groaning with pain, and two or three killed outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men were dodging and twisting, with heads bent forward a little as if
+      in a pelting rain. Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger ones were
+      perfectly erect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you dodge the balls?" asked a recruit of the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A soldier of the empire never dodges," was the proud reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some change occurred on the hills; they could not see what. Just then the
+      order came down the line to advance at a double-quick and support the
+      batteries. They moved forward at a run and passed beyond the shelter of
+      the ridge. Instantly they were in the line of fire from the Prussian
+      batteries, whose white puffs of smoke were visible across the plain, and
+      bullets and shell tore wide spaces in their ranks. They could not see the
+      infantrymen, who were in pits, but the bullets hissed and whistled by
+      them. The men on both sides of Pierre were killed and fell forward on
+      their faces with a thud, one of them still clutching his musket. Pierre
+      would have stopped, but there was no time, the men in the rear pressed him
+      on. As they appeared in the smoke of the nearest battery, the artillerymen
+      broke into cheers at the welcome sight, and all down the line it was taken
+      up. All around were dead and dying men increasing in numbers momentarily.
+      No one had time to notice them. Some of them had blankets thrown over
+      them. The infantry, who were a little to the side of the batteries, were
+      ordered to lie down; most of them had already done so; even then they were
+      barely protected; shot and shell ploughed the ground around them as if it
+      had been a fallow field; men spoke to their comrades, and before receiving
+      a reply were shot dead at their sides. The wounded were more ghastly than
+      the dead; their faces growing suddenly deadly white from the shock as they
+      were struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gunners lay in piles around their guns, and still the survivors worked
+      furiously in the dense heat and smoke, the sweat pouring down their
+      blackened faces. The fire was terrific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly an officer galloped up, and spoke to the lieutenant of the
+      nearest battery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is the colonel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Killed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your captain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dead, there under the gun."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you in command?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, hold this hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forever." And he galloped off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was heard clear and ringing in a sudden lull, and the old
+      Sergeant, clutching his musket, shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We will, forever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a momentary lull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the cry was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here they are."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant a dark line of men appeared coming up the slope. The guns
+      were trained down on them, but shot over their heads; they were double
+      shotted and trained lower, and belched forth canister. They fell in
+      swathes, yet still they came on at a run, hurrahing, until they were
+      almost up among the guns, and the gunners were leaving their pieces. The
+      old Sergeant's voice speaking to his men was as steady as if on parade,
+      and kept them down, and when the command was given to fire kneeling, they
+      rose as one man, and poured a volley into the Germans' faces which sent
+      them reeling back down the hill, leaving a broken line of dead and
+      struggling men on the deadly crest. Just then a brigade officer came
+      along. They heard him say, "That repulse may stop them." Then he gave some
+      order in an undertone to the lieutenant in command of the batteries, and
+      passed on. A moment later the fire from the Prussian batteries was heavier
+      than before; the guns were being knocked to pieces. A piece of shell
+      struck the Sergeant on the cheek, tearing away the flesh badly. He tore
+      the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around his head with perfect
+      unconcern. The fire of the Germans was still growing heavier; the smoke
+      was too dense to see a great deal, but they were concentrating or were
+      coming closer. The lieutenant came back for a moment and spoke to the
+      captain of the company, who, looking along the line, called the Sergeant,
+      and ordered him to go back down the hill to where the road turned behind
+      it, and tell General &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; to send them a support
+      instantly, as the batteries were knocked to pieces, and they could not
+      hold the hill much longer. The announcement was astonishing to the old
+      soldier; it had never occurred to him that as long as a man remained they
+      could not hold the hill, and he was half-way down the slope before he took
+      it in. He had brought his gun with him, and he clutched it convulsively as
+      if he could withstand alone the whole Prussian army. "He might have taken
+      a younger man to do his trotting," he muttered to himself as he stalked
+      along, not knowing that his wound had occasioned his selection. "Pierre&mdash;"
+      but, no, Pierre must stay where he would have the opportunity to
+      distinguish himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no holiday promenade that the old soldier was taking; for his path
+      lay right across the track swept by the German batteries, and the whole
+      distance was strewn with dead, killed as they had advanced in the morning.
