French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART II
Chapter VII
THROUGH THE ROUT—THE FIGHT AT THE HERMITAGE
From all the lost positions around Sedan, from Floing, from the plateau of Illy, the wood of La Garenne, the valley of the Givonne, and the road to Bazeilles, a stream of men, horses, and cannon was now flowing back in terror, rolling along towards the town. This stronghold, which the commanders of the army had so disastrously selected as their base, was proving a balefully tempting spot, an inviting refuge for the runaways, a place of seeming safety whither the bravest allowed themselves to be allured, in the demoralisation and panic overtaking all. They imagined that behind those ramparts yonder, they would at last escape from that terrible artillery which had been growling for nearly twelve hours; and there was no discriminative capacity, no reasoning faculty left among them; the animal carried away the man, it was the madness of instinct, galloping off and seeking its hole, to hide underground and sleep.
When Maurice, whilst bathing Jean’s face with cool water, at the foot of the little wall, at last saw him open his eyes again, he raised an exclamation of delight: ‘Ah! my poor fellow, I thought you were done for! And I don’t say it to reproach you, but you are that heavy!’
Jean, still dazed, seemed to be awaking from a dream. Then he must have understood and have remembered everything, for two big tears rolled down his cheeks. So that weak fellow Maurice, whom he loved and tended like a child, had, in the enthusiasm of his friendship, found arms strong enough to carry him thither.
‘Let me just look at your nob,’ said Maurice.
The wound proved to be scarcely anything, a mere scratch of the scalp, but it had bled profusely. The hair, glued together by the blood, now served the purpose of a pledget, and Maurice took good care not to damp it, for fear of reopening the sore.
‘There, you are clean now,’ he added, ‘you look like a human being again. Wait a bit, here’s a cap.’
Thereupon, picking up the képi of a dead soldier which was lying beside him, he placed it carefully on Jean’s head: ‘It’s just your size,’ said he. ‘Now if you can walk we shall be proper.’
Jean rose up and shook his head to make sure that it was firm. He only felt a slight heaviness, and that he could very well endure. Then, carried away by emotion, like the man of simple heart he was, he caught Maurice in his arms, and, almost smothering him, pressed him to his breast. ‘Oh, my dear little fellow, my dear little fellow,’ he repeated; it was all that he could say.
The Prussians were coming up, however, and they ought not to dawdle behind that wall. Lieutenant Rochas was already beating a retreat with his few men, protecting the colours, which the sub-lieutenant still carried, rolled around their shaft. Lapoulle, being very tall, was able to rise on tip-toe and fire a few more shots over the coping of the wall; but Pache carried his chassepot slung over his shoulder, opining, no doubt, that he had done quite enough work that day, and ought now to have something to eat and go to bed. Bending double, Jean and Maurice made haste to join the others. There was no lack either of guns or cartridges; one merely had to stoop to pick them up. So they again armed themselves, their knapsacks, rifles, and pouches having been abandoned over yonder, when Maurice had been obliged to hoist Jean upon his shoulders.
The wall stretched as far as the wood of La Garenne, and the little band, fancying itself saved, promptly threw itself behind a farmhouse, whence it reached the trees. ‘Ah!’ said Rochas, who retained all his fine, unshakable confidence, ‘we’ll just draw breath here for a moment, before resuming the offensive.’
At the first steps they took, however, they all felt that they were entering a hellish place; still, they could not fall back—whatever the danger, they must needs cross that wood, through which lay their only line of retreat. And it had become a most fearful wood, a wood of despair and death. Realising that some of the French troops must be retiring through it, the Prussians were riddling it with bullets, and covering it with shells. Lashed, as it were, by a tempest, it shook and howled amid the shattering of its branches. The shells cut down the trees, the bullets brought down the leaves in showers, plaintive voices seemed to issue from the split trunks, and sobs fell with the sap-laden boughs. It was like the awful agony of a chained multitude, the terror and wailing of thousands of beings rooted to the soil and unable to flee from the storm of lead and iron. Never was plaint of anguish more intense than in that bombarded forest.
