French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART I
Chapter VI
AN ARMY’S CALVARY—CHASED BY THE FOE
‘Thunder!’ exclaimed Chouteau, when he awoke on the following morning in the tent, feeling weary and icy cold; ‘I’d willingly accept some hot broth with plenty of meat round it.’
When they had encamped on the previous evening at Boult-aux-Bois, only some scanty rations of potatoes had been distributed, the commissariat becoming more and more bewildered and disorganised by the incessant marching and counter-marching, and failing to meet the troops at any of the appointed places. In the confusion prevailing on the roads, no one knew where to find those migratory droves of cattle intended for the army, and famine seemed near at hand.
‘Yes, dash it all!’ rejoined Loubet, with a sneer of desperation, as he stretched himself. ‘But it’s all over now. No more roast goose!’
The squad was in a bad humour. Things were not lively when there was nothing to eat; and besides there was that incessant rain, and that mud in which they had been sleeping.
Seeing that Pache was crossing himself, after saying his morning prayer with closed lips, that infidel Chouteau furiously resumed: ‘Why don’t you pray for a couple of sausages and a pint of wine for each of us?’
‘Ah! if we only had some bread even,’ sighed Lapoulle, who, with his excessive appetite, suffered more hunger than the others.
However, Lieutenant Rochas silenced them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, always thinking of their stomachs! For his part, when he felt hungry he simply tightened his belt. Since affairs had been going from bad to worse, and a fusillade could occasionally be heard, the lieutenant had recovered all his stubborn confidence in victory. It was so simple now that the Prussians were there: the French would just give them a licking. And he shrugged his shoulders behind Captain Beaudoin, that whipper-snapper, as he called him, who, quite distracted by the loss of his baggage, was now always in a furious passion, with his lips set and his face extremely pale. Nothing to eat? A man could put up with that! What made the Captain so indignant was that he could not change his shirt.
Maurice awoke, depressed and shivering. Thanks to his broad shoes, his foot had not again become inflamed; but the deluge of the previous day, which still made his great-coat very heavy, had again left him aching in every limb. When he was sent to fetch the water for the coffee he gazed for a moment over the plain at the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated. Forests climb the hills on the west and the north, where a ridge extends as far as Belleville; whilst a vast open expanse, amid the gentle undulations of which various hamlets are hidden, stretches towards Buzancy on the east. Was it from that side that the enemy was expected? As he came back from the stream with his can full of water, a family of weeping peasants, clustering on the threshold of a little farmhouse, called him and asked him if the soldiers would stay there to defend them. Three times already, owing to contrary orders, had the Fifth Army Corps crossed this part of the country. A cannonade in the direction of Bar had been heard during the previous day, so that the Prussians could not now be more than a couple of leagues distant. When Maurice told these poor people that the Seventh Corps would in all probability soon set out again, they began to bewail their lot. So they were to be abandoned; so the soldiers did not come to fight, since they simply saw them appear and disappear, invariably fleeing from the foe.
‘Those who want any sugar,’ said Loubet, when he served the coffee, ‘must suck their thumbs.’
Nobody laughed, however. It was, indeed, vexatious, not even to have any sugar for their coffee. And if they had only had a scrap of biscuit to eat! However, during that long halt on the plateau of Quatre-Champs the day before, almost all of them, by way of passing the time, had nibbled the fragments, devoured even the crumbs remaining in their knapsacks. Fortunately, Jean’s squad discovered that they possessed a dozen potatoes, and these were divided among the men.
‘Ah! if I had only known, I would have bought some bread at Le Chêne,’ regretfully said Maurice, whose stomach craved for food.
Jean sat there listening in silence. He had had a quarrel that morning with Chouteau, who when ordered to fetch the firewood had insolently refused to do so, saying that it was not his turn. Since affairs had been going from bad to worse, the indiscipline was increasing, until at last the officers dared not even reprimand their men. Jean, with his admirable calmness, realised that he must sink his authority as corporal, if he did not wish to provoke open mutiny. So he played the part of a good-natured fellow, appearing to be simply the comrade of his men, to whom, thanks to his experience, he was able to render important services. If his squad was no longer so well fed as formerly, at all events it did not perish of hunger like others did. It was especially Maurice’s sufferings that touched Jean. He realised that this delicate little fellow was getting very weak, and he watched him with an uneasy eye, wondering how he would manage to keep up to the end.
When he heard him complaining that he had no bread, he rose to his feet, went off for a moment to rummage in his knapsack, and then, on returning, slipped a biscuit into Maurice’s hand.
‘Take that and hide it,’ he whispered to him, ‘I haven’t enough for everyone.’
‘But how about yourself?’ asked the young fellow, deeply touched.
‘Oh! never mind me. Besides, I still have a couple left.’
This was a fact. Jean had been carefully preserving three biscuits in case there should be any fighting, for he knew by experience that a man feels frightfully hungry on the battlefield. For the moment he had eaten a potato, and that sufficed him. Later on, something else might turn up.
