Chapter 91 Night scene on the nineteenth battlefield

It is necessary for this book that we return to that unfortunate battlefield. June 18, 1815 was the night of the full moon.The moonlight gave Blücher a lot of convenience in his fierce pursuit, pointed out the movement of the deserters for him, handed over the flow of people in the catastrophe to the greedy Prussian cavalry, and facilitated the massacre.In natural disasters and man-made disasters, the night is sometimes so helpful. After the last shot had been fired, all that was left over the fields of Mount St. John was a melancholy scene. The British occupied the French camp, which is the usual way of proving victory, and slept on the couch of the defeated.They crossed Luosong and camped.The Prussian army pursued hard and pushed forward.Wellington returned to the village of Waterloo to write a military letter to report the victory to the nobleman Bassett.

If the word "puppet" can be used properly, it must be applied to the village of Waterloo, which has done nothing and is half a mile from the place of operation.Mont Saint-Jean was bombarded, Hougoumont burned, Papelotte burned, Planchanoy burned, Saint-Lahey was attacked, Gamon saw two victors embrace; It is known that Waterloo did nothing in this war, but enjoyed all the glory. We are not the type to praise the war, so we tell the truth about the war whenever we get the chance.War has its hideous beauties, which we do not conceal; but it must also be admitted that it has its ugliness, one of the most appalling of which is the plundering of the dead immediately after victory.On the day after the war, the morning light often shines on the naked corpse.

Who did that, who insulted Victory like that?Whose murderer is that that sneaks out of Victory's pocket?Who are these rascals who hide behind their glory and carry out their crimes?Some philosophers, like Voltaire and others, have affirmed that the man who does that happens to be the winner.It is said that they are all the same without distinction, and those who stand prey on those who fall.The heroes of the day are the vampires of the night.What's more, after killing the person, it is also a right to enjoy a little bit of glory.As for us, we dare not believe it.Winning laurels and stealing a dead man's shoes do not seem to us to be made by the same hand.

It is true, however, that there are always thieves following the victors.But we should leave aside soldiers, especially modern soldiers. Every army has a tail, and that's where the indictment is.Some kind of bat-like thing, half bandit, half servant, various flying squirrels born from the sad days of war, wearing military uniform instead of going to battle, pretending to be sick, lame and heartless, riding horses, sometimes with women, riding in carts, selling Private goods, fire soldiers who sold and stole casually, beggars, orderlies, pickpockets who asked the officers to be guides, from the former army - let's not talk about modern times - always dragged such a group of guys, so professional It is called "team escort" in the term.No military or country is responsible for those people.They speak Italian and follow the Germans, speak French and follow the English.On the night of the victory in the battle of Cherisol, Lord Fewak met a French-speaking Spanish escort, and after hearing his northern dialect, he regarded him as a family member. was stolen by him.Where there is a thief there is a thief.There is a despicable colloquial phrase "relying on the enemy for food" to explain the origin of this leprosy, which can only be cured by strict military discipline.Some people have their names in vain, and we cannot know why a certain general, or even a certain general, is so famous.Turenne was loved by his soldiers because he condoned plundering, and vice became an integral part of benevolence, and Turenne was so benevolent that he allowed his men to burn and slaughter Baratina.The number of thieves behind the army is all based on the strictness of the generals.Hosh and Marceau have absolutely no convoys, Wellington has not many - we are happy to do him justice.

But on the night of June 18th to 19th, someone robbed the body.Wellington is strict, and there is an order in the army to shoot or kill on the spot, but the robbers are as rampant as before.While the criminals were being shot on one side of the battlefield, the theft continued on the other side of the battlefield. A pale moonlight shone across the fields. Around midnight, there was a man wandering around Ao'an'ao Road, or more precisely, prostrate in that area.Judging from his appearance, he is exactly the kind of person we have just described, neither French nor English, neither peasant nor soldier, three parts human, seven parts ghost, he smells dead bodies Taste and salivate, steal is the victory, now come to search for Waterloo.He wore a hooded cloth shirt, furtive but full of guts, and he walked forward and looked back.Who is that?His origin, the night may know better than the day.He didn't carry a bag, but there were obviously some large pockets under the shirt.He stopped from time to time and looked around, afraid that someone would notice him. He suddenly bent down and turned some silent and motionless things on the ground, then stood up again and walked away secretly.His gliding, his air, his swift and mysterious movements were like those of those wild ghosts that haunt the hills at dusk, those wanderers of old Norman romances.

Certain wading birds that walk at night in the lake will have that kind of image. If anyone had been paying attention, looking through the mist, he would have seen parked not far before him, behind a dilapidated house on the side of the Rue Nivelles, which turned from Mount St. John to Branlalle, Dodging, so to speak, a little general cart with a wicker hood and tarred hood, and driving a nasty horse that was hungry enough to eat nettles with a stutter on, and in it was a woman sitting on some boxes and bundles. above.Maybe that car has something to do with the people who come and go. The night was bright and quiet.The sky was cloudless.The blood-stained battlefield does not affect the brightness of the moonlight, as the saying goes, Haotian does not hang.In the past, some branches had been broken by shells, but they never fell to the ground. They were still hanging on the trees with their skins, turbulent slightly in the evening wind.A gust of wind as weak as a breath brushed the weeds.The weeds shrank, as if the soul had returned.

