The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  Upset at seeing him looking so pale, Jean asked in a fatherly way:

  ‘Not too good? Is it still that foot of yours?’

  Maurice shook his head. His foot was now quite all right with these wide boots.

  ‘Hungry then?’

  Seeing he did not answer, Jean took one of the two biscuits out of his pack without being seen, and then, telling a simple lie:

  ‘Look here, I have saved you your share… I ate the other one just now.’

  Day was breaking as the 7th left Oches, making for Mouzon via La Besace, where it should have slept that night. The accursed supply column had left first with the first division, and if the proper army waggons which had first-rate horses made good speed, the others, the requisitioned ones, mostly empty and useless, dawdled astonishingly on the gradients of the gorge of Stonne. The road climbs, particularly after the hamlet of La Berlière, between wooded hills which overlook it. At about eight, when the two remaining divisions were at last beginning to move, Marshal MacMahon appeared and was furious to find still there troops which he thought had left La Besace that morning with only a few kilometres to do to be right on time at Mouzon. And so he had a violent altercation with General Douay. It was decided that the first division and the supply train should be left to continue their march to Mouzon, but that the two other divisions, so as not to be slowed down any more by the cumbersome advance guard, would take the road to Raucourt and Autrecourt so as to cross the Meuse at Villers. This once again meant turning northwards, in the haste the marshal was making to put the river between his army and the enemy. Cost what it may, they had to be on the right bank that evening. And the rearguard was still at Oches when a Prussian battery opened fire from a distant height near Saint-Pierremont, renewing the tactics of the day before. At first they made the mistake of answering their fire, but then the last troops pulled out.

  Until about eleven the 106th made its way slowly along the winding road in the gorge of Stonne, between the high hills. On the left the crests rose bare and precipitous, but on the right woods grew down the gentle slopes. The sun had come out again and it was very hot in the narrow valley, frighteningly lonely. After you leave La Berlière, dominated by its tall, dreary Calvary, there is not a single farm, not a living soul or animal grazing in the meadows. The men, so weary and famished the day before, were already dragging their feet, disheartened and full of smouldering anger.

  Then suddenly, as they were halted by the roadside, gunfire thundered to the right. The firing was so clear and loud that the battle could not be more than two leagues away. The effect on these men, so weary of retreating and sick of waiting about, was extraordinary. They all leaped to their feet, full of excitement, forgetting their fatigue: why weren’t they marching? They wanted to fight, to be killed rather than go on running away helter-skelter like this, and without knowing where or why.

  General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had just gone up a hill to the right, with Colonel de Vineuil, to reconnoitre the country. They could be seen on the top, between two clumps of trees, field-glasses raised, and at once they sent down an aide-de-camp who was with them to ask for the guerrillas to be sent up if they were still there. A few men, Jean, Maurice and some others, went up with them in case any help should be needed.

  As soon as the general saw Sambuc he bawled:

  ‘What a damn silly place this is with these hills and woods going on for ever… here, you, where is it, where’s the fighting?’

  Sambuc, with Ducat and Cabasse always at his heels, listened and scanned the wide horizon without answering. Maurice, who was standing by him, looked too and was impressed by the immense stretch of valleys and hills, like an endless sea with huge, slow waves. Forests made patches of dark green on the yellow earth, and in the blazing sun the distant hilltops faded into a russet haze. Although nothing could be seen, not even a single puff of smoke in the pale sky, the guns were still booming like the sound of a distant but approaching storm.

  ‘That’s Sommauthe to the right,’ Sambuc finally said, pointing to a lofty crest covered with green. ‘Yoncq is over there to the left… It’s at Beaumont where the fighting is, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Warniforêt or Beaumont,’ Ducat confirmed.

  The general mumbled some half audible words.

  ‘Beaumont, Beaumont, you never know in this bloody part of the world.’

  Then aloud:

  ‘How far is Beaumont from here?’