The Seventh Corps was again set in motion at about ten o’clock. The marshal’s original intention, no doubt, was to despatch it by way of Buzancy to Stenay, where it would have crossed the Meuse. But the Prussians, who were marching faster than the army of Châlons, must by this time already be at Stenay; indeed, it was said, they were even at Buzancy. Driven in this way towards the north, the Seventh Corps had consequently received orders to proceed to La Besace, some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boult-aux-Bois, with the view of reaching and crossing the Meuse at Mouzon on the morrow. The start was a dreary one; the men, with their stomachs almost empty and their limbs unrested, exhausted by the fatigue and waiting of the previous days, were audibly growling; and the gloomy officers, giving way to uneasiness at thought of the catastrophe to which they were marching, talked complainingly of their inaction, and were indignant that they had not been sent to Buzancy to support the Fifth Corps, whose guns had been heard there. This corps must also be retreating—no doubt towards Nouart, whilst the Twelfth, bound for Mouzon, was setting out from La Besace, and the First was taking the road to Raucourt.
All these masses of men now tramped along like so many flocks, urged on and worried by dogs, and hustling one another, as they at last advanced towards the longed-for Meuse, after endless dawdling and delay.
When the 106th started from Boult-aux-Bois, following the cavalry and artillery—the three divisions streaking the plain with a long stream of marching men—the sky again became covered with large, livid clouds, the gloom of which put the finishing stroke to the men’s sadness. For a time the regiment followed the high road to Buzancy, which was edged with superb poplars. At Germond, a village where heaps of manure were smoking before the doors on either side of the road, the women sobbed, and taking their children in their arms, held them out to the passing troops as though begging the latter to carry them away. Not a morsel of bread or a potato remained in the place. And now, instead of proceeding any farther in the direction of Buzancy, the 106th wheeled to the left towards Authe; and when on a hill across the plain, the men again saw Belleville, through which they had marched the day before, they at once became conscious that they were retracing their steps.
‘Thunder!’ growled Chouteau; ‘do they take us for spinning tops?’
And Loubet added, ‘There are generals for you! Pulling first one way, then another! One can easily see that they don’t care a fig for our legs.’
They all became angry. It was too bad to weary men out in this fashion simply for the purpose of promenading them up and down. They were now marching across the barren plain in a column of two files, one on either side of the road, the centre of which was reserved to the officers; but no jokes were cracked, no songs were sung to enliven the march as on the day when they had left Rheims—the day when they carried their knapsacks so jauntily, their shoulders lightened by the hope of outstripping the Prussians and beating them. Now they were silent and irritated, and crawled along wearily, hating their guns, which made their shoulders sore, and their knapsacks, which weighed them down; no longer, moreover, having any confidence in their commanders, but giving way to such despair that they were like cattle, which only fear of the goad can impel onward. The wretched army was now beginning to ascend its Calvary.
For a few minutes, however, something had greatly interested Maurice. He had seen a horseman ride out of a little wood, far away on the left, where the ground rose in a succession of ridges of increasing height, parted by narrow valleys. Almost immediately afterwards a second horseman appeared and then another. They all three remained there motionless, looking no larger than the fist, like toys, sharply and precisely outlined. Maurice thought they must belong to some outpost of Hussars, or to some returning reconnoitring-party, but he was suddenly astonished to see some brilliant specks on their shoulders—the glitter, no doubt, of brass epaulettes.
‘Look over there!’ he said, nudging Jean, who marched beside him; ‘some Uhlans!’
The corporal opened his eyes wide: ‘Uhlans? Those?’
Indeed they were Uhlans, the first Prussians that the 106th had seen. During the six weeks or so that the regiment had been campaigning, not only had it not fired a shot, but it had not even obtained a glimpse of the enemy. Maurice’s remark sped along the file, and every head was turned with growing curiosity. Those Uhlans looked fine fellows.
‘One of them is precious fat,’ observed Loubet.
However, an entire squadron suddenly showed itself on a plateau to the left of the little wood; and at this threatening apparition the column was halted. Orders arrived, and the 106th took up position behind some trees, on the margin of a stream. The artillery was already galloping back and placing itself on a knoll. And then, for a couple of hours, they lingered there in battle array without anything further occurring. The party of hostile cavalry remained at the same spot on the horizon; and at last, realising that precious time was being lost, the French resumed their march.
‘Ah! well,’ muttered Jean, regretfully; ‘the fight won’t be for to-day.’
Maurice also felt his hands burning with the desire to fire at least a shot. And he reflected on the blunder that had been made the previous day in not hurrying to the support of the Fifth Corps. If the Prussians did not attack them it could only be because they had not as yet sufficient infantry at their disposal. Their cavalry demonstrations could therefore have no other object than to delay the columns on the march. Once again, then, the French had fallen into the trap set for them. And, indeed, from that time forward, the 106th incessantly beheld the Uhlans at each rise of the ground on their left flank. The enemy’s scouts followed the regiment and watched it, vanishing every now and again behind some farm, and reappearing at the corner of a wood.
By degrees it harassed the troops to see themselves being thus enveloped from afar, as if in some invisible net. ‘Those fellows are becoming a confounded nuisance,’ repeated Pache, and even Lapoulle said the same. ‘It would ease one, dash it, to send them a few slugs.’
But, with a heavy step that soon wearied them, the men continued painfully marching on. Just as one feels a storm brewing before it has even shown itself on the horizon, so, in the general uneasiness, one could feel the enemy approaching. Severe orders were given with reference to the rear-guard, and there were no more laggards, everyone now being aware that the Prussians were following the corps, and would pounce upon all stragglers. The German infantry was in fact arriving at a lightning pace, marching its five-and-twenty miles a day, whilst the French regiments, harassed and paralysed, tramped and tramped over the same ground.