+      But the old Sergeant got safely across. He found the General with one or
+      two members of his staff sitting on horseback in the road near the park
+      gate, receiving and answering dispatches. He delivered his message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go back and tell him he <i>must</i> hold it," was the reply. "Upon it
+      depends the fate of the day; perhaps of France. Or wait, you are wounded;
+      I will send some one else; you go to the rear." And he gave the order to
+      one of his staff, who saluted and dashed off on his horse. "Hold it for
+      France," he called after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were heard perfectly clear even above the din of battle which
+      was steadily increasing all along the line, and they stirred the old
+      soldier like a trumpet. No rear for him! He turned and pushed back up the
+      hill at a run. The road had somewhat changed since he left, but he marked
+      it not; shot and shell were ploughing across his path more thickly, but he
+      did not heed them; in his ears rang the words&mdash;"For France." They
+      came like an echo from the past; it was the same cry he had heard at
+      Waterloo, when the soldiers of France that summer day had died for France
+      and the emperor, with a cheer on their lips. "For France": the words were
+      consecrated; the emperor himself had used them. He had heard him, and
+      would have died then; should he not die now for her! Was it not glorious
+      to die for France, and have men say that he had fought for her when a
+      babe, and had died for her when an old man!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these thoughts was mingled the thought of Pierre&mdash;Pierre also
+      would die for France! They would save her or die together; and he pressed
+      his hand with a proud caress over the cross on his breast. It was the
+      emblem of glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was almost back with his men now; he knew it by the roar, but the smoke
+      hid everything. Just then it shifted a little. As it did so, he saw a man
+      steal out of the dim line and start towards him at a run. He had on the
+      uniform of his regiment. His cap was pulled over his eyes, and he saw him
+      deliberately fling away his gun. He was skulking. All the blood boiled up
+      in the old soldier's veins. Desert!&mdash;not fight for France! Why did
+      not Pierre shoot him! Just then the coward passed close to him, and the
+      old man seized him with a grip of iron. The deserter, surprised, turned
+      his face; it was pallid with terror and shame; but no more so than his
+      captor's. It was Pierre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pierre!" he gasped. "Good God! where are you going?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sick," faltered the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come back," said the father sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot," was the terrified answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is for France, Pierre," pleaded the old soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! I cannot," moaned the young man, pulling away. There was a pause&mdash;the
+      old man still holding on hesitatingly, then,&mdash;"Dastard!" he hissed,
+      flinging his son from him with indescribable scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierre, free once more, was slinking off with averted face, when anew idea
+      seized his father, and his face grew grim as stone. Cocking his musket, he
+      flung it up, took careful and deliberate aim at his son's retreating
+      figure, and brought his finger slowly down upon the trigger. But, before
+      he could fire, a shell exploded directly in the line of his aim, and when
+      the smoke blew off, Pierre had disappeared. The Sergeant lowered his
+      piece, gazed curiously down the hill, and then hurried to the spot where
+      the shell had burst. A mangled form marked the place. The coward had in
+      the very act of flight met the death he dreaded. Pierre lay dead on his
+      face, shot in the back. The back of his head was shattered by a fragment
+      of shell. The countenance of the living man was more pallid than that of
+      the dead. No word escaped him, except that refrain, "For France, for
+      France," which he repeated mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although this had occupied but a few minutes, momentous changes had taken
+      place on the ridge above. The sound of the battle had somewhat altered,
+      and with the roar of artillery were mingled now the continuous rattle of
+      the musketry and the shouts and cheers of the contending troops. The
+      fierce onslaught of the Prussians had broken the line somewhere beyond the
+      batteries, and the French were being borne back. Almost immediately the
+      slope was filled with retreating men hurrying back in the demoralization
+      of panic. All order was lost. It was a rout. The soldiers of his own
+      regiment began to rush by the spot where the old Sergeant stood above his
+      son's body. Recognizing him, some of his comrades seized his arm and
+      attempted to hurry him along; but with a fierce exclamation the old
+      soldier shook them off, and raising his voice so that he was heard even
+      above the tumult of the rout, he shouted, "Are ye all cowards? Rally for
+      France&mdash;For France&mdash;&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tried to bear him along; the officers, they said, were dead; the
+      Prussians had captured the guns, and had broken the whole line. But it was
+      no use; still he shouted that rallying cry, For France, for France, "Vive
+      la France; Vive l'Empereur"; and steadied by the war-cry, and accustomed
+      to obey an officer, the men around him fell instinctively into something
