French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART II
Chapter II
MAURICE RECEIVES THE BAPTISM OF FIRE
At daybreak, in the thick fog enveloping the plateau of Floing, Bugler Gaude sounded the reveille with all the strength of his lungs. But the moisture with which the atmosphere was densely impregnated, so deadened the joyous call that it failed to awaken the men of the company, most of whom, lacking even the energy to pitch their tents, had rolled themselves in the canvas or stretched themselves in the mud. They were lying there, already looking like corpses with their pallid faces hardened by weariness and sleep, and to rouse them it became necessary to shake them one by one, when they sat up with the air of men just resuscitated from the grave, quite livid, and with their eyes full of terror at the thought of life.
Maurice was awakened by Jean. ‘What’s up? Where are we?’ he stammered as he glanced in a scared way on either side, perceiving nothing but the grey sea in the depths of which he was apparently plunged, with the shadowy forms of his comrades floating around him. It was impossible to see twenty yards ahead, so that he could not take his bearings. He had not the faintest notion as to the whereabouts of Sedan. At that moment, however, the sound of a cannonade, somewhere far away, fell on his ears: ‘Ah! it’s for to-day—so we are going to fight. So much the better, we must make an end of it all.’
The men around him said the same: on all sides there was a gloomy satisfaction, a longing to escape from that interminable nightmare, and to come face to face with those Prussians, whom, at the outset, they had gone in search of, and then had fled from during so many weary hours. At last they would be able to fire on the foe and disburden themselves of those cartridges which they had brought from such a distance without an opportunity of burning even one of them. This time everybody realised that battle was inevitable.
However, the guns of Bazeilles were thundering more and more loudly, and Jean, who stood there listening, inquired: ‘Where are they firing?’
‘I fancy it’s near the Meuse,’ replied Maurice; ‘but the deuce take me if I know where I am.’
‘Listen, youngster,’ now said the corporal, ‘you must keep beside me to-day, for a fellow needs to know something about these affairs if he doesn’t want to get injured. I’ve been through the mill before, and I’ll keep my eyes open for both of us.’
In the meantime the squad was beginning to growl, furious at the thought that they had nothing warm to comfort their stomachs with. It was impossible to light any fires without any dry wood, and in such filthy weather too. Thus, at the very moment when the battle was about to commence, the great, imperious, paramount belly-question came to the fore once more. Perhaps they were heroes—some of them at any rate—but before and above everything else they were maws. Eating was indeed the one all-important question, and how lovingly they skimmed the pot on the days when there was some good soupe, and how angry they waxed, like children and savages, when there was a scarcity of rations!
‘No grub, no fighting,’ declared Chouteau; ‘I’ll be blowed if I risk my skin to-day!’
This big, lanky house-painter, this fine speechifier from Montmartre, this public-house theorist who marred the few reasonable ideas that he had picked up here and there, by blending them with a frightful mixture of trash and lies, was again showing himself in the colours of a revolutionist. ‘Besides,’ continued he, ‘haven’t they played the fool with us, telling us that the Prussians were dying of hunger and illness, that they hadn’t even got any shirts left, and were to be met on the roads grimed with dirt and as tattered as paupers?’
This made Loubet laugh, like the gamin he was whose life had been spent amid all the hole-and-corner avocations of the Paris markets.
‘But it’s all rot,’ continued Chouteau, ‘it’s we who are kicking the bucket, dying of misery, with our shoes full of holes and our clothes so ragged that anyone might be tempted to give us a copper out of charity. And then too those big victories! Ah! the humbugs, to tell us that they had taken Bismarck prisoner and knocked a whole army head over heels into a stone quarry. Ah! they have played the fool with us and no mistake.’
Pache and Lapoulle listened, clenching their fists and nodding their heads with an air of fury. Others also were enraged, for the everlasting lies of the Paris newspapers had ended by having a disastrous effect. Confidence was dead; no belief remained in anything. The minds of these big children, at the outset so fertile in extraordinary hopes, were now filled with maddening nightmares.
‘Of course, and it’s simple enough,’ resumed Chouteau. ‘It’s easily understood since we’ve been sold—you fellows know it as well as I do.’
Every time that he heard this, Lapoulle in his childish simplicity felt quite exasperated. ‘Sold, eh?’ said he. ‘Ah! what rogues some people are.’
‘Yes, sold like Judas sold his Master,’ muttered Pache, his mind always full of biblical reminiscences.
Chouteau was triumphing: ‘It’s simple enough,’ said he, ‘everyone knows the figures. MacMahon was paid three millions of francs, and the generals had a million apiece to bring us here. It was all settled in Paris last spring; and a rocket was sent up last night as a signal that all was ready, and that the others could come and take us.’
The arrant stupidity of this invention revolted Maurice. Chouteau had formerly amused him, almost won him over by his Parisian ‘go;’ but for some time past he had been unable to stomach this perverter, this ne’er-do-well, who railed at everything so as to disgust the others. ‘Why do you tell such absurd stories?’ he exclaimed; ‘you know very well there’s no truth in it at all.’
