The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  Meanwhile General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the brigade commander, had installed himself comfortably in the little farmhouse that Loubet and his mates had their eye on. He had found a quite acceptable bed and was at table in front of a large omelette and roast chicken, which put him in a charming good humour, and as Colonel de Vineuil happened to be there about some service detail he had invited him to dinner. So they were both eating, waited on by a big fair-haired yokel who had only been working for the farmer for three days, having said he was an Alsatian, a refugee displaced by the disaster of Froeschwiller. The general talked freely in front of this man, discussed the army’s march and then asked him about the route and distances, forgetting that he was not a native of the Ardennes. The total ignorance displayed by the general’s questions finally upset the colonel, for he had lived in Mézières. He gave a few exact pieces of information which drew the cry from the general:

  ‘Well, isn’t it silly? How can you expect us to fight in a terrain we don’t know!’

  The colonel made a vague gesture of despair. He knew that immediately war was declared they had issued to every officer maps of Germany, but certainly not one possessed a map of France. What he had seen and heard during the past month had finished him, and all he had left was his courage, which made him loved rather than feared by his regiment as a somewhat weak and limited commander.

  ‘You can’t eat in peace!’ the general shouted. ‘What are they yapping like that for? Go and find out, you.’

  But the farmer appeared, exasperated and gesticulating, in tears. He was being robbed – Chasseurs and Zouaves were looting his home. To begin with he had been unwise enough to open his shop, being the only one in the village who had any eggs, potatoes and rabbits. He sold without being too extortionate, pocketed the money, delivered the goods, and that resulted in more and more buyers who swamped the place, muddled him and finally rough-handled him and took the lot without paying. The reason why so many countryfolk during the campaign hid everything, refused even a glass of water, was this terror of the steady, irresistible advance of the tide of men that swept them out of their homes and carried away home and all.

  ‘Oh, leave us alone, my good man,’ said the general, irritated. ‘I should have to shoot a dozen of these characters everyday. How can I?’

  He had the door shut so as not to have to go and deal with it himself, while the colonel explained that there had been no issue of rations and the men were hungry.

  Outside, Loubet had spied a field of potatoes, and he and Lapoulle had thrown themselves upon it, digging with both hands, tearing them out and filling their pockets. But then Chouteau, looking over a low wall, gave them a whistle call and they ran over and shouted for joy: it was a flock of geese, ten magnificent geese parading majestically in a narrow yard. At once a council was held and Lapoulle was pushed forward and made to climb over the wall. The combat was fierce, the goose he seized nearly cut his nose off with the snapping scissors of its beak. Then he grasped it by the neck and tried to strangle it, but all the time it beat on his arms and stomach with its powerful legs. He had to smash its head with his fist and yet it was still struggling as he hurried away, pursued by the rest of the gaggle tearing at his legs.

  When the three got back, hiding the beast in a sack with the potatoes, they found Jean and Pache just coming back and equally pleased with their expedition, carrying four loaves and a cheese they had bought from some nice old girl.

  ‘The water’s boiling, we’ll make some coffee,’ said the corporal. ‘We’ve got bread and cheese, it’ll be a real party!’

  Suddenly he caught sight of the goose lying outspread at his feet, and couldn’t help laughing. He felt it with an experienced hand and was full of admiration.

  ‘Good God, what a lovely bird! It must weigh over twenty pounds.’

  ‘It’s a bird we happened to meet,’ explained Loubet in his professional funny-man’s voice, ‘and she wanted to make our acquaintance.’

  Jean made a sign meaning that he didn’t want to know any more. You had to live after all! And besides, why the hell shouldn’t they have this banquet – a lot of poor sods who had forgotten what poultry tasted like?