+      like order, and for an instant the rout was arrested. The fight was
+      renewed over Pierre's dead body. As they had, however, truly said, the
+      Prussians were too strong for them. They had carried the line and were now
+      pouring down the hill by thousands in the ardor of hot pursuit, the line
+      on either side of the hill was swept away, and whilst the gallant little
+      band about the old soldier still stood and fought desperately, they were
+      soon surrounded. There was no thought of quarter; none was asked, none was
+      given. Cries, curses, cheers, shots, blows, were mingled together, and
+      clear above all rang the old soldier's war-cry, For France, for France,
+      "Vive la France, Vive l'Empereur." It was the refrain from an older and
+      bloodier field. He thought he was at Waterloo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mad with excitement, the men took up the cry, and fought like tigers; but
+      the issue could not be doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Man after man fell, shot or clubbed down, with the cry "For France" on his
+      lips, and his comrades, standing astride his body, fought with bayonets
+      and clubbed muskets till they too fell in turn. Almost the last one was
+      the old Sergeant. Wounded to death, and bleeding from numberless gashes,
+      he still fought, shouting his battle-cry, "For France," till his musket
+      was hurled spinning from his shattered hand, and staggering senseless
+      back, a dozen bayonets were driven into his breast, crushing out forever
+      the brave spirit of the soldier of the empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was best, for France was lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours later the Quarter was in mourning over the terrible defeat.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      That night a group of Prussian officers going over the field with lanterns
+      looking after their wounded, stopped near a spot remarkable even on that
+      bloody slope for the heaps of dead of both armies literally piled upon
+      each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was just here," said one, "that they got reinforcements and made that
+      splendid rally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second, looking at the body of an old French sergeant lying amidst heaps
+      of slain, with his face to the sky, said simply as he saw his scars:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There died a brave soldier."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another, older than the first, bending closer to count the bayonet wounds,
+      caught the gleam of something in the light of the lantern, and stooping to
+      examine a broken cross of the Legion on the dead man's breast, said
+      reverently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was a <i>soldier of the empire</i>."
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
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+Project Gutenberg's "A Soldier Of The Empire", by Thomas Nelson Page
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: "A Soldier Of The Empire"
+       1891
+
+Author: Thomas Nelson Page
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE."
+
+By Thomas Nelson Page
+
+1891
+
+It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier--a soldier
+of the empire. (He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is probable
+that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a
+child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant
+with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two
+sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all knew, had been received the summer
+day when he had stood, a mere boy, in the hollow square at Waterloo,
+striving to stay the fierce flood of the "men on the white horses"; the
+other, tradition said, was of even more ancient date.)
+
+Yes, they all knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen, just
+the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as Pauline, he
+had received the cross which he always wore over his heart sewed in the
+breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself, for standing
+on the hill at Wagram when his regiment broke, and beating the
+long-roll, whilst he held the tattered colors resting in his arm, until
+the men rallied and swept back the left wing of the enemy. This the
+children knew, as their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
+grandmothers before them had known it, and rarely an evening passed that
+some of the gamins were not to be found in the old man's kitchen,
+which was also his parlor, or else on his little porch, listening with
+ever-new delight to the story of his battles and of the emperor. They
+all knew as well as he the thrilling part where the emperor dashed by
+(the old Sergeant always rose reverently at the name, and the little
+audience also stood,--one or two nervous younger ones sometimes bobbing
+up a little ahead of time, but sitting down again in confusion under
+the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the rest),--where the emperor
+dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer what regiment that was
+that had broken, and who was that drummer that had been promoted
+to ensign;--they all knew how, on the grand review afterwards, the
+Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other, which had
+been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his company
+before the emperor, and had been recognized by him. They knew how he had
+been called up by a staff-officer (whom the children imagined to be
+a fine gentleman with a rich uniform, and a great shako like Marie's
+uncle, the drum-major), and how the emperor had taken from his own
+breast and with his own hand had given him the cross, which he had never
+from that day removed from his heart, and had said, "I would make you a
+colonel if I could spare you."
