The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  At King William’s feet, from Remilly to Frénois, the almost continuous line of batteries were ceaselessly thundering, pounding La Moncelle and Daigny with shells and firing right over the town of Sedan to rake the plateaux to the north. It was not much after eight in the morning, and he was awaiting the inevitable outcome of the battle, his eyes on the giant chessboard, busily manoeuvring this dust-storm of men, the furious attack of these few black dots in the midst of eternal, smiling nature.

  2

  AT first light on the plateau of Floing, in a thick fog, Gaude’s bugle sounded reveille for all it was worth. But the air was so saturated with moisture that the merry tune was muffled. Nevertheless the men of the company, who had not even had the heart to put up the tents but had rolled themselves up in the canvas and lain in the mud, did not even wake up but were like a lot of corpses already with pallid faces, stiff with fatigue and sleep, and had to be shaken one by one and pulled out of their torpor. They rose up as if from the dead, ghastly looking, with eyes full of the terror of being alive.

  Jean had roused Maurice.

  ‘What’s up? Where are we?’

  He looked about him, scared, but only saw the grey sea of fog in which the shades of his comrades were floating. You couldn’t make out anything twenty metres in front of you. You lost all sense of direction, and he could never have said which way Sedan was. Just then his ear caught the far off sound of gunfire somewhere.

  ‘Oh yes, the fighting is to be today… Good, we shall get it over!’

  Voices round him were saying the same thing, and there was a feeling of grim satisfaction, the need to get out of this nightmare at last by seeing those Prussians, whom they had come to find and from whom they had been running away for so many mortal hours. So they were going to give them a bit of rifle-fire and unload themselves of these cartridges they had carted so far without firing a single one! This time, they all felt, it was the inevitable battle.

  ‘Where’s that firing?’

  ‘As far as I can tell,’ Maurice answered, ‘it seems to me to be over towards the Meuse, but the devil take me if I have the faintest idea where I am!’

  ‘Look here chum,’ the corporal said, ‘you and I aren’t going to get separated because, you see, you’ve got to have the know-how if you don’t want to land in trouble. I’ve already been through all this, and I’ll keep my eyes open for you as well as myself.’

  By now the squad were beginning to grouse and get angry at having nothing hot to put in their stomachs. Can’t light a fire with no dry wood in bloody awful weather like this! At the very moment when the battle was opening the question of the belly came back imperiously, decisively. Heroes perhaps, but bellies first and foremost. To eat, that was the sole concern, and with what rapture they skimmed the pot on good stew days, and what childish, savage tempers when bread was short!

  ‘When you don’t eat you don’t fight,’ declared Chouteau. ‘I’ll be buggered if I risk my skin today!’

  The revolutionary was raising his head again in this great oaf of a house-painter, the Montmartre orator, the public-bar theorist who spoiled the few good ideas he picked up here and there in the most appalling mess-up of rubbish and lies.

  ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘what did they fucking well take us for, telling us the Prussians were dying of starvation and diseases, that they hadn’t even got no shirts left and that you could meet them on the roads all dirty and ragged like a lot of tramps?’

  Loubet began to laugh. He was a real Parisian smart aleck, who had dabbled in all the dubious jobs at the Markets.

  ‘Don’t you believe it, we’re the ones pegging out in poverty, the ones people’d give a penny to when we go by with our cracked boots and scarecrow’s clothes. And what about those famous victories? And that was a nice joke too, when they told us how Bismarck had been taken prisoner and that they had kicked a whole army of them into a quarry… Balls! They were fucking well having us on!’

  Pache and Lapoulle listened and clenched their fists, nodding furiously. And others were getting worked up too, for the final effect of these continuous lies in the papers was disastrous. The men had lost all confidence and no longer believed anything. The imaginings of these overgrown children, at first so fertile in wild hopes, were now collapsing into wild nightmares.

  ‘Of course it’s easy enough to see,’ went on Chouteau, ‘it’s got a simple explanation, we’ve been sold down the river… You all know that.’

