The Debacle: (1870-71)

by Emile Zola

  The next day, the 23rd, a springlike Tuesday with bright, warm sun, was a terrible one for Maurice. The few hundred Federals to whom he was attached, among whom were men from several battalions, were still occupying all the area between the river and the rue Saint-Dominique. But most of them had bivouacked in the rue de Lille, in the gardens of the great private mansions in that neighbourhood. He had slept soundly on a lawn at the side of the Palace of the Legion of Honour. First thing in the morning he thought that the troops would sally forth from the Legislative Assembly and push them back behind the strong barricades of the rue du Bac. But hours went by and no attack came. Only a few random shots were exchanged between one end of the street and the other. This was the Versailles plan being developed in a prudent progression: a clear determination not to run head on into the formidable fortress that the insurgents had made out of the terrace of the Tuileries, but to adopt a double thrust to left and right, following the fortifications, so as to take first Montmartre and the Observatory and then turn back and enmesh the central area in an enormous net. At about two Maurice heard that the tricolour flag

  was flying over Montmartre: the great battery of the Moulin de la Galette had been attacked by three army corps at once, who had flung their battalions at the hill from the north and west via the rue Lepic, rue des Saules and rue du Mont-Cenis, and then the victors had turned down into Paris, carrying by storm the Place Saint-Georges, Notre-Dame de Lorette, the town hall in the rue Drouot and the new Opera House, while on the left bank a wheeling movement from the Montparnasse cemetery reached the Place d’Enfer and the Marché aux Chevaux. The news of such a rapid advance of the army filled them with bewilderment, rage and fear. What! Montmartre taken in two hours, Montmartre, the glorious, impregnable citadel of the insurrection! Maurice noticed that the ranks were thinning, trembling comrades were quietly slipping away to wash their hands and put on their overalls, in terror of reprisals. It was being said that they would be taken in the rear via La Croix-Rouge, where an attack was being prepared. Already the barricades in the rue Martignac and the rue de Bellechasse had fallen, and red

  trousers were being seen at the end of the rue de Lille. Soon the only ones left were the convinced diehards, Maurice and some fifty others, who were determined to die after killing as many as possible of this Versailles lot who treated the Federals as bandits and shot prisoners behind the battle-line. Since the previous day the implacable hatred had intensified, and it was now a matter of extermination between these insurgents dying for their vision and this army in a white heat of reactionary passion and exasperated at still having to fight.

  By five, as Maurice and his comrades were definitely withdrawing behind the barricades in the rue du Bac, going down the rue de Lille from doorway to doorway firing the while, he suddenly saw a lot of black smoke coming out of a window of the Palace of the Legion of Honour. It was the first case of incendiarism in Paris, and in his state of wild rage it filled him with fierce joy. The hour had struck, let the whole city go up in flames like a huge bonfire, and let fire purify the world! Then he was amazed at what he suddenly saw – five or six men had rushed out of the Palace with a great lout at their head whom he recognized as Chouteau, his old comrade in the squad in the 106th. He had already seen him once since 18 March and found him much up-graded, his képi covered all over with gold braid, and attached to the staff of some general who had kept clear of the fighting. He recalled a story somebody had told about Chouteau being installed in the Palace of the Legion of Honour and living there with a mistress on one continual binge, sprawling on great sumptuous beds with his boots on and breaking the mirrors with pistol shots just for a lark. It was even alleged that his mistress, on the pretext of going shopping in the market, went off every morning in a state coach taking bundles of stolen linen, clocks and even furniture. Now, seeing him running along with his men, still holding a can of paraffin oil, Maurice suddenly felt uneasy and a dreadful doubt came over him and made his whole faith waver. Could this terrible work of destruction be an evil thing, since it was being done by a man like that?

  Still more hours went by and he was only fighting now with sickness in his heart, finding nothing left intact within him but a sullen wish for death. If he had been mistaken, then at least he could redeem the error with his blood! The barricade across the rue de Lille at the junction with the rue du Bac was very strongly built of sandbags and barrels full of earth with a deep trench in front. He was defending it with barely a dozen Federals, all lying almost flat and picking off any soldier who showed himself. Until nightfall he stayed there and used up his ammunition in obstinate, despairing silence. He watched the clouds of smoke from the Palace of the Legion of Honour getting denser as the wind blew them down into the middle of the road, but so far no flames could be seen in the failing light. Another fire had broken out in a mansion nearby. Suddenly a comrade came and told him that the soldiers, not wanting to risk a frontal attack on the barricades, were making their way through gardens and houses, battering holes through the walls with picks. This was the end, they might emerge here at any moment. And indeed a shot had been fired down on them from a window. He caught sight of Chouteau and his gang rushing madly into the corner houses on each side with their paraffin and torches. Half an hour later, when the sky was quite black, the whole crossroad was ablaze while he, still lying behind the barrels and sandbags, could take advantage of the brilliant light and shoot down soldiers who unwisely ventured out of doorways into the open roadway.