‘No truth in it? What! it isn’t true that we have been sold? It wouldn’t be surprising if a toff like you happened to belong to that band of swinish traitors. If that’s the case,’ continued Chouteau, stepping forward in a threatening way, ‘you had better say so, Mr. Gentleman, because we can settle your hash at once, without waiting for your friend Bismarck.’
The others also were beginning to growl, and Jean thought it his duty to intervene: ‘Keep quiet, all of you: I’ll report the first one who stirs.’
But Chouteau, with a sneer, began to hoot him. He didn’t care a rap for his report. He’d fight or not, just as he pleased, and they’d better not bother him, for his cartridges would do just as well for others as for the Prussians. Now that the battle was beginning, the little discipline that fear had still maintained would be swept away. What could they do to him? He meant to skedaddle as soon as he had had enough of it. And he went on talking in an insulting fashion, exciting the others against the corporal, who suffered them to die of hunger. Yes, it was Jean’s fault if the squad had had nothing to eat for three days past, whereas the comrades had soupe and meat. Mr. Jean and the toff, however, had gone to feast with some wenches. Yes, indeed, others had seen their goings-on at Sedan.
‘You’ve spent the squad’s money,’ shouted Chouteau at last; ‘you daren’t deny it, you cursed jobber!’
Matters were getting serious. Lapoulle clenched his fist, and even Pache, usually so gentle but now maddened by hunger, demanded an explanation of Jean. The only sensible one was Loubet, who began to laugh, saying that it was idiotic for Frenchmen to fall out when the Prussians were there close by. He wasn’t a partisan of quarrelling either with fists or with guns, and, alluding to the few hundred francs he had received as a substitute, he added: ‘Well, if they fancy my skin’s worth no more than that I’ll undeceive them. I’m not going to give them more than their money’s worth.’
Maurice and Jean, however, exasperated by Chouteau’s idiotic onslaught, replied in violent terms, and were spurning the charges levelled at them, when all at once a loud voice rang out through the fog: ‘What’s the row there? Who are the stupid clowns disputing like that?’
Then Lieutenant Rochas appeared to view, with his cap discoloured by the rain, his overcoat merely retaining a button here and there, and the whole of his lank, awkward person in a pitiable condition of neglect and wretchedness. And yet he had none the less assumed a victorious swagger, his moustaches bristling and his eyes flaring.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Jean, quite beside himself, ‘it’s these men who are shouting that we are sold. Yes, they say our generals have sold us.’
To the narrow mind of Rochas this idea of treachery did not appear altogether unreasonable, for it explained defeats which he did not consider admissible. ‘Well, what the deuce is it to them if they have been sold?’ he answered. ‘What business is it of theirs? At any rate, it doesn’t alter the fact that the Prussians are here now, and that we are going to give them one of those lickings that are remembered.’
Afar off, behind the dense curtain of mist, the guns of Bazeilles did not cease thundering. And impulsively thrusting out his arms, the lieutenant added, ‘Ah! this time there’s no mistake. We are going to drive them home again with the butt-ends of our rifles.’
To his mind the thunder of the cannonade effaced all the past: the delays and uncertainties of the march, the demoralisation of the troops, the disaster of Beaumont, and even the last agony of the forced retreat upon Sedan. Since they were about to fight, was not victory a certainty? He had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, he retained all his braggart contempt for the enemy, his absolute ignorance of the new methods of warfare, his unswerving conviction that an old soldier of the Crimea, Italy, and Algeria could not be beaten. It would be really too droll if he were to undergo that experience at his age.
A laugh suddenly parted his jaws from ear to ear. And, like the worthy fellow he was, he now did his men one of those good turns which made them like him so much despite the manner in which he occasionally rated them. ‘Listen, my lads,’ said he, ‘instead of disputing, it’s much better to drink a drop together. Yes, I’m going to stand treat, and you can drink my health.’
Thereupon, from a deep pocket of his overcoat, he produced a bottle of brandy, adding, with that triumphant air of his, that it was a present from a lady. This was not so surprising, as during the previous day he had been seen in a tavern at Floing making himself quite at home there with the servant girl on his knees. And now the soldiers laughed heartily, and held out their tin bowls, into which he gaily poured the liquor.
‘You must drink to your sweethearts, my lads, if you have any, and you must drink to the glory of France. That’s all I care about. Here’s to jollity!’
‘You’re right, sir; here’s to your health and everybody’s!’
They all drank together, reconciled and warmed by the liquor. It was really very kind of the lieutenant to have treated them to that drop of ‘short’ in the early cold before they advanced on the enemy. And Maurice felt the alcohol descending into his veins, again bringing warmth and the semi-intoxication of illusion. Why should they not defeat the Prussians after all? Had not battles their surprises in reserve, sudden, unexpected transitions at which History remained astonished? Besides, that devil of a fellow, Rochas, declared that Bazaine was on his way to join them, and was expected to come up before nightfall. And he intimated that the information could be positively relied upon, for he had it from a general’s aide-de-camp; and although he stretched his arm towards Belgium, to point out by what direction Bazaine was approaching, Maurice surrendered himself to one of those crises of hope without which he was unable to live. After all, perhaps the revanche was really at hand.
‘Pray, sir, what are we waiting for?’ he ventured to ask; ‘aren’t we going to march?’
