How We Stormed the Fort

A military friend of mine, who died of fever in Greece some years ago, once told me the story of his first battle. His account was so vivid that I wrote it down from memory as soon as I had the chance. This is what he told me.

On the evening of September 4th, I rejoined my regiment. I found the colonel in bivouac. At first he received me rather coolly, but after reading General B——'s letter of recommendation, his manner softened, and he said a few kind words.

He introduced me to my captain, who had just returned from a reconnaissance mission. I barely had time to size him up. He was a tall, dark man with a stern and forbidding expression. He had risen from the ranks, winning his commission and his cross on the battlefield. His voice was weak and hoarse, strangely at odds with his almost gigantic stature. I was told that a bullet had pierced him through at the Battle of Jena, leaving him with that odd voice.

When he heard I came from the school at Fontainebleau, he shrugged and said, "My lieutenant died yesterday." I understood he meant, "You're meant to take his place, and you're not up to it." A sharp retort came to my lips, but I held my tongue.

Behind Fort Cheverino, which stood about two gunshots from our bivouac, the moon was rising. It was large and red, as it often is when it first appears. But that evening it seemed to me unusually brilliant. For a moment, the fort stood out black against the glowing orb, like the cone of a volcano in eruption. An old soldier near me remarked on the moon's color.

"How red it is!" he said. "That's a sign it will cost us dearly to take that fort."

I've always been a bit superstitious, and this omen, especially at such a moment, made a deep impression on me. I lay down, but couldn't sleep. I got up and walked about, watching the long lines of campfires scattered over the heights beyond the village of Cheverino.

When I thought the crisp night air had cleared my head, I returned to the fire. I wrapped myself carefully in my cloak and closed my eyes, hoping not to open them until morning. But sleep stubbornly refused to come. Gradually, my thoughts took on a melancholy cast. I told myself that among the hundred thousand men covering that plain, I didn't have a single friend. If I were wounded, I'd end up in a hospital, treated carelessly by ignorant surgeons. Everything I'd ever heard about surgery came back to me. My heart pounded, and instinctively I arranged my handkerchief and pocket-book over my chest like a makeshift breastplate. I grew more weary, and drowsiness crept over me, but each time some dark thought would jolt me awake.

Finally, exhaustion won out, and by the time reveille sounded, I was fast asleep. We fell into ranks, the roll was called, then we stacked arms again. Everything pointed to a quiet day.

Around three o'clock, an aide-de-camp arrived with a dispatch, and we were ordered to shoulder arms. Our skirmishers spread out across the plain, and we followed slowly. Within about twenty minutes, we saw the Russian outposts fall back and re-enter the fort.

One artillery battery was on our right, another on our left, both well ahead of us. They opened a sharp fire on the enemy, who answered briskly, and soon Fort Cheverino was hidden under thick clouds of smoke.

Our regiment was fairly well protected from Russian fire by a ridge of earth. Since they were aiming more at our artillery than at us, their balls passed overhead or just threw up dirt and small stones at us.

The moment we got the order to advance, my captain looked at me so intently that I felt compelled to stroke my budding moustache two or three times with as nonchalant an air as I could manage. In truth, I wasn't scared; my only fear was that someone might think I was. Besides, those harmless shots helped keep me calm. My vanity told me I was really in danger, finally under fire. I was pleased to find myself so cool, and I daydreamed about telling the story of the capture of Fort Cheverino in Madame B——'s drawing room on the Rue de Provence.

The colonel rode past our company and said, "Well, you're going to get it hot in your first battle."

I smiled with a military air, brushing from my sleeve some dust thrown up by a ball thirty paces away.

It was clear the Russians had noticed their balls were falling short, so they switched to shells, which could reach us more easily in the hollow where we were posted. One burst nearby, knocking off my cap and killing a man close to me.

"I congratulate you," said the captain as I picked up my cap. "You're safe for the day now."