When they reached Authe the sky cleared, and Maurice, to whom the sun served as a guide, observed that instead of proceeding any farther in the direction of Le Chêne—three long leagues away—they now went straight towards the east. It was two in the afternoon, and after shivering for a couple of days under the rain the men now began to suffer from the oppressive heat. The road wound with long bends across some deserted plains. Not a house, not a living being was to be seen; only a few little woods relieved the monotony of the barren expanse; and the mournful silence prevailing in this solitude infected the sweating soldiers, as with their heads drooping they wearily dragged themselves along. At last they caught sight of St. Pierremont, a cluster of deserted houses on a monticle. They did not pass the village, however; indeed Maurice noticed that they wheeled at once to the left, taking a northerly direction towards La Besace. He now realised what route had been selected for this attempt to reach Mouzon before the Prussians arrived there. But could they succeed in the effort, with troops so weary and so demoralised? This seemed the more doubtful, as at St. Pierremont the three Uhlans again appeared in the distance at the bend of a road coming from Buzancy; and, moreover, just as the French rear-guard was leaving the village a hostile battery was unmasked, and a few shells fell, without, however, doing any harm. The French did not answer the fire, but continued their march with increasing difficulty.
There are three long leagues from St. Pierremont to La Besace, and Jean, on learning this from Maurice, made a gesture of despair. The men could never go that distance; he could tell that by sure and certain signs—their hard breathing, and the wild look on their faces. The road moreover was a steep one, running between two ridges, which gradually drew nearer to one another. At last a halt became necessary; but, unfortunately, this rest increased the stiffness of the men’s limbs, and when orders were given to start again matters became even worse than before. The regiments no longer made way, and many men fell to the ground. Jean, who noticed that Maurice was growing pale, with his eyes dimmed by weariness, began talking, contrary to his wont, hoping that by a flow of words he would manage to divert the young fellow, and keep him awake amid the mechanical tramp, tramp of the march, of which the men had now ceased to have any mental perception.
‘So your sister lives at Sedan,’ said Jean; ‘perhaps we shall pass that way.’
‘Through Sedan? Never, that’s not our road; they would be madmen to take us there.’
‘Is your sister young?’
‘She’s as old as I am. I told you we were twins.’
‘And is she like you?’
‘Yes, she’s fair like me, but with such soft, curly hair. She’s very slight, with a thin face, and so quiet. Ah! my poor Henriette.’
‘You are very fond of one another?’
‘Yes—yes.’
There was a pause, and Jean, on looking at Maurice, saw that his eyes were closing and that he was about to fall. ‘Hullo, my poor youngster—hold yourself up. Good heavens! Give me your poun a moment; that will ease you. It certainly isn’t possible to go any farther to-day; if we do, we shall leave half the men on the road.’ He had just caught sight of Oches, with its few houses climbing a hill ahead of them. The yellow church, perched aloft, overlooks the other buildings from amidst the trees.
‘Sure enough we shall have to sleep here,’ added Jean.
He had guessed correctly. Noticing the extreme weariness of his men, General Douay despaired of reaching La Besace that day. He was, however, more particularly induced to halt by the arrival of the convoy—that worrying convoy which he had been dragging about with him since leaving Rheims and whose three leagues of vehicles and horses had so repeatedly delayed his march. Whilst at Quatre-Champs, he had despatched this interminable train direct to St. Pierremont, but it was only at Oches that it again joined the corps, and with the horses so exhausted that they could no longer be prevailed upon to move. It was now already five o’clock, and the general, fearing to enter the defile of Stonne at that hour, decided that he must renounce accomplishing the distance prescribed by the marshal. The men halted and began to encamp, the convoy being drawn up in the meadows below, where it was protected by one of the divisions; whilst the artillery established itself on the slopes behind, and the brigade which was to serve as the rear-guard on the morrow remained upon a height facing St. Pierremont. Another division, of which General Bourgain-Desfeuilles’ brigade formed part, bivouacked behind the church on a broad plateau, edged by a wood of oak trees.
When the 106th was at last able to encamp on the outskirts of this wood, night was already coming on, so much confusion had there been in selecting and apportioning the various sites.
‘Curse it!’ said Chouteau, furiously; ‘I sha’n’t eat. I shall sleep!’
Indeed, this was the general cry. Many of the men had not enough strength left them to pitch their tents, but went to sleep wherever they fell. Besides, in order to sup, they needed the presence of the commissariat; and the commissariat, which was expecting the Seventh Corps at La Besace, was not at Oches. Such, too, were the disorder and laxity that there were no longer any bugle calls to rations, nor from this time forward, indeed, were any rations distributed. It was a case of everyone for himself; the soldiers having to subsist on the supplies which they were supposed to have in their knapsacks. But the latter were empty; few indeed were the men who found a crust in them, some chance crumbs of the plenty in which they had momentarily lived at Vouziers. There was, however, some coffee, and the less weary of the troops again drank coffee without sugar.
When Jean, desirous of sharing his two remaining biscuits with Maurice, came up to the young fellow, he found him sound asleep. For a moment he thought of rousing him, but decided not to do so; and then, like the stoic he was, he again hid both biscuits in his knapsack, as carefully as though he were concealing gold, and contented himself with some coffee like his comrades. He had insisted upon having the tent pitched, and they were already lying down inside it when Loubet, who had been on the prowl, came back with some carrots which he had pulled up in a neighbouring field. It was impossible to cook them, so they were eaten raw; but they only irritated the men’s hunger, and made Pache quite ill.
‘No, no, let him sleep,’ said Jean to Chouteau, when the latter began shaking Maurice to give him his share.