Rochas made a gesture as if to say that he was without orders. Then, after a pause, he added: ‘Has anyone seen the captain?’
Nobody replied. Jean remembered that during the night he had espied him slinking away in the direction of Sedan; however, a prudent soldier should never let it appear that he has seen a superior apart from the service. So he had decided to hold his tongue, when, on turning round, he perceived a shadowy form approaching beside a hedge. And, thereupon, he exclaimed: ‘Here he comes!’
It was indeed Captain Beaudoin, who astonished everybody with his irreproachable get-up, contrasting in such a marked degree with the deplorable condition of the lieutenant. His uniform was nicely brushed, his boots were beautifully polished, and there was something quite coquettish, something suggestive of galanterie about his white hands, his curled moustaches, and the vague perfume of Persian lilac that he diffused around him, reminding one of a pretty woman’s well-appointed dressing-room.
‘Hallo!’ sneered Loubet; ‘so the captain has found his baggage again.’
Nobody smiled, however, for the captain was known not to be an easy customer. He was execrated by his men, whom he kept at a distance. A regular vinegar-bottle, as Rochas put it. Since the earlier defeats he had seemed quite offended, and the disaster, which everybody foresaw, appeared to him above all things improper. A Bonapartist by conviction, having had a prospect of rapid and high advancement before him, backed up as he was by several influential Parisian salons, he felt that his fortune was sinking in the mud and mire of this disastrous war. It was said that he possessed a very pretty tenor voice, to which he was already deeply indebted. Moreover, he was not without intelligence, though he knew nothing of his profession, being simply desirous of pleasing, and when necessary proving very brave, without, however, displaying any excessive zeal.
‘What a fog!’ he quietly remarked, feeling more at his ease now that he had found his company, which he had been looking for during the last half-hour, almost fearing that he had lost himself.
However, orders had at length arrived, and the battalion immediately advanced. Fresh clouds of mist must have been ascending from the Meuse, for the men almost had to grope their way through a kind of whitish dew, falling upon them in fine drops. And Maurice was struck by the sudden apparition of Colonel de Vineuil, who, erect on his horse, rose up before him at the corner of a road; the old officer looking very tall and very pale, motionless like a marble statue of despair, and the animal shivering in the early cold with dilated nostrils which were turned towards the cannon over yonder. And Maurice was yet more struck when, at ten paces in the rear, he espied the regimental colours carried by the sub-lieutenant on duty, and looking, amid the soft, shifting white vapour, like a trembling apparition of glory, already fading away in the atmosphere of dreamland. The gilded eagle was drenched with water, and the tricoloured silk, embroidered with the names of victories, soiled by smoke, and perforated with ancient wounds, seemed to be paling in the mist; well-nigh the only brilliant touches, amid all this obliteration, being supplied by the enamel points of the Cross of Honour, which was hanging from the tassel of the flag.
The colonel and the colours disappeared, hidden by a fresh wave of mist, and the battalion still continued advancing, as though through a mass of damp cotton-wool, and without the men having the faintest notion whither they were going. They had descended a narrow slope, and were now climbing a hollow road. Then all at once resounded the command, ‘Halt!’ And there they remained, their arms grounded, their knapsacks weighing down their shoulders, and with strict orders not to stir. They were probably on a plateau, but it was still quite impossible to distinguish anything twenty paces away. It was now seven o’clock; the cannonade seemed to have drawn nearer; fresh batteries, installed closer and closer to one another, were now firing from the other side of Sedan.
‘Oh! as for me,’ suddenly said Sergeant Sapin to Jean and Maurice, ‘I shall be killed to-day.’ He had not opened his mouth since the reveille. Judging by the expression of his thin face, with its large, handsome eyes, and small, contracted nose, he had been absorbed in a painful reverie.
‘What an idea!’ protested Jean. ‘Can any of us say what will happen to us? It’s all chance.’
The sergeant, however, shook his head as though absolutely convinced of what he had said. ‘For my part,’ he added, ‘it’s as good as done. Yes, I shall be killed to-day.’
Some of the men now turned round and asked him if he had dreamt it. No, he hadn’t dreamt anything; only he felt it there. ‘And all the same, it worries me,’ said he, ‘for I was going to be married as soon as I got my discharge.’
Again his eyes wavered; all his past life rose up before him. The son of a Lyons grocer in a small way of business, spoilt by his mother, who was dead, and unable to get on with his father, he had remained in the regiment disgusted with everything, but unwilling to be bought out. Then, on one occasion, whilst away on leave, he had come to an understanding with one of his cousins and had arranged to marry her. And then he had again begun to take an interest in life, and the pair of them had laid many happy plans for going into business together with the help of the small sum that the girl was to bring as a dowry. He, on his side, had received some education, and was fairly proficient in the three R’s. For a year past his only thoughts had been for the future felicity he had planned.
All at once he shuddered, shook himself as though to get rid of his fixed idea, and then calmly repeated: ‘Yes, it’s a beastly worry; but I shall be killed to-day.’
