again in the afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my children, if I were
to tell you of the slaughter there, the throats that were cut and the
brains knocked out, you would refuse to believe me! The next place
where we had trouble was around a village with the jaw-breaking name
of Elsasshausen. We got a peppering from a lot of guns that banged
away at us at their ease from the top of a blasted hill that we had
also abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever been able to tell.
And there it was that with these very eyes of mine I saw the famous
charge of the cuirassiers. Ah, how gallantly they rode to their death,
poor fellows! A shame it was, I say, to let men and horses charge over
ground like that, covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And
on top of it all, _nom de Dieu!_ what good could they accomplish? But
it was very _chic_ all the same; it was a beautiful sight to see. The
next thing for us to do, shouldn't you suppose so? was to go and sit
down somewhere and try to get our wind again. They had set fire to the
village and it was burning like tinder, and the whole gang of
Bavarian, Wurtemburgian and Prussian pigs, more than a hundred and
twenty thousand of them there were, as we found out afterward, had got
around into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest
for us then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a
livelier tune than ever around Froeschwiller. For there's no use
talking, fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead but he is a brave man;
you ought to have seen him on his big horse, with the shells bursting
all about him! The best thing to do would have been to give leg-bail
at the beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to
fight an army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was
bound to see the thing through to the end. And see it through he did!
why, I tell you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer
human beings; they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For
near two hours the gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however,