The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  ‘Of course, my legs are all right!’

  ‘O.K., then we’re going off to see what we can find… We’ve got some money, and I’ll be damned if we don’t find something to buy. And don’t let’s bother about the others, they’re just not worth it, let them work it out for themselves!’

  As a matter of fact he was disgusted by the sly selfishness of Loubet and Chouteau, who stole everything they could and never shared anything with their mates. Neither was there anything to be got out of Lapoulle, who was a clod, or Pache, who was a worm.

  So the two of them took the road Maurice had already been along, by the river. The gardens of La Tour à Glaire and the house had already been laid waste and looted, the lawns ploughed up as though by storm-floods, trees felled, buildings broken into. A bedraggled mob of soldiers, covered with mud, hollow-cheeked and with feverish, shining eyes, were camping out like a lot of gypsies, living like wolves in rooms filthy with excrement, for they dared not go out in case they lost their places for the night. And further on, up the slopes, they went through the cavalry and artillery, formerly so well drilled but now demoralized, too, going to pieces in this torturing hunger which maddened the horses and sent men off over the meadows in marauding bands. On the right they saw an endless queue of artillerymen and Chasseurs d’Afrique slowly moving past a mill where the miller was selling flour, two handfuls of it in their handkerchiefs for a franc. But they were afraid of waiting too long and went on, hoping to find something better in the village of Iges. But when they reached there they were filled with consternation to find it bare and grim like an Algerian village after the locusts have passed, not a scrap left of anything to eat, bread, vegetables or meat, and the miserable houses looked as though people had scratched all through them with their nails. It was said that General Lebrun had put up in the mayor’s house. He had tried in vain to arrange an issue of vouchers payable after the war so as to facilitate the feeding of the troops. There was nothing left, and money was useless. Even the day before one biscuit had fetched two francs, a bottle of wine seven, a little tot of brandy one franc, a pipeful of tobacco fifty centimes. And now officers had to guard the general’s house and the surrounding hovels with drawn swords because continual bands of marauders were breaking down doors and stealing even lamp-oil to drink.

  Three Zouaves hailed Maurice and Jean. With five of them they might be able to pull something off.

  ‘Come on… There are some horses pegging out, and if only we had some dry wood…’

  Then they made a rush at a peasant’s cottage, broke off cupboard doors and tore the thatch off the roof. Some officers with revolvers dashed up and drove them away.

  When they saw that the few inhabitants left in Iges were as miserable and starved as the soldiers, Jean was sorry they had turned their noses up at the flour at the mill.

  ‘Let’s go back, there may still be some left.’

  But Maurice was beginning to get so tired and weak for want of food that Jean left him in a hole in a quarry, sitting on a rock, staring at the broad horizon of Sedan. Jean, after queueing for threequarters of an hour, came back eventually with some flour in a bit of rag. And all they could do was eat it just like that, out of their hands. It wasn’t too bad, it had no smell and an insipid taste like dough, but it did cheer them up a bit. They were even lucky enough to find a natural pool of pure rain-water in a rock and they joyfully quenched their thirst.

  Jean suggested staying there for the afternoon, but Maurice impatiently dismissed the idea.

  ‘No, no, not here! It’d make me ill to have all this in front of my eyes for long.’

  With a trembling hand he pointed at the immense horizon, Le Hattoy, the plateaux of Floing and Illy, the Garenne woods, all these hateful scenes of massacre and defeat.

  ‘While I was waiting for you just now I had to turn my back on it, for I should have ended up by screaming with rage, yes, howling like a dog being teased beyond endurance… You can’t imagine how it hurts me, it’s driving me mad!’

  Jean looked at him, and this wounded and bleeding pride astonished him, and he was perturbed to catch once again the wild look of insanity in his eyes that he had seen already. He tried to make a joke of it.

  ‘All right, that’s easy, we’ll have a change of scene.’