  Lapoulle’s simple peasant mind was outraged each time this phrase cropped up.

  ‘Sold down the river! Oh aren’t they shits!’

  ‘Sold, like Judas sold his Master,’ murmured Pache, always haunted by biblical memories.

  Chouteau was triumphant.

  ‘It’s quite simple, good Lord, we know the figures… MacMahon has had three million and the other generals a million each for bringing us to this place… It was all fixed up in Paris in the spring, and last night they fired a rocket just to tell them it was all ready and they could come and get us!’

  Maurice was disgusted by the stupidity of this invention. Formerly Chouteau had amused him and almost won him over with his back-street smartness. But at the moment he could not stand this trouble-maker, the bad workman who spat on all the jobs so as to put off the others.

  ‘Why do you say such absurdities?’ he shouted. ‘You know it isn’t true!’

  ‘What do you mean it isn’t true?… So it isn’t true that we’ve been sold?… Oh I say, your lordship, are you one of them too, one of that lot of fucking bastards?’

  He advanced menacingly.

  ‘Look here, it’s about time it was said, Mister La-di-da, because we might not wait for your friend Bismarck but cook your goose straight away.’

  The others were beginning to mutter, and so Jean thought he had better intervene.

  ‘Now you shut up! I’ll report the first one to move.’

  But Chouteau sneered and booed at him. He didn’t give a hoot for his report! He would fight or he wouldn’t, just as he felt inclined, and they’d better not get across him any more, because he hadn’t got bullets for Prussians only! Now that the battle was under way what little discipline had been maintained by fear was collapsing: what could anyone do to him? He’d just piss off when he had had enough. He began a slanging match, working the others up against the corporal who let them die of hunger. Yes, it was his fault that the squad hadn’t had anything to eat for three days while the other blokes had had soup and meat. But of course the gentleman went out guzzling with his lordship and the tarts. Oh yes, they’d been seen in Sedan all right!

  ‘You’ve blued the squad’s money, and don’t you dare to deny it, you bleeding swindler!’

  Then things turned nasty. Lapoulle began clenching his fists, and Pache, for all his meekness, was crazed with hunger and demanding an explanation. The most sensible was Loubet once again, who began laughing his knowing laugh, saying it was daft for Frenchmen to be going for each other when the Prussians were just over there. He didn’t hold with quarrels, whether with fists or guns, and referring to the few hundred francs he had received as a conscript’s replacement, he added:

  ‘’Struth, if they think my carcass isn’t worth more than that I’ll give them something for their money.’

  Maurice and Jean, annoyed by this mindless aggressiveness, were shouting back in self-defence when a loud voice came out of the fog:

  ‘What’s up? What’s all this about? Which bloody fools are having a row now?’

  Lieutenant Rochas appeared, in his rain-soiled képi and cape with buttons off, his whole lean and gawky person in a pitiful state of neglect and shabbiness. But that didn’t affect his victorious cockiness, and his eyes were shining and his moustache bristling.

  ‘Sir,’ Jean said, beside himself with rage, ‘what’s up is these men shouting about the place that we have been betrayed… Yes, they say our generals have sold us…’

  In Rochas’s limited mind this idea of treason was not far fro
m seeming the obvious thing, for it explained defeats he could not admit to.

  ‘Well, what the fuck does it matter to them if we are sold? What business is it of theirs? It doesn’t alter the fact that the Prussians are here and that we’ve got to give them one of those thrashings you don’t forget in a hurry.’

  Away behind the thick curtain of fog the gunfire at Bazeilles was continuous. He waved his arms with a sweeping gesture.

  ‘Well, this time here it is! We’re going to chase them back home with the butts of our rifles!’

  For him, since he had heard the gunfire, everything else was wiped out: the delays, lack of direction on the march, demoralization of the troops, the disaster at Beaumont, the final agony of the forced retreat on Sedan. But since they were actually fighting, wasn’t victory certain? He had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and he kept his swaggering contempt for the enemy, his total ignorance of modern conditions of warfare, his obstinate certainty that a veteran of Africa, the Crimea and Italy was unbeatable. It really would be too silly to start again at his age!

