om everywhere. There were the orchards
and the gardens and the stone walls which ran along the hill-side, but
they were thrown down and demolished, the palisades torn up, and could
no longer serve as a shelter or a defence. From the well-barricaded
cottages, they still poured their fire upon us. In ten minutes more,
we should have been exterminated to the last man; seeing this, the
column turned down the hill again, drummers and sappers, officers and
soldiers pell-mell, all went without once turning their heads to look
back. I jumped over the palisades where I never should have thought it
possible at any other time, with my knapsack and cartridge-box at my
back; the others followed my example, and we all tumbled in a heap like
a falling wall.

Once in the road again between the hills, we stopped to breathe. Some
stretched themselves on the ground, and others sat down with their
backs against the slope. The officers were furious; as if they too had
not followed the movement to retreat, and some shouted to bring up the
cannon, and others wanted to re-form the troops, though they could
scarcely make themselves heard in the midst of the thunder of the
artillery which shook the air like a tempest.

I saw Jean Buche hurrying back with his bayonet red with blood. He
took his place beside me without saying a word, and commenced to reload.

Captain Gregoire, Lieutenant Certain, and several sergeants and
corporals, and more than a hundred men were left behind in the
orchards; and the first two battalions of the column had suffered as
much as we.

Zebede, with his great crooked nose, white as snow, seeing me at some
distance, shouted, "Joseph--no quarter!"

Great masses of white smoke rose over the sides of the road. The whole
hill-side from Ligny to St. Amand was on fire behind the willows and
aspens and poplars.

As I crept up on my hands and knees, and looked over the surface of the
grain and saw this terrible spectacle, and saw the long black lines of
infantry on the top of the hill and near the windmills, and the
innumerable cavalry on their flanks ready to fall upon us, I went back
thinking:

"We shall never rout that army. It fills the villages, and guards the
roads, and covers the hill as far as the eye can reach, there are guns
everywhere, and it is contrary to reason to persist in such an
enterprise."

I was indignant and even disgusted with the generals.

All this did not take ten minutes. God only