The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  He went on pointing things out. The plateau of Algérie was a belt of red earth about three kilometres long that sloped gently from the Garenne wood to the Meuse, from which it was separated by the meadows. It was there that General Douay had stationed the 7th corps, in despair at not having enough men to defend such a long drawn-out line and link up firmly with the 1st corps which was at right angles to him, occupying the valley of the Givonne, from the Garenne wood to Daigny.

  ‘It’s huge, isn’t it, huge!’

  Maurice turned and with a wave of the hand went round the horizon. From the plateau of Algérie the whole battlefield lay stretched out to the south and west: first Sedan, with its citadel dominating the rooftops, then Balan and Bazeilles with a pall of smoke that never went away. Then, beyond, the heights of the left bank, Le Liry, La Marfée, La Croix-Piau. But it was westwards, more especially, towards Donchery that the view was extensive. The loop of the Meuse surrounded the Iges peninsula with a pale ribbon, and there could be seen very clearly the narrow Saint-Albert road, running between the river bank and a steep cliff on top of which, far away, was the little Seugnon wood, a tail-end of the woods of La Falizette. The road from Vrigne-aux-Bois and Donchery came out at the top of the rise at the Maison-Rouge crossroads.

  ‘You see, that’s the way we could fall back on Mézières.’

  But at that very minute the first round of artillery fire came from Saint-Menges. In the distance a few wisps of mist were still hanging about and nothing could be seen clearly except a vague shape moving through the Saint-Albert gap.

  ‘Ah, here they come,’ said Maurice, instinctively lowering his voice and not mentioning the Prussians by name. ‘We’re cut off, it’s all up!’

  It was not yet eight. The gunfire getting stronger in the Bazeilles direction could now be heard eastwards too, out of sight up the Givonne valley – it was just at the moment when the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, emerging from the Chevalier wood, came up against the 1st corps before Daigny. And now that the Xlth Prussian corps, marching on Floing, was opening fire on General Douay’s troops, the battle was joined in all directions, from north to south round this immense perimeter of many leagues.

  That was when Maurice fully realized the irreparable mistake that had been made in not falling back on Mézières during the night. But the consequences were not yet quite clear to him. It simply was that some deep instinct of danger made him glance anxiously at the neighbouring heights overlooking the plateau of Algérie. If they hadn’t had time to effect a retreat, then why hadn’t they decided to occupy those heights backing on to the frontier so that they could go into Belgium if they were thrown back? Two points looked especially menacing, the round hilltop of Le Hattoy, above Floing to the left, and the Calvary of Illy, a stone cross between two lime trees on the right. On the previous day General Douay had put a regiment in occupation on Le Hattoy, but being too exposed it was withdrawn at dusk. As for the Calvary of Illy, it was to be defended by the left wing of the 1st corps. The land extending between Sedan and the Ardennes was a vast expanse of bare earth, deeply indented with valleys, and the key to the position was obviously there, at the foot of that cross and those two lime trees, from which the whole of the surrounding country could be raked by gunfire.

  Three more rounds of gunfire were heard, then a whole salvo. This time they saw smoke rise from a little hill to the left of Saint-Menges.

  ‘Here we come,’ said Jean. ‘This is our turn.’

  And yet nothing happened, the men were still just standing easy, and had nothing else to do except look at the fine arrangement of the second division drawn up in front of Floing with its left wing running at right-angles towards the Meuse to hold off an attack from that side. Eastwards the third division stretched as far as the Garenne woods below Illy, while the first, which had been very depleted at Beaumont, was a second line of defence. During the night the engineers had run up some defence works. Even now, under the opening fire of the Prussians, they were still making dug-outs and throwing up breastworks.

  A fusillade burst out at the lower end of Floing, but was over almost at once, and Captain Beaudoin’s company was ordered to fall back three hundred metres. They were entering a huge square cabbage-field when the captain snapped out:

  ‘Everybody down!’

  They had to lie flat. The cabbages were wet with heavy dew, and their thick greeny-yellow leaves retained drops as pure and bright as big jewels.