  So they wandered about until evening wherever the paths took them. They explored the low-lying part of the peninsula hoping to find some more potatoes, but the artillerymen had taken the ploughs and turned over the fields, gleaning and picking up everything. They retraced their steps and once again passed through crowds of idle, slowly dying men, starving soldiers walking about in their hunger or lying on the ground listless, having collapsed with exhaustion in their hundreds in the hot sun. They themselves frequently gave in and had to sit down, but then a kind of exasperated bravado set them on their feet again and they resumed their prowl, goaded on by the animal instinct to hunt for food. This seemed to have been going on for months, and yet the minutes sped quickly by. In some of the enclosed fields on the Donchery side they were frightened by the horses and had to take refuge behind a wall, where they stayed a long time, their strength gone, looking with unseeing eyes at these stampedes of crazed animals against the red sky of sunset.

  As Maurice had foreseen, the thousands of horses interned with the army and which could not be fed were a menace that increased in seriousness each day. They had begun by eating the bark of trees, then they had attacked trellises and fences, any sort of planks they could find, and now they were devouring each other. They could be seen hurling themselves on each other to tear the hair from their tails, which they chewed madly, foaming at the mouth. But it was above all at night that they became terrible, as though darkness brought them nightmares. They would gather together and charge at the few tents standing, looking for straw. It was useless for the men to light big fires to keep them off; the fires seemed to excite them still more. Their whinnyings were so pitiful and unnerving that they seemed like the roaring of wild beasts. If you drove them away they came back fiercer and more numerous than ever. And every minute during the hours of darkness you could hear a long cry of agony from some stray soldier trampled to death in this mad stampede.

  The sun was still on the horizon when Jean and Maurice, on their way back to camp, were surprised to come upon the four other members of the squad lying in a ditch and looking as though they were hatching some evil plot. Loubet called them over and Chouteau said:

  ‘It’s about tonight’s meal… We are starving and it’s thirty-six hours since we’ve had anything inside us… Well, as there are some horses, and as horsemeat’s not bad…’

  ‘You will be in on it, won’t you, corporal?’ went on Loubet. ‘Because the more of us there are the better, with such a big animal… Look, there’s one over there we’ve been trailing for an hour, that big chestnut that looks sick. It’ll be easier to finish him off.’

  He pointed to a horse struck down by hunger on the edge of a ravaged beet field. The horse was on his side and now and again he raised his head and looked round dolefully with a great sigh of misery.

  ‘Oh what a long wait!’ grumbled Lapoulle, tortured by his huge appetite. ‘I’ll knock him out, shall I?’

  But Loubet stopped him. No thank you! And get into a row with the Prussians, who had forbidden the killing of a single horse on pain of death, for fear that an abandoned carcass might start off plague… So they had to wait until it was quite dark, which was why all four were now in the ditch keeping watch with glittering eyes, which were never taken off the animal.

  ‘Corporal,’ ventured Pache in a slightly quavery voice, ‘you know all about these things, could you kill him without hurting him?’

  With a gesture of disgust Jean refused to do the cruel job. That poor dying creature, oh no, no! His first impulse had been to run away and take Maurice with him so that neither should take part in this horrible butchery. But seeing how ill his friend looked, he reproached himself for being so squeamish. After all,
good heavens, that’s what animals are for, to feed men. They couldn’t let themselves die of starvation when there was meat there. He was glad to see Maurice cheering up a little in the hope that they would get a meal, so he said in his good-humoured way:

  ‘Well, really, I’ve no idea, and if we’ve got to kill him without pain…’

  ‘Oh balls!’ cut in Lapoulle. ‘You watch me!’

  The two newcomers sat in the ditch and the wait was resumed. Every so often one of them stood up and made sure that the horse was still there stretching his neck towards where the cool air of the Meuse came from, towards the setting sun, to drink in what life was left there. At last, when dusk had slowly come down, the six stood up; in this savage watch they were impatient with the slowness of nightfall, keeping a look-out in all directions, nerves on edge in case anybody should see them.

  ‘Oh blast it all!’ cried Chouteau. ‘Now’s the time!’