I knew the soldiers' superstition that the saying *non bis in idem* holds as true on the battlefield as in a court of law. I put my cap back on with a jaunty air.

"That's a free and easy kind of greeting," I replied, trying to sound jovial. That feeble joke seemed excellent under the circumstances.

"You're lucky," said the captain. "You needn't fear anything more, and you'll command a company tonight. As for me, I know a bullet will find me today. Every time I've been wounded, the officer next to me was grazed by a spent bullet, and," he added in a lower, half-ashamed tone, "their names always began with a P."

I took courage; most people would have done the same, and most would have been equally struck by such prophetic words. As a raw conscript, I didn't think I could confide my feelings to anyone. I felt I had to appear cool and brave.

About half an hour later, the Russian fire slackened noticeably. Then we sallied out from our cover to storm the fort.

Our regiment consisted of three battalions. The second was ordered to outflank the fort from the side of the gorge; the other two were to make the assault. I was in the third battalion.

As we came out from behind the buttress that had protected us, we were met by several volleys, which did little harm to our ranks. The whistling of the balls startled me, and I kept looking around, drawing joking remarks from the more seasoned soldiers.

"On the whole," I said to myself, "a battle isn't so very dreadful."

We advanced at the double, preceded by our sharpshooters. Suddenly the Russians gave three cheers, three distinct hurrahs, then they stopped firing and fell silent.

"I don't like that silence," said my captain. "It bodes no good for us."

I thought our men were a bit too noisy, and I couldn't help contrasting their tumultuous clamor with the enemy's impressive silence.

We quickly reached the outskirts of the fort, where the palisades had been broken and the earth churned up by our cannonballs. The soldiers leapt onto the newly broken ground, shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" more loudly than I would have thought possible for men who had already shouted so much.

I raised my eyes, and I shall never forget the sight before me. Most of the smoke had risen, hanging like a canopy about twenty feet above the fort. Through the blue haze, I saw the Russian grenadiers, with bayonets fixed, standing like motionless statues behind their half-destroyed parapet. I can still see each soldier, his left eye fixed on us, his right hidden by his raised gun. In an embrasure a few feet away, a man was holding a lighted fuse to a cannon.

I shuddered, thinking my last hour had come.

"Now the fun begins!" cried my captain. "Here goes!"

Those were the last words I heard him speak.

A roll of drums sounded from the fort. I saw all the muskets leveled. I closed my eyes and heard an appalling uproar, followed by shrieks and groans. I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself still alive. The fort was again wrapped in smoke. I was surrounded by wounded and dying men. My captain lay stretched at my feet; his head had been smashed by a shell, and I was covered with his brains and blood. Out of my whole company, only six men and I were left standing.

A moment of stupor followed this carnage. The colonel, putting his hat on the end of his sword, was the first to climb the parapet, shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" He was soon followed by all the survivors. I cannot clearly remember what happened next. I don't know how we entered the fort. We fought hand to hand in such dense smoke that we could barely see. I suppose I struck out, for I found my sabre covered with blood. At last I heard the shout "Victory!" and, as the smoke cleared, I saw the ground of the fort covered with blood and corpses. The guns especially were buried under heaps of dead. Scattered about in disorder stood about two hundred men in French uniform: some were loading their pieces, others wiping their bayonets. Eleven Russian prisoners were with them.

The colonel was lying covered with blood on a broken ammunition box near the gorge. Several soldiers crowded around him. I joined them.

"Where is the senior captain?" he asked one of the sergeants.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"And the senior lieutenant?"

"Here is the gentleman who came yesterday," said the sergeant in a perfectly calm voice.

The colonel smiled bitterly.

"Well, monsieur, you are commander-in-chief," he said to me. "Have the gorge of the fort fortified at once with these wagons. The enemy is in force, but General C—— is coming to support you."

"Colonel," I said to him, "you are badly wounded."

"A fig for that, my lad. We have taken the fort!"