The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  ‘We’re finished,’ he said to Jean, seized with despair in a sudden brief moment of lucidity.

  Then as the other opened his eyes wide, not following, he lowered his voice and went on for him alone, referring to the commanders:

  ‘More stupid than wicked, that’s certain, and always out of luck! They don’t know anything, never foresee anything, they’ve got no plan, no ideas, no lucky breaks… Can’t you see, everything is against us, we’re done for!’

  This discouragement that Maurice reasoned out, being an intelligent and educated fellow, gradually grew and weighed on all the troops who were immobilized for no reason and worn out with waiting. In an obscure way doubt and suspicion about the true situation were doing their work in their thick heads, and there was not a man left, however dim-witted, who didn’t feel uneasy about being badly led, held up for no reason, shoved somehow or other into the most disastrous adventure. What the hell were they buggering about there for, with no Prussians coming? Either let them fight at once or go somewhere and get a good night’s sleep. They’d had enough. Since the last aide-de-camp had gone off to bring back orders anxiety was growing every minute, groups had formed and were arguing at the tops of their voices. The officers, who were in sympathy with this agitation, did not know what answers to give to soldiers who ventured to ask questions. So at three, when word went round that the aide-de-camp was back and that they were going to fall back, there was relief in every heart and a sigh of real joy.

  So wise counsels were to prevail at last! The Emperor and the marshal, who had never been in favour of this march on Verdun and were now alarmed to know that once again they had been out-manoeuvred and were going to be confronted by the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony as well as that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, were giving up the improbable link-up with Bazaine in order to retreat via the northern strongholds and swing round on Paris. The 7th corps received orders to make for Chagny via Le Chêne, while the 5th was to march on Poix and the 1st and 12th on Vendresse. Very well, then, as they were falling back, why had they advanced to the Aisne, why so many days lost and so much fatigue when it was so easy and logical to go straight from Rheims and take up strong positions in the valley of the Marne? Was there no master plan, no military skill, nor even plain common sense, then? But now the wondering stopped and all was overlooked in delight at this most reasonable decision, the only right one to get them out of the hornets’ nest they had run into. From the generals down to the ranks they all had the feeling that they would recover their strength and be invincible before Paris, and that it was there of necessity that they would defeat the Prussians. But they had to evacuate Vouziers before dawn so as to be on the march towards Le Chêne before an attack came, and at once the camp was filled with extraordinary animation, with bugles sounding, orders being given in all directions, and already baggage trains and administration were going on ahead so as not to impede the rearguard.

  Maurice was overjoyed. Then, while he was trying to explain to Jean the manoeuvre of withdrawal they were going to execute, he let out a cry of pain. His state of elation had gone, and he became conscious of his foot again, like a lump of lead on the end of his leg.

  ‘What, is that starting up again?’ The corporal was very concerned, but with his practical mind he had an idea.

  ‘Listen, kid, you told me yesterday that you knew people in that town. You ought to get the major’s permission to get a lift to Le Chêne, where you could get a good night’s sleep in a good bed. Tomorrow, if you are walking all right, we can pick you up as we go through. How does that strike you?’

  In Falaise itself, the village near which they were camping, Maurice had run into an old friend of his father’s, a small farmer who in any case was going to take his daughter to an aunt’s in Le Chêne, and his horse was already harnessed to a trap.

  But with Major Bouroche things nearly went wrong from the very first words.

  ‘It’s my foot, doctor, it’s got the skin off…’

  ‘Don’t call me doctor… who sent me a bloody soldier like this?’

  As Maurice was nervously trying to apologize he went on:

  ‘I’m the major, don’t you understand, you clot?’

  Then, realizing the sort of person he was dealing with, he must have felt a bit ashamed, for he stormed louder than ever:

  ‘Your foot, that’s a nice tale! All right, all right, you can have permission. Go in a carriage, go in a balloon. We’ve got enough Tired Tims and Weary Willies here!’

  When Jean helped Maurice up into the trap the latter turned round to thank him and the two men hugged each other as though they were never to see each other again. How could you tell, in all the confusion of retreat, with these Prussians about? Maurice was still surprised at the deep affection that already tied him to this fellow. Twice more he turned round and waved him good-bye, and so he left the camp, where they were preparing to light big fires to deceive the enemy while they slipped off quite noiselessly before dawn.