None of the others spoke; the spell of waiting continued. They were not aware whether they were facing or turning their backs on the enemy. Vague sounds occasionally emerged from the depths of the fog—the rumbling of wheels, the tramp of a mass of men, the distant trot of horses; sounds produced by the movements of the troops which the fog was hiding, all the evolutions of the Seventh Army Corps, now taking up its line of battle. During the last minute or so, however, it had seemed as if the vapour were becoming less dense. Fragments of it arose, looking like pieces of muslin, and patches of the horizon were disclosed, still dim, however, of a gloomy blue, like that of deep water. And it was at one of these moments when the atmosphere was clearing that they saw the regiments of Chasseurs d’Afrique, belonging to Margueritte’s division, pass by like phantom horsemen. Erect in their saddles, with their short, light-blue jackets and their broad red sashes, the Chasseurs urged on their mounts, animals of slender build, who were half hidden beneath the cumbersome kits they carried. Behind one squadron came another, and after emerging for a moment from the haze where all was vague, they passed into it again as though melting away under the fine rain. Doubtless they had been in the way, and were being sent farther off, those in command not knowing what to do with them, as had been the case ever since the outset of the campaign. They had scarcely been employed on reconnoitring duties at all, and as soon as an engagement began they were promenaded from valley to valley, valuable, yet useless.
As Maurice looked at them he thought of Prosper. ‘Hallo!’ he muttered, ‘perhaps he’s over there.’
‘Who?’ asked Jean.
‘That fellow from Remilly, whose brother, the Franc-tireur, we met at Oches.’
The Chasseurs had passed on, however, and then came another gallop, that of a general’s staff descending the sloping road. Jean recognised Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, who was waving his arm in a furious manner. So he had at last deigned to quit the Golden Cross Hotel, and his bad humour plainly indicated how annoyed he was at having had to rise so early, after being so badly lodged and wretchedly fed. His voice could be distinctly heard, thundering out: ‘Well, d—— it, the Moselle or the Meuse, at any rate the water that’s there!’
However, the mist was at length rising. As at Bazeilles, there was a sudden transformation scene, a radiant spectacle gradually disclosed to view, as when the drop-curtain slowly ascends towards the flies. The sunrays were brightly streaming from the blue vault, and Maurice immediately recognised the spot where they were waiting. ‘Ah!’ said he to Jean, ‘this is what they call the plateau of Algeria. You see that village in front of us, on the other side of the valley, that’s Floing. That one, farther off, is St. Menges; and there, farther still, is Fleigneux. Then, right away, in the forest of the Ardennes—those trees on the horizon—comes the frontier.’
With his hand outstretched he continued giving his explanations. The plateau of Algeria, a strip of muddy soil, rather less than two and a half miles in length, sloped gently from the wood of La Garenne towards the Meuse, from which some meadows parted it. It was here that General Douay had disposed the Seventh Corps, in despair that he had not sufficient men to defend so long a line as that allotted to him, or to establish a solid connection with the First Corps, whose positions, perpendicular to his own, extended along the valley of the Givonne from the wood of La Garenne to Daigny.
‘Ah! you see how vast it is, eh?’ said Maurice, turning round, and with a wave of the hand embracing the entire horizon. From the plateau of Algeria the whole immense field of battle stretched out towards the south and the west. First there was Sedan, whose citadel could be seen rising above the housetops; then came Balan and Bazeilles, hazy with smoke; and, in the rear, the heights on the left bank of the Meuse, the Liry, Marfée and Croix-Piau hills. But the view was more particularly extensive on the west, in the direction of Donchery. The loop of the Meuse bounded the peninsula of Iges as with a light ribbon, and over there one could plainly detect the narrow Route de St. Albert, running between the bank and a steep height, which, somewhat farther on, was crowned by the little wood of Le Seugnon, a spur of the woods of La Falizette. The road to Vrignes-aux-Bois and Donchery passed over the summit of the height at a spot known as the Crossway of the Red House.
‘And in that direction, you know, we could fall back on Mézières,’ said Maurice. But at that very moment a first cannon shot was fired from St. Menges. Shreds of fog were still trailing in the depths, and a vague mass of men could just be espied marching along the defile of St. Albert. ‘Ah! there they are!’ resumed Maurice, instinctively lowering his voice, and without naming the Prussians. ‘Our line of retreat is cut off!’
It was not yet eight o’clock. The cannonade, which was increasing in violence in the direction of Bazeilles, could now also be heard on the east, in the valley of the Givonne, which they were unable to see. At this moment, indeed, the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony was emerging from the Chevalier Wood and advancing upon the First Corps in front of Daigny. And now that the Eleventh Prussian Corps, marching upon Floing, was opening fire on General Douay’s troops, the battle had begun on all sides, from north to south, over an expanse of several leagues.