  A sudden laugh opened his jaws wide. He had one of those bursts of maty affection that made the soldiers worship him in spite of the ticking-off he sometimes handed out.

  ‘Listen, boys, instead of squabbling it would be better to have a drink. Yes, I’m going to stand you all a drink and you can drink my health!’

  And from a pocket deep in his cape he produced a bottle of brandy, adding with his triumphant air that it was a present from a lady. And indeed he had been seen the evening before at a table in a pub at Floing getting very fresh with the barmaid whom he had on his knee. By now the soldiers were laughing like mad, holding out their messtins into which he was gaily pouring.

  ‘My lads, drink to your girlfriends if you’ve got any, and drink to the glory of France… That’s all I know about, so here’s to fun!’

  ‘Quite true, sir, here’s to your health and everybody else’s.’

  They all drank, warmed up and friends again. This drink was a real treat in the chilly morning just before marching against the enemy. Maurice felt it running down into his veins, giving him the warmth and semi-tipsiness of illusion. Why shouldn’t they beat the Prussians? Didn’t battles have their surprises in store, the sudden changes of fortune that history looked at in wonderment? This devil of a man went on to say that Bazaine was on the march and was expected before the evening, and although it was actually Belgium he pointed to, when indicating the route Bazaine was taking, Maurice indulged in one of those upsurges of hope without which he could not live. Perhaps this was the moment of revenge after all.

  ‘What are we waiting for, sir?’ he ventured to ask. ‘Aren’t we going to start?’

  Rochas made a sign meaning that he had no orders. Then after a pause:

  ‘Has anyone seen the captain?’

  There was no answer. Jean recollected having seen him stealing away after dark towards Sedan, but a prudent soldier should never see an officer when off duty. So he was keeping his mouth shut, when turning round he saw a shadowy form coming along the hedge.

  ‘Here he is,’ he said.

  It was indeed Captain Beaudoin. He amazed them all by the smartness of his dress – his spotless uniform and polished boots contrasted violently with the bedraggled state of the lieutenant. Moreover there was about him a certain elegance, something of the lady-killer in his white hands and curled moustache, a vague perfume of Persian lilac such as pervades the well-stocked dressing-room of a pretty woman.

  ‘Just look at that!’ sneered Loubet. ‘So the captain’s found his luggage again!’

  But nobody smiled because he was known to be difficult. He was detested and kept his men in their places. A real bastard, according to Rochas. Ever since the first reverses he had looked positively outraged, and the disaster that everybody had foreseen seemed to him bad form rather than anything else. A convinced Bonapartist and heading for the highest promotion, backed up by several salons, he felt his fortune sinking into all this mud. It was said that he had a very fine tenor voice to which he already owed a great deal. Not without intelligence, though knowing nothing about his profession, he was solely concerned with being acceptable, and he was also very brave, if necessary, but no fanatic.

  ‘What a fog!’ was all he said, thankful to find his own company again which he had spent the last half-hour looking for as he was afraid of being lost.

  Immediately after that an order at last came through and the battalion moved forward. New billows of fog must have been coming up from the Meuse, for they almost groped their way along in a sort of whitish dew coming down in a fine drizzle. At that moment Maurice was struck by a vision – Colonel de Vineuil suddenly looming ahead, motionless on his horse at the junction of two roads, very tall and pale, like a marble statue of despair, his mount shivering in the morning cold with his nostrils open and turned away towards the guns. But most striking of all, ten paces to the rear the regimental flag, already out of its cover and held by the lieutenant on duty and flapping in the soft moving whiteness of the vapour, seemed to be up in a sky of dreams, an apparition of glory, trembling and on the point of vanishing away. The golden eagle was soaking wet and the silk tricolor, on which the names of victories were embroidered, looked faded and dirty, riddled with old wounds, and the only thing to stand out from all this dimness was the gleaming enamel of the arms of the cross of honour attached to the tassels.

