The Young Franc Tireurs, and Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War by Henty (fun to read .txt) 📗

in hand--ready to turn and ride for his life, on an instant's notice.

Presently, as the road wound through a narrow gorge, lined with trees, he heard a voice say, close in his ear, "Stop!"

He reined in his horse, and drew his pistol. The leaves parted; and a man of some sixty years of age, armed with an old double-barreled fowling piece, stepped out.

"The Germans are just beyond," he said. "I expect them every moment."

"And what are you doing here?" Ralph asked.

"What am I doing?" repeated the peasant. "I am waiting to shoot some of them."

"But they will hang you, to a certainty, if they catch you."

"Let them," the old man said, quietly; "they will do me no more harm than they have done me. I had a nice farm, near Metz. I lived there with my wife and daughter, and my three boys. Someone fired at the Prussians from a wood near. No one was hit, but that made no difference. The black-hearted scoundrels came to my farm; shot my three boys, before their mother's eyes; ill treated her, so that she died next day and, when I returned--for I was away, at the time--I found a heap of ashes, where my house had stood; the dead bodies of my three boys; my wife dying, and my daughter sitting by, screaming with laughter--mad--quite mad!

"I took her away to a friend's house; and stayed with her till she died, too, a fortnight after. Then I bought this gun, and some powder and lead, with my last money; and went out to kill Prussians. I have killed thirteen already and, please God," and the peasant lifted his hat, devoutly, "I will kill two more, today."

"How is it that you have escaped so long?" Ralph asked, in surprise.

"I never fire at infantry," the peasant said. "It was Uhlans that did it, and it's only Uhlans I fire at. I put myself on a rock, or a hillside, where they can't come--or in a thick wood--and I content myself with my two shots, and then go. I don't want to be killed, yet. I have set my mind on having fifty--just ten for each of mine--and when I've shot the last of the fifty, the sooner they finish me, the better.

"You'd better not go any farther, sir. The valley widens out, round the corner; and there are Prussians in the nearest village."

"Thank you," Ralph said, "but my orders are to reconnoiter them, myself, and I must do so. I am well mounted, and I don't think that they will catch me, if I get a couple of hundred yards' start. There are franc tireurs in the village, a mile back."

Ralph now rode carefully forward, while the peasant went back into his hiding place by the wood. As he had said, the gorge widened into a broad valley, a few hundred yards farther on. Upon emerging from the gorge, Ralph at once saw a village--almost hidden among trees--at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile. After what he had heard, he dared not ride on farther. He therefore drew his horse aside from the road, among some trees; dismounted, and made his way carefully up the rocky side of the hill, to a point from which he could command a view down the whole valley.

When he gained this spot, he looked cautiously round. Below, beyond the village, he could see large numbers of men; could make out lines of cavalry horses, and rows of artillery. A considerable movement was going on, and Ralph had no doubt that they were about to advance. In his interest in what he saw, he probably exposed his figure somewhat; and caught the eye of some sharp-sighted sentry, in the village.

The first intimation of his danger was given him by seeing some twenty Uhlans dart suddenly out of the trees, in which the village lay, at the top of their speed while, almost at the same moment, eight or ten rifles flashed, and the balls whizzed round him in most unpleasant propinquity. Ralph turned in an instant; and bounded down the rock with a speed and recklessness of which, at any other moment, he would have been incapable. Fierce as was the pace at which the Uhlans were galloping, they were still a hundred yards distant when Ralph leaped upon his horse, and galloped out in front of them.

There was a rapid discharge of their carbines, but men at full gallop make but poor shooting. Ralph felt he was untouched but, by the convulsive spring which his horse gave, he knew the animal was wounded. For a couple of hundred yards, there was but little difference in his speed; and then Ralph--to his dismay--felt him flag, and knew that the wound had been a severe one. Another hundred yards, and the animal staggered; and would have fallen, had not Ralph held him up well, with knee and bridle.

The Uhlans saw it; for they gave a shout, and a pistol bullet whizzed close to his head. Ralph looked round. An officer, twenty yards ahead of his men, was only about forty yards in his rear. In his hand he held a revolver, which he had just discharged.

"Surrender!" he shouted, "or you are a dead man!"

Ralph saw that his pursuers were too close to enable him to carry out his intention of dismounting, and taking to the wood--which, here, began to approach thickly close to the road--and was on the point of throwing up his arm, in token of surrender; when his horse fell heavily, with him, at the moment when the Prussian again fired. Almost simultaneously with the crack of the pistol came the report of a gun; and the German officer fell off his horse, shot through the heart.

Ralph leaped to his feet, and dashed up the bank in among the trees; just as another shot was fired, with a like fatal result, into the advancing Uhlans. The rest--believing that they had fallen into an ambush--instantly turned their horses' heads, and galloped back the road they had come.

Ralph's first impulse was to rush down into the road, and catch the officer's horse; which had galloped on a short distance when its master fell, and was now returning, to follow its companions. As he did so, the old peasant appeared, from the wood.

"Thank you," Ralph said warmly. "You have saved my life or, at any rate, have saved me from a German prison."