  ‘About ten kilometres, by the road from Le Chêne to Stenay which is down there.’

  The gunfire never stopped and seemed to be moving from west to east in a continuous rolling of thunder. Sambuc went on:

  ‘Golly, it’s warming up! I expected it, and I warned you this morning, sir, it is certainly the batteries we saw in the Dieulet woods. By now the 5th corps must be having to deal with the whole of that army coming from Buzancy and Beauclair.’

  There was a silence while the distant battle thundered louder. Maurice almost bit his tongue off, for he had a mad desire to scream. Why weren’t they marching to battle, now, without all this talk? He had never felt so worked up. Each round made his heart leap, lifted his spirit and gave him a desperate urge to be there, to be in it, to get it over. Were they once again going to skirt along the edge of this battle, rub elbows with it without firing a shot? It was against all reason to drag them round like this ever since the declaration of war, and always running away! At Vouziers all they had heard was shots from the rearguard. At Oches the enemy had just bombarded them for one minute – in the back. And still they were running away, this time they weren’t even going to race to the help of their comrades! He glanced at Jean who was very pale, like himself, with a feverish light in his eye. Every heart was leaping at this clarion call of the guns.

  But then there was a fresh delay because a staff officer was climbing the narrow path up the hill. It was General Douay hurrying with an anxious look on his face. When he had personally questioned the guerrillas he gave vent to a cry of despair. Even if he had been warned that morning, what could he have done? The marshal’s order was categorical, they must cross the Meuse by nightfall at all costs. And besides, how could one possibly at this stage reassemble troops strung out on the road to Raucourt so as to redirect them at full speed towards Beaumont? Wouldn’t they get there too late in any case? The 5th must already be retreating towards Mouzon, and the gunfire showed this clearly as it moved further and further eastwards like a disastrous hailstorm moving away. General Douay raised both arms above the vast horizon of valleys and hills in a gesture of helpless fury, and the order was given to continue the march to Raucourt.

  And what a march! Deep in the gorge of Stonne between the high peaks, while to the right behind the woods the cannon went on roaring. At the head of the 106th Colonel de Vineuil rode bolt upright on his horse, with his ashen face raised and his eyelids blinking as though he were holding back his tears. Captain Beaudoin silently chewed his moustache, while Lieutenant Rochas was softly muttering obscenities and curses against everybody including himself. And even among those soldiers who did not want to fight, among the least brave, there was developing an urge to bawl and bang in anger at the continual defeat and rage at sloping off yet again with weary, uncertain steps while these bloody Prussians were slaughtering their comrades over yonder.

  At the foot of the Stonne gorge, down which the route zigzags between hillocks, the roadway widens out and the troops were passing through broad meadows broken by clumps of trees. The 106th, which was now in the rearguard, had expected to be attacked at any moment since leaving Oches, for the enemy was dogging the column step by step, keeping his eye on it, obviously waiting for the favourable moment to take it in the rear. His cavalry was utilizing all the ups and downs of the terrain to try to catch it on the flanks. Several squadrons of the Prussian Guard were seen to debouch from behind a wood, but they stopped in the face of a demonstration by a regiment of hussars which came along and kept the road clear. Thanks to this respite the retreat went on i
n fairly good order, and they were nearing Raucourt when something they saw redoubled everyone’s uneasiness and put the finishing touch to the men’s demoralization. They suddenly saw a mob rushing down a side road – wounded officers, soldiers out of control and without weapons, supply waggons galloping, men and animals all in flight, panic-striken before the wind of disaster. It was all that was left of a brigade of the first division which had been escorting the supply train that had set out that morning for Mouzon via La Besace. A terrible piece of ill-luck, a mistake in the route had thrown them and part of the train right into the rout of the 5th corps at Varni-forêt, near Beaumont. Surprised by a flank attack and outnumbered, they had fled, and panic was driving them on, bleeding, haggard, half-crazed, knocking over their own comrades in their terror. Their tales spread alarm; it was as though they had been flung there by the rumbling thunder of the cannon that had gone on since noon without a break.

