The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  She rapidly explained the idea to Maurice, who approved.

  ‘Cousin Dubreuil has always been so good to us… He’ll be useful to you.’

  Then he, too, had an idea. Lieutenant Rochas wanted to save the flag. It had already been suggested that it should be cut up and that each man should carry a piece under his shirt, or again that it should be buried at the foot of a tree and that bearings be taken so that it could be dug up later. But it was too depressing to think of this flag being cut to pieces or buried like a dead thing, and they wished they could think of something else.

  So when Maurice proposed giving the flag to somebody quite reliable who would hide it and if necessary defend it until the day it could be returned intact, they all agreed.

  ‘Very well,’ he said to his sister, ‘we’ll go with you to see whether Dubreuil is at L’Ermitage… In any case I don’t want to leave you.’

  It was not easy to get out of the crush, but they managed to and hurried up a sunken lane to the left. Then they found themselves in a real labyrinth of paths and lanes, quite a little township of market gardens, pleasure grounds and country homes, small properties all mixed up with each other, and these little lanes and alleys ran along between walls, made sharp turns and came to dead ends – a marvellous system of fortifications for guerrilla warfare, with corners that ten men could defend for hours against a regiment. And already shots were going off in there, for this district overlooked Sedan and the Prussian Guard was coming in on the opposite side of the valley.

  When Maurice and Henriette, followed by the others, had hurried left, then right, between two endless walls, they suddenly emerged in front of the wide open gate of L’Ermitage. The estate, with its little park, was on three broad terraces, on one of which stood the building, a large square house reached by an avenue of ancient elms. Opposite, across the narrow, deep valley, there were other properties on the edge of a wood.

  The door left brutally open worried Henriette.

  ‘They aren’t here. They must have gone.’

  And indeed, foreseeing certain disaster, Dubreuil had decided to take his wife and children to Bouillon the day before. But the house was not empty, and even from a distance and through the trees you could tell that something was going on inside. As she was venturing into the avenue the corpse of a Prussian soldier made her jump back.

  ‘Blimey!’ exclaimed Rochas. ‘There’s already been some sparring here!’

  Anxious to find out, they all pushed on towards the house, and what they saw made it plain: the ground-floor doors and windows must have been smashed in with rifle-butts, the gaping holes opened into looted rooms, and furniture thrown outside was lying on the gravel terrace at the bottom of a flight of steps. In particular there was a drawing-room suite in sky-blue, a settee and twelve easy chairs standing higgledy-piggledy round a big side-table, the white marble top of which was split across. And Zouaves, chasseurs and infantrymen were running about behind the buildings and in the avenue firing over the valley into the little wood opposite.

  ‘Sir,’ a Zouave told Rochas, ‘we found those Prussian sods in the middle of sacking everything. You can see we’ve put paid to their account… Only the buggers always come back ten to one, and it’s not going to be a picnic.’

  Three other bodies of Prussian soldiers were laid out on the terrace. As Henriette was staring at them, doubtless thinking of her husband, also lying over there and disfigured with blood and dirt, a bullet hit a tree just behind her. Jean darted forward.

  ‘Don’t stay there! Quick, quick, hide in the house!’

  Now that he had seen her again, looking so changed and overcome with distress, his heart was bursting with pity as he remembered how she had struck him only the day before, a smiling housewife. At first he had not found anything to say to her, not knowing even whether she recognized him. He would have liked to devote himself to her and bring back into her life some peace and joy.

  ‘Wait for us inside… as soon as there is any danger we’ll find a way of getting you out up that way.’

  She made a gesture of indifference.

  ‘What’s the use?’

  But her brother was urging her too, and she had to go up the steps and stay a minute inside the hall, whence she could see right down the avenue. From then on she watched all the fighting.

  Maurice and Jean were standing behind one of the nearest elms. The century-old trunks were gigantic and could easily provide cover for two men. Further off bugler Gaude had joined Lieutenant Rochas, who was obstinately hanging on to the flag as there was nobody to entrust it to, and he had set it down next to him against the tree while he fired his rifle. Each tree-trunk had its man, and all along the avenue Zouaves, chasseurs and marines kept behind cover except when they poked out their heads to fire.