+
+This was the story they liked best, though there were many others which
+they frequently begged to be told--of march and siege and battle, of
+victories over or escapes from red-coated Britishers and fierce German
+lancers, and of how the mere presence of the emperor was worth fifty
+thousand men, and how the soldiers knew that where he was no enemy could
+withstand them. It all seemed to them very long ago, and the soldier of
+the empire was the only man in the Quarter who was felt to be greater
+than the rich nobles and fine officers who flashed along the great
+streets, or glittered through the boulevards and parks outside. More
+than once when Paris was stirred up, and the Quarter seemed on the eve
+of an outbreak, a mounted orderly had galloped up to his door with
+a letter, requesting his presence somewhere (it was whispered at the
+prefect's), and when he returned, if he refused to speak of his visit
+the Quarter was satisfied; it trusted him and knew that when he advised
+quiet it was for its good. He loved France first, the Quarter next. Had
+he not been offered--? What had he not been offered! The Quarter knew,
+or fancied it knew, which did quite as well. At least, it knew how he
+always took sides with the Quarter against oppression. It knew how he
+had gone up into the burning tenement and brought the children down out
+of the garret just before the roof fell. It knew how he had jumped into
+the river that winter when it was full of ice, to save Raoul's little
+lame dog which had fallen into the water; it knew how he had reported
+the gendarmes for arresting poor little Aimee just for begging a man in
+the Place de L'Opera for a franc for her old grandmother, who was blind,
+and how he had her released instead of being sent to ------. But what
+was the need of multiplying instances! He was "the Sergeant," a soldier
+of the empire, and there was not a dog in the Quarter which did not feel
+and look proud when it could trot on the inside of the sidewalk by him.
+
+Thus the old Sergeant came to be regarded as the conservator of order in
+the Quarter, and was worth more in the way of keeping it quiet than all
+the gendarmes that ever came inside its precincts. And thus the children
+all knew him.
+
+One story that the Sergeant sometimes told, the girls liked to hear,
+though the boys did not, because it had nothing about war in it, and
+Minette and Clarisse used to cry so when it was told, that the Sergeant
+would stop and put his arms around them and pet them until they only
+sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+It was of how he had, when a lonely old man, met down in Lorraine his
+little Camille, whose eyes were as blue as the sky, and her hand as
+white as the flower from which she took her name, and her cheeks as pink
+as the roses in the gardens of the Tuileries. He had loved her, and she,
+though forty years his junior, had married him and had come here to live
+with him; but the close walls of the city had not suited her, and she
+had pined and languished before his eyes like a plucked lily, and, after
+she bore him Pierre, had died in his arms, and left him lonelier than
+before. And the old soldier always lowered his voice and paused a moment
+(Raoul said he was saying a mass), and then he would add consolingly:
+"But she left a soldier, and when I am gone, should France ever need
+one, Pierre will be here." The boys did not fancy this story for the
+reasons given, and besides, although they loved the Sergeant, they did
+not like Pierre. Pierre was not popular in the Quarter,--except with the
+young girls and a few special friends. The women said he was idle and
+vain like his mother, who had been, they said, a silly lazy thing with
+little to boast of but blue eyes and a white skin, of which she was too
+proud to endanger it by work, and that she had married the Sergeant for
+his pension, and would have ruined him if she had lived, and that Pierre
+was just like her.
+
+The children knew nothing of the resemblance. They disliked Pierre
+because he was cross and disagreeable to them, and however their older
+sisters might admire his curling brown hair, his dark eyes, and delicate
+features, which he had likewise inherited from his mother, they did not
+like him; for he always scolded when he came home and found them there;
+and he had several times ordered the whole lot out of the house; and
+once he had slapped little Raoul, for which Jean Maison had beaten him.
+Of late, too, when it drew near the hour for him to come home, the old
+Sergeant had two or three times left out a part of his story, and had
+told them to run away and come back in the morning, as Pierre liked to
+be quiet when he came from his work--which Raoul said was gambling.
+
+Thus it was that Pierre was not popular in the Quarter.
+
+He was nineteen years old when war was declared.
+
+They said Prussia was trying to rob France,--to steal Alsace and
+Lorraine. All Paris was in an uproar. The Quarter, always ripe for any
+excitement, shared in and enjoyed the general commotion. It struck off
+from work. It was like the commune; at least, so people said. Pierre was
+the loudest declaimer in the district. He got work in the armory.
