The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  Down below Maurice woke up on the sofa at daybreak. Aching all over, he lay still and stared at the window gradually lightening in a grey dawn. Horrible memories came back, the lost battle, flight, disaster, all with the sharp clarity of the morning after. He could see it all again in the minutest detail, and the defeat pained him terribly, penetrating to the depths of his being as if he felt personally guilty. He considered his own pain, analysed himself and recovered his old faculty of tearing himself to pieces, but more successfully than ever. Was he not just the ordinary man, the man in the street of the period, highly educated no doubt, but crassly ignorant of all the things that ought to be known, and moreover conceited to the point of blindness, perverted by the lust for pleasure and the deceptive prosperity of the régime? Then his mind moved on to another vision – his grandfather, born in 1780, one of the heroes of the Grande Armée, the victors of Austerlitz, Wagram and Friedland; his father, born in 1811, who had come down to bureaucracy, a humdrum salaried official, tax-collector at Le Chêne-Populeux, where he had burnt himself out; and finally himself, born in 1841, brought up to be a gentleman, a qualified lawyer and capable of the worst sillinesses and greatest enthusiasms, beaten at Sedan in a catastrophe that he knew must be immense and mark the end of a world. The degeneration of his race, which explained how France, victorious with the grandfathers, could be beaten in the time of their grandsons, weighed down on his heart like a hereditary disease getting steadily worse and leading to inevitable destruction when the appointed hour came. If it had been victory he would have felt so brave, so triumphant! In defeat he was as weak and nervous as a woman and giving in to one of those fits of despair in which the whole world collapsed. There was nothing left. France was dead. He began sobbing and cried, putting his hands together and going back to the faltering prayers of his childhood:

  ‘Oh God, take me away… Oh God, take away all these poor, suffering people!’

  Jean, wrapped in his blanket on the floor, began to move. Then he sat up in astonishment.

  ‘What’s up, lad? Are you ill?’

  Then, realizing that it was another lot of what he called ‘those ideas’ you should put out to roost, he turned fatherly.

  ‘Now, now, what’s the matter, boy? Mustn’t get yourself into a state like this over nothing!’

  ‘Oh,’ exclaimed Maurice, ‘it’s all up – we might as well get ready to be Prussians.’

  As his friend, being a hard-headed, uneducated man, showed surprise, he tried to make him understand the impoverishment of the race, its extinction in a necessary stream of fresh blood. But the countryman obstinately shook his head and turned down the explanation.

  ‘What! My field no longer my field? Am I supposed to let the Prussians take it away from me before I’m quite dead and while I’ve still got my two arms?… Come off it!’

  Then it was his turn to express what he thought, awkwardly and as the words came. All right, they had had a bloody licking, for sure! But they weren’t all dead, were they, and there were still some of them left and they would manage to build the house again if they were sensible blokes, worked hard and didn’t drink what they earned. In a family, if you take the trouble to put something aside you always manage to get by even in the worst trouble. In fact, sometimes it isn’t a bad thing if you do get a good clip on the ear, it makes you think. Of course it was true that there was something rotten somewhere or some limb was septic, well, it was better to see it on the ground, chopped off, than to die because of it as if you had the plague.

  ‘Done for, oh no, no,’ he said several times. ‘I’m not done for, I don’t feel a bit like that!’

  And, although he was wounded, his hair still matted with blood from the graze, he struggled up in an unquenchable urge to live, to handle a tool or a plough and rebuild his house, as he put it. He came from the old, unchanging, careful soil, from the land of reason, hard work and savings.

  ‘All the same,’ he went on, ‘I feel sorry for the Emperor… Things looked as if they were going well and corn was selling. But he has been too stupid, that’s certain, and people shouldn’t get themselves into such a mess.’

  Maurice was still cast down, and he made a gesture of despair once again.

  ‘Oh I quite liked the Emperor really, for all my ideas about liberty and republicanism… Yes, I had it in my blood from my grandfather, I suppose. And now that’s all gone rotten as well, what are we going to come down to?’

