The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  ‘I’ve thought it over a lot, and that was what I had to come here and tell you… If Father won’t consent, well, we’ll go away, the world is a big place… And your child, well, we can’t do him in, can we? There’ll be lots more as well, and I shall end up by not being able to pick him out of the crowd.’

  It was forgiveness. She still fought against this immense happiness and murmured at long last:

  ‘No, it isn’t possible, it’s too much. You might live to regret it some day… But how good you are, Honoré! And how I love you!’

  He silenced her with a kiss. Already she had given up trying, unable to reject the happiness coming to her, the whole blissful life she thought had gone for ever. With an instinctive, irresistible urge she threw both her arms round him and clasped him to her, kissing him in her turn with all the strength a woman can find, like a lost treasure regained and hers alone, that nobody would take away from her any more. He was hers again, this man she had lost, and she would die rather than let him be taken from her yet again.

  But at that moment there rose from below a noise like a great reveille, peopling the thick darkness. Orders were shouted, bugles sounded and a host of shadows were rising out of the bare ground, an indistinct, moving sea already flooding down towards the road. Below, the fires on each bank were nearly out, and all that could be seen was vague, trampling masses, neither was it clear whether they were still crossing the river. Never before had such anguish, dismay and terror stalked through the shadows.

  Old Fouchard had come back to the window shouting that they were off. Jean and Maurice woke up, shivering and aching, and jumped to their feet. Honoré quickly squeezed Silvine’s hand in his.

  ‘We’ve sworn… wait for me.’

  She could find nothing to say, but put her whole soul into a last long look as he leaped out of the window, racing off to rejoin his battery.

  ‘Good-bye, Father.’

  ‘Good-bye, my lad.’

  That was all, peasant and soldier parted again as they had met, with no embrace, a father and son who could get along quite well without having to see each other.

  When they too had left the farmhouse, Maurice and Jean galloped down the steep slopes. At the bottom they found no sign of the 106th; all the regiments were already on the move, and they had to keep running and were redirected right and left. But in the end, when they were frantic in the dreadful confusion, they fell in with their company, led by Lieutenant Rochas. As for Captain Beaudoin and the regiment itself, they were somewhere or other, no doubt. And then Maurice was astounded to see that this multitude of men, horses and guns was leaving Remilly and making for Sedan along the road on the left bank. What on earth was going on? So they had given up crossing the Meuse and were retreating northwards!

  A cavalry officer standing there, heaven knows why, said quite audibly:

  ‘Good God, we should have cleared out on the 28th, when we were at Le Chêne!’

  Other voices were explaining the manoeuvre, and news began coming in. At about two in the morning an aide-de-camp from Marshal MacMahon had come and informed General Douay that the whole army had orders to fall back on Sedan without losing a minute. Routed at Beaumont, the 5th corps was sweeping away the three others in its own disaster. At that moment the general, who was keeping watch by the pontoon bridge, was horrified to see that his third division had crossed the river alone. It would soon be light and they might be attacked at any minute. So he sent word to all officers under his command to make for Sedan each one as best he could by the most direct route. And he himself, abandoning the pontoon bridge which he ordered to be destroyed, hurried off along the left bank with his second division and reserve artillery, while the third followed the right bank, and the first, thrown into disarray at Beaumont, was fleeing in disorder nobody knew where. Of the 7th corps, which had still not seen any fighting, there were only odd sections left, lost on the roads, galloping in the darkness.

  It was not yet three, and the night was still dark. Although he knew the district, Maurice had no idea where he was going, and could not recover his wits in the rushing torrent of this crazy mob filling the road. Quite a few men who had escaped from the disaster at Beaumont, soldiers of all arms, in rags, covered with dust and blood, were mingling with the regiments and spreading despondency. The same murmuring sound arose from the whole valley, beyond the river as well, other trampling herds, other fugitives, the 1st corps which had just left Carignan and Douzy, the 12th corps from Mouzon with the remnants of the 5th, all unnerved, carried away by the same logical, invincible force which ever since the 28th had been thrusting the army northwards and ramming it into the impasse where it was to perish.