+
+Recruiting officers went in and out of the saloons and cafes, drinking
+with the men, talking to the women, and stirring up as much fervor as
+possible. It needed little to stir it. The Quarter was seething. Troops
+were being mustered in, and the streets and parks were filled with the
+tramp of regiments; and the roll of the drums, the call of the bugles,
+and the cheers of the crowds as they marched by floated into the
+Quarter. Brass bands were so common that although in the winter a couple
+of strolling musicians had been sufficient to lose temporarily every
+child in the Quarter, it now required a full band and a grenadier
+regiment, to boot, to draw a tolerable representation.
+
+Of all the residents of the Quarter, none took a deeper interest than
+the soldier of the empire. He became at once an object of more than
+usual attention. He had married in Lorraine, and could, of course, tell
+just how long it would take to whip the Prussians. He thought a single
+battle would decide it. It would if the emperor were there. His little
+court was always full of inquirers, and the stories of the emperor were
+told to audiences now of grandfathers and grandmothers.
+
+Once or twice the gendarmes had sauntered down, thinking, from seeing
+the crowd, that a fight was going on. They had stayed to hear of the
+emperor. A hint was dropped by the soldier of the empire that perhaps
+France would conquer Prussia, and then go on across to Moscow to settle
+an old score, and that night it was circulated through the Quarter that
+the invasion of Russia would follow the capture of Berlin. The emperor
+became more popular than he had been since the _coup d'etat_. Half the
+Quarter offered its services.
+
+The troops were being drilled night and day, and morning after morning
+the soldier of the empire locked his door, buttoned his coat tightly
+around him, and with a stately military air marched over to the park to
+see the drill, where he remained until it was time for Pierre to have
+his supper.
+
+The old Sergeant's acquaintance extended far beyond the Quarter. Indeed,
+his name had been mentioned in the papers more than once, and his
+presence was noted at the drill by those high in authority; so that he
+was often to be seen surrounded by a group listening to his accounts of
+the emperor, or showing what the _manuel_ had been in his time. His air,
+always soldierly, was now imposing, and many a visitor of distinction
+inquiring who he might be, and learning that he was a soldier of the
+empire, sought an introduction to him. Sometimes they told him that they
+could hardly believe him so old, could hardly believe him much older
+than some of those in the ranks, and although at first he used to
+declare he was like a rusty flint-lock, too old and useless for service,
+their flattery soothed his vanity, and after a while, instead of shaking
+his head and replying as he did at first that France had no use for old
+men, he would smile doubtfully and say that when they let Pierre go,
+maybe he would go too, "just to show the children how they fought then."
+
+The summer came. The war began in earnest. The troops were sent to the
+front, the crowds shouting, "On to Berlin." Others were mustered in
+and sent after them as fast as they were equipped. News of battle
+after battle came; at first, of victory (so the papers said), full and
+satisfying, then meagre and uncertain, and at last so scanty that only
+the wise ones knew there had been a defeat. The Quarter was in a fever
+of patriotism.
+
+Jean Maison and nearly all the young men had enlisted and gone, leaving
+their sweethearts by turns waving their kerchiefs and wiping their
+eyes with them. Pierre, however, still remained behind. He said he was
+working for the Government. Raoul said he was not working at all; that
+he was skulking.
+
+Suddenly the levy came. Pierre was conscripted.
+
+That night the Sergeant enlisted in the same company. Before the week
+was out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for
+the news came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that
+France needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not
+what she needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion
+of this by some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew from
+him the rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called out a
+corporal and a file of grenadiers."
+
+The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him
+and bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve. The
+order had come from the colonel, some even said from the marshal. In
+the Quarter it was said that it 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 there by Pierre. And he saw in his imagination Pierre climbing
+at a stride from a private to a captain, a colonel, a--! who could
+tell?--had not the _baton_ been won in a campaign? As to dreaming that a
+battle could bring any other result than victory!--It was impossible!
+
+"Where are you going?" shouted derisively the men of a regiment at rest,
+to the Sergeant's command as they marched past.
+
+"To Berlin," replied the Sergeant.
+
+The reply evoked cheers, and that regiment that day stood its ground
+until a fourth of its men fell. The old soldier's enthusiasm infected
+the new recruits, who were pale and nervous under the strain of waiting.