The peasant paid no attention to him; but stooped down to examine, carefully, whether the Germans were both dead.

"Two more," he said, with a grim smile. "That makes fifteen. Three apiece."

Then he picked up the officer's revolver, took the cartridge belonging to it from the pouch and, with a wave of the hand to Ralph, strode back into the wood.

Ralph removed the holsters from the saddle of his own horse--which had fallen dead--placed them on the horse of the German officer and then, mounting it, rode off at full speed, to inform General Cambriels of the results of his investigation.

"Hallo, Barclay!" one of his fellow officers said, as he rode up to the headquarters, "what have you been up to? Doing a little barter, with a German hussar? You seem to have got the best of him, too; for your own horse was a good one, but this is a good deal better, unless I am mistaken.

"How has it come about?"

Quite a crowd of idlers had collected round, while the officer was speaking; struck, like him, with the singularity of the sight of a French staff officer upon a horse with German trappings. Ralph did not wish to enter into explanations, there; so merely replied, in the same jesting strain, that it had been a fair exchange--the small difference in the value of the horses being paid for, with a small piece of lead. Then, throwing his reins to his orderly--who came running up--he went in to report, to the general, the evident forward movements of the Germans.

"Are they as strong as we have heard?" the general asked.

"Fully, I should say, sir. I had no means of judging the infantry, but they seemed in large force. They were certainly strong in cavalry, and I saw some eight or ten batteries of artillery."

"Let the next for duty ride, with all speed, to Tempe; and tell him to hold the upper end of this valley. Send Herve's battery forward to assist him. Have the general assembly sounded."

Ralph left to obey these orders, while the general gave the colonel of his staff the instructions for the disposition of his forces.

The army of the Vosges--pompous as was its name--consisted, at this time, of only some ten thousand men; all Mobiles or franc tireurs, with the exception of a battalion of line, and a battalion of Zouaves. The Mobiles were almost undisciplined, having only been out a month; and were, for the most part, armed only with the old muzzle loader. Many were clothed only in the gray trousers, with a red stripe, which forms part of the mobile's uniform; and in a blue blouse. Great numbers of them were almost shoeless; having been taken straight from the plow, or workshop, and having received no shoes since they joined. Half disciplined, half armed, half clothed, they were too evidently no match for the Germans.

The fact was patent to their general, and his officers. Still, his instructions were to make a stand, at all hazards, in the Vosges; and he now prepared to obey the orders--not hoping for victory, but trusting in the natural courage of his men to enable him to draw them off without serious disaster. His greatest weakness was his artillery, of which he had only two batteries; against eight or ten of the Germans--whose forces were, even numerically, superior to his own.

In half an hour, the dispositions were made. The valley was wide, at this point; and there were some five or six villages nestled in it. It was pretty thickly wooded and, two miles behind, narrowed again considerably. Just as the troops had gained their appointed places, a faint sound of heavy musketry fire was heard, in the gorge ahead; mingled, in a few minutes, with the deep boom of cannon.

The general, surrounded by his staff, moved forward towards the spot. From the road at the entrance to the narrow part of the valley, nothing could be seen; but the cracking of rifles among the trees and rocks on either side, the bursting of shells and the whistling of bullets were incessant. The general and his staff accordingly dismounted, handed their horses to the men of the escort, and mounted the side of the hill.

After a sharp climb, they reached a point from whence they could see right down the long narrow valley. On beyond, the trees--except near the road--were thin; the steep sides of the hills being covered with great blocks of stone, and thick brushwood. Among these--all down one side, and up the other--at a distance of some five hundred yards from the post taken up by the general, a succession of quick puffs of smoke told where Colonel Tempe's franc tireurs were placed; while among the trees below there came up great wreaths of smoke from the battery, which was supporting them by firing at the Germans.

These formed a long line, up and down the sides of the valley, at three or four hundred yards distance from the French lines. Two German batteries were down in the road, a few hundred yards to the rear of their skirmishers; and these were sending shells thickly up among the rocks, where the franc tireurs were lying hid; while two other batteries--which the Germans had managed to put a short way up on the mountain sides, still farther in the rear--were raining shell, with deadly precision, upon the French batteries in the road.

A prettier piece of warfare it would have been difficult to imagine--the lofty mountain sides; the long lines of little puffs of smoke, among the brushwood and rocks; the white smoke arising from the trees, in the bottom; the quick, dull bursts of the shells--as a spectacle, it was most striking. The noise was prodigious. The steep sides of the mountain echoed each report of the guns into a prolonged roar, like the rumble of thunder. The rattle of the musketry never ceased for an instant, and loud and distinct above the din rose the menacing scream of the shells.

"This is grand, indeed, Ralph!" Percy said, after a moment's silence.

"Splendid!" Ralph said, "but it is evident we cannot hold the gorge. Their skirmishers are three to our one, and their shells must be doing terrible damage."

"Barclay," General Cambriels said, "go down to the battery, and bring me back word how they are getting on."

The scene quite lost its beauty to Percy, now, as he saw Ralph scramble rapidly down the hillside in the direction of the trees; among which the French battery was placed, and over and among which the shells were