‘Ah!’ remarked Lapoulle, ‘we shall have some bread to-morrow when we get to Angoulême—I’ve a cousin who’s in garrison at Angoulême—a capital place!’
The others were amazed (as well they might be, for it was as if an English soldier marching through the Highlands had expressed the belief that they would reach Bristol on the morrow), and Chouteau exclaimed: ‘Angoulême! what do you mean? What a fool you must be to think you’re going to Angoulême!’
It was impossible, however, to extract any explanation from Lapoulle, though he adhered to his opinion that they were marching to Angoulême. That same morning, by the way, on seeing the Uhlans, he had maintained that they were some of Bazaine’s soldiers.
Then the camp fell into a death-like silence in the inky night. Chilly though it was, no fires were allowed to be lighted. It was known that the Prussians were only a few miles away, and as little noise as possible was made for fear of attracting their attention. The officers had already warned their men that the march would be resumed at four o’clock, with the view of making up for lost time, and weary as they were they all hastily and gluttonously gave themselves up to sleep. The loud breathing of those masses of men ascended into the darkness above the dispersed encampments, as though it were the breathing of the very earth.
All at once the squad was awakened by the report of a firearm. The night was still dense, it could scarcely be three o’clock. In a moment they were all on foot, and the alert passed through the camp, everyone believing that the enemy was attacking them. But it was only that hungry fellow Loubet, who, having woke up, had plunged into the neighbouring wood in the idea that there must be some rabbits there. What a feast they would have if, at the first gleam of light, he could bring a couple of rabbits back to his comrades! But whilst he was seeking a good spot to post himself, he heard some men coming towards him, talking together and breaking the branches, and thereupon he had fired in dismay, thinking that he had to deal with some Prussians. Maurice, Jean, and others were already reaching the spot, when a gruff voice shouted, ‘In God’s name don’t shoot!’
At the edge of the wood they then perceived a tall, thin man, whose thick bushy beard could be but imperfectly distinguished. He wore a grey blouse, tightened at the waist by a red sash; and carried a gun slung over his shoulder. He at once explained that he was a Frenchman, a sergeant of Francs-tireurs, and that he had come from the woods of Dieulet with a couple of his men to give the general some information. ‘Here, Cabasse! Ducat!’ he shouted, turning round, ‘here, you drones, make haste!’
The two men had doubtless felt frightened. However, they now approached. Ducat was short, pale, and fat, with scanty hair; and Cabasse, tall and bony, with a dark face and a long nose like a knife-blade. Meantime Maurice, who had been scrutinising the sergeant with surprise, ended by asking him, ‘Aren’t you Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly?’
And when the sergeant, looking rather alarmed, had with some hesitation answered affirmatively, the young fellow instinctively fell back, for this man, Sambuc, had the reputation of being a terrible rogue, the true scion of a family of woodcutters, who had turned out very badly. The father, a drunkard, had been found one evening on the verge of a wood, with his throat cut; the mother and daughter, both thieves and beggars, had disappeared, but were doubtless leading a shameful life. Guillaume, the Franc-tireur, had been a smuggler and poacher in time of peace; and only one of this family of wolves had grown into an honest man—Prosper, the Chasseur d’Afrique, who, before becoming a soldier, had hired himself out as a farm hand in his hatred of forest life.
‘I saw your brother at Rheims and Vouziers,’ resumed Maurice. ‘He was all right.’
Sambuc made no answer to this, but to hasten matters exclaimed: ‘Take me to the general. Tell him that some Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet woods have something important to communicate to him.’
While they were returning to the camp Maurice began thinking of these Francs-tireurs, these free companies on whom so many hopes had been founded, but who were already, on all sides, giving so much cause for complaint. It had been expected that they would carry on a war of ambushes, await the enemy behind the hedges, harass him, shoot down his sentries, and hold the woods so that, not a Prussian would ever leave them alive. But, to tell the truth, they were becoming the terror of the peasants, whom they defended inefficiently, and whose fields they laid waste. In their hatred of the regular military service, all the waifs and strays of society hastened to join these corps, delighted to escape discipline and to roam the country like merry bandits, sleeping and tippling wheresoever chance led them. Some of these companies were indeed composed of really execrable elements.
‘Here, Cabasse! Here, Ducat!’ repeated Sambuc, turning round at each step he took; ‘make haste, you laggards!’
Maurice instinctively divined that both these men must be terrible rascals. Cabasse, the tall, bony fellow, had been born at Toulon, and after serving as a waiter in a café at Marseilles, had turned up at Sedan as commission agent for a firm of the South of France. He had narrowly escaped the clutches of the law in connection with some story of theft, the real facts of which were not known. Ducat, his short, fat comrade, had been a process-server at Blainville, but had been compelled to sell his office owing to his scandalous immorality, which, since he had been book-keeper at a factory at Raucourt, had again almost brought him into the dock at the assize court. Ducat indulged in Latin quotations, whereas Cabasse was scarcely able to read; but the one completed the other, and they formed together a pair of equivocal scoundrels, well calculated to inspire alarm.
The camp was already awakening, and Jean and Maurice conducted the Francs-tireurs to Captain Beaudoin, who took them to Colonel de Vineuil. The latter began to question them, but Sambuc, conscious of his importance, was absolutely bent on speaking to the general. In a bad humour at having to rise in the middle of the night, with another day of famine and fatigue before him, General Bourgain-Desfeuilles—who, having slept at the priest’s, had just appeared on the parsonage threshold—received the three men in a furious fashion.