Maurice had just realised what a deplorable blunder had been made in not withdrawing upon Mézières during the night. And although he had only a dim notion as to what might be the exact consequences of the blunder, he was instinctively apprehensive of danger, and gazed with disquietude at the neighbouring heights overlooking the plateau of Algeria. Allowing that they might not have had sufficient time to retreat on Mézières, why, at all events, had they not occupied those heights, with their backs to the frontier, so that they might, at all risks, have made their way into Belgium in the event of a defeat? Two points appeared particularly threatening, the round Hattoy hill, above Floing on the left, and the so-called Calvary of Illy, crowned by a stone cross rising between two lime trees. On the previous day General Douay had sent a regiment to occupy the Hattoy hill, but this isolated position being considered dangerous the men had fallen back at dawn. As for the Calvary of Illy, its defence had been entrusted to the left wing of the First Army Corps. All the vast bare expanse, dented with deep valleys from Sedan to the Ardennes, was there; and evidently the key of the position was at the foot of that cross and those two lime trees, whence one could sweep all the surrounding country.
Two more artillery reports were now heard. Then came the roar of several pieces fired simultaneously, and this time a puff of smoke was seen to ascend from a little hill on the left of St. Menges. ‘Ah!’ said Jean, ‘it’s our turn now.’
Nothing was seen of any projectile, however. The men, still standing there stock-still, with their arms grounded, had no other pastime than that of contemplating the fine order of the Second Division, drawn up in front of Floing, and with its left wing thrown forward in the direction of the Meuse, to meet any attack on that side. The Third Division was deploying on the east as far as the wood of La Garenne, below Illy; whilst the first, cut up at Beaumont, was in the rear, forming a second line. The Engineers had been engaged all night in the preparation of defensive works, and were still digging shelter-trenches and raising breast-works, when the Prussians began firing.
A fusillade broke out in the lower part of Floing, but soon ceased, and just then Captain Beaudoin’s company received orders to fall back a distance of some three hundred yards. The men had just reached a large square field of cabbages, when the captain curtly commanded them to lie down. They had to obey, although the order was by no means a pleasant one. The abundant dew had quite soaked the cabbages, on whose thick leaves of a greenish gold there lingered large drops of as brilliant and as pure a water as diamonds. ‘Sight at four hundred yards!’ called the captain.
Maurice thereupon rested the barrel of his chassepot on a cabbage in front of him. Lying there, on the soil, he could no longer see anything save a confused stretch of ground streaked here and there with greenery, and nudging Jean, who was on his right hand, he asked him what they were doing in that field. Jean, experienced in such matters, pointed out to him a battery which was being established on a hillock near at hand. Plainly enough they had been placed there to support that battery. Thereupon Maurice, inquisitive as to whether Honoré was at the battery in question, scrambled to his feet; but the reserve artillery was in the rear, beyond a clump of trees.
‘Thunder!’ shouted Rochas, ‘lie down at once!’
Before Maurice had again stretched himself on his stomach a shell passed by, hissing, and from that moment there was no pause in the arrival of the projectiles. The correct range, however, was but slowly found; the first shells fell far beyond the French battery, which also opened fire, whilst others, which sank into the soft soil, did not explode, so that for some time there was any number of jokes about the clumsiness of those sauerkraut-eating gunners.
‘Why, their artillery fire is a mere flash in the pan!’ said Loubet.
Then Chouteau indulged in a disgusting joke, and Lieutenant Rochas joined in with the remark, ‘There! I told you those fools couldn’t even point a gun!’
One shell, however, burst some ten paces away, covering the company with mould, and although Loubet called to his comrades in a bantering way to get their brushes out of their knapsacks, Chouteau, who was turning quite pale, held his peace. He had never been under fire before, neither had Pache nor Lapoulle, nor, indeed, any man of the squad excepting Jean. Their eyes blinked and grew dim, whilst their voices became shrill and faint as though they had a difficulty in speaking. Maurice, who still retained some measure of self-possession, endeavoured to analyse his sensations: he was not yet frightened, for he did not think he was in danger, and all that he experienced was a slight uneasiness in the epigastrium, whilst his head gradually emptied, so that he could not connect his ideas. All the same, however, his hopefulness had been increasing like growing intoxication ever since he had observed with so much wonderment the capital order of the troops. He had reached a state when he no longer had any doubt of victory, provided they could only charge the enemy with cold steel.
‘Hallo!’ he muttered; ‘what a lot of flies there are.’ Thrice already he had heard a buzzing sound.
Jean could not help laughing. ‘No,’ said he; ‘they are bullets.’
Other light buzzing sounds swept by, and now all the men of the squad turned their heads, greatly interested. It was an irresistible impulse, and one after another they lifted up their necks, unable to keep still.
‘I say,’ said Loubet to Lapoulle, by way of amusing himself with the simpleton, ‘whenever you see a bullet coming you’ve only got to put a finger in front of your nose—like that—it cuts the air apart, and the bullet passes on the right or the left.’
‘But I don’t see them coming,’ said Lapoulle, whereupon everybody roared.
‘Oh my! he doesn’t see them! Keep your lamps open, you fool! Why, there comes one—and there’s another. Didn’t you see that one? It was a green bullet.’
And thereupon Lapoulle opened his eyes as wide as he could, and kept one finger uplifted in front of his nose, whilst Pache, touching the scapular he wore, wished he were able to extend it like a breastplate over his chest.
Rochas, who had remained standing, exclaimed all at once in his bantering way: ‘You’re not forbidden to salute the shells, my lads, bub never mind about the bullets, there are too many of them.’