  By the time they were going through Raucourt, anxious haste was turning into a stampede. Should they turn right towards Autrecourt so as to cross the Meuse at Villers as had been decided? Worried and hesitating, General Douay feared he might find the bridge jammed, or perhaps even in Prussian hands. So he preferred to go straight ahead along the valley of Haraucourt in order to reach Remilly before nightfall. After Mouzon, Villers, and after Villers, Remilly. They were still going northwards with the galloping Uhlans behind them. There were only six more kilometres to do, but it was already five o’clock, and what overwhelming fatigue! They had been on their feet since dawn, had taken twelve hours to cover barely three leagues, standing about and getting tired in endless delays, and subjected to the strongest emotional strains and fears. For two nights the men had hardly slept at all and they had never satisfied their hunger since Vouziers. They were collapsing for want of food. In Raucourt things were pitiful.

  This little town is prosperous, with its numerous factories, main street with fine buildings on each side, its charming church and town hall. But the night spent there by the Emperor and Marshal MacMahon, with all the paraphernalia of General Headquarters and the imperial household, followed by the passage through the town of the whole of the 1st army corps which had flowed along the street all the morning like a river, had exhausted all the town’s resources, emptying bakeries and grocers’ and making a clean sweep even of the crumbs in the townspeople’s homes. There was no more bread, wine or sugar to be found – nothing drinkable or eatable. There had been ladies standing at their front doors giving away glasses of wine and cups of broth until the last drops had gone from casks and saucepans. And now it was all gone, and by the time the first regiments of the 7th corps began to come through at about three the people were in despair. What, was it starting all over again? And still going on and on? Once again the main street was thronged with men, dead beat, covered with dust, dying of hunger, and they hadn’t a mouthful of anything to offer them. Many of the men stopped and knocked at doors, held out their hands in front of windows, begging for a crust of bread to be thrown to them. There were women in tears as they made signs that they couldn’t, that they had nothing left.

  At the corner of the rue des Dix-Potiers, Maurice came over faint and reeled. When Jean rushed up to him:

  ‘No, leave me here, this is the end… I’d rather peg out here.’

  He flopped by the roadside. The corporal put on purposely the brutality of an angry N.C.O.

  ‘Christ! What’s the good of a fucking soldier like that! Do you want to be picked up by the Prussians? Come on, up you get!’

  Then seeing that the young man made no answer, but looked white as a sheet, his eyes half closed and half swooning, he went on swearing, but in a tone of infinite pity.

  ‘Christ Almighty! Christ Almighty!’

  He ran to a near-by fountain, filled his messtin with water and came back and bathed the other’s face. Then, with no concealment this time, he took the last biscuit out of his pack, the one he had saved so jealously, broke it up into small pieces which he poked into Maurice’s mouth. The famished man opened his eyes and devoured the food.

  ‘But what about you?’ he suddenly remembered, ‘Haven’t you had anything, Jean?’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, I’ve got a tougher hide than you and I can wait. A good drink of frog juice and I shall be right as rain.’

  He had filled the messtin again and he drank it off in one gulp, clicking his tongue. But his face, too, looked as pale as death, and he was so tortured with hunger that his hands were shaking.

  ‘Off we go! Come on boy, got to rejoin the others.’