  ‘Set your sights at four hundred,’ the captain called out next.

  Maurice supported the barrel of his rifle on a cabbage in front of him. But you couldn’t see anything down at ground level like this, for the earth stretched on and was quite featureless, cut up by greenery. He nudged Jean, who was stretched out on his right, and asked him what the hell they were supposed to be doing. Jean, as an experienced soldier, showed him a battery they were installing on a near-by hillock. Clearly they had been positioned here to support this battery. Out of curiosity he stood up to see whether Honoré and his cannon were involved, but the reserve artillery was in the rear, protected by a clump of trees.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ bawled Rochas, ‘lie down, will you!’

  Maurice had hardly got down again before a shell whistled overhead. From then on they never stopped. The range was only gradually adjusted, the first came well beyond the battery, which began to fire also. As a matter of fact many shells did not explode because they were deadened in soft earth, and at first there were plenty of jokes about the clumsiness of these bloody sauerkraut-eaters.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Loubet, ‘their fireworks are duds.’

  ‘I expect they’ve pissed on them!’ added Chouteau with a grin.

  Even Lieutenant Rochas joined in.

  ‘I told you those silly sods can’t even aim straight with a cannon!’

  But then a shell burst ten metres away, spattering the company with earth. Although Loubet said something funny about the chaps getting out their clothes-brushes, Chouteau went pale and stopped talking. He had never been under fire, nor for that matter had Pache or Lapoulle, in fact nobody in the squad except Jean. Eyelids fluttered over worried eyes, and voices went thin as though they could not get out properly. Maurice had sufficient self-control to make an attempt at self-examination: he was not afraid yet, for he didn’t think he was in any danger, and all he felt was a slight discomfort under the diaphragm, while his mind went blank and he couldn’t put two ideas together in his head. Yet if anything his hopes were rising in a sort of elation since he had been struck with admiration at the discipline of the troops. He reached the state of no longer doubting victory if they could get close to the enemy with the bayonet.

  ‘Funny,’ he remarked, ‘it’s full of flies.’

  Three times already he had heard what he took for a swarm of bees.

  ‘Oh no,’ laughed Jean, ‘they’re bullets.’

  Other faint buzzings passed over. The whole squad looked round and began to take interest. It was irresistible, the men screwed their necks round and couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Look here,’ Loubet advised Lapoulle, delighting in his simplicity, ‘when you see a bullet coming all you’ve got to do is put one finger up in front of your nose like this, and that cuts the air and the bullet passes to the right or the left.’

  ‘But I can’t see them,’ said Lapoulle.

  At explosion of laughter burst around him.

  ‘Oh the artful old devil, he can’t see them! Open your optics, you fool! Look, there’s one, there’s another!… Didn’t you spot that one? It was green.’

  Lapoulle opened his eyes wide, put one finger in front of his nose, while Pache was fingering the scapular he always had on him and would have liked to spread it out to make a breast-plate to cover all his chest.

  Rochas, who had remained standing, called out in his chaffing way:

  ‘No harm in saying hallo to shells, my boys, but it’s no use for bullets – too many of ’em!’

  Just then a piece
of shell smashed in the head of a soldier in the front rank. Not even a cry – a jet of blood and brains, that was all.

  ‘Poor bugger,’ Sergeant Sapin said simply. He was very calm and very pale. ‘Whose turn next?’

  But after that nobody could hear anybody else speak. The frightful din was what upset Maurice most. The battery near-by was firing incessantly, with a continual roar that shook the very ground, and the mitrailleuses were worse still, rending the air, intolerable. Were they going to stay like this a long time, lying in the middle of the cabbages? They still could see nothing and knew nothing. It was impossible to have the slightest conception of the battle as a whole – was it even a real big battle? Above the bare line of the fields the only thing Maurice recognized was the round wooded top of Le Hattoy, a long way away and still unoccupied. Not that a single Prussian could be seen anywhere on the horizon, just puffs of smoke going up and floating for a moment in the sunshine. As he looked round he was very surprised to see down in a lonely valley, isolated by steep slopes, a peasant unhurriedly ploughing, guiding his plough behind a big white horse. Why lose a day’s work? The corn wouldn’t stop growing or people living just because there was fighting going on.