  How much longer did Maurice stay there shooting? He had no sense of time or place. It might be nine, perhaps ten. The vile job he was doing now made him feel sick, like some disgusting wine coming back when you are drunk. The houses burning round him were beginning to encircle him with intolerable heat and choking hot air. The crossing, with the piles of paving stones enclosing it, had become a fortress defended by fires with sparks raining down. Were not these their orders? Set fire to districts as the barricades were abandoned, stop the troops with an all-destroying line of furnaces, burn Paris as they surrendered it. Already he had the impression that the houses in the rue du Bac were not the only ones burning. Behind his back he could see the sky lit up by an immense red glow and hear a distant roaring as though the whole city were catching fire. To his right along the Seine other huge fires must be breaking out. Chouteau had long since disappeared, dodging the bullets. Even the most fanatical of his comrades were sloping off one by one, terrified by the thought of being taken in the rear at any moment. In the end he was left alone, lying between two sandbags with only one thought, keep on firing, when the soldiers who had made their way through courtyards and gardens came from a house in the rue du Bac to take him in the rear.

  In the excitement of this decisive struggle Maurice had not thought of Jean for two whole days. Similarly Jean, since he had entered Paris with his regiment to reinforce the Bruat division, had never remembered Maurice for a single moment. On the previous day he had been fighting on the Champ de Mars and on the Esplanade des Invalides. But today he had only left the Place du Palais-Bourbon at about noon to storm the barricades in that part of Paris as far as the rue des Saints-Pères. Placid though he was by nature, he had grown more and more angry in this fratricidal war, surrounded by comrades whose one great desire was to have a rest at last after so many months of fatigue. Prisoners sent back from Germany to be put into the army were in a constant state of fury with Paris, and on top of that there were the reports of the foul crimes of the Commune which incensed him by outraging his respect for property and desire for order. He had remained typical of the very heart of the nation, the sensible peasant, longing for peace so as to get back to work, earn some money and recover health and strength. In this increasing anger, which carried away even his most tender feelings, it was the fires more than anything else which had infuriated him. Burn down houses and public buildings just because you weren’t the strongest, no, that really was the end! Only criminals could be capable of such a thing. This man, whos
e heart had been sickened only the day before by the summary executions, was now beside himself, wild-eyed, yelling and laying about him.

  Jean rushed madly out into the rue du Bac with the handful of men in his squad. At first he didn’t see anybody and thought the barricade had been abandoned. Then, between two sandbags, he saw a Communard still moving, rifle to shoulder and still firing into the rue de Lille. Carried on by the inexorable fury of destiny, he ran and pinned him to the barricade with a thrust of his bayonet.

  Maurice had not had time to turn round. He screamed and looked up. The fires lit them both up with blinding light.

  ‘Oh Jean, Jean my dearest friend, is it you?’

  Death was what he had wanted and sought with desperate impatience. But to die at the hand of his brother was too much – it spoiled death for him, poisoned it with unspeakable bitterness.

  ‘So it’s you, Jean, dear old Jean!’

  Jean looked at him, horrified and suddenly sobered. They were alone together, the other soldiers having already gone off in pursuit of the runaways. Round them the fires flared up still more fiercely, windows belched forth great red flames and from inside came the noise of blazing ceilings coming down. Jean collapsed beside Maurice, sobbing, feeling him and trying to lift him and see if he could yet save him.

  ‘Oh, my dearest boy, my poor dear boy!’

  8

  WHEN at long last, after endless delays, the train from Sedan pulled up at the station of Saint-Denis about nine, the sky to the south was lit up by a great red glow, as though all Paris was on fire. As night had come on this glow had brightened until it filled the whole horizon, flecking with blood a flight of little clouds that lost themselves to the east in the deepening night.

  Henriette was the first to jump down, for she was worried by these signs of a conflagration that the passengers had seen out of the windows of the train as it sped across the dark fields. In any case Prussian soldiers had taken over the station and were making everybody get out, while two of them on the arrival platform were calling out in guttural French:

  ‘Paris on fire… Train stops here, everybody out… Paris on fire, Paris on fire…’

  It was a terrible shock for Henriette. Oh God, had she got here too late? As Maurice had not answered her last two letters she had been so mortally scared by the more and more alarming news from Paris that she had suddenly made up her mind to leave Remilly. For months she had been getting more miserable at Uncle Fouchard’s, the army of occupation had become more harsh and exacting as Paris prolonged its resistance; and now that the regiments were returning one by one to Germany they were draining the countryside and the towns once again as they passed through. That morning, as she was getting up at first light to catch the train at Sedan, she had seen the farmyard packed with cavalrymen who had slept there all in a heap, wrapped in their cloaks. There were so many of them that they covered the ground. Then there was a smart bugle call and they had all risen to their feet without a word, draped in their long garments and packed so close to each other that she had had the impression of witnessing a battlefield rising from the dead at the sound of the last trumpet. And now she still found Prussians at Saint-Denis, and it was they who were shouting these devastating words:

  ‘All out, train stops here… Paris on fire, Paris on fire…’

  Distracted, Henriette rushed along with her little case, asking for information. Fighting had been going on inside Paris for two days, the railway was cut, and the Prussians were keeping the situation under observation. But still she wanted to get through, and noticing on the platform the officer in command of the company occupying the station, she ran up to him.