  In the little wood opposite the number of Prussians must have been steadily building up, for their fire was getting heavier. There was nothing to be seen except an occasional glimpse of a man dashing from one tree to another. A country house with green shutters was also occupied by snipers who were firing out of the open ground-floor windows. It was now about four o’clock, and the sound of gunfire was slackening and gradually stopping, and yet here men were still killing each other as though in some personal feud down in this remote dingle, from which the white flag hoisted on the Keep could not be seen. Right on until it was dark, and despite the armistice, there were pockets of fighting going obstinately on like this, and rifle fire went on in the Fond-de-Givonne district and the gardens of Petit-Pont.

  For a long time they went on riddling each other with bullets from one side of the valley to the other. Now and again any man who was unwise enough to emerge from cover went down with a bullet through his body. Three more were killed in the avenue. One wounded man had fallen on his face and was gasping horribly, but nobody dreamed of turning him over to relieve his agony.

  Looking up suddenly Jean saw Henriette who had calmly come back and was slipping a sack under the poor devil’s head by way of a pillow after she had turned him over on to his back. He rushed and pulled her roughly back behind the tree where he was sheltering with Maurice.

  ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’

  She did not seem to realize how rash she was.

  ‘No, of course not… But it makes me frightened, being alone in that hall… I’d rather be outside.’

  And so she stayed with them. They made her sit down at their feet against the tree while they went on firing their last rounds right and left with such fury that all fear and fatigue had gone. They had reached a state of complete unawareness and were acting automatically, with nothing in their minds, having even lost the instinct of self-preservation.

  ‘Look, Maurice,’ Henriette suddenly said, ‘isn’t that dead man just over there a soldier in the Prussian Guard?’

  For a few minutes she had been looking at one of the bodies left behind by the enemy, a stocky fellow with a bushy moustache, lying on his side on the gravel of the terrace. His spiked helmet had rolled down near them, its chinstrap broken. The corpse was indeed wearing the Guard’s uniform – dark-grey trousers, blue tunic, white braid, and rolled coat slung round like a bandolier.

  ‘I tell you, he’s a guardsman… I’ve got a picture at home… And then what about the photo cousin Gunther sent us?’

  She stopped talking and walked calmly over to the dead man before they could stop her, and leaned over him.

  ‘Red shoulder-straps,’ she called out, ‘oh, I could have taken a bet on it!’

  She came back with a hail of bullets whistling about her ears.

  ‘Yes, red shoulder-straps, it just had to be… Cousin Gunther’s regiment!’

  After that neither Maurice nor Jean could get her to keep still under cover. She was constantly on the move, sticking out her head, determined, come what may, to watch the little wood, with one fixed idea. They went on firing and jerked her back with their knees if she ventured too far out. Presumably the Prussians were beginning to
think they were now sufficiently numerous and ready to attack, for they were now showing themselves in a flood spilling out between the trees, and they were sustaining terrible losses as each French bullet was accurate and picked off its man.

  ‘Look,’ said Jean, ‘perhaps that’s your cousin. That officer coming out of the house with the green shutters opposite.’

  It was certainly a captain, recognizable by the gold collar of his tunic and the golden eagle shining on his helmet in the light of the afternoon sun. He had no epaulettes, had a sabre in his hand and was shouting an order in staccato tones, and the distance was so short, a bare two hundred metres, that he could be seen quite clearly, with his slim build, pink, hard face and little fair moustache.

  Henriette scrutinized him with her piercing eyes.

  ‘Yes, it’s him all right,’ she said without any surprise. ‘I recognize him perfectly.’

  With a furious movement Maurice was already taking aim.

  ‘Our cousin!… Oh Christ, he’s going to pay for Weiss!’

  But she leaped up in terror and pushed the rifle to one side, and the shot spent itself in the sky.

  ‘No, no, not between relations, not between people who know each other… It’s an abomination!’