‘Where have they come from? What do they want? Ah! so it’s you, Francs-tireurs? Some more laggards, eh?’
‘We are holding the woods of Dieulet with our comrades, general,’ replied Sambuc, in no wise disconcerted.
‘The woods of Dieulet! where are they?’
‘Between Stenay and Mouzon, general.’
‘Stenay, Mouzon. I don’t know them. How can I understand anything with all these new names?’
Colonel de Vineuil felt uncomfortable on hearing this, and discreetly intervened to remind the general that Stenay and Mouzon were on the Meuse, and that the Germans, having occupied the former locality, were about to attempt the passage of the river by the bridge at the latter town, which lay more to the north.
‘Well, general,’ resumed Sambuc, ‘we came to warn you that the Dieulet woods are now full of Prussians. When the Fifth Corps was leaving Bois-les-Dames yesterday there was an engagement near Nouart.’
‘What! was there fighting yesterday?’
‘Yes, general; the Fifth Corps fought while it was falling back, and to-night it must be at Beaumont. So while some of our comrades went to inform it of the enemy’s movements, it occurred to us to come and tell you of the situation, so that you may support the Fifth Corps, for it will have quite sixty thousand men to deal with in the morning.’
On hearing this, General Bourgain-Desfeuilles shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sixty thousand men! How you talk! Why not a hundred thousand? You must be dreaming, my fine fellow. Fear makes you see double. There can’t be sixty thousand men near us—we should know it.’
To this opinion he obstinately clung, and it was in vain that Sambuc appealed to the testimony of Ducat and Cabasse.
‘We saw the guns,’ so the Provençal asserted, ‘and those devils must be madmen to risk sending them along the forest roads, in which one sinks to the shins on account of the late rain.’
‘Somebody is guiding them, that’s certain,’ declared the ex-process-server, in his turn.
Since their experiences at Vouziers, however, the general no longer believed in the reported concentration of the two German armies, which had been dinned into his ears, he said, till he was sick and tired of it. And he did not even consider it worth his while to send the Francs-tireurs to the commander of the Seventh Corps, to whom, by the way, the men thought they were speaking. If one had listened to all the peasants and prowlers who came with so-called information, the army would no longer have taken a step without being turned to right or left, and launched into unheard-of adventures. However, as the three Francs-tireurs knew the country, the general ordered them to remain and accompany the column.
‘All the same,’ said Jean to Maurice as they were returning to the camp to fold up their tent; ‘all the same, those are good fellows to have come four leagues across country to warn us.’
The young man assented; he considered that the Francs-tireurs were in the right. He also knew the country, and felt extremely uneasy at the thought that the Prussians were in the Dieulet woods advancing upon Sommauthe and Beaumont. In the dawn of what he instinctively felt would be a terrible day, he had seated himself on the ground, weary already, although they had not yet started on the march; but his stomach was empty, and his heart oppressed with anguish.
Worried to see him look so pale, the corporal, in a fatherly way, inquired: ‘Still queer, eh? Is it your foot again?’
Maurice shook his head. Thanks to the broad shoes he was now wearing, his foot was very much better.
‘You are hungry, then?’ And, as he did not reply, Jean, without being observed, took one of the two remaining biscuits out of his knapsack, and then, frankly lying, said, ‘There, I kept your share for you. I ate the other one just now.’
The dawn was breaking when the Seventh Corps left Oches, on the way to Mouzon, through La Besace, where it ought to have slept. First of all, the terrible convoy had gone off escorted by the First Division, and whilst the train waggons, drawn by capital horses, set out at a good pace, the vehicles that had been requisitioned, empty for the most part and useless, dawdled in the strangest way between the ridges of the defile of Stonne. The road rises—more particularly after passing the hamlet of La Berlière—between wooded hills which overlook it. At about eight o’clock, just as the two other divisions were at last setting out, Marshal MacMahon made his appearance, and was exasperated at still finding there the troops, whom he fancied would have left La Besace at dawn with only a few miles to cover in order to reach Mouzon. And, not unnaturally, he had a lively altercation with General Douay. It was decided that the First Division and the convoy should be allowed to continue their march on Mouzon, but that the other division should take the road to Raucourt and Autrecourt, so as to pass the Meuse at Villers, by which plan they would no longer be retarded by that heavy, slow-travelling advance-guard. Once more, then, they had to take a northerly direction, so eager was the marshal in his desire to place the Meuse between his army and the enemy. They must, at any cost, be on the right bank of the river that evening. Yet the rear-guard was still at Oches, when a Prussian battery on a distant summit, in the direction of St. Pierremont, again began the game of the day before, and fired. At first the French unwisely returned the fire, but eventually the last troops fell back.
Until eleven o’clock or so the 106th continued slowly following the road which winds, between lofty rounded hills, through the depths of the defile of Stonne. Precipitous bare crests rise up on the left, but the slopes descending from the woods on the right are less abrupt. The sun was now shining again, and it was very hot in that narrow valley, the solitude of which was quite oppressive. After passing La Berlière, which is overlooked by a lofty, dreary calvary, there was not a farm, not a human being, not even a cow grazing in the meadows. And the men, so weary and so hungry already the previous day, who had scarcely slept and had eaten nothing, were even at this stage lapsing into a crawl, dispirited and full of covert rage.