  Loubet was already blowing up the fire. Pache and Lapoulle were plucking the goose for all they were worth. Chouteau, who had run off to get some string from the artillerymen, came back and hung it between two bayonets in front of the roaring fire, and Maurice was detailed to turn it every now and again with a touch of his finger. The fat dripped down into the communal messtin. It was a triumph of string roasting. The whole regiment, attracted by the lovely smell, came and stood round, and what a feast! Roast goose, boiled potatoes, bread and cheese! When Jean had carved the goose the squad tucked into it up to their eyes. There was no question of portions, each man stuffed as much into him as he could take. They even took a piece over to the artillery who had provided the string.

  That evening, as it happened, the officers of the regiment were going hungry. Owing to a mistake in instructions the canteen van had gone astray; probably it had followed the main column. When the men went short because food had not been issued they usually managed to scrounge something to eat, they helped each other and the squads pooled their resources. But the officer, left to himself and isolated, had no alternative but starvation as soon as the canteen went wrong.

  So Chouteau, who had heard Captain Beaudoin carrying on about the disappearance of the provision van, had a good sneer when, from the depths of the carcass of the goose, he saw him go by with his stiff, unbending air. He indicated him with a look out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Just look at him, his nose is twitching… he’d give five francs for the parson’s nose.’

  They all roared at the captain’s hunger, for he had never managed to be popular with his men, being too young and too strict, a real slave-driver they called him. For a moment it looked as though he was going to tell the squad off for the scandal they were creating with their goose. But probably the fear of giving away his own hunger made him move on, head in the air as though he had seen nothing.

  But as for Lieutenant Rochas, his guts were just as tormented with terrible hunger, and he was prowling round the blissful squad openly laughing. He was worshipped by the men, first because he loathed the captain for being a puppy from Saint-Cyr, and also because he himself had shouldered the knapsack the same as the rest of them. Not that he was always as easy-going as that, being so rude sometimes that you could punch his head.

  Jean first glanced for confirmation from his mates and then stood up and made Rochas follow him to the back of the tent.

  ‘I say, sir, no offence meant, but if you would like…’

  And he slipped him half a loaf of bread and a messtin in which he put a thigh of the goose sitting on six large potatoes.

  They didn’t need rocking to sleep that night either. All six were digesting the bird for all they were worth. And they had the corporal to thank for the solid way he had pitched the tent, for they didn’t even notice a violent squall at about two in the morning, with a deluge of rain; tents were blown away, men woke up in a panic, soaked to the skin and forced to run for it in the dark, but theirs stood up to it and they were perfectly sheltered, without a single drop of wet, thanks to the gulleys that took away the storm water.

  Maurice woke up at dawn, and as they were not to start off again until eight he thought he would go up to the top of the hill to where the reserve artillery were camped and have a word with his cousin Honoré. After a good night’s rest his foot was not so painful. It was still a matter of wonderment to him how well the parking was done, the six guns of each battery correctly in line, and behind them the ammunition waggons, gun-carriages, forage waggons and smithies. Further off the tethered horses were neighing with their nostrils turned towards the rising sun. He found Honoré’s tent at once, thanks to the perfect order allocating a line of tents to all the men on the same gun, so that the first glance at a camp tells you the number of guns.

 
When Maurice arrived the artillerymen were up already and having their coffee, and a row was going on between Adolphe, the leading driver and the gun-layer Louis, his mate. They had been together for three years, according to the custom that coupled a driver and a gunner, and all the time theirs had been a perfect marriage except when they were eating. Louis, who was better educated and more intelligent, accepted the dependent position in which any horseman keeps a foot-slogger, and he it was who put up the tent, did fatigues, looked after the cooking, while Adolphe saw to his two horses with an air of absolute superiority. But Louis, a swarthy, thin type cursed with a ravenous appetite, rebelled when the other, a very tall man with a big fair moustache, was by way of helping himself as though he was the master. That particular morning the squabble was because Louis, who had made the coffee, accused Adolphe of drinking the lot. Someone had to see that they made it up.