  His eyes looked wild and he uttered such a moan of grief that Jean, now really worried, was on the point of jumping up when he saw Henriette come in. She had just woken up, hearing voices in the next room. A dismal grey light now filled the room.

  ‘You’ve come at the right time to give him a talking to,’ he said, pretending to be joking. ‘He’s not being a good boy.’

  But the sight of his sister looking so pale and tragic had shaken Maurice into a salutary fit of compassion. He opened his arms and invited her to come to him, and when she flung herself into his arms he was filled with a great tenderness. She was weeping too, and their tears mingled.

  ‘Oh my poor, poor dearest, I could kick myself for not being braver so as to console you!… Good, kind Weiss, the husband who loved you so much! What are you going to do? You’ve always been the victim, and never complained. Haven’t I given you enough sorrow as it is, and who can tell how much more I may give you!’

  She stopped him by putting her hand on his mouth, and at that moment Delaherche came in, almost out of his mind with exhaustion. He had finally come down from the roof, ravenous again with one of those nervous hungers made worse still by fatigue, and as he had gone back to the kitchen to get something warm to drink he had come upon the cook with a relation of hers, a carpenter from Bazeilles, whom she was giving some mulled wine. And this man, one of the last to stay behind in the midst of the fires, had told him that his dyeworks was completely destroyed, a heap of rubble.

  ‘What vandals they are!’ he spluttered to Maurice and Jean. ‘All is really lost now, and they’ll set fire to Sedan this morning as they did to Bazeilles yesterday. I’m ruined, ruined!’

  Then he noticed the bruise on Henriette’s forehead, and remembered that he had not yet been able to speak to her.

  ‘Oh yes, of course, you went there, and that’s where you got that… Oh, poor Weiss!’

  Then, seeing from her red eyes that she knew her husband was dead, he let out an appalling detail that the carpenter had just told him.

  ‘Poor Weiss! It seems they burned him… Yes, they collected the bodies of the civilians they had shot, poured paraffin on them and threw them into the middle of a burning house.’

  Henriette listened to this, frozen with horror. Oh God, not even the consolation of claiming and burying her beloved dead, the wind would scatter his ashes! Maurice once again tightened his arms round her, calling her his poor Cinderella in a caressing voice and begging her not to give in to her grief too much – she was so brave!

  After a pause Delaherche, who had been at the window watching it getting lighter, turned round quickly to say to the two soldiers:

  ‘Oh, I forgot… I came up to tell you that down there in the coach-house where they deposited the cash, there’s an officer distributing the money to the men so that the Prussians don’t get it… You should go down, some money might be useful if we aren’t all dead by tonight.’

  It was sound advice. Maurice and Jean went down after Henriette had consented to take her brother’s place on the sofa. As for Delaherche, he went through the adjoining room in which Gilberte, with her calm face, was still sleeping like a child, and the sounds of talking and crying had not even made her turn over. And from there he peeped into the room in which his mother was watching over Monsieur de Vineuil, but she had dozed off in her armchair and the colonel, his eyes shut, had not moved, for he was exhausted by fever.

  He opened his eyes wide and asked:

  ‘Well, it’s all over, isn’t it?’

  Vexed by this question which ca
ught him just when he was hoping to escape, Delaherche answered angrily, keeping his voice down:

  ‘Oh yes, all over until it starts again! Nothing’s been signed.’

  The colonel went on very softly, beginning to wander again:

  ‘Oh God, let me die before the end!… I can’t hear the guns. Why have they stopped firing?… Up there at Saint-Menges and Fleigneux we’re commanding all the routes, and we’ll throw the Prussians into the Meuse if they try to come round Sedan and attack us. The town is at our feet like an obstacle strengthening our positions… Come on the 7th! We’ll take the lead, the 12th will cover the retreat…’

  His hands went up and down on the sheet as though he were riding his horse in his dream. Gradually they slackened and his words thickened and he fell asleep again. The hands stopped, and he remained motionless, knocked out.

  ‘Have a rest,’ Delaherche whispered. ‘I’ll come back when I get some news.’

  After making sure that he had not awakened his mother he made his escape and disappeared.