  She became a woman again, and collapsed behind the tree, weeping hysterically. She was overcome with horror, full of nothing but terror and grief.

  Meanwhile Rochas was having his moment of triumph. Round him the firing of a handful of soldiers, inspired by his stentorian voice, had so intensified at the sight of the Prussians that the latter fell back into the little wood.

  ‘Stick to it, boys! Don’t slack off!… Look at those fat pigs doing a bunk! We’ll settle their hash!’

  He was cheerful and now apparently full of immense confidence again. There hadn’t been any defeats. That handful of men opposite was the German army, and he was going to kick them arse over tip, nothing easier. His tall lean body, his long bony face with its beak of a nose coming down over his big mouth, was all laughing with a bragging joy, the joy of the trooper who has conquered the world between having his girl and a bottle of good wine.

  ‘It goes without saying, boys, that’s what we’re all here for, to give them a bloody licking. Can’t finish any other way, it would be too much of a change to be beaten, now wouldn’t it? Beaten! Is that possible? One more effort, lads, and they’ll piss off like hares!’

  He bawled and waved his arms, such a fine chap with his ignorant illusions that the soldiers laughed with him. Suddenly he shouted:

  ‘With kicks up the arse! With kicks up the arse all the way to the frontier! Victory! Victory!’

  But then, just when the enemy opposite really looked as though he was falling back, a terrible fusillade burst out on the left. It was the inevitable turning movement – a whole detachment of the Guards that had come round by way of Fond-de-Givonne. From that moment defence of L’Ermitage was out of the question, for the dozen or so soldiers still defending the terraces were caught between two fires and in danger of being cut off from Sedan. Some of them fell, and there was a moment of great confusion. Already the Prussians were coming over the wall of the estate and running along the paths in such numbers that fighting began with the bayonet. One Zouave in particular, bareheaded and with his coat off, a fine man with a black beard, was doing a terrific job, smashing through breastbones and sinking into soft stomachs, wiping his bayonet, red with the blood of one, on the body of another, and when the bayonet snapped he went on smashing in skulls with his rifle-butt, until at length, when a false move finally disarmed him, he leaped at a big Prussian’s throat with such a flying leap that they rolled together on the gravel as far as the broken-in kitchen door, in a mortal embrace. Between the trees and in every corner of the lawns similar slaughter piled up the dead. The fight was at its most deadly in front of the flight of steps, round the sky-blue settee and chairs, a furious hand-to-hand set-to with men firing point-blank into each other’s faces, tearing each other with tooth and claw for want of a knife to slit open each other’s breasts.

  Then Gaude, with that doleful face of his, suggesting the man who has had his troubles but never refers to them, was seized with heroic bravado. In this final defeat, well knowing that the company was wiped out and not a single man could answer his call, he seized his bugle, put it to his lips and blew Fall In with such a blast that he seemed to want to make the dead rise to their feet. The Prussians were nearly there, but he never budged, blowing louder still, a complete fanfare. A shower of bullets struck him down, and his last breath flew away in a brassy note and filled the sky with shuddering.

  Rochas stood there uncomprehending, having made no attempt to run away. He waited, stammering:

  ‘Well, what’s up? What’s up?’

  It never entered his head that it could be defeat. Everything was being changed nowadays, even the way you fought. Oughtn’t those chaps to have waited across the valley for them to go and beat them? It was no use killing them, they still went on coming. What was the matter with this buggering war in which they got ten men to crush one and the enemy only showed himself in the evening after throwing you into confusion all day long with precautionary gunfire? Flabbergasted and wild-eyed, having understood nothing so far about the campaign, he felt himself being enveloped and carried away by some superior force he could not resist any more, even though he went on with his obstinate cry:

  ‘Courage, lads, victory is just round the corner!’