  Every morning as soon as he woke up Honoré went to inspect his gun and saw to it that the night’s dew was wiped off, just as he might have rubbed down a beloved horse for fear it might catch a chill. There he was with a fatherly eye, watching it gleaming in the cool morning air, when he caught sight of Maurice.

  ‘Oh hallo, I knew the 106th was somewhere about, I had a letter from Remilly yesterday and was coming down… Let’s go and have a white wine.’

  So that they could be alone together he took him off to the little farmhouse that the soldiers had plundered the day before, and in which the farmer, incorrigibly out for the main chance, had fitted up a sort of bar by broaching a cask of white wine. He was serving it on a plank outside the door at four sous a glass, helped by the farm-hand he had taken on three days earlier, the fair giant, the Alsatian.

  Honoré was clinking glasses with Maurice when his eyes fell on this man. For a moment he stared at him, thunderstruck. Then he gave vent to a terrible oath:

  ‘Fucking hell! It’s Goliath!’

  He leaped up and made as if to fly at his throat. But the farmer, thinking his house was going to be sacked once again, jumped back and locked the door. There was a moment of scrimmage and all the soldiers rushed up as the furious sergeant shouted himself hoarse:

  ‘Open the door, open it, you fucking sod! He’s a spy, I tell you he’s a spy!’

  Maurice was quite sure now, too. He had had no trouble in recognizing the man they had let go at the camp at Mulhouse for want of proof, and this man was Goliath, once the farm-hand at his Uncle Fouchard’s at Remilly. When at last the farmer consented to open his door they searched everywhere in vain, the Alsatian had vanished, this blond giant with the honest face whom General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had questioned unavailingly the day before, and in front of whom, over the meal, he had so carelessly revealed his own secrets. The fellow had probably jumped out of a back window they found open, but they hunted all round in vain – this great big man had vanished like a wisp of smoke.

  Maurice had to take Honoré away, for in his despair he was going to say too much in front of his mates, who had no need to share in all these miserable family affairs.

  ‘Christ, I would have loved to throttle him! In any case that letter I had just had had made me furious about him!’ They sat down by a haystack a few yards away from the farmhouse and Honoré gave his cousin the letter.

  It was the old, old story, this unhappy love affair of Honoré Fouchard and Silvine Morange. She was a dark girl with meek eyes who had lost her mother when she was quite a child, the mother being a factory worker in Raucourt who had been seduced. Dr Dalichamp, who had obligingly stood godfather (he was a kindly soul always prepared to adopt the babies of the poor girls he delivered), had placed her as a maid at old Fouchard’s. It was true that this old peasant, who had become a butcher for love of gain, hawking his meat round twenty neighbouring parishes, was as miserly as hell and as hard as nails, but he looked after the girl and she would do well if she worked. Anyhow, she would be saved from the lusts of the factory. And of course it happened that in old Fouchard’s establishment the son of the house and the young maid fell in love. Honoré was sixteen then and she was twelve, and when she was sixteen and he twenty he had drawn lots for the call-up and to his delight drawn a lucky number and so resolved to marry her. Nothing had passed between them beyond a good deal of kissing and embracing in the barn – an unusual purity which was part and parcel of the thoughtful and level-headed character of the young man. But when he mentioned marriage to his father, the outraged and obstinate old man declared that it would only be over his dead body, and he calmly kept the girl on, hoping that they would have their fun together and get it over with. For nearly another eighteen months the young pair were madly in love and full of desire but never touched each other. Then after a terrible scene between the two men, the son, who could not stand any more of it, enlisted and was sent to Africa while the old man insisted on keeping the maid, who