  Flag and colonel disappeared, swallowed up in a new cloud, and the battalion still advanced without knowing where it was going, as though in damp cotton wool. They had come downhill and were now climbing again up a narrow lane. The command to halt rang out. And there they stood easy, their packs weighing down on their shoulders, forbidden to move. They must be on some high land, but it was still impossible to see twenty paces and nothing could be made out. It was now seven, and the gunfire seemed to have come nearer, fresh batteries were firing on the other side of Sedan, nearer and nearer.

  ‘Oh well,’ Sergeant Sapin said in his matter-of-fact way to Jean and Maurice, ‘I shall be killed today.’

  He hadn’t opened his mouth since reveille, but was lost in a dream, with his delicate face, large beautiful eyes and prim little nose.

  ‘Well, that’s a nice idea!’ protested Jean. ‘Can anyone say what he’ll get? You know there’s none for nobody and some for everybody.’

  ‘Oh, as far as I’m concerned it’s as though it was done already… I shall be killed today!’

  Heads turned round and asked if he had seen that in a dream. No, he hadn’t dreamed anything, just felt it, and there it was.

  ‘Still, it’s annoying, because I was going to get married when I got home.’

  His eyes wandered off again and he saw his own life. Son of a small grocer in Lyons, spoilt by his mother who had died, and unable to get on with his father, he had stayed with the regiment, fed up with everything and refusing to be bought out. Then on one of his leaves he had come to an understanding with a girl cousin, come to terms with life, and together they had worked out an attractive project for opening a business, thanks to the small sum she would bring with her. He had had some schooling – reading, writing and arithmetic. For the past year he had lived only for the joy of this future life.

  He shivered and shook himself free of this dream, then calmly repreated:

  ‘Yes, it’s annoying, I shall be killed today.’

  The talking stopped and the wait went on. There was no knowing even whether they had their backs or their fronts to the enemy. Vague sounds came now and again out of the foggy unknown: rumbling of wheels, tramping of feet, distant trotting of horses. These were troop movements hidden by the mist, all the manoeuvres of the 7th corps taking up its battle positions. But in the last few minutes the mist seemed to be thinning out. Shreds blew up like wisps of gauze and odd corners of the horizon came into sight, still indistinct, like the murky blue of deep water. It was in one of these breaks that the regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique that formed
part of the Margueritte division could be seen moving along like a procession of phantom riders. Bolt upright in their saddles, in their full regimentals with broad red belts, they were spurring on their mounts, slender creatures half hidden by their complicated kit. Squadron after squadron, they all emerged from the murk and went back into it as though they were melting in the fine drizzle. No doubt they were a nuisance and were being moved further off because nobody knew what to do with them, as had been the case since the outset of the campaign. They had been used just occasionally as scouts, and as soon as battle was joined they were moved from valley to valley as an expensive luxury.

  Maurice watched them and thought of Prosper.

  ‘Look,’ he murmured, ‘perhaps that’s him over there.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Jean.

  ‘That chap from Remilly, you remember, whose brother we met at Oches.’

  But by now they had gone, and there was a sound of rapid galloping and a staff officer appeared down the hill. This time it was Jean who recognized General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, waving his arms wildly. So he had at last deigned to leave the Hôtel de la Croix d’Or, and from his bad temper it was clear enough that he was annoyed at having been up so early, to say nothing of deplorable conditions of lodging and food.

  His stentorian voice carried as far as them.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, as though I knew! Moselle or Meuse, there’s some water down there anyway!’

  However the fog was really lifting. It was quite sudden, as at Bazeilles, like a stage set discovered behind the floating curtain as it slowly goes up into the flies. The bright sun poured down from a blue sky. At once Maurice realized where they were standing waiting.

  ‘Oh,’ he said to Jean, ‘we’re on the Algérie plateau… See over there, across the valley opposite us, that’s Floing. And over there is Saint-Menges, and beyond that Fleigneux. And then right behind in the Ardennes forest, where you see those scraggy trees on the horizon, that’s the frontier.’