In front of the British barracks, the sound of night patrol sergeants coming and going came from a distance, faintly discernible. Hougoumont and Saint-Lahe, one on the west and the other on the east, were still burning. Between the two blazes, on the high slope in the distance, the lamps of the English camps formed a large semicircle, as if A loose ruby ​​choker with a colored crystal at each end. We have already spoken of the catastrophe of the Oran Concave Road.It is shocking to think that so many loyal and brave people would die so miserably. If there is a dreadful thing in the world that is more real than a dream, it must be: to be alive, to see the sun, to be strong, to be healthy and warm, to be able to laugh wildly, to run towards the glory that lies ahead of you, the glorious glory , I feel that I have breathing lungs, a beating heart, a will to distinguish right from wrong, can talk, think, hope, love, have a mother, a wife, children, and light in my chest, but suddenly, in a cry, I fall In the pit, I fell, rolled, pressed, and was pressed. I saw ears of wheat, flowers, leaves, and branches, but I couldn’t grasp them. I felt that my knife had lost its effect. There were people below and horses above, struggling in vain. It was dark, I felt that I was under the kick of a horseshoe, my bones were broken, my eyes were protruding, I was biting the horseshoe crazily, I was gasped, I screamed, I struggled to toss and turn, I was pressed under there, thinking in my heart: "Just now I'm still alive!"

Where that sad and sad disaster broke out, there is not even a sound now.The two walls of that concave road have been filled with horses and knights, layer upon layer, upside down, vertical and horizontal, in a frightening mess.There are no sloped walls on either side.Dead men and dead horses filled the road as high as the field and as level as the side of the road, like a well-measured liter of corn.Above was a heap of corpses, below a river of blood, such was the state of the road on the night of June 18, 1815.The blood flowed as far as the Neville Road, and formed a great pool in front of the pile of trees that had been cut down to block the road, and the place is still mourned.We remember that the place where the cuirassiers were in distress was on the opposite side, near the Rue Genappe.The thickness of the corpse layer is directly proportional to the depth of the concave road.In the middle part of the road where the pit is flat and shallow, that is, where Delors' troops crossed, the layer of corpses is gradually thinning.

It was towards that lot that the night-time burglar, whom we have just sketched to the reader, walked towards.He sniffed the wide cemetery.He looked around.What he was reviewing was an indescribably disgusting procession of dead people.He walked forward through a pool of blood. He stopped suddenly. A few steps ahead of him, at the end of the mountain of corpses in the concave road, a hand stretched out among the crowd in the moonlight. There was something shiny on the finger of that hand, which was a gold ring. The man bent down and squatted for a while, and when he stood up again, there was no ring on that hand.

He didn't really stand up, he looked like a frightened beast, with his back facing the pile of dead people, his eyes looking into the distance, kneeling, his upper body resting on his two index fingers on the ground, his head sticking out of the curb , looking out.The jackal's four paws are suitable for certain actions. Then, having made up his mind, he stood up. Just then, he was startled, he felt someone holding him from behind. He turned to look, and it was the hand that was originally open that was now closed, grabbing the hem of his clothes. Honest people must have been taken aback, but this one laughed.

"Phew," he said, "it's a good thing it's a dead man! I'd rather see a ghost than a gendarme." As he was speaking, the hand was exhausted and threw him away.The power of the dead is limited. "Strange thing!" said the thief again, "Is this dead man alive? Let me see." He stooped down again, searched the crowd, removed the things that were in the way, grabbed the hand, grabbed his arm, moved his head out, dragged his body out, and after a while, he pulled a dead man , or at least an unconscious person, dragged into the shadows of the sunken road.It was an officer of the Iron Cavalry Army, and it was a rather high-ranking officer. A wide golden epaulette was protruding from the iron armor. The officer had lost his iron helmet.His face was smeared with blood, and he had a long knife wound, besides, he didn't look like he had any broken limbs, and by luck, if there could be luck here, some corpses crossed over him to form a gap, so He wasn't stressed.His eyes are closed. On his armor, there is a silver medal of meritorious service. The thief pulled out the ankhs and stuffed them in those bottomless pits under his hooded cloak. Afterwards, he touched the officer's waist pocket, found a watch, and took it together.Then he searched his vest, found a wallet, and stuffed it in his pocket. Just as he was bringing the dying man to the present stage, the officer's eyes opened. "Thank you." He said breathlessly. The jerky movement of the man turning him, the coolness of the evening wind, and the smooth air he breathed woke him up from his stupor. The thief did not answer.He looked up.He heard footsteps in the field, perhaps some patrol. The officer whispered, because he had just recovered and was not far from death: "Who won?" "British," replied the thief. "You search my pockets. I have a purse and a watch. You can take them." He has already taken it. The thief pretended to search for it as he said, and said: "Nothing." "Someone has already stolen it," continued the officer. "Why not, or it would be yours." The footsteps of the patrol became more and more distinct. "Someone is coming," said the thief, pretending to leave. With all his might, the officer reached out and grabbed him: "You saved my life. Who are you?" The thief quickly replied in a low voice: "I am in the French army, like you. I must go away. If anyone catches me, they will shoot me. I have saved your life. Now escape yourself." "What level are you at?" "Sergeant." "What is your name?" "Thenardier." "I will not forget that name," said the officer, "and you will remember mine, too. My name is Pontmercy."