  pleased him. Then the awful thing happened: one evening two weeks later Silvine, who had sworn to wait for him, found herself in the arms of a farm-hand who had been taken on a few months before, Goliath Steinberg, the Prussian as they called him, a big, good-natured fellow with close cropped fair hair and round pink face always smiling, who had been the friend and boon companion of Honoré. Had old Fouchard slyly encouraged this to happen? Had Silvine given herself in a moment of thoughtlessness, or had she been half raped when she was sick with misery and still worn out with weeping over the separation? She did not know herself and was aghast, pregnant and now accepting the necessity of marriage to Goliath. Not that he refused on his side, ever smiling, but he put off the formality until the baby’s arrival. Then suddenly, on the very eve of the birth, he vanished. It was said later that he went and worked at another farm near Beaumont. Three years had gone by since then, and nobody now doubted that this Goliath, such a nice chap, who so enjoyed giving babies to the girls, was one of those spies with whom Germany filled our eastern provinces. When Honoré had heard this story in Africa he spent three months in hospital, as though the fierce sun of those parts had felled him with a hot iron on the back of the neck, and he had never used a leave to go back home, for fear of seeing Silvine and the child.

  While Maurice was reading the letter Honoré’s hands were trembling. The letter was from Silvine and it was the first and only one she had ever sent him. What emotion had stirred this submissive, silent girl, whose beautiful dark eyes would sometimes take on an expression of extraordinarily fixed determination in her life of continual service? She simply wrote that she knew he was at the war and that should she never see him again it hurt her too much to think he might die believing she didn’t love him. She still loved him, she had never loved anybody else, and she repeated this for four pages in the same sentences that came back again and again, with no attempt to find excuses or even to explain what had happened. And not a word about the child, nothing but an infinitely sad good-bye.

  The letter touched Maurice deeply, for his cousin had told him the whole story long ago. He looked up and saw that he was in tears, and he put a brotherly arm round him.

  ‘Poor Honoré!’

  But already the sergeant was fighting down his emotion. He carefully put the letter away in his breast pocket and buttoned up his coat.

  ‘Yes, things like that upset you… Oh, the swine! If only I could have strangled him! Oh well, we shall see.’

  The bugles sounded for striking camp, and they had to run to get back to their own tents. As a matter of fact the preparations for departure were held up, and the troops waited about with full kit on until nearly nine. The commanders seemed to be in some uncertainty, and already the fine determination of the first two days had gone, when the 7th corps had covered sixty kilometres in two stages. And a fresh piece of news, rather strange and alarming, had been going the rounds since first thing: the march northwards of the three other army corps, the 1st to Juniville, the 5th and 12th to Rethel, was quite illogical, and it was being explained by lack of supplies. Weren’t they making for Verdun, then? Why a day lost? The wo
rst thing was that the Prussians couldn’t be far away now, for the officers came and warned the men not to lag behind because any laggard was liable to be picked up by reconnoitring enemy cavalry.

  It was the 25th of August, and later, remembering Goliath’s disappearance, Maurice was convinced that he was one of those who gave information to the German High Command on the exact route of the march of the army of Châlons and who influenced the change of tactics of the third army. The very next day the Crown Prince of Prussia left Ruvigny and the manoeuvre was under way, the flanking attack, the gigantic encircling movement carried out by forced marches and with admirable efficiency across Champagne and the Ardennes. Whereas the French would hesitate and wander round and round in the same place as though they were suddenly struck with paralysis, the Prussians covered as much as forty kilometres a day like a huge circle of beaters herding the human game they were pursuing towards the forest on the frontier.

  Anyhow, they set off at last, and that day as it happened the army pivoted on its left, the 7th corps only covered the two short leagues between Contreuve and Vouziers, whilst the 5th and 12th stood still at Rethel and the 1st stopped at Attigny. From Contreuve to the Aisne valley the plains began again and were even barer; as it neared Vouziers the road wound through the grey earth between desolate hillocks with never a tree or a house, as depressing as a desert, so that the very short march was fatiguing and boring and seemed to be terribly long. By noon a halt was called on the left bank of the Aisne and they bivouacked on the barren ground of the last escarpments overlooking the valley and commanding the Monthois road which ran along the river and by which the enemy was expected to come.