  Maurice let himself be carried away like a child. No woman’s arms had ever held him as close and warm as this. In the collapse of everything, amidst this utter misery, with death staring him in the face, it was an ineffable comfort to feel another person loving him and looking after him; and possibly the thought that this heart that was all his belonged to a simple man, a peasant who had never left the land and whom at first he had looked on with distaste, now added a wonderful tenderness to his gratitude. Was this not the brotherhood of the earliest days of the world, friendship before there was any culture or class, the friendship of two men united and become as one in their common need of help in the face of the threat of hostile nature? He heard his own humanity beating in Jean’s breast, and so he was proud on his own account to feel him there, stronger, helping, devoting himself. And Jean, who did not analyse what he felt, found a great joy in protecting in his friend the refinement and intelligence that were still so rudimentary in himself. Since the violent death of his wife in a dreadful tragedy, he thought he had no heart, he had sworn never again to look at those creatures on whose account a man suffers so much, even when they are not being evil. And so friendship became a sort of broadening out for both of them: they might not kiss, but they touched each other’s very souls, the one was part of the other, however different they might be, on this terrible road to Remilly, one upholding the other and the two of them making a single being in pity and suffering.

  As the rearguard was leaving Raucourt the Germans were entering it at the other end, and two of their batteries were set up at once on the heights to the left and started firing. At that moment the 106th on the road going down beside the Emmane was in the line of fire. A shell brought down a poplar on the river bank and another buried itself in a field near Captain Beaudoin, but did not explode. But all the way to Haraucourt the gorge went on narrowing, and they wormed their way into a narrow corridor dominated on both sides by wooded crests, and if even a handful of Prussians were in ambush up there disaster was certain. Bombarded from the rear and with the threat of a possible attack from right and left, the troops could not help advancing with ever increasing anxiety, and were in a great hurry to get out of this dangerous pass. This inspired a final burst of energy even in the most exhausted. The same soldiers who just before had dragged their feet from door to door in Raucourt were now stepping out quite perky and revived under the stinging lash of peril. Even the horses seemed to realize that a minute lost might have to be paid for very dearly. The head of the column must have reached Remilly when there was a sudden halt to the march.

  ‘Fuck it all!’ said Chouteau. ‘Are they going to leave us standing here?’

  The 106th had not yet reached Haraucourt, and the shells were still raining down.

  As the regiment was marking time, waiting to set off again, one exploded to their right which fortunately did not wound anyone. Five interminable, terrifying minutes went by and still they made no move, there was some obstacle blocking the road further on, some wall had apparently sprung up. The colonel stood up in his stirrups and shuddered as he looked, for he was conscious of the mounting panic of his men behind.

  ‘We’ve been sold down the river, everybody knows that,’ Chouteau went on in a dangerous voice.

  There broke out murmurings and then a swelling growl of exasperation under the lash of fear. Yes, yes, they had been brought here to be sold, to be handed over to the Prussians. The re
lentless piling-up of mishaps and the countless mistakes made had planted in these limited minds the idea of betrayal as the only possible explanation of such a series of disasters.

  ‘We’ve been sold,’ repeated panic-stricken voices.

  Then Loubet thought up something.

  ‘It’s that sod of an Emperor further on, stuck across the road with all his luggage, just to hold us up.’

  The news at once flew round. It was affirmed that the jam was due to the movement of the imperial household cutting across the column. There was an outbust of execration, with abominable words, all the hatred prompted by the insolence of the Emperor’s servants, taking over whole towns to sleep in, unpacking their provisions, their hampers of wine, their silver plate in front of soldiers stripped of everything, lighting roaring fires in kitchens while other poor buggers tightened their belts. Oh, that bloody Emperor with neither throne nor power, like a lost child in his Empire, being carried round now like a useless parcel in the baggage of his troops, condemned to drag about with him the irony of his gala household, his bodyguard, carriages, horses, vans, all the pomp of his state robe embroidered with bees, used to sweep up the blood and mud on the highways of defeat!

  One after another two more shells came down. Lieutenant Rochas had his cap knocked off by a bit of shrapnel. The ranks closed and there was a thrust, a sudden surging wave which communicated itself further and further. Voices were spluttering with rage, Lapoulle was furiously bawling for them to get a move on. In another minute, perhaps, there was going to be an appalling catastrophe, a stampede that would crush men to death in a struggling mass.