  All the same, he had quickly taken up the flag again. This was his last thought, he must hide it so that the Prussians wouldn’t get it. But although the staff was broken it caught in his legs and he nearly fell. Bullets hissed around, and feeling death coming he ripped off the silk flag and tore it up, trying to do away with it. It was then that he was struck in the neck, chest and legs, and he collapsed among the bits of tricolor as though he were dressed in them. He lived for a minute more with staring eyes, seeing perhaps a true picture of war as it is, a ghastly struggle for life that can only be accepted with serious resignation, as one does a law. Then, with a little cough, he departed with the wonderment of a child, like some poor limited creature, a carefree insect squashed by nature’s vast, impassive machine. With him perished a legend.

  As soon as the Prussians arrived Jean and Maurice had withdrawn from tree to tree, protecting Henriette as much as they could behind them. They never stopped shooting, firing one round and then gaining shelter. Maurice knew there was a little gate at the top of the park, and luckily they found it open. All three quickly got away. They had emerged into a narrow by-way which wound between two high walls. But when they came to the end of it some firing made them run up another lane to the left which unfortunately proved to be a dead end. They had to rush back and turn right under a hail of shot. They never knew afterwards what roads they had taken. There was still rifle fire going on at every turn of the wall in this inextricable labyrinth. Fighting was lingering on in gateways, and the smallest obstacles were being defended and attacked by storm with fearful tenacity. All of a sudden they came out on to the Fond-de-Givonne road quite near Sedan.

  For the last time, Jean looked up westwards where the sky was filling with a great pink light, and at last he sighed with immense relief:

  ‘Oh, that bloody sun, at last it’s going down!’

  They were now all three running and running without stopping for breath. Round them the tail end of the fugitives was still filling the roadway with a constantly mounting pressure like a torrent in spate. When they reached the Balan gate they had to wait in an appalling mêlée. The chains of the drawbridge were broken and the only way open was a pedestrian footway, so that guns and horses could not get through. At the castle postern and the Cassine gate they said the crush was even more frightening. It was the headlong rush of all the remnants of the army pelting down the slopes and throwing themselves into the town with a noise like an open sluicegate or water going down a drain. The fatal attraction of these city walls corrup
ted even the bravest.

  Maurice seized Henriette in his arms, and trembling with impatience:

  ‘Surely they aren’t going to shut the gate before everyone’s got in.’

  This was what the crowd was afraid of. But to right and left soldiers were already camping on the grass slopes, while the batteries of artillery had tumbled into the ditches in a jumble of pieces of equipment, ammunition waggons and horses.

  Repeated bugle-calls resounded, soon to be followed by the clear notes of the retreat. Straggling soldiers were being called in. Some were still running up at full speed, and isolated shots went off in some outlying neighbourhoods, but fewer and fewer. Detachments were left on the benches inside the parapet to defend the approaches, and eventually the gate was closed. The Prussians were not more than a hundred metres away. They could be seen coming and going on the Balan road, calmly setting about occupying houses and gardens.

  Maurice and Jean, pushing Henriette in front of them to protect her from being jostled, were among the last to enter Sedan. It was striking six and already nearly an hour since the bombardment had stopped. Gradually even the isolated rifle shots gave over. Then nothing was left of the deafening noise and hateful thunder that had been roaring ever since sunrise – nothing but the peace of death. Night was coming, falling into a mournful, frightening silence.

  8

  AT about half past five, before the closing of the gates, Delaherche had gone back yet again to the Sub-Prefecture in his anxiety about what was going to happen now that he knew the battle was lost. He stayed there nearly three hours, tramping up and down the paved courtyard on the watch and questioning any passing officer, and in this way he learned about the rapid sequence of events: General de Wimpffen’s resignation tendered and then withdrawn, the plenary powers he had received from the Emperor to go to the Prussian General Headquarters and obtain for the beaten army the least harsh conditions, then the meeting of the war council to decide whether they should attempt to carry on the war by defending the fortress. During this meeting, attended by a score of high-ranking officers, which seemed to him to last a century, he went up the flight of steps twenty times. At eight-fifteen General de Wimpffen suddenly emerged looking very flushed and with swollen eyes, followed by a colonel and two other generals. They leaped into the saddle and rode off over the Meuse bridge. It was capitulation, accepted as inevitable.