+His eye rested on Pierre, who was standing down near the other end of
+the company, and the father's face beamed as he thought he saw there
+resolution and impatience for the fight. Ha! France should ring with his
+name; the Quarter should go wild with delight.
+
+Just then the skirmishers ahead began to fire, and in a few moments it
+was answered by a sullen note from the villages beyond the plain, and
+the battle had begun. The dropping fire of the skirmish line increased
+and merged into a rattle, and suddenly the thunder broke from a hill
+to their right, and ran along the crest until the earth trembled under
+their feet. Bullets began to whistle over their heads and clip the
+leaves of the trees beyond them, and the long, pulsating scream of
+shells flying over them and exploding in the park behind them made the
+faces of the men look gray in the morning twilight. Waiting was worse
+than fighting. It told on the young men.
+
+In a little while a staff-officer galloped up to the colonel, who was
+sitting on his horse in the road, quietly smoking a cigar, and a moment
+later the whole line was in motion. They were wheeled to the right, and
+marched under shelter of the knoll in the direction of the firing. As
+they passed the turn of the road, they caught a glimpse of the hill
+ahead where the artillery, enveloped in smoke, was thundering from an
+ever-thickening cloud. A battery of eight guns galloped past them, and
+turning the curve disappeared in a cloud of dust. To the new recruits it
+seemed as if the whole battle was being fought right there. They could
+see nothing but their own line, and only a part of that; smoke and dust
+hid everything else; but the hill was plainly an important point, for
+they were being pushed forward, and the firing on the rise ahead of them
+was terrific. They were still partly protected by the ridge, but shells
+were screaming over them, and the earth was rocking under their feet.
+More batteries came thundering by,--the men clinging to the pieces and
+the drivers lashing their horses furiously,--and disappearing into
+the smoke on the hill, unlimbered and swelled the deafening roar; they
+passed men lying on the ground dead or wounded, or were passed by others
+helping wounded comrades to the rear. Several men in the company fell,
+some crying out or groaning with pain, and two or three killed outright.
+
+The men were dodging and twisting, with heads bent forward a little as
+if in a pelting rain. Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger ones
+were perfectly erect.
+
+"Why don't you dodge the balls?" asked a recruit of the Sergeant.
+
+"A soldier of the empire never dodges," was the proud reply.
+
+Some change occurred on the hills; they could not see what. Just then
+the order came down the line to advance at a double-quick and support
+the batteries. They moved forward at a run and passed beyond the shelter
+of the ridge. Instantly they were in the line of fire from the Prussian
+batteries, whose white puffs of smoke were visible across the plain, and
+bullets and shell tore wide spaces in their ranks. They could not see
+the infantrymen, who were in pits, but the bullets hissed and whistled
+by them. The men on both sides of Pierre were killed and fell forward on
+their faces with a thud, one of them still clutching his musket. Pierre
+would have stopped, but there was no time, the men in the rear pressed
+him on. As they appeared in the smoke of the nearest battery, the
+artillerymen broke into cheers at the welcome sight, and all down the
+line it was taken up. All around were dead and dying men increasing in
+numbers momentarily. No one had time to notice them. Some of them had
+blankets thrown over them. The infantry, who were a little to the side
+of the batteries, were ordered to lie down; most of them had already
+done so; even then they were barely protected; shot and shell ploughed
+the ground around them as if it had been a fallow field; men spoke to
+their comrades, and before receiving a reply were shot dead at their
+sides. The wounded were more ghastly than the dead; their faces growing
+suddenly deadly white from the shock as they were struck.
+
+The gunners lay in piles around their guns, and still the survivors
+worked furiously in the dense heat and smoke, the sweat pouring down
+their blackened faces. The fire was terrific.
+
+Suddenly an officer galloped up, and spoke to the lieutenant of the
+nearest battery.
+
+"Where is the colonel?"
+
+"Killed."
+
+"Where is your captain?"
+
+"Dead, there under the gun."
+
+"Are you in command?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Well, hold this hill."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Forever." And he galloped off.
+
+His voice was heard clear and ringing in a sudden lull, and the old
+Sergeant, clutching his musket, shouted:
+
+"We will, forever."
+
+There was a momentary lull.
+
+Suddenly the cry was:
+
+"Here they are."