Then, all at once, as they were halted at the edge of the road, the cannon thundered out on the right. The reports were so precise and so loud that the fighting could not be more than a couple of leagues away. The effect which the sound had upon these men, so wearied by retreating, so enervated by waiting, was extraordinary. They all stood there erect and quivering, forgetting their fatigue. Why did they not march? They wished to fight, to get their skulls cracked, anything rather than to continue fleeing as they were doing, without knowing whither or why.
Taking Colonel de Vineuil with him, General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had just ascended one of the hills on the right, with a view of reconnoitring the country. They could both be seen levelling their field-glasses up there, between two little woods; and they at once despatched an aide-de-camp, who accompanied them, with orders to send them the Francs-tireurs, if the latter were still with the troops. A few of the men, Jean, Maurice, and others, accompanied Sambuc and his comrades, to be in attendance in case of need.
‘What a cursed country this is, with these everlasting hills and woods!’ exclaimed the general, as soon as he perceived Sambuc. ‘You hear that? Where is it? Where are they fighting?’
For a moment, Sambuc, to whom Ducat and Cabasse stuck like leeches, listened and scanned the wide-spread horizon, without replying. Near him was Maurice, gazing at the same scene, wonderstruck at sight of the immense rolling expanse of vales and woods. It was like an endless sea of huge, slowly rising waves. The forests blotched the yellow soil with dark green, and under the fierce sun the distant hills were bathed in a ruddy vapour. Although one could see nothing, not even a little smoke against the background of clear sky, the cannon continued thundering, with the din of a distant storm increasing in violence.
‘There’s Sommauthe on the right,’ said Sambuc, at last, pointing to a high summit crowned with foliage. ‘Yoncq is there on the left—the fighting is at Beaumont, general.’
‘Yes, at Varniforêt or at Beaumont,’ corroborated Ducat.
‘Beaumont, Beaumont,’ muttered the general; ‘one never knows in this cursed country——’ Then he added aloud, ‘And how far away is this place, Beaumont?’
‘About six miles, by taking the road from Le Chêne to Stenay, which runs past over yonder.’
The cannonade did not cease, but seemed to be advancing from west to east like a continuous roll of thunder. ‘The devil! it’s getting hotter,’ added Sambuc. ‘I expected it. I warned you this morning, general. Those are certainly the batteries we saw in the Dieulet woods. At the present time the Fifth Corps must have to contend against all that army which was coming up by Buzancy and Beauclair.’
There was a pause, whilst the battle roared louder and louder afar off. Maurice had to set his teeth to restrain his furious desire to cry out. Why did they lose time in talk, why did they not at once march towards those guns? Never before had he experienced such excitement. Each report re-echoed in his breast, raised him from the ground, inspired him with a longing to rush to the battlefield, join in the fray, and at once bring matters to an issue. Were they going to skirt that battle like the others; elbow it, as it were, without firing even a shot? Was there a wager on, that ever since the declaration of war they had been dragged about like this, invariably fleeing from the foe? At Vouziers they had only heard the shots fired by the rear-guard. At Oches the enemy had merely cannonaded them in the rear for a few minutes. And now were they going to scamper away, instead of hurrying to support their comrades at the double quick? Maurice looked at Jean, who, like himself, was very pale, with his eyes glittering feverishly. Every heart bounded in response to the vehement call of the cannon.
However, there was another spell of waiting. A number of staff officers were climbing the narrow pathway up the hill. It was General Douay hastening to the spot with an anxious face, and when he, himself, had questioned the Francs-tireurs, a cry of despair escaped him. But even if he had been warned in the morning, what could he have done? The marshal’s orders were peremptory; they were to cross the Meuse before evening, no matter at what cost. And now, how could he collect together his columns écheloned along the road to Raucourt so as to throw them rapidly upon Beaumont? Would they not certainly arrive too late? The Fifth Corps must already be retreating in the direction of Mouzon; as, indeed the cannonade clearly indicated, for it was travelling farther and farther towards the east, like a hurricane of hail and disaster passing along into the distance. With a gesture of fury at the thought that he was so powerless, General Douay raised both his arms above the vast horizon of hills and vales, fields and forests; and then angrily gave orders to continue marching upon Raucourt.
Oh! that march in the depths of the defile of Stonne, between the high crests, whilst the guns continued thundering behind the woods on the right! At the head of the 106th rode Colonel de Vineuil, stiffly bestriding his horse, with his pale head erect and his eyelids beating as if to restrain his tears. Captain Beaudoin was biting his moustache in silence, whilst Lieutenant Rochas could not refrain from muttering blasphemous words, insulting everybody, himself included. And even among the soldiers who were not desirous of fighting, among those who were the least brave, there ascended a desire to shout and strike, the anger born of the perpetual defeat, the rage they felt that they should still have to fall back with heavy uncertain steps, whilst those accursed Prussians were slaughtering their comrades yonder!