  Down in the coach-house Jean and Maurice did find a paymaster, sitting on a kitchen chair with only a little whitewood table in front of him, and no pen, no receipts, no papers of any kind, doling out fortunes. All he did was thrust his hands into money-bags bursting with gold coins, and without even bothering to count he quickly put handfuls into the képis of all the sergeants of the 7th corps who were passing him in line. It was understood that the sergeants would share out the sums among the soldiers in their half-sections. Each one received it awkwardly, like a ration of coffee or meat, and went off in embarrassment, emptying the képi into his pockets so as not to be out in the street in broad daylight with all that gold. Not a word was being said, and there was no sound except the clear tinkle of the coins, to the amazement of these poor devils seeing themselves loaded with riches when there wasn’t a loaf of bread or litre of wine left to be bought.

  When Jean and Maurice came up the officer at first held back the handful of gold louis he was holding.

  ‘You’re not sergeants, either of you… Only sergeants have the right to handle…’

  But, tired already and anxious to get it done with:

  ‘Oh well, you, the corporal, have some all the same… Hurry up there, next!’

  He had dropped the coins into the képi Jean was holding out. Jean, staggered by the amount – nearly six hundred francs – wanted Maurice to have half at once. You never knew, they might get separated.

  They shared it out in the garden, near the ambulance station, and then they went in there as they recognized their company drummer Bastian lying on the straw almost by the door. He was a fat, jolly chap and he had had the ill-luck to get a stray bullet in the groin at five o’clock, after the battle was over. He had been at death’s door since yesterday.

  In the dim morning light, time for waking up in the hospital, the sight of the place chilled them with horror. Three more wounded had died during the night without anybody noticing, and the orderlies were busy carrying off the bodies and making room for others. Yesterday’s operation cases, still half asleep, opened staring eyes and gazed bewildered at this vast dormitory of suffering, where a herd of half-slaughtered creatures were lying on the straw. For all the sweeping and mopping up of the night before, after the bleeding butchery of the operations, the floor had not been properly wiped and there were trails of blood here and there, and a big sponge stained red and looking like brains was floating in a pail, and an odd hand with broken fingers had been dropped near the shed door. These were the bits fallen from the butchery, the awful refuse of the day after a massacre, lit up by the gruesome light of dawn. The normal bustling and noisy life of the earlier hours had given way to a sort of apathy under the pressure of fever. Only now and again was the reeking silence broken by some incoherent moan, muffled by sleep. Glazed eyes looked frightened of the daylight, coated mouths breathed foul breath, the whole ward was relapsing into that endless succession of livid, disgusting, agonizing days through which these wretched wounded were to exist, and from which after two or three months they might emerge with a limb missing.

  Bouroche, coming on again after a few hours’ rest, paused in front of the drummer Bastian, then went on with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. Nothing to be done. But the drummer had opened his eyes again and seemed to come back to life as his keen glance followed a sergeant who had had the bright idea of coming in holding his képi full of gold in his hand to see if any of his men might be here among these poor devils. Other sergeants came in and gold began to rain down on the straw. Bastian, who had managed to sit up, held out the shaking hands of a dying man:

  ‘Me! Me!’

  The sergeant was for going on as Bouroche had. What was the point? But then an instinct of kindness prevailed, and without counting he threw some coins into the already cold hands.

  ‘Me! Me!’

  Bastian had fallen back. He tried to catch the gold that eluded his grasp, clutching for some time with stiff fingers. Then he died.

  ‘Night-night, the gent has blown out his candle!’ said a neighbour, a dark wizened little Zouave. ‘Too bad just when you’ve got something to stand yourself a drink!’

  This man had his left foot in an appliance, but he managed to lift himself and crawl on his elbows and knees as far as the dead man and pick up the lot, looking into his hands and ransacking the folds of his coat. When he got back to his own place he realized he was being looked at, but all he said was:

  ‘No need for it to get lost, is there?’