  On the road the farmer moaned continuously about the times being out of joint. He had not had the courage to stay at Falaise, and now he was already sorry he wasn’t still there, repeating that he was ruined if the enemy set fire to his house. His daughter, a lanky, colourless creature, was snivelling. But Maurice, who was drunk with fatigue, did not hear, for he was asleep on his seat, lulled by the smart trot of the little horse, which covered the four leagues from Vouziers to Le Chêne in under an hour and a half. It was not yet seven, and dusk was hardly setting in when the young man, startled out of sleep and shivering, got down at the canal bridge on to the open space in front of the narrow yellow house where he was born and where he had lived twenty years of his existence. He made for it automatically although the house had been sold eighteen months before to a veterinary surgeon. When the farmer asked him if he could help he answered that he knew quite well where he was going and thanked him very much for his kindness.

  But in the middle of the little three-sided space, by the well, he stood still, puzzled, his mind a blank. Where was he aiming for? Then he remembered he was making for the notary’s, whose house adjoined the one in which he had grown up, and whose mother, the very old and kind Madame Desroches, as a neighbour used to spoil him when he was a child. But he hardly recognized Le Chêne, for this normally dead-and-alive little town was in a state of uproar caused by the presence of an army corps camped just outside, filling the streets with officers, dispatch riders, camp-followers, prowlers and hangers-on of all kinds. Of course he knew the canal cutting through the town from end to end and dividing the central square, and the narrow stone bridge connecting the two triangles; and on the further side the market hall was still there with its moss-covered roof, the rue Berond going off to the left and the Sedan road to the right. But from where he was he had to look up and see the clock tower with its slate roof above the notary’s house to be sure this really was the quiet corner where he had played hopscotch long ago, for the rue de Vouziers in front of him, as far as the Hôtel de Ville, was buzzing with a solid mass of people. On the open space itself he thought an area was being kept clear and men were heading off sightseers. And there, to his surprise, he saw a large space taken up behind the well by a large park of carriages, vans, carts, a whole encampment of baggage he had certainly seen before.

  The sun had gone down into the straight and blood-red water of the canal and Maurice was making up his mind when a woman who had been looking at him for a minute or two exclaimed:

  ‘Good Lord, can it be possible? Surely you are the Levasseur boy?’

  Then he recognized Madame Combette, the chemist’s wife on the square. As he was telling her that he was going to beg for a bed for the night from that nice Madame Desroches, she pulled him away, obviously disturbed.

  ‘No, no, come over to us, I’ll explain…’

  When she had carefully closed the shop door behind her:

  ‘So you don’t know, my dear boy, that the Emperor is lodging at the Desroches’s. The house
has been commandeered for him and they are not all that pleased with the great honour, I can tell you. When you think that the poor old mother, a woman well past seventy has been forced to give up her own room and go and sleep up in the garret in a maid’s bed!… Look, all you can see out there on the square is to do with the Emperor – his luggage in fact, if you see what I mean!’

  Maurice then recalled those carriages and vans, all the grand paraphernalia of the imperial household he had seen at Rheims.

  ‘Oh my dear boy, if only you knew the things they unpacked from there – silver plate and bottles of wine, hampers of provisions, fine linen and everything! It went on for two whole hours. I wonder where they have managed to stow so many things, for it isn’t a big house… Just look at the fire they’ve lit in the kitchen.’

  He glanced over at the little white two-storey house on the corner of the square and the Vouziers road, a serene, respectable-looking house, and the inside, the central passage-hall on the ground floor, the four rooms on each floor, all came back to his mind as though he had been there only yesterday. There was already a light in the first-floor window nearest the corner that looked on to the square, and the chemist’s wife explained that that was the Emperor’s room. But as she had said, the place which blazed most brightly was the kitchen, the windows of which, on the ground floor, looked on to the Vouziers road. Never had the inhabitants of Le Chêne seen such a show. An ever-rolling stream of sightseers blocked the street, gaping at this furnace on which an Emperor’s dinner was roasting and boiling. So as to get some air, the cooks had thrown the windows wide open. There were three chefs in spotless white jackets busy in front of chickens spiked along an immense spit, stirring sauces in enormous saucepans of copper gleaming like gold. Old men couldn’t remember having seen so much fire and so much food cooking at once at the Lion d’Argent, even for the grandest weddings.