Below Stonne, whence a narrow road winds down through the hills, the highway became broader, and the troops passed beside large fields, intersected by little woods. Since leaving Oches the 106th, which now found itself in the rear-guard, had, at every moment, been in expectation of an attack; for the enemy was now following the column step by step, observing its movements, and doubtless watching for a favourable moment to fall upon its rear. Hostile cavalry, profiting by the undulatory character of the country, was already trying to gain upon the army’s flanks. Several squadrons of the Prussian Guard were at last seen debouching from behind a wood, but halted at sight of a regiment of Hussars, which advanced, sweeping the road. And, thanks to this respite, the retreat continued in fairly good order, and the men were approaching Raucourt, when they beheld a sight which increased their anguish and completed their demoralisation. All at once, by a cross road, they caught sight of a precipitate rout coming towards them—wounded officers, disbanded and unarmed soldiers, galloping train-waggons, men and horses all fleeing, distracted, beneath a hurricane of disaster! These were the remnants of a brigade of the First Division which had escorted the convoy sent off in the morning to Mouzon by way of La Besace. A mistake in the road, a frightful mischance, had brought this brigade and a part of the convoy to Varniforêt, near Beaumont, at the moment of the complete rout of the Fifth Corps. Surprised, suddenly subjected to a flank attack, succumbing beneath superior numbers, the men had fled, and panic was bringing them back, bleeding, haggard, and half mad, distracting their comrades with their terror. The stories they told spread fear around them; they seemed to have come on the wings of that thunderous cannonade which since noon had been heard without cessation.
Then, in passing through Raucourt there was desperate hustling and anxiety. Ought they to turn to the right, towards Autrecourt, in view of crossing the Meuse at Villers, as had been decided? Perplexed and hesitating, General Douay feared that he might find the bridge there blocked with retreating troops, perhaps even already in the power of the Prussians. He preferred, therefore, to continue straight on through the defile of Haraucourt, so as to reach Remilly before night. Again had their destination been changed; after Mouzon, Villers, and after Villers, Remilly. They were still marching due north, with the Uhlans galloping behind them. They had now less than four miles to go, but it was already five o’clock, and they were overwhelmingly fatigued. They had been on foot since daybreak, and had taken twelve hours to cover scarcely three leagues, tramping along, wearing themselves out with endless halts, amid the liveliest emotions and fears. Moreover, during the last two nights they had barely slept, and since leaving Vouziers they had not been able to satisfy their hunger. They were sinking with inanition. At Raucourt the scene was pitiable.
Raucourt is a well-to-do little town, with its numerous factories, its well-built high street which the road follows, its coquettish-looking church and town-hall. Only, all its resources had been exhausted; the bakers’ and grocers’ shops had been emptied, even the crumbs in the private houses had been swept away—first during the night that the Emperor and Marshal MacMahon had spent there, when the town was burdened with the staff and the imperial household, and then when the whole of the First Corps passed through it on the following morning, streaming along the highway like a river. Now there was no bread left there, no more wine, no more sugar, nothing that can be eaten, nothing that can be drunk—excepting water. Ladies had been seen standing at their doors, distributing glasses of wine and cups of broth, draining alike their casks and their saucepans to the dregs. And thus everything had gone, and great was the despair when, at about three o’clock, the first regiments of the Seventh Corps began defiling along the high street. What! So it was beginning again! There were still more soldiers! Once more, indeed, the high street became a river of exhausted men—men covered with dust and dying of hunger, without anybody having a morsel of anything to give to them. Many of the soldiers halted, knocked at the doors, held out their hands towards the windows, begging that a crust of bread might be thrown to them. And there were women who sobbed, and who signed to the soldiers that they could give them nothing, since they had nothing whatever left.
At the corner of a street called the Rue des Dix-Potiers Maurice’s eyes began to swim, and he staggered. Jean hastened to assist him, but, sinking on a corner-stone, he murmured: ‘No, leave me; this is the end—I prefer to die here!’
‘Thunder!’ exclaimed the corporal, affecting the stern mien of a discontented superior, ‘who’s given me such a soldier as you? Do you want to be picked up by the Prussians? Make haste—up, and march!’
The young fellow did not reply; his face was livid, his eyes were closed, and he had half fainted away. On seeing this, Jean swore again, but in a tone of infinite pity: ‘My God! My God!’ And hastening to a fountain near by, he filled his tin bowl with water, with which he began to bathe his comrade’s face. Then, this time without any concealment, he drew from his knapsack that last biscuit which he had so carefully preserved, and broke it into little morsels which he placed between Maurice’s teeth. The famished man opened his eyes and began to devour.
‘But you?’ he suddenly asked, his memory returning to him. ‘Didn’t you eat then?’
‘I?’ said Jean. ‘Oh, I’m tougher than you. I can wait. A drop of Adam’s ale, and I’m on my legs again.’
He again went to the fountain to fill his bowl, which he emptied at a draught, clacking his tongue. His face, however, was also ashy pale, and he felt so famished that his hands trembled.
‘Make haste and let’s get off,’ he said to Maurice. ‘We must join the comrades, youngster.’
Leaning heavily on Jean’s arm, Maurice then allowed himself to be led away. Never had woman’s arm brought such warmth as this to his heart. Now that everything was crumbling to the ground, amid this extreme misery, with death threatening him, he experienced a delicious sensation of comfort, on realising that there was yet one who loved him and succoured him; and perhaps also the idea that this heart which was wholly his was the heart of a man of simple mind, of a peasant but slightly removed from the soil, and who had once been so repugnant to him, now added an infinite sweetness to his feelings of gratitude. Was not this the fraternity of the earliest days of the world, the friendship that existed long before there was any culture, before there were any classes; the friendship of two men, linked together, bound up in one another in their mutual need of assistance, threatened as they were by inimical nature? He could hear his humanity beating in Jean’s breast, and he even felt proud that his comrade was stronger than himself, that he succoured him and devoted himself to him; whilst Jean, on the other hand, without analysing his sensations, experienced a feeling of delight in shielding his young friend’s refinement and intelligence—qualities that in himself had remained in a rudimentary state. Since the violent death of his wife, carried off in a fearful tragedy, he had thought himself without a heart, and he had sworn that he would have nothing more to do with those creatures who bring man so much suffering, even when their natures are not evil. And the mutual friendship of Jean and Maurice became to both of them, as it were, an expansion of their beings; they did not embrace, and yet, however dissimilar their natures, they were none the less closely united, so bound up in one another, as they tramped along that terrible road to Remilly, the one supporting the other, that they seemed to form but one being compounded of pity and suffering.