At that moment a splinter of a shell shattered the head of a soldier in the front rank. He was not even able to cry out: there was a spurt of blood and brain-matter—that was all.
‘Poor devil!’ quietly said Sergeant Sapin, who was very calm and very pale; ‘whose turn next?’
But they could no longer hear one another; and it was indeed especially the frightful uproar that distressed Maurice. The battery near by was firing without a pause, with a continuous roar which shook the ground; and the mitrailleuses, rending the air asunder, were even more insufferable. How long were they going to lie among those cabbages? There was still nothing to be seen; nothing was known. It was impossible to form the slightest idea of the battle; was it even a real battle, a great one? All that Maurice could distinguish above the smooth line of the fields before him was the round, wooded summit of the Hattoy hill, far away and still deserted. Not a Prussian was to be seen on the horizon. Only some puffs of smoke arose, wafted for a moment in the sunlight. Then, as he turned his head, he was greatly astonished on perceiving in the depths of a sequestered valley, sheltered by rugged slopes, a peasant who was calmly pursuing his avocation—guiding a plough drawn by a big white horse. Why should the man lose a day? Corn would not cease growing, the human race would not cease living, because a few thousand men happened to be fighting.
Consumed by impatience, Maurice rose to his feet, and at a glance he again saw the batteries of St. Menges, which were cannonading them, crowned with tawny smoke; and he also again beheld the road from St. Albert now blocked with Prussians, the indistinct swarming of an invading horde. Jean, however, swiftly caught hold of his legs and dragged him to the ground. ‘Are you mad?’ said the corporal; ‘you’ll be potted.’
On his side Rochas began to swear: ‘Lie down at once! What the deuce does the fellow mean, trying to get killed when he hasn’t been ordered to do so?’
‘But you’re not lying down, sir,’ said Maurice.
‘Oh! in my case it’s different; it’s necessary that I should know what’s passing.’
Captain Beaudoin also remained bravely erect. But he did not open his mouth to speak to his men, to whom nothing attached him; and it seemed as if he were unable to keep still, for again and again did he tramp from one end of the field to the other.
And meantime the waiting continued, nothing came. Maurice was suffocating beneath his knapsack, which, in his horizontal position, so wearisome after a time, was weighing heavily on his back and chest. The men had been particularly cautioned that they were not to rid themselves of their knapsacks until the last extremity.
‘I say, are we going to spend the whole day here?’ Maurice ended by asking Jean.
‘Perhaps so. At Solferino, I remember, we spent five hours lying in a carrot-field with our noses on the ground.’ And then, like the practical fellow he was, Jean added: ‘But what are you complaining of? We are not badly off. There’ll always be time enough for us to expose ourselves. Everyone has his turn, you know. If we all got ourselves killed at the beginning there would be no one left for the finish.’
‘Ah!’ suddenly interrupted Maurice, ‘look at that smoke on the Hattoy hill. They’ve captured it; they’ll be leading us a nice dance now.’
For a moment the sight he beheld supplied some food for his anxious curiosity, into which the first quiver of fear was stealing. He could not take his eyes off the round summit of that hill, the only acclivity that he could perceive, above the fleeting line of fields, level with his eye. It was, however, much too far away for him to distinguish the gunners of the batteries that had just been established there by the Prussians, and, indeed, he only saw the puffs of smoke rising at each fresh discharge above a plantation, which probably concealed the guns.
As Maurice had instinctively divined, the capture of this position, the defence of which General Douay had been compelled to renounce, was a very serious matter. The Hattoy hill commanded the surrounding plateaux, and when the German batteries installed there opened fire on the Second Division of the Seventh Corps, they speedily decimated it. The enemy’s practice was now much improved, and the French battery, near which Beaudoin’s company was lying down, had a couple of gunners killed in rapid succession. A splinter at the same time wounded a quartermaster-corporal of the company, whose left heel was carried clean away, and who began shrieking with pain as though he had suddenly gone mad.
‘Shut up, you brute!’ shouted Rochas. ‘Is there any sense in making such a row over a flea-bite?’
Suddenly calmed, the wounded man became silent, and sank into a senseless immobility, with his foot in his hand.
And, meanwhile, the formidable artillery duel, growing more and more serious, steadily went on over the heads of the prostrate regiments, across the hot, mournful stretch of country where no one was to be seen in the fierce sunlight. There seemed to be nothing but this thunder, this destructive blizzard rushing backwards and forwards athwart the deserted expanse. And hours and hours were to elapse before it ceased. But the superiority of the German artillery was already becoming manifest; nearly all of their percussion shells exploded at tremendous distances, whereas the French shells, on the fuse system, did not travel nearly so far, and more frequently than otherwise burst in the air before reaching their destinations. And, meantime, for Captain Beaudoin’s men there was no resource but that of trying to make themselves as small as possible in the furrows in which they were lying, close-pressed to the soil. They were not even able to ease themselves, intoxicate themselves, shake off their thoughts by firing a few shots. For whom could they fire at, since there was still nobody to be seen along the blank horizon?
‘Aren’t we going to fire?’ Maurice kept on repeating, quite beside himself. ‘I’d give five francs to see one of those Prussians appear. It’s exasperating to be fired at like that without being able to reply.’