  However, a grey dawn came as the Beaudoin company was going through Pont-Maugis, and Maurice saw where he was, with the hills of Liry on the left and the Meuse along the right of the road. This grey dawn revealed Bazeilles and Balan looking utterly dreary in the mists over the fields, while a livid, nightmarish, tragic Sedan could be made out on the horizon against the immense dark curtain of forest. And after Wadelincourt, when they at last reached the Torcy gate, there had to be a parley, with begging and threats, almost a regular siege, to make the governor lower the drawbridge. It was five o’clock. The 7th corps entered Sedan, knocked out with fatigue, hunger and cold.

  8

  IN the crush in the Place de Torcy at the end of the Wadelincourt road, Jean became separated from Maurice, and he ran madly about in the milling throng but could not find him. This was a real blow because he had accepted the young man’s offer to take him to his sister’s, where they could have a rest and even sleep in a proper bed. There was such confusion, with all the regiments mixed up and no route orders or officers left, that the men were more or less free to do what they liked. There would still be time to sort yourself out and find your own lot again when you had had a few hours’ sleep.

  Really alarmed, Jean found himself on the Torcy viaduct above the broad meadows that the governor had had flooded with water from the river. Then, having gone through another gate, he crossed the Meuse bridge and it seemed to him, in spite of the growing daylight, that it was getting dark again in this constricted town, hemmed in between its ramparts, with dank streets between tall buildings. He couldn’t even remember the name of Maurice’s brother-in-law. Where should he go? Whom could he ask? His feet were only carrying him on now because of the automatic movement of walking, and he felt he would fall down if he stopped. Like a drowning man, all he could hear was a dull roaring in his ears, and all he could see was the continual flow of the tide of men and animals carrying him forward. As he had had something to eat at Remilly his main trouble was lack of sleep, and all round him fatigue was more powerful than hunger, and the herd of shadows was staggering along the unknown streets. At every step a man collapsed on the pavement, fell into a doorway and stayed there as if dead, fast asleep.

  Looking up, Jean read a name-plate: Avenue de la Sous-Préfecture. At the far end there was a monument in a garden. And at the corner of the avenue he saw a cavalryman, a Chasseur d’Afrique, whom he thought he knew. Wasn’t it Prosper, the chap from Remilly he had seen at Vouziers with Maurice? The man had dismounted, and the horse, sick-looking and unsteady on his legs, was suffering so much from hunger as to be on the point of stretching his neck to eat the planks of the baggage-wagon drawn up at the kerb. The horses had had no rations for two days and were dying of exhaustion. His big teeth were grating like a file on the wood and the man was in tears.

  Jean went on, but turned back thinking this man might know the address of Maurice’s relatives, but he had gone. Then he was in despair, and wandered from street to street, found himself at the Sub-Prefecture, pushed on as far as the Place Turenne. There he thought for one moment he was saved when he saw Lieutenant Rochas and a few men of the company in front of the Hôtel de Ville at the foot of the statue of Turenne. If he couldn’t rejoin his friend he would link up with the regiment again and at any rate sleep in a tent. Captain Beaudoin not ha
ving reappeared – he had been carried along and landed somewhere else – the lieutenant was trying to collect his men together, asking for information and trying in vain to find out where their camp was. But as they advanced into the town the company, far from growing, was fading away. One soldier gesturing wildly, went into a pub and never reappeared. Three others stopped at the door of a grocer’s, their interest held by some Zouaves who had banged a hole in a little cask of spirits. Quite a few were already stretched out across the gutter, others set off to go somewhere, but fell down again, overcome with fatigue and quite dazed. Chouteau and Loubet, nudging each other, disappeared down a dark alley behind a fat woman carrying a loaf of bread. By then only Pache and Lapoulle, with a handful of others, were left with the lieutenant.

  At the foot of the bronze statue of Turenne Rochas was making a great effort to stay on his feet with his eyes open. When he saw Jean he muttered:

  ‘Oh, it’s you, corporal. What about your men?’