+
+In an instant a dark line of men appeared coming up the slope. The guns
+were trained down on them, but shot over their heads; they were double
+shotted and trained lower, and belched forth canister. They fell in
+swathes, yet still they came on at a run, hurrahing, until they were
+almost up among the guns, and the gunners were leaving their pieces. The
+old Sergeant's voice speaking to his men was as steady as if on parade,
+and kept them down, and when the command was given to fire kneeling,
+they rose as one man, and poured a volley into the Germans' faces which
+sent them reeling back down the hill, leaving a broken line of dead and
+struggling men on the deadly crest. Just then a brigade officer came
+along. They heard him say, "That repulse may stop them." Then he
+gave some order in an undertone to the lieutenant in command of the
+batteries, and passed on. A moment later the fire from the Prussian
+batteries was heavier than before; the guns were being knocked to
+pieces. A piece of shell struck the Sergeant on the cheek, tearing away
+the flesh badly. He tore the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around
+his head with perfect unconcern. The fire of the Germans was still
+growing heavier; the smoke was too dense to see a great deal, but they
+were concentrating or were coming closer. The lieutenant came back for
+a moment and spoke to the captain of the company, who, looking along the
+line, called the Sergeant, and ordered him to go back down the hill to
+where the road turned behind it, and tell General ------ to send them
+a support instantly, as the batteries were knocked to pieces, and they
+could not hold the hill much longer. The announcement was astonishing
+to the old soldier; it had never occurred to him that as long as a man
+remained they could not hold the hill, and he was half-way down the
+slope before he took it in. He had brought his gun with him, and he
+clutched it convulsively as if he could withstand alone the whole
+Prussian army. "He might have taken a younger man to do his trotting,"
+he muttered to himself as he stalked along, not knowing that his wound
+had occasioned his selection. "Pierre--" but, no, Pierre must stay where
+he would have the opportunity to distinguish himself.
+
+It was no holiday promenade that the old soldier was taking; for his
+path lay right across the track swept by the German batteries, and the
+whole distance was strewn with dead, killed as they had advanced in the
+morning. But the old Sergeant got safely across. He found the General
+with one or two members of his staff sitting on horseback in the road
+near the park gate, receiving and answering dispatches. He delivered his
+message.
+
+"Go back and tell him he _must_ hold it," was the reply. "Upon it
+depends the fate of the day; perhaps of France. Or wait, you are
+wounded; I will send some one else; you go to the rear." And he gave
+the order to one of his staff, who saluted and dashed off on his horse.
+"Hold it for France," he called after him.
+
+The words were heard perfectly clear even above the din of battle which
+was steadily increasing all along the line, and they stirred the old
+soldier like a trumpet. No rear for him! He turned and pushed back up
+the hill at a run. The road had somewhat changed since he left, but
+he marked it not; shot and shell were ploughing across his path more
+thickly, but he did not heed them; in his ears rang the words--"For
+France." They came like an echo from the past; it was the same cry he
+had heard at Waterloo, when the soldiers of France that summer day
+had died for France and the emperor, with a cheer on their lips. "For
+France": the words were consecrated; the emperor himself had used them.
+He had heard him, and would have died then; should he not die now for
+her! Was it not glorious to die for France, and have men say that he had
+fought for her when a babe, and had died for her when an old man!
+
+With these thoughts was mingled the thought of Pierre--Pierre also would
+die for France! They would save her or die together; and he pressed his
+hand with a proud caress over the cross on his breast. It was the emblem
+of glory.
+
+He was almost back with his men now; he knew it by the roar, but the
+smoke hid everything. Just then it shifted a little. As it did so, he
+saw a man steal out of the dim line and start towards him at a run. He
+had on the uniform of his regiment. His cap was pulled over his eyes,
+and he saw him deliberately fling away his gun. He was skulking. All
+the blood boiled up in the old soldier's veins. Desert!--not fight for
+France! Why did not Pierre shoot him! Just then the coward passed close
+to him, and the old man seized him with a grip of iron. The deserter,
+surprised, turned his face; it was pallid with terror and shame; but no
+more so than his captor's. It was Pierre.
+
+"Pierre!" he gasped. "Good God! where are you going?"
+
+"I am sick," faltered the other.
+
+"Come back," said the father sternly.
+
+"I cannot," was the terrified answer.
+
+"It is for France, Pierre," pleaded the old soldier.