Whilst the rear-guard was leaving Raucourt, the Germans entered the town at the other end; and two of their batteries which were immediately planted on the heights, upon the left, commenced firing. At this moment, as the 106th was moving off by the downhill-road, skirting the Emmane, it found itself in the line of fire. One shell cut down a poplar on the river bank, and another buried itself in a meadow near Captain Beaudoin. Until reaching Haraucourt the defile gradually contracts, and one there plunges into a narrow passage, overlooked on either hand by crested hills covered with trees. If a handful of Prussians were in ambuscade there, a disaster was certain. Cannonaded in the rear, with an attack possible both on right and left, the troops now advanced in increasing anxiety, eager to get out of this dangerous pass. And thus a last flash of energy came to even the weariest among them. The men, who a little while ago had been crawling from door to door through Raucourt, now stepped out jauntily, revived by the spur of peril. Even the horses seemed to realise that a terrible price might have to be paid for a moment lost; and the head of the column must have already been at Remilly, and the impetus given to the retreat was continuing, when all at once the men again ceased to advance.
‘Dash it!’ said Chouteau, ‘are they going to leave us here?’
The 106th had not yet reached Haraucourt and the shells were still falling. Whilst the regiment was marking time pending the resumption of the march, a shell burst on the right, fortunately without wounding anyone. Five minutes elapsed, seeming frightfully long, an eternity. But the men could not move; there was some obstacle over yonder, barring the road like a wall suddenly thrown up. The colonel, rising in his stirrups, looked ahead, quivering, and feeling that panic was spreading among his men behind him.
‘Everyone knows that we’ve been sold!’ resumed Chouteau, vehemently.
Then, under the lash of fear, loud murmurs arose, a swelling growl of exasperation. Yes, yes; they had been brought there to be sold, to be handed over to the Prussians!
Evil fortune had proved so implacable, the blunders committed had been so excessive, that to these men of narrow minds such a series of disasters could only be explained by treachery.
‘We are betrayed! We are betrayed!’ they shouted, in maddened voices.
Then, an idea occurring to Loubet he exclaimed: ‘It’s perhaps that beast of an Emperor who’s blocking the road with all his luggage.’
The surmise circulated, till it was positively affirmed that the block was occasioned by the imperial household having intercepted the column. Then the men swore abominable oaths, venting all the hatred that had been roused in their breasts by the insolence of the Emperor’s attendants, who took possession of the towns where they slept, unpacking their provisions, their baskets of wine, and their silver plate in the presence of soldiers who were destitute of everything, and setting the kitchens ablaze when the poor devils had to go without a particle of food.
Ah! that wretched Emperor—now without a throne or a command, like a lost child in the midst of his empire, carried off as if he were some useless parcel among the baggage of his troops, condemned to drag about with him the irony of his gala household, his Cent-Gardes, his carriages, his horses, his cooks, his vans, all the pomp of his bee-spangled state robes, sweeping up the blood and the mire of the highways of defeat!
Two more shells now fell in quick succession, and a splinter carried off Lieutenant Rochas’s cap. The ranks closed up amid violent pushing—a kind of wave, the ebbing of which spread afar off. Men were calling out in choking voices, and Lapoulle shouted to those in front of him to advance. Another minute, perhaps, and a frightful catastrophe would take place, a sauve-qui-peut which would result in the men engaging in a furious mêlée together, and being crushed to death in the depths of that narrow pass.
The colonel turned round, looking very pale: ‘My lads, my lads,’ he said, ‘a little patience. I have sent some one to see—we are off.’
But the march was not resumed, and the seconds seemed like centuries. Jean had already taken Maurice by the hand, and with admirable calmness was explaining to him in a whisper that if their comrades should again begin pushing, they had better jump aside on the left, and climb through the woods on the other side of the little river. He looked round for the Francs-tireurs, in the idea that they must know the roads, but he was told that they had disappeared while the regiment was passing through Raucourt. And then, all at once, the march was resumed; they turned round a bend of the road, and were thenceforth screened from the German batteries. Later on, some of them learned that it was General de Bonnemain’s division of cavalry—four regiments of Cuirassiers—that had thus intercepted and stopped the Seventh Corps in the confusion of that disastrous day.
The night was falling when the 106th passed through Augecourt. The wooded crests still rose upon the right, but on the left the defile grew broader, and a bluish valley could be seen in the distance. At last from the heights of Remilly they perceived, in the evening mist, a pale silvery ribbon winding through the immense rolling expanse of meadow and cultivated land. It was the Meuse—the Meuse they had so longed to reach and where it seemed the victory was to be.
And Maurice, stretching out his arm towards some distant, tiny lights, that were gaily shining out amid the verdure in the depths of that fruitful valley, so delightfully charming in the gentle twilight, said to Jean, with the joyous relief of a man who again finds a spot he loves: ‘There—look over yonder—that is SEDAN!’
< < < Chapter V
Chapter VII > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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