  Jean waved a vague arm to indicate that he didn’t know. But Pache, pointing at Lapoulle, answered, melting into tears:

  ‘Here we are, only two of us left… Oh God have mercy on us, it’s too awful!’

  The other one, the big eater, looked voraciously at Jean’s hands, outraged to see them empty at this juncture. Perhaps in his sleepwalking state he had dreamed that the corporal had gone for the issue of rations.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he growled. ‘Got to squeeze me belly in again!’

  Gaude the bugler, leaning against the railings while waiting for the order to blow fall-in, had slipped straight down and gone to sleep flat on his back. One by one they all gave in to sleep and were snoring away dead to the world. Only Sergeant Sapin was still standing, with his eyes wide open and his nose screwed up in his little pale face as though he were reading his own doom on the horizon of this unknown town.

  By now Lieutenant Rochas had given in to the irresistible urge to sit down on the ground. He tried to give an order.

  ‘Corporal, we must… we must…’

  He couldn’t find his words, for his mouth was clogged by fatigue, and suddenly he went over as well, knocked out by sleep.

  Afraid of falling on the pavement too, Jean moved off. He was determined to find a bed. From the other side of the square, through a window of the Hôtel de la Croix d’Or, he had perceived General Bourgain-Desfeuilles already in his shirtsleeves and preparing to slip between some fine white sheets. What was the point of being conscientious and putting up with any more? He had a sudden burst of joy when a name sprang up in his memory, the name of the cloth manufacturer who was the employer of Maurice’s brother-in-law: Monsieur Delaherche. Yes, that was it! He stopped an old man who was passing.

  ‘Monsieur Delaherche’s?’

  ‘Rue Maqua, almost at the corner of the rue au Beurre, a nice big house with carvings on it.’

  Then the old man ran after him.

  ‘I say, you belong to the 106th, don’t you? If you are looking for your regiment, it went off again down by the castle. I’ve just run into the colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil, whom I knew when he was at Mézières.’

  But Jean was off with a gesture of wild impatience. Oh no, now he was sure of finding Maurice he wasn’t going to sleep on the hard ground. But there was a slight feeling of guilt nagging inside him as he conjured up a vision of the colonel with his tall figure, a man so resistant to fatigue in spite of his age, sleeping like his men under canvas. But then he entered the Grande-Rue and finally asked a little boy who took him to the rue Maqua.

  It was there that a great-uncle of the present Delaherche had built in the last century the huge factory which had not gone out of the family for a hundred and sixty years. There are textile mills like this in Sedan dating from the early years of Louis XV, mills as big as the Louvre, with regal, majestic façades. The one in the rue Maqua had three floors with lofty windows framed with classical carvings, and inside there was a palatial courtyard still planted with the original elms dating from the founding of the business, gigantic trees. Three generations of Delaherches had made sizeable fortunes there. The father of Jules, the present proprietor, had inherited the mill from a cousin who had died childless, and so it was a younger branch of the family that was now in charge. Jules’s father had increased the prosperity of the firm, but he was a gay fellow and had made his wife unhappy. So she, when she was widowed, trembling lest her boy should start on the same fun and games, had tried to keep him completely dependent, like a grown-up good boy, until he was past fifty, having married him off to a simple and pious woman. The terrible thing is that life takes its revenges. His wife died, and Delaherche, never having been allowed any youth, fell head over heels in love with a young widow of Charleville, the pretty Madame Maginot, about whom various tales were whispered, and in spite of his mother’s remonstrances he had married her the previous autumn. Sedan, a very puritanical town, has always been severe on Charleville, a city of gaiety and fun. Not that the marriage would ever have been concluded had not one of Gilberte’s uncles been Colonel de Vineuil, who was by way of being promoted to general. This connexion and the thought that he had become a member of a military family, were very gratifying to the cloth manufacturer.

