I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested,"
in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's
at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little,
deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous
screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I
saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's
exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the
country they were to see no more.
History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world,"
yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four
thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has
climbed high since then!
I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at
Chalons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The
water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"
At Vitry-le-Francois there is also that same sinister canal which leads
from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a
wicked sound in these days--Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-Francois of all
places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time
to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for
him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the
toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and
burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens,
obliterated; women drowned in the river by laughing German soldiers,
deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place
to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses
in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.
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