  ‘Sir, I am joining my brother and I am terribly worried about him. Do please help me to continue my journey.’

  Then she stopped in amazement, recognizing the captain whose face was lit up by the gas-lamp.

  ‘Otto, it’s you!… Oh, do be kind to me now that chance has once again brought us face to face.’

  Otto Gunther, Weiss’s cousin, was still smartly dressed in the tight-fitting uniform of a captain in the Prussian Guard, with the tight-lipped air of a fine, well-groomed officer. He did not recognize this thin, delicate-looking woman with her fair hair and pretty, sweet face under the widow’s veil. It was only her clear serious eyes that made him remember her. He merely made a little gesture.

  ‘You know I have a brother who is a soldier,’ Henriette hurriedly went on. ‘He has stayed in Paris and I’m afraid he has got caught up in all this horrible fighting… Otto, I beg of you, help me to continue my journey.’

  Only then did he speak.

  ‘But I assure you there is nothing I can do… The trains have not been running since yesterday and I think they’ve taken up the rails near the ramparts. And I haven’t a carriage or a horse or a man to take you.’

  She stared at him and in her bitterness at finding him so callous and determined not to come to her aid she could only find disconnected words:

  ‘Oh God, you won’t do anything… Oh God, who can I ask?’

  These Prussians, who were the absolute masters, who at a single word could have turned the place upside down, commandeered a hundred vehicles, got a thousand horses out of stables! And he was refusing with the haughty air of a conqueror whose principle was never to interfere with the affairs of the beaten natives, no doubt considering them unclean and likely to soil his nice new glory!

  ‘Anyhow,’ she went on, trying to recover her self-control, ‘you must at least know what is going on, and surely you can tell me.’

  He smiled a thin, almost imperceptible smile.

  ‘Paris is burning… come here and have a look, you can see plainly.’

  He walked in front of her, out of the station and along the track for about a hundred metres, as far as an iron footbridge across the line. When they had climbed up the narrow steps and were on the top and leaning over the handrail, the vast level plain could be seen beyond an embankment.

  ‘You can see, Paris is burning.’

  It must have been about half past nine. The red glow in the sky was still spreading. In the east the flight of little bloodstained clouds had gone and the vault was simply a wall of ink on which distant flames were reflected. Now the whole line of the horizon was ablaze, but in certain places more intense fires could be seen, bright red fountains playing continuously against the dark background of the great billows of smoke. It looked as though the fires themselves were on the move like some gigantic forest with the flames leaping from tree to tree, or as though the earth itself was about to flare up, kindled by the colossal bonfire of Paris.

  ‘Look,’ Otto pointed out, ‘that black hump standing out against the red background is Montmartre… On the left there’s nothing burning so far at La Villette or Belleville. The fire must have been started in the rich neighbourhoods, and it’s gaining ground, gaining ground… Just look over there to the right, that’s a new fire being started! You can see the flames, a fountain of flames with fiery smoke rising… And others, still others, everywhere!’

  He was not shouting or getting excited, but the outrageousness of his quiet joy terrified Henriette. Oh, these Prussians who could watch this! She felt the insult of his calm, faint smile, as though he had foreseen this unparalleled disaster and had been waiting for it for a long time. At last Paris was burning down, Paris where German shells had only succeeded in knocking off a few gutters. All his rancour was satisfied and he seemed avenged for the endless siege, the terrible cold and the ever renewed difficulties which still rankled with Germany. In the triumph of their pride the conquered provinces, the indemnity of five milliards, none of it was as good as this spectacle of Paris destroyed, gone raving mad and setting fire to herself and going up in smoke on this clear spring night.

  ‘Oh, it was bound to come!’ he went on almost in a whisper. ‘A grand piece of work!’

  As she took in the immensity of the disaster Henriette felt more and more sick at heart until the pain was unbearable. For a few
minutes her own misfortunes vanished, carried away in this expiation of a whole nation. The thought of fire devouring human lives, the sight of this blazing city on the horizon, throwing up the hellish glare of cities accursed and destroyed, made her cry out in spite of herself. She clasped her hands together and asked:

  ‘What have we done, oh God, to be punished like this?’

  But Otto at once raised his arm as though delivering a reproof. He was about to speak with the vehemence of that cold, hard, militaristic Protestantism that can always quote verses of the Bible. But he caught the young woman’s beautiful, clear and reasonable eyes, and one glance stopped him. In any case his gesture had been enough, it had expressed his racial hatred and his conviction that he was in France as a judge sent by the Lord of Hosts to chastise a perverse people. Paris was burning as a punishment for centuries of wickedness, for the long tale of its crimes and debauches. Once again the Germanic tribes would save the world and sweep away the last remains of Latin corruption.