+
+"Oh! I cannot," moaned the young man, pulling away. There was a
+pause--the old man still holding on hesitatingly, then,--"Dastard!" he
+hissed, flinging his son from him with indescribable scorn.
+
+Pierre, free once more, was slinking off with averted face, when anew
+idea seized his father, and his face grew grim as stone. Cocking his
+musket, he flung it up, took careful and deliberate aim at his son's
+retreating figure, and brought his finger slowly down upon the trigger.
+But, before he could fire, a shell exploded directly in the line of his
+aim, and when the smoke blew off, Pierre had disappeared. The Sergeant
+lowered his piece, gazed curiously down the hill, and then hurried to
+the spot where the shell had burst. A mangled form marked the place. The
+coward had in the very act of flight met the death he dreaded. Pierre
+lay dead on his face, shot in the back. The back of his head was
+shattered by a fragment of shell. The countenance of the living man
+was more pallid than that of the dead. No word escaped him, except that
+refrain, "For France, for France," which he repeated mechanically.
+
+Although this had occupied but a few minutes, momentous changes had
+taken place on the ridge above. The sound of the battle had somewhat
+altered, and with the roar of artillery were mingled now the continuous
+rattle of the musketry and the shouts and cheers of the contending
+troops. The fierce onslaught of the Prussians had broken the line
+somewhere beyond the batteries, and the French were being borne back.
+Almost immediately the slope was filled with retreating men hurrying
+back in the demoralization of panic. All order was lost. It was a rout.
+The soldiers of his own regiment began to rush by the spot where the
+old Sergeant stood above his son's body. Recognizing him, some of his
+comrades seized his arm and attempted to hurry him along; but with a
+fierce exclamation the old soldier shook them off, and raising his voice
+so that he was heard even above the tumult of the rout, he shouted, "Are
+ye all cowards? Rally for France--For France----"
+
+They tried to bear him along; the officers, they said, were dead; the
+Prussians had captured the guns, and had broken the whole line. But it
+was no use; still he shouted that rallying cry, For France, for France,
+"Vive la France; Vive l'Empereur"; and steadied by the war-cry, and
+accustomed to obey an officer, the men around him fell instinctively
+into something like order, and for an instant the rout was arrested. The
+fight was renewed over Pierre's dead body. As they had, however, truly
+said, the Prussians were too strong for them. They had carried the line
+and were now pouring down the hill by thousands in the ardor of hot
+pursuit, the line on either side of the hill was swept away, and whilst
+the gallant little band about the old soldier still stood and fought
+desperately, they were soon surrounded. There was no thought of quarter;
+none was asked, none was given. Cries, curses, cheers, shots, blows,
+were mingled together, and clear above all rang the old soldier's
+war-cry, For France, for France, "Vive la France, Vive l'Empereur." It
+was the refrain from an older and bloodier field. He thought he was at
+Waterloo.
+
+Mad with excitement, the men took up the cry, and fought like tigers;
+but the issue could not be doubtful.
+
+Man after man fell, shot or clubbed down, with the cry "For France"
+on his lips, and his comrades, standing astride his body, fought with
+bayonets and clubbed muskets till they too fell in turn. Almost the last
+one was the old Sergeant. Wounded to death, and bleeding from numberless
+gashes, he still fought, shouting his battle-cry, "For France," till
+his musket was hurled spinning from his shattered hand, and staggering
+senseless back, a dozen bayonets were driven into his breast, crushing
+out forever the brave spirit of the soldier of the empire.
+
+It was best, for France was lost.
+
+A few hours later the Quarter was in mourning over the terrible defeat.
+
+* * * * *
+
+That night a group of Prussian officers going over the field with
+lanterns looking after their wounded, stopped near a spot remarkable
+even on that bloody slope for the heaps of dead of both armies literally
+piled upon each other.
+
+"It was just here," said one, "that they got reinforcements and made
+that splendid rally."
+
+A second, looking at the body of an old French sergeant lying amidst
+heaps of slain, with his face to the sky, said simply as he saw his
+scars:
+
+"There died a brave soldier."
+
+Another, older than the first, bending closer to count the bayonet
+wounds, caught the gleam of something in the light of the lantern,
+and stooping to examine a broken cross of the Legion on the dead man's
+breast, said reverently:
+
+"He was a _soldier of the empire_."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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