‘Don’t be in a hurry, the time may come,’ replied Jean, quietly.
However, the gallop of horses on their left made them turn their heads, and they recognised General Douay, who, followed by his staff, had ridden up to ascertain how his troops were behaving under the terrible fire from the Hattoy hill. He seemed satisfied, and was giving a few orders, when General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, in his turn, debouched from a hollow road. ‘Carpet-general’ though he was, he trotted along with careless indifference amidst all the projectiles, obstinately clinging to his Algerian practices, and having failed to profit by any of the lessons of the war. He was gesticulating after the fashion of Rochas, and shouting: ‘I’m waiting for them. We’ll see how it will be when we get to close quarters by-and-by.’ Then, catching sight of General Douay, he rode up to him: ‘Is it true, general, that the marshal’s wounded?’
‘Yes, it is, unfortunately. I received a line from Ducrot just now, telling me that the marshal had selected him to take command of the army.’
‘Ah! so it’s Ducrot! And what are the orders?’
The commander of the Seventh Corps made a gesture of despair. He had realised, already on the previous day, that the army was lost if it remained at Sedan, and he had urged again and again, but vainly, that the positions of St. Menges and Illy ought to be occupied in view of insuring a means of retreating upon Mézières.
‘Ducrot reverts to our plan,’ he said, in answer to Bourgain-Desfeuilles. ‘The entire army is to concentrate on the plateau of Illy.’ And then he repeated his gesture as though to say that it was too late!
The roar of the cannon drowned many of his words; still the sense of them reached Maurice’s ears distinctly enough, and he was quite scared. What! Marshal MacMahon was wounded, General Ducrot commanded in his stead, the entire army was to retreat to the north of Sedan, and the poor devils of soldiers who were getting themselves killed were in utter ignorance of all these important matters! And they were playing this fearful game at the mercy of a chance accident, dependent on the fancies of a fresh leader! He divined the confusion, the final disarray into which the army was falling, without a commander, without a plan, dragged first one way and then another, whilst the Germans never deviated, but went straight towards their goal with the precision of machinery.
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles was already riding away when he was imperatively recalled by his superior, who had just received another message, brought to him by a Hussar, covered with dust.
‘General! general!’ shouted Douay, whose voice, in his surprise and emotion, thundered so loudly that it resounded above all the roar of the artillery. ‘General, it is no longer Ducrot who commands, but Wimpffen! Yes, he arrived yesterday, at the very moment of the Beaumont rout, to take De Failly’s place at the head of the Fifth Corps—and he writes me that he has a letter from the Minister of War placing him at the head of the army in the event of any vacancy in the command—and the orders to retreat are cancelled, we are to regain and defend our original positions.’
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles was listening with dilated eyes. ‘Thunder!’ he exclaimed at last, ‘we ought to know what we are to do—though for my own part I don’t care a rap!’
Then away he galloped, really indifferent as to the issue of the affair, having merely viewed the war at the outset as a means of rapidly attaining to divisional rank, and now simply desiring that this stupid campaign should be brought to an end as soon as possible, since it gave so little satisfaction to everybody.
And now the men of Beaudoin’s company burst into a derisive laugh. Maurice said nothing, but he shared the opinion of Chouteau and Loubet, who began to jeer and joke, pouring forth their contempt. Right wheel, left wheel, go as you’re told. Nice commanders they had, and no mistake; commanders who agreed so well together, and who didn’t want all the blanket to themselves—oh! no, of course not! When men had such generals as those, wasn’t it best to go off to bed? Three commanders-in-chief in the space of a couple of hours, three fine fellows who didn’t know what ought to be done, and each of whom gave different orders! Really, it was enough to make you feel exasperated, enough to demoralise a saint! And then those fatal charges of treason cropped up afresh—Ducrot and Wimpffen were like MacMahon, they wanted to earn Bismarck’s three millions!
General Douay had halted at some little distance in advance of his staff, and there he remained quite alone, gazing at the Prussian positions, and absorbed in a reverie of infinite sadness. For a long time he continued scanning the Hattoy hill, the shells from which were falling close around him. Then, after turning towards the plateau of Illy, he summoned an officer to carry an order to a brigade of the Fifth Corps, which he had obtained from General de Wimpffen the day before, and which connected him with Ducrot’s left wing. And he was distinctly heard to remark: ‘If the Prussians should obtain possession of the Calvary we could not hold out here for an hour; we should be thrown back on Sedan.’
Thereupon he went off, disappearing with his escort at a bend of the hollow road, whilst the enemy’s fire increased in intensity. Very possibly he had been remarked.
And now the shells, which hitherto had simply been coming from the front, began raining on the left flank as well. The fire of the batteries at Frénois, and of another battery established on the peninsula of Iges, was crossing that from the Hattoy hill. And the projectiles fairly swept the plateau of Algeria. The men, occupied in watching what was going on in front, now had this flank fire to alarm them, and, exposed to two dangers, were at a loss how to escape from either. In rapid succession three men were killed, whilst two who were wounded shrieked aloud.