  The countryside could still be seen in the dim light of dusk. Lapoulle ran first, followed by the five others. He had taken with him from the ditch a big round stone, and he rushed at the horse and began bashing in his skull with both arms straight as though using a club. But at the second blow the horse attempted to stand up. Chouteau and Loubet threw themselves across the horse’s legs, trying to hold him down and shouting for the others to help. The horse whinnyed in an almost human voice in his bewildered grief, and began to struggle and would have broken the men like glass if he had not already been half dead with starvation. But his head was moving too much and the blows were going wide. Lapoulle could not finish him off.

  ‘Christ, his bones aren’t half hard! Hold on to him and let me do him in!’

  Jean and Maurice were frozen with horror and did not hear Chouteau calling, but stood there with arms dangling and unwilling to join in.

  All of a sudden Pache, in an instinctive burst of religious compassion, fell on his knees, put his hands together and began to mumble some prayers as people do at the bedside of the dying:

  ‘Lord, have mercy upon him…’

  Once again Lapoulle missed his aim and only took an ear off the wretched horse, who fell over with a loud cry.

  ‘What a minute,’ growled Chouteau, ‘we’ve got to finish this off, he’ll get us pinched… Don’t you let go, Loubet!’

  He had taken a knife out of his pocket, a little knife with a blade hardly longer than your finger. And sprawling on top of the animal’s body, with one arm round its neck, he buried the blade, digging about in the living flesh, hacking lumps out until he found and severed the artery. He jumped to one side as the blood spurted out like water from a spout, while the feet pawed about and convulsive twitchings ran along the skin. It took nearly five minutes for the horse to die. His great staring eyes, full of grief and terror, were fixed on the grim-faced men waiting for his death. They grew dim and went out.

  ‘Oh God,’ muttered Pache, still on his knees, ‘succour him, take him into Thy holy keeping…’

  Then, when the horse had stopped moving, they were very hard put to it as to how to get the best cuts. Loubet, who was a jack of all trades, did show them how to set about getting the fillet. But he was a clumsy butcher and in any case only had the little knife, and he floundered about in this warm flesh, still pulsing with life. Lapoulle, impatient as always, started helping him by opening up the belly quite unnecessarily and the carnage became appalling. They rummaged with furious haste in the blood and entrails like wolves worrying the carcass of the prey with their fangs.

  ‘I don’t know what cut this can be,’ Loubet finally said, straightening up, his arms burdened with an enormous lump of meat. ‘But anyhow here’s enough to fill us all up to the eyes.’

  Sick with horror, Jean and Maurice had turned away. Nevertheless hunger was driving them, and they followed the rest when they ran away so as not to be caught near a horse that had been cut open. Chouteau had made a discovery, three large beetroots somebody had dropped, and took them. Loubet, to get his arms free, had thrown the meat over Lapoulle’s shoulders, and Pache carried the squad’s saucepan, which they took about with them in case they had any lucky find. All six ran and ran without stopping to breathe, as though they were being chased.

  Loubet suddenly stopped them all.

  ‘This is silly, we’ve got to think where we can cook it.’

  Jean, who was beginning to feel better now, suggested the quarries. They weren’t more than three hundred metres away, and there were hidden caves where you could light a fire without being seen. But when they got there all sorts of difficulties cropped up. First there was the question of wood; fortunately they found a quarryman’s wheelbarrow, and Lapoulle kicked the planks apart with his heel. Then there was absolutely no drinking water. During the day the hot sun had dried up the little pools of rainwater. There was a pump, but it was too far away, at the manor of La Tour à Glaire, and you queued there until midnight and thought yourself lucky if, in the scrimmage, some comrade didn’t knock the lot out of your can with his elbow. The little wells in the neighbourhood had been exhausted for two days and you got nothing out of them but mud. That left only the water of the Meuse, and the banks were just across the road.

  ‘I’ll go with the pan,’ said Jean.

  They all protested.

  ‘Oh no! We don’t want to be poisoned, it’s full of corpses!’