  Overcome with impatience Maurice stood up. Casting his eyes round he again saw the batteries at Saint-Menges which were bombarding them, surmounted by lurid smoke, and in particular he saw once again the road from Saint-Albert black with Prussians, a milling horde of invaders. Already Jean was pulling at his legs and bringing him roughly down to the ground again.

  ‘Are you crazy? You’ll leave your body here!’

  Rochas swore at him too:

  ‘Will you lie down! Who landed me with a lot of bloody fools getting themselves killed without orders?’

  ‘But sir,’ Maurice said, ‘you’re not lying down, are you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s different for me, I have to know!’

  Captain Beaudoin was also courageously standing, but he never opened his mouth, for he was out of touch with his men, and seemed unable to stand still, but kept on walking from end to end of the field.

  Still waiting, nothing happening. Maurice felt suffocated beneath the weight of his pack which was pressing on his back and chest in this prone posture, so painful for any length of time. The men had been urged not to jettison their packs except in the very last resort.

  ‘Look here, are we going to stay like this all day?’ he finally asked Jean.

  ‘May well be! At Solferino it was in a field of carrots, and we stayed there for five hours with our noses to the ground.’

  Then, being a practical fellow, he went on:

  ‘What are you complaining about? We aren’t too bad here, and we shall have plenty of time to expose ourselves a bit more. We all get our turn, I can tell you. If you all got killed at the beginning, well, there wouldn’t be anyone left for the end!’

  ‘Oh,’ Maurice suddenly cut in, ‘look at that smoke on Le Hattoy… They’ve taken Le Hattoy, now we’re for it.’

  For a short time his anxious curiosity, in which there was an element of his original fear, had some real reason. He kept his eyes fixed on the round top of the hill, the only mound he could see above the flat stretch of great fields on his eye level. Le Hattoy was much too far away for him to make out the crews of the batteries the Prussians had just installed there, and all he could really see was the puffs of smoke at each discharge over a copse in which the guns must be concealed. As he had felt earlier, it was a really serious thing that the enemy had taken this position that General Douay had had to give up defending. It commanded all the surrounding plateaux. All at once the batteries opened fire on the second division of the 7th corps and decimated it. Now they were getting the range, and the French battery near which the Beaudoin company was lying had two of its crew killed in quick succession. A splinter even came and wounded one man in their own company, a quartermaster whose left heel was blown off and who began shrieking with pain as though he had suddenly gone mad.

  ‘Shut up, you fool!’ cried Rochas. ‘What’s the sense in bawling like that for a silly little trouble in your foot!’

  The man was suddenly calmed, he stopped and relapsed into a motionless lethargy, nursing his foot.

  The formidable artillery duel went on, getting steadily fiercer over the heads of the prostrate regiments in the baking and depressing country where there was not a soul to be seen in the blazing sun. Nothing but this thunder and hurricane of destruction rolling through the solitude. The hours were to pass one after another and it would never stop. Yet already the superiority of the German artillery was becoming clear, their percussion shells almost all went off at enormous distances, whereas the French ones with fuses had a much shorter range and most often exploded in the air before reaching the target. And no other resource was left but to make oneself as small as possible in the furrow where one was cowering! Not even the relief, the thrill of going off the deep-end and firing a rifle, for who was there to fire at since you still couldn’t see anybody on the empty horizon!

  ‘Are we ever going to fire?’ Maurice kept on saying in a flaming temper. ‘I’d give five francs to see one of them. It’s maddening to be machine-gunned like this and never be able to answer back!’

  ‘Just wait, it’ll come, I expect,’ said Jean mildly.

  A galloping on their left made them look up. They recognized General Douay, followed by his staff, who had hurried over to gauge the morale of his troops under the murderous fire from Le Hattoy. He seemed satisfied, and was giving some orders when General Bourgain-Desfeuilles also appeared, emerging from a sunken road. The latter, although a court soldier, was trotting quite unruffled amid the shells, hidebound in his African colonial routine and having learned nothing. He was shouting and gesticulating like Rochas.