And it was now that Sergeant Sapin met the death he expected. He had turned round, and, when it was too late to avoid the shell, he saw it coming. ‘Ah! there it is,’ he simply said. There was a look, not of terror, but of profound sadness on his little pale face, in his large handsome eyes. His belly was ripped open, and he began to moan: ‘Oh! don’t leave me here! take me to the ambulance I beg of you—take me away.’
Rochas wished to silence him, and in his brutal fashion was about to tell him that when a man was mortally wounded he had no business to put a couple of comrades to unnecessary trouble. Suddenly, however, the grim lieutenant was stirred by pity, and exclaimed: ‘Wait a moment, my poor fellow, till the bearers come for you.’
But the wretched man continued moaning, and began to weep, distracted that the longed-for happiness should be fleeing away with the flow of his blood. ‘Take me away,’ he begged, ‘take me away.’
Thereupon Captain Beaudoin, whose excited nerves were doubtless exasperated by this plaint, called for a couple of men to carry the sergeant to a little wood near by, where there was a field ambulance. Anticipating their comrades, Chouteau and Loubet at once bounded to their feet and took up the sergeant, one holding him under his armpits and the other by his feet. Then off they carried him at a run. On the way, however, they felt him stiffening, expiring in a last convulsion.
‘I say,’ said Loubet, ‘he’s dead. Let’s drop him.’
But Chouteau refused to do so, exclaiming in a fury: ‘Just you run on, you lazybones. Do you think I’m such a fool as to drop him here for the captain to call us back?’
Accordingly they went on their way with the corpse until they reached the little wood, where they flung it at the foot of a tree. Then they went off, and were not seen again until the evening.
The firing was now becoming more and more violent, the battery which the company was supporting having been reinforced by a couple of guns; and, in the increasing uproar, fear, mad fear, at last took possession of Maurice. At the outset he had been free from the cold perspiration that was now issuing from every pore of his skin, from the painful weakness that at present he felt in the pit of his stomach, the well-nigh irresistible inclination that he experienced to rise up and rush away shrieking. And doubtless all this was but the result of reflection, as often happens with delicate, nervous natures. Jean, however, was watching him, and as soon as he detected this crisis of cowardice by the troubled wavering of his eyes, he caught hold of him with his strong hand, and roughly prevented him from stirring. And, in a fatherly way, he whispered insulting words in his ear, trying to make him feel ashamed of himself, for he knew that insults, and at times even kicks, are needed to restore some men’s courage. Others also were shivering. Pache had his eyes full of tears, and gave vent to a gentle, involuntary plaint, like the wailing of a little child, which he was altogether unable to restrain. And Lapoulle’s vitals were so stirred that he was taken quite ill. Several other men were similarly distressed, and the scene which ensued led to much hooting and jeering, the effect of which was to restore everybody’s courage.
‘You wretched coward!’ Jean repeated to Maurice, ‘mind you don’t behave like them—I’ll punch your head if you don’t behave properly.’
He was in this manner warming the young fellow’s heart, when all at once, at some four hundred yards in front of them, they perceived a dozen men in dark uniforms emerging from a little wood. At last, then, there were the Prussians—easily recognisable by their spiked helmets—the first Prussians they had seen within range of their chassepots since the outset of the campaign. Other squads followed the first one, and in front of them one could see the little clouds of dust thrown up by the shells. Everything was very small, yet delicately precise; the Prussians looked like so many little tin soldiers set out in good order. However, as the shells from the French batteries rained upon them in increasing numbers, they soon fell back again, disappearing behind the trees.
But Captain Beaudoin’s men had seen them, and fancied they could see them still. The chassepots had gone off of their own accord. Maurice was the first to fire. Jean, Pache, Lapoulle, all the others followed his example. There had been no command to fire; in fact, the captain wished to stop it, and only gave way on Rochas making a gesture implying that it was absolutely necessary the men should thus ease their feelings. So at last they were firing, employing those cartridges which they had been carrying in their pouches for more than a month past, without an opportunity of burning a single one of them. Maurice, especially, was quite enlivened. Thus occupied, he forgot his fright. The detonations drove away his thoughts. Meantime, the verge of the wood remained desolate. Not a leaf was stirring there, not a Prussian had reappeared, yet the men continued firing at the motionless trees.
Then, all at once, having raised his head, Maurice was surprised to see Colonel de Vineuil on his big horse, only a few paces away; both man and beast looking as impassive as though they were of stone. With his face to the foe, the colonel remained there, whilst the bullets rained around him. The entire regiment must now have fallen back to this point, other companies were lying down in neighbouring fields, and the fusillade was spreading right along the line. And, slightly in the rear, Maurice also saw the colours, borne aloft by the strong arm of the sub-lieutenant, who carried them. But they were no longer the phantom colours which the morning fog had obscured. The gilded eagle was shining radiantly under the fierce sunbeams, and vividly glared the silk of the three colours, despite all the glorious wear and tear of bygone battles. Against the bright blue sky, amid the wind of the cannonade, the flag was waving like a flag of victory.
And now that they were fighting, why should not victory be theirs? With desperate, maddened rage, Maurice and his comrades continued burning their cartridges, shooting at the distant wood, where twigs and branches were slowly and silently raining upon the ground.
< < < Chapter I
Chapter III > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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