  Maurice felt sick at heart in this atmosphere of human misery and got Jean away quickly. As they re-crossed the operating shed they saw Bouroche, exasperated at not having got any chloroform, deciding to amputate all the same the leg of a poor young fellow of twenty. They hurried away so as not to hear.

  At that moment Delaherche was coming in from the street. He beckoned them over and said:

  ‘Come upstairs quick. We’re going to have breakfast, cook has managed to get some milk. Can’t really say I’m sorry, we can do with something hot!’

  Try as he would, he could not repress all his exultant joy. He lowered his voice and added, beaming:

  ‘This time it really is it! General de Wimpffen has gone off again to sign the capitulation.’

  Oh, what a tremendous relief, his factory saved, the dreadful nightmare lifted, life going to start up again, painful no doubt, but life, life! It was nine o’clock and young Rose, who had come to this part of the town to get some bread from an aunt who had a baker’s shop – the streets were now somewhat clearer – had told him all that had happened that morning at the Sub-Prefecture. At eight o’clock General de Wimpffen had called a new council of war, more than thirty generals, and told them the outcome of his move, his useless efforts and the harsh demands of the victorious enemy. His hands were shaking and deep emotion filled his eyes with tears. He was still speaking when a colonel from the Prussian headquarters had appeared as an emissary on behalf of General von Moltke to remind them that if a decision was not reached by ten firing would begin again on Sedan. So the council, in the face of dire necessity, could only authorize the general to go again to the Château de Bellevue and accept everything. He must be there by now and the whole French army must be prisoners, together with arms and baggage.

  Rose had then gone into details about the extraordinary sensation the news was creating in the town. At the Sub-Prefecture she had seen officers tearing off their epaulettes and weeping like children. On the bridge cuirassiers were throwing their sabres into the Meuse, and a whole regiment had passed across, each man throwing his own, watching the water splash and close over it. In the streets soldiers were taking hold of their rifles by the barrel and breaking off the butts against the wall, and gunners who had taken the moving parts out of mitrailleuses were getting rid of them down the sewers. Some were burying or burning flags. In the Place Turenne an old sergeant had climbed up on a bollard and was insulting the commanders, calling them cowards as tho
ugh he had suddenly gone off his head. Others looked stunned and wept silently. But also it had to be admitted that others, and the majority, had expressions of joy in their eyes and happy relief permeating their whole being. At last this was the end of their misery, they were prisoners, they wouldn’t be fighting any more! For so long they had been suffering from too much marching and not enough eating! Besides, what’s the point of fighting if you aren’t the ones who are winning? If their officers had handed them over so as to put an end to it straight away, well, a good job too! It was so nice to think they were going to get some white bread again and sleep in beds!

  Upstairs, as Delaherche went into the dining-room with Maurice and Jean, his mother called him.

  ‘Come here, I’m worried about the colonel.’

  Monsieur de Vineuil, with his eyes open, was going on aloud with the delirious visions of his fever.

  ‘What does it matter if the Prussians do cut us off from Mézières… look, now they’re getting round the Falizette wood, and others are following up the Givonne stream… We’ve got the frontier behind us and we’ll jump across it in one bound when we’ve killed as many of them as possible… That’s what I wanted to do yesterday…’

  But his blazing eyes had seen Delaherche. He recognized him and seemed to sober down and emerge from the hallucination of his dreams into the terrible reality, asking for the third time:

  ‘It’s all over, isn’t it?’

  This time the mill-owner could not repress the explosion of his gratification.

  ‘Yes, thank God, all quite over… The capitulation must be signed by now.’

  The colonel struggled violently up, despite his bandaged foot, and he seized his sword, which was on a chair, and tried to break it. But his hands were too shaky and the blade slipped.

  ‘Look out, he’ll cut himself!’ exclaimed Delaherche. ‘It’s dangerous, take it out of his hands.’

  It was Madame Delaherche who took possession of the sword. Then, seeing Monsieur de Vineuil’s despair, instead of hiding it as her son told her to, she herself broke it with one smart tap over her knee, with a superhuman strength she would not have thought her old hands capable of. The colonel had sunk down again and he was crying as he looked at his old friend with infinite tenderness.