  ‘I’m expecting them. I’m expecting them now for a showdown at close quarters.’

  Seeing General Douay he came over.

  ‘General, is it true about the marshal’s wound?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately… I’ve just had a note from General Ducrot in which he said that the marshal had named him commander-in-chief of the army.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s General Ducrot! Well, what are the orders?’

  The general made a gesture of despair. Since the previous day he had felt that the army was doomed, and had insisted in vain that the positions at Saint-Menges and Illy must be occupied in order to cover a retreat on Mézières.

  ‘Ducrot is going back to our plan, all troops are to concentrate on the plateau of Illy.’

  He made the same gesture again, as though to say it was too late.

  The noise of gunfire drowned his words, but the meaning had reached Maurice’s ears and he was appalled. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded and General Ducrot in command instead, the whole army in retreat north of Sedan? And these terrible facts unknown to the soldiers, the poor devils getting killed, and this dreadful gamble dependent on a mere accident, the whim of a new command! He felt the confusion and final chaos into which the army was falling, with no chief, no plan and pushed about in all directions, while the Germans were making straight for their goal with their clear judgement and machine-like precision.

  General Bourgain-Desfeuilles was already moving off when General Douay, who had just received a new message delivered by a dust-stained hussar, recalled him in stentorian tones.

  ‘General! General!’

  His voice was so loud and so thunderous with surprise and emotion that it could be heard above the noise of the artillery.

  ‘General! It’s no longer Ducrot in command, it’s Wimpffen!… Yes, he turned up yesterday in the middle of the Beaumont rout, to take over the command of the 5th corps from de Failly. And he writes that he has an official letter from the Minister of War putting him at the head of the army in the event of the command becoming vacant. And we don’t fall back any more, orders are now to regain and defend our original positions.’

  General Bourgain-Desfeuilles listened goggle-eyed.

 
‘Good God!’ he said. ‘So long as we know… For my part I don’t give a damn anyway!’

  He galloped away, not really interested at bottom, having only looked upon the war as a quick means of gaining promotion to general of division, and only too anxious that this stupid campaign should come to an end as soon as possible, as it was proving so unsatisfactory to everybody.

  Then there came a burst of mirth from the soldiers of the Beaudoin company. Maurice said nothing, but he was of the same opinion as Chouteau and Loubet, who went off into scornful laughter. Gee up! Whoa back! Any old way you like! Look at that fine lot of officers who were all hand in glove and never looked after number one – I don’t think! When you had officers like that wasn’t the best thing you could do to go off and have a kip? Three commanders-in-chief in three hours, three clots who didn’t even quite know what there was to do and gave different orders! No, straight, it was enough to make God Almighty in person lose his temper and throw his hand in! And then the inevitable accusations of treason began again – Ducrot and Wimpffen were out for Bismarck’s three million, same as MacMahon.

  General Douay had stayed alone at the head of his staff, looking into the distance at the Prussian positions, lost in an utterly depressing dream. For a long while he examined Le Hattoy, shells from which were falling at his feet. Then, having turned towards the plateau of Illy, he summoned an officer to take an order over to the brigade of the 5th corps he had borrowed from Wimpffen the day before and which linked him up with General Ducrot’s left. Once more he was clearly heard saying:

  ‘If the Prussians captured the Calvary we couldn’t hold on here for an hour, but would be thrown back into Sedan.’

  He left, disappearing with his escort round a bend in the sunken road, and the gunfire redoubled its intensity. Perhaps they had spotted him. The shells, which so far had only been coming from straight in front, now began to rain down obliquely from the left. They were the batteries on Frénois and another battery on the Iges peninsula, and they were directing a cross-fire with those on Le Hattoy. The whole plateau of Algérie was being swept by them. From then on the situation of the company became terrible. Men concerned with watching what was happening in front of them had this new worry in their rear and did not know which threat to dodge. Three men were killed in quick succession, and two wounded men were screaming.