  It was true, the Meuse was carrying along bodies of men and horses. They could be seen floating past every minute, with swollen bellies and already decomposing and going green. Many of them had got caught in the weeds near the banks and were filling the air with stench as they constantly bobbed up and down in the water. Nearly all the soldiers who had drunk this abominable water had had sickness and dysentery after frightful colic.

  And yet they had to make up their minds to it. Maurice explained that the water would no longer be dangerous once it had been boiled.

  ‘All right, I’ll go,’ said Jean again, taking Lapoulle with him.

  By the time the pan was on the fire, full of water and with the meat in it, it was really dark. Loubet had peeled the beetroots so as to cook them in the broth – a stew that would be out of this world, as he put it – and they all kept the flames up by pushing pieces of the barrow under the pan. Their long shadows danced weirdly in this rocky cavern. But then they could wait no longer and threw themselves on to this disgusting brew and tore the meat into shares with wild, impatient fingers, without waiting to use a knife. But all the same it made them heave. It was the lack of salt in particular that upset them, for their stomachs refused to keep down this insipid mess of beetroot and bits of half-cooked, gluey meat tasting like earth. Almost at once they began throwing it up. Pache could not go on, Chouteau and Loubet cursed the devil’s own nag they had had so much trouble to turn into a stew and which was now giving them the belly-ache. Lapoulle was the only one who dined copiously, but later in the night it nearly did him in when he had gone back with the three others to sleep under the poplars.

  On the way Maurice, without a word, had taken Jean’s arm and pulled him down a side path. The others filled him with a kind of furious disgust, and he had made a plan which was to go and sleep in the little copse where he had spent the first night. It was a good idea, and Jean strongly approved of it when he had lain down on sloping ground quite dry and sheltered by dense foliage. They stayed there until broad daylight and even slept a deep sleep which somewhat restored their strength.

  The following day was a Thursday, but they no longer knew how they were living, and were simply glad that the fine weather seemed to have come back. Jean persuaded Maurice, in spite of his reluctance, to go back to the canal to see whether the regiment was to leave that day. Each day now prisoners were leaving for German fortresses in detachments of a thousand to twelve hundred. Two days earlier they had seen a party of officers and generals setting off for the train at Pont-à-Mousson. Everybody was in a frenzy of desire to get away from this awful Camp of Hell. Oh, if only their turn could come! When they foun
d the 106th still camping on the towpath, in the growing confusion of so much suffering, they really were in despair.

  And yet that day Jean and Maurice really thought they were going to get something to eat. Beginning that morning, quite a system of trading had developed between the prisoners and the Bavarians across the canal. Money was thrown to them in a handkerchief and they returned the handkerchief with some black bread or coarse tobacco scarcely dried Qut. Even the soldiers who had no money had contrived to do business by throwing over regulation white gloves which the Germans seemed to like. For two hours, all along the canal, this primitive bartering caused packages to fly to and fro. But when Maurice sent over a five-franc piece in his tie, the Bavarian who was sending back a loaf threw it, either out of clumsiness or for a nasty joke, so that it fell into the water. Roars of laughter from the Germans. Twice Maurice persisted, and twice the loaf went in. Then some officers ran up to see what the laughter was about, and they forbade the men to sell anything to the prisoners on pain of severe penalties. The trading stopped and Jean had to calm Maurice down, for he was shaking his fists at these robbers and yelling at them to return his five-franc pieces.

  In spite of the bright sunshine it was another terrible day. There were alerts, two bugle calls that made Jean run to the shed where rations were supposed to be issued. But both times all he got out of it was jostling in the crush. The Prussians, so remarkably organized themselves, still showed a callous indifference towards the defeated army. As a result of complaints from Generals Douay and Lebrun they had indeed had a few sheep and cartloads of bread brought in, but they took so few precautions that the sheep were stolen and the carts ransacked as soon as they reached the bridge, so that troops camped more than a hundred metres away still got nothing. Only prowling thieves and gangs who attacked convoys got anything to eat. And so Jean, tumbling to it, as he put it, took Maurice with him to the bridge so that they too could lie in wait for food.