Where the Light Falls(26)

Kellermann sat in the center, peering through his looking glass toward the faraway tree line. To the right of Kellermann, Dumouriez’s horse pawed restlessly at the ground, and Dumouriez tightened his grip on the beast’s reins. Murat sat to the left, studying a map. Kellermann slammed his looking glass shut, turning back toward the line of French soldiers.

He said something to his two colleagues, though his words were inaudible to André from such a distance. Dumouriez’s bright red sash and golden epaulets shone blindingly bright in the sunlight as he nodded at whatever Kellermann had said. Murat adjusted his hat, lifting it slightly to gain a better view of the far forest.

On André’s far right stood a cluster of National Guard companies, recognizable by their tattered blue coats and patchwork leggings. They began to shout and cheer, goaded to a fever pitch by their unseasoned leaders.

“Damned inexperienced whelps,” one of André’s men grumbled under his breath, but he sounded more anxious than angry.

“Leave it to the grown-ups, lads!” Leroux yelled in their direction, and several of André’s men began to chuckle.

André threw Leroux a barbed look. “Steady,” he said. “Don’t bother with that.” He knew that before battle, men often masked their fear with shouts and insults, crutches to fortify their nerves. But his men were trained better than to forget their discipline.

And then André knew he hadn’t been imagining things, as there, from the distant tree line, several small figures emerged from behind the veil of the woods. A figure clothed in emerald green and a hat plumed with a single green feather glided out. And then another. And then another. One of the distant enemy held a looking glass, and its funnel caught a ray of sunlight, the reflection glinting off of its polished surface.

“There! Look!” Farther down the French line, one of the bluecoats shouted, pointing. “In the trees!”

André noted with small satisfaction that his men had all remained quiet, still, in their first sighting of the distant enemy.

The Prussian with the looking glass paused for a moment before vanishing back behind the trees. Kellermann, Dumouriez, and Murat must have seen them, too, for they now turned their horses and trotted back from the center of the field toward the French line.

Before his horse passed through the line, Kellermann paused a moment, turning once more in the direction of the Prussians. Almost a taunt, inviting the enemy to come and defy him. And then he lifted his reins and guided his horse back, a hearty grin on his face as he passed his men. “Give ’em hell, boys!” Kellermann lifted his plumed cap from his head.

“Vive la France!” a soldier near André shouted, and his voice mingled with the hoarse cries of the other men. All around him, soldiers were shouting the battle cry that had become familiar over the summer: “La patrie est en danger! The nation is in danger!”

But this momentary burst of bravery was cut short, as the men realized that they now stood exposed before an enemy that had indeed arrived for battle. A lone Prussian stood on the edge of the wood-line, well out of musket range. He raised his right hand, as if to wave toward the French, and then dropped it as he began to trot forward into the meadow. Still out of range, he dropped to his knees and lifted his long rifle. André saw a puff of smoke and, a heartbeat later, heard a crack that ripped across the field, sending several birds upward toward the sky.

Several other enemy skirmishers emerged, darting along the edge of the woods. They dropped to their knees, concealed partially by the high wheat. Now, intermittent pops of gunfire, followed by small clouds of smoke, rose up out of the wheat in which the Prussian skirmishers knelt. Their bullets were sporadic and shot from far away, their purpose to lure the French.

Suddenly, appearing like woodland ghosts, figures in white and blue began to dart through and past the French line. André watched the French skirmishers run out to challenge the Prussians. They sped past in a crouch, zigzagging to render themselves difficult targets for the long-range enemy rifles.

As the Prussian fire picked up, the French rifles barked in response. It was like watching a frenzied, illogical dance, André reflected—the first awkward moments at the start of a great ball, before partners had been matched and when only a few brave souls ventured out, inviting the other side to engage.

André stole a glance down his line, where his men’s faces were rapt, one of them shouting out an encouragement as more of their fleet-footed countrymen joined the skirmishers’ dance. None had been hit yet, but the bursts of fire became more constant. On the left, several of the French skirmishers had stopped firing, taking a pause to reload their muskets. The foremost men on each side had now approached within two hundred meters of one another, and André knew that they had now moved into killing range. A lone cry rose up as a green figure, pausing to reload, snapped backward. This sight was met with a murderous cheer that rose up from the French line as the men celebrated the first death of the day—one that had been inflicted by one of their own. But the riflemen did not celebrate, did not pause in the job before them.