  Combette the chemist, a bustling little man, came in very excited by all he had seen and heard. He seemed to be in the know, being deputy mayor. It appeared that at about half past three MacMahon had wired Bazaine that the arrival of the Crown Prince of Prussia at Châlons forced him to fall back on the northern fortresses, and another telegram was going off to the Minister of War warning him also about the retreat, explaining the terrible danger the army was in of being cut off and annihilated. The wire to Bazaine could run there if it had good legs, for all communication with Metz seemed to have been cut off for some days. But the other wire was more disturbing, and lowering his voice the chemist said he had heard a high officer say: ‘If anybody tells them in Paris, we’re up the spout!’ Everybody was aware of the pertinacity with which the Empress-Regent and the cabinet were urging an advance. Anyhow the confusion was getting worse every hour, and the most extraordinary tales came in about the approaching German armies. The Crown Prince of Prussia at Châlons – was it possible? Then, what troops had the 7th corps run into in the gorges of the Argonne?

  ‘At General Headquarters they know nothing,’ the chemist went on with a despairing wave of the arms. ‘Oh, what a mess! But still, it’s all right so long as the army is in retreat by tomorrow.’

  Then his real kindness came out:

  ‘Look here, my young friend, I’m going to put a dressing on that foot of yours, you’ll have a meal with us and sleep up there in my apprentice’s little room. He’s sloped off.’

  But being still obsessed with the need to see and know, Maurice wanted above all to carry out his first idea and go and see old Madame Desroches opposite. He was surprised not to be stopped at the door which in spite of the tumult of the square outside was left open and not even guarded. People were continually going in and out, officers and orderlies, and it seemed as if the commotion in the blazing kitchen was affecting the whole house. Yet there was no light on the stairs and he had to feel his way up. On the first floor he paused a few seconds with thumping heart in front of the door of the room where he knew the Emperor was, but in that room there was not a sound, it was as still as death. And up at the top, on the threshold of the maid’s room where she had had to retreat, old Madame Desroches was at first afraid of him. Then, when she saw who it was:

  ‘Oh my child, what a dreadful time to meet again! I would gladly have given up my house to the Emperor, but some of the people with him really are too uncouth! If you knew how they have taken everything, and they’ll burn everything too, with the huge fire they’re making… He, poor man, looks like death, and so sad…’

  When the young man took his leave, trying to cheer her up, she came with him and leaned over the banister.

  ‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘you can see him from here… Oh, it’s all up with us, that’s certain. Good-bye, my boy.’

  Maurice stayed rooted to a step on the dark staircase. By craning his neck he could see through a fanlight a sight that remained stamped on his mind for ever.

  The Emperor was there in this simply furnished, cold room, sitting at a little table on which his dinner was served and which was lit by a candle at each end. Behind, two aides-de-camp were standing in silence. A major-domo was standing by the table, in attendance. And the glass had not been used, the bread had not been touched, a chicken breast was going cold in the middle of the plate. The Emperor, motionless, was gazing at the cloth with the same vacillating, lack-lustre, watery eyes he already had at Rheims. But he looked more tired, and when he had made up his mind, as though it were an immense effort, and taken two mouthfuls, he pushed all the rest away with his hand. He had dined. An expression of secretly borne pain made his pale face look even more ashen.

  Downstairs, as Maurice was passing the dining-room, the door was suddenly thrown open and he saw in the flickering candlelight and in the steam rising from dishes, a whole table of equerries, aides-de-camp, court officials busy emptying the bottles unloaded from the vans, swallowing down chickens and mopping up sauces, all with loud conversation. Now that the telegram to the marshal had gone off all these people were delighted at the certainty of retreat. In a week’s time they would have clean beds at last, in Paris.