  The day before, in the morning, Delaherche, learning that the army was to pass through Mouzon, had been out with Weiss, his book-keeper, for the drive that old Fouchard had mentioned to Maurice. Tall and heavily built, with a high colour, strong nose and thick lips, he was an outgoing kind of man with the middle-class Frenchman’s enjoyment and interest in watching fine parades of troops. Having been told by the chemist at Mouzon that the Emperor was at Baybel farmhouse, he had gone up as far as there, had seen him, and even almost spoken to him – quite a thrilling adventure that he had never stopped narrating since his return. But what a terrible return it was, through the panic at Beaumont and on the roads blocked with fugitives! A score of times the carriage had nearly capsized in ditches, and it was dark before the two men had made their way back through ever recurring obstacles. This pleasure jaunt, the army that Delaherche had travelled two leagues to see go by and which carried him brutally back in the stampede of its retreat, this whole unforeseen and tragic tale had made him say ten times over on the way back:

  ‘And to think that I thought it was marching to Verdun and didn’t want to miss the chance of seeing it! Well, I’ve seen it now, and I think we’re going to see it at Sedan, and more of it than we want!’

  That morning he was awakened at five by the 7th corps going through the town with the loud noise of open sluice-gates. He had dressed with all speed, and the first person he saw in the Place Turenne proved to be Captain Beaudoin. The year before, in Charleville, the captain had been one of pretty Madame Maginot’s group of intimates, and Gilberte had introduced him before their marriage. A story had formerly gone the whispered rounds that the captain, having no favour left to desire, had withdrawn with tactful delicacy in favour of the cloth manufacturer, not wanting to stand between his mistress and the very great fortune which was coming her way.

  ‘What, you!’ exclaimed Delaherche. ‘Good Lord, what a state you’re in!’

  Beaudoin, normally so correct and well groomed, was in fact in a lamentable condition, with dirty uniform and black hands and face. He was exasperated at having fallen in with some Turcos and couldn’t understand how he had lost his own company. Like everybody else, he was dropping with hunger and fatigue, but that was not what caused his most acute misery; what put him out most of all was not having changed his shirt since Rheims.

  ‘Just think of it!’ he at once began moaning. ‘They lost my luggage at Vouziers. Fools and rogues, I’d break their necks if I got hold of them!… Nothing left, not even a handkerchief or a pair of socks! It’s enough to drive you mad, it really is!’

  Delaherche at once insisted on taking him to his own home, but he demurred: oh no, he didn’t even look human, he didn’t want to give everybody a fright. Delaherche had to swear that neither his wife nor his m
other would be up yet. And besides, he would give him soap and water, clean underclothes, in fact anything he needed.

  It was striking seven when Captain Beaudoin, all washed and brushed up, wearing one of the husband’s shirts under his uniform, appeared in the grey-panelled dining-room with its lofty ceiling. Madame Delaherche senior was there already, for she always rose at dawn in spite of her seventy-eight years. She was quite white, and her nose had got even more pointed and her mouth never laughed now in her long, thin face. She rose to her feet and was exceedingly polite, inviting the captain to sit down in front of one of the cups of coffee and milk already poured out.

  ‘But perhaps, sir, you would rather have some meat and wine after such a tiring time?’

  He protested.

  ‘No, thank you very much indeed, Madame, just some milk and bread and butter, that would suit me best.’

  At that moment a door was gaily thrown open and Gilberte came in with outstretched hand. Delaherche must have warned her, for as a rule she never got up before ten. She was tall, looked lithe but well built, with beautiful black hair and lovely dark eyes, and yet a very fair skin, a laughing face, a bit harum-scarum and without a trace of malice. Her beige dressing-gown with red silk embroidery had come from Paris.

  ‘Oh, captain,’ she gushed, as she shook the young man’s hand, ‘how kind of you to have come to see us in our dead-and-alive part of the world!’

  But she was the first to laugh at her own scatterbrained talk.

  ‘Oh aren’t I silly? You could certainly do without being in Sedan in these circumstances. But I’m so glad to see you again!’

  Her fine eyes shone with delight. Madame Delaherche, who must have been aware of the tittle-tattle of the Charleville gossips, sat bolt upright, watching them both closely. The captain, on his side, was being very discreet, behaving like a man who had simply kept happy memories of a hospitable home where he had been made welcome.