Erckmann-Chatrian - The Invasion of France in 1814

The invasion of France by the allied armies after the battle of Leipsic had proved the German campaign even more disastrous than that of Russia the year before, was not only essentially the death-blow to the power of Napoleon, but was the first real taste France had had for many years of an experience she had so often previously meted out to her neighbors. In spite of all she had suffered from the conscription and from exhaustion of men and treasure in offensive war – or at least war waged outside her own territory – the great Invasion meant for her something far more terrible than any reverses she had yet undergone. Napoleon was not only not invincible, it appeared, he was not even able to defend the frontiers he had found firmly established on his accession to power. The allies had announced that they were warring not against France but against the French Emperor – "against the preponderance that Napoleon had too long exercised beyond the limits of his empire." Everywhere in France except in the official world of Paris, the once enchanted name of Napoleon had become recognized as a synonym of national disaster.

Nevertheless nothing – except, perhaps, the similar circumstances of the Prussian invasion in 1870 – has ever so well attested the fundamental and absorbing patriotism of the French people as their heroic resistance to this invasion and their instinctive and universal refusal to separate in this crisis the cause of their Emperor from their own. The presence of a foreign foe on whatever pretext within their boundaries sufficed to arouse them en masse . No such enthusiasm had been known since the days of the Republic's and the Consulate's victories as was awakened, in the thick of national disaster and amid the ruin of all ambitious hopes, by the thought of an enemy within the borders of la patrie . And in "The Invasion" of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian this enthusiasm and devotion find a chronicle which is most realistically impressive. So soon as the peasants of the outlying villages of the eastern frontier learn of the impending descent of the Cossacks and Germans, without thought of their own comfort and safety – which it is, however, impartially pointed out they know would hardly be better secured by submission – they organize for resistance. They blockade the highways and defend the mountain passes. Women and children aid in the work. While the siege of Phalsbourg goes on the heights are occupied by sturdy peasants who oppose for a while an effective obstacle to the passage of the invaders. The worst hardships, the most perilous adventures, are accepted by them with the heroic courage of regulars. Outlaws and smugglers work and fight hand to hand with the respected worthies of the neighborhood. They watch their farms burn from their outlook on the hill-tops, they suffer the pangs of starvation when their supplies are intercepted by the enemy, they fight to desperation when their position is finally turned by the treachery of a crazy German they have long harbored – and whose vagaries give, by the way, a most romantic color to the narrative – and they are finally slain or captured just as Paris capitulates and peace is made. None of the National Novels is more graphic or more significant historically than "The Invasion."

If you would wish to know the history of the great invasion of 1814, such as it was related to me by the old hunter Frantz du Hengst, you must transport yourself to the village of Charmes, in the Vosges. About thirty small houses, covered with shingles and dark-green houseleeks, stand in rows along the banks of the Sarre: you can see the gables carpeted with ivy and withered honeysuckles, for winter is approaching; the beehives closed with corks of straw, the small gardens, the palings, the hedges which separate them one from the other.

To the left, on a high mountain, arise the ruins of the ancient château of Falkenstein, destroyed two hundred years ago by the Swedes. It is now only a mass of stones and brambles; an old "timber-way," with its worn-out steps, ascends to it through the pine-trees. To the right, on the side of the hill, one can perceive the farm of Bois-de-Chênes – a large building, with granaries, stables, and sheds, the flat roof loaded with great stones, in order to resist the north wind. A few cows are grazing in the heather, a few goats on the rocks.

Everything is calm and silent.

Some children, in gray stuff trousers, their heads and feet bare, are warming themselves around their little fires on the outskirts of the woods; the spiral lines of blue smoke fade away in the air, great white clouds remain immovable above the valley; behind these clouds arise the arid peaks of the Grosmann and Donon.

You must know that the end house of the village, whose square roof is pierced by two loophole windows, and whose low door opens on the muddy street, belonged, in 1813, to Jean-Claude Hullin, one of the old volunteers of '92, but now a shoemaker in the village of Charmes, and who was held in much consideration by the mountaineers. Hullin was a short stout man, with gray eyes, large lips, a short nose, and thick eyebrows. He was of a jovial, kind disposition, and did not know how to refuse anything to his daughter Louise, a child whom he had picked up among some miserable gypsies – farriers and tin-sellers – without house or dwelling-place, who go from village to village mending pots and pans, melting the ladles, and patching up cracked utensils. He considered her as his own daughter, and never seemed to remember she came of a strange race.

Besides this natural affection, the good old fellow possessed others still: he loved above all his cousin, the old mistress of the farm of Bois-de-Chênes, Catherine Lefèvre, and her son Gaspard, who had been carried off that year by the conscription – a handsome young fellow, the "fiancé" of Louise, and whose return was expected by all the family at the end of the campaign.

Hullin recalled always with enthusiasm his campaigns of the Sambre-et-Meuse, of Italy and of Egypt. He often thought of them, and sometimes in the evening, when the work was over, he would go to the sawmills of Valtin, that dark manufactory formed of trunks of trees still bearing their bark, and which you can perceive down there at the end of the valley. He sat down among the wood-cutters and charcoal-gatherers, and sledges, in front of the great fire; and while the heavy wheel turned, the dam thundered and the saws grinded, he, his elbow on his knee, and his pipe in his mouth, would speak to them of Hoche, of Kleber, and finally of General Bonaparte, whom he had seen hundreds of times, and whose thin face, piercing eyes, and eagle profile, he would depict as though he were present.

Such was Jean-Claude Hullin.

He was one of the old Gallic stock, fond of extraordinary adventures and heroic enterprises, but constant to his work, out of a sentiment of duty, from New Year's day until Saint Sylvester's.

As for Louise, the child of the tramp, she was a slender creature, with long delicate hands, eyes of such a soft deep blue that they seemed to penetrate to the depths of your soul, skin of a snowy whiteness, hair of a pale straw-color, like silk in texture, and drooping shoulders like those of a virgin praying. Her ingenuous smile, pensive forehead – in fact, her whole appearance – recalled the old Lied of the Minnesinger Erhart, when he said: "I have seen a ray of light pass by: my eyes are still dazzled by it. Was it a moonbeam piercing the foliage? Was it a smile from the dawn in the forests? No, it was the beautiful Edith, my love, who passed by. I have seen her, and my eyes are still dazzled."