  This made Maurice suddenly conscious of the terrible fatigue weighing him down: now it was certain that the army was falling back all he had to do was sleep until the 7th corps came through. He crossed the open space again, found himself back in Combette’s shop, where he ate as in a dream. Then it seemed that somebody was dressing his foot and taking him up to a room, and after that, black night and nothingness. He slept, knocked right out, scarcely breathing. After an indeterminate time, hours or centuries, his sleep was interrupted by a shudder of panic, and he sat up in the darkness. Where was he? What was this continuous rumbling of thunder that had woken him up? He sudddenly remembered and ran to the window to look. Down in the dark square where the nights were usually so quiet the artillery was on the move in a ceaseless trot of men, horses and cannon, shaking the little dead houses. This sudden departure filled him with unreasoning anxiety. Whatever was the time? It struck four at the Hôtel de Ville. He was endeavouring to be sensible, telling himself that it was simply the beginning of the execution of the order for retreat given the day before, when what he saw as he turned his head upset him more than ever. There was still a light in the corner window of the notary’s house, and at regular intervals the shadow of the Emperor could clearly be seen in dark silhouette.

  Maurice quickly pulled on his trousers to go downstairs, but Combette appeared, holding a candlestick and gesticulating.

  ‘I saw you from down there, on my way back from the Hôtel de Ville, so I came up to say… Just think of it, they haven’t let me go to bed, and for the past two hours the mayor and I have been dealing with fresh requisitions… Yes, once again the whole thing has been changed… Oh, that officer who didn’t want the wire to be sent to Paris was bloody well right!’

  He went on for a long time in short, disconnected sentences, and in the end the young man understood, and he was silent and sick at heart. At about midnight a telegram from the War Office had reached the Emperor in
reply to that of the marshal. The exact text was not known, but an aide-de-camp had said out loud at the Hôtel de Ville that the Empress and cabinet were afraid of a revolution in Paris if the Emperor returned there and left Bazaine in the lurch. The telegram was misinformed about the true position of the Germans and, appearing to believe that the army of Châlons had advanced further than it really had, it insisted in extraordinarily passionate terms on a march straight ahead come what may.

  ‘The Emperor sent for the marshal,’ went on the chemist, ‘and they were shut up together for nearly an hour. Of course, I don’t know what they can have said, but what all the officers have repeated is that the retreat is off and the march to the Meuse is on again… We have requisitioned all the bakehouses in the town for the 1st corps which will replace the 12th here in the morning. The 12th’s artillery, as you see, is now leaving for La Besace… This really is the end, and you are off to battle!’

  He stopped, for he, too, was looking at the lighted window at the notary’s. Then he went on in an undertone, as though tortured by curiosity:

  ‘What can they have said to each other, I wonder?… Funny all the same, to fall back at six in the evening before the threat of danger, and at midnight to rush headlong into the same danger, although the situation remains identical!’

  Maurice was still listening to the rumbling of the guns down there through the dark little town, this uninterrupted trotting past, this stream of men flowing towards the Meuse, to the terrible unknown of tomorrow. On the ordinary, thin curtains over the window he could still see the shadow of the Emperor regularly passing to and fro. This sick man, kept up by insomnia, was pacing up and down, feeling the need to keep moving in spite of his pain, his ears filled with the noise of those horses and men he was allowing to be sent to their death. So only a few hours had been enough and it was now disaster, deliberately chosen, accepted. What indeed could the Emperor and the marshal have said to each other, both perfectly aware of the doom towards which they were moving, convinced in the evening of defeat in the appalling circumstances in which the army would find itself and surely not able to change their minds by morning, when the peril was increasing hour by hour? General Palikao’s plan, an all-out march on Montmédy, which already by the 23rd was on the rash side, still perhaps just possible on the 25th, became by the 27th an act of pure lunacy, given the continual vacillating of the command and the growing demoralization of the troops. If they were both aware of all this why were they giving in to the pitiless voices hounding them on in their indecision. Perhaps the marshal was merely a blinkered and obedient soldier showing his greatness by his abnegation. And the Emperor, no longer in command, was just waiting for fate to decide. Their lives, and the lives of the army, were being asked for and they were giving them. This was the night of the crime, the abominable night of the murder of a nation, for from that moment onwards the army was in peril, a hundred thousand men were being sent to the slaughter.