Maurice and Jean, who had joined their comrades, at once felt frightened. They were making their way through full-grown trees and there was space to run, but the bullets whizzed past them every second, wildly ricocheting hither and thither, so that, as they glided from trunk to trunk, they could not tell from which side danger might come. Two men were killed, struck both in front and behind. A venerable oak, whose trunk was smashed by a shell, fell across Maurice’s path with the tragic majesty of a hero, crushing all around it. And just as the young fellow was springing back, a colossal beech tree, which another shell had discrowned, snapped and sank to the ground, like some lofty cathedral pillar. Whither could they flee? On which side direct their steps? There were but toppling branches all around them; it seemed as though they were in some vast edifice that threatened ruin, and the ceilings of whose halls, following one upon another, were for ever and ever falling. And when they had sprung into a plantation to escape being crushed by the big trees, Jean narrowly missed being cut in half by a shell, which fortunately failed to explode. They were now unable to make way amid the inextricable multitude of shrubs and saplings. The slender stems detained them by the shoulders, the long grass twined around their ankles, sudden walls of brambles brought them to a standstill; whilst all around them flew the foliage detached by the giant scythe which was mowing down the wood. Another man, killed beside them by a bullet which penetrated his forehead, remained erect, caught between two young birches; and a score of times, whilst imprisoned in this plantation, they felt death brush them as it passed.
‘Curse it!’ said Maurice, ‘we shall never get out of it.’
He was livid, shuddering again; and even Jean, the brave fellow, who in the morning had inspirited him, was now paling and feeling icy cold. It was fear—horrible, contagious, irresistible fear. Again did they feel an ardent thirst burning them, an unbearable dryness of the mouth and a contraction of the throat, of painful, strangulating violence. They experienced, too, a most uncomfortable sensation, with nausea in the pit of the stomach, whilst innumerable pins seemed to be pricking their legs. And amid these purely physical symptoms of fear, with the grasp of fright pressing tightly on their brows, they saw thousands of black specks flit past them, as though they were indeed able to distinguish the flying cloud of bullets.
‘Ah! what cursed luck!’ stammered Jean. ‘It’s horribly vexing to be here, getting our skulls cracked for others, when they are somewhere else, quietly smoking their pipes.’
‘Yes, why should it be I rather than another?’ added Maurice, distracted and haggard. This was the rebellion of self, the egotistical rage of the individual unwilling to sacrifice himself and die for the sake of the species.
‘And besides,’ resumed Jean, ‘if one only knew the reason of it, if it were at all likely to be of any use.’ And then raising his eyes and looking at the sky, he added: ‘That horrid sun, too, won’t make up its mind to skedaddle! When it has set and night comes there will perhaps be an end of the fighting.’
Unable to tell what o’clock it was, having in fact lost all consciousness of time, he had for a long while already been watching the slow decline of the orb, whose course seemed almost to have been stayed, for it was still and ever hanging over yonder, above the woods on the left bank. And this longing for the sunset was not cowardice, but rather an imperious, growing needment to cease hearing the shells and the bullets, to go off elsewhere, bury oneself in the ground, and plunge into oblivion. Were it not for fear of the world, for the vain glory of distinguishing oneself in presence of one’s comrades, a man would ofttimes lose his head, and despite himself hurry away at a gallop.
However, Maurice and Jean were now again growing accustomed to their peril; and amidst their utter distraction there came to them a kind of unconsciousness and intoxication which was bravery. They ended by no longer trying to hasten through that accursed wood. Horrors had yet increased among that people of bombarded trees, now falling upon all sides like giant sentries killed at their posts. In the delicious, subdued, greeny light under the foliage, in the depths of all the mysterious shelter-places carpeted with moss, the brutal blast of death was ever blowing. The lonely springs were violated; the dying moaned even in the hidden nooks where only lovers hitherto had strayed. One man, whose chest was perforated by a bullet, had just time enough to cry ‘Hit!’ as he fell dying, face downward, on the sward. Another, both of whose legs had been broken by a shell, continued laughing, unconscious of his wound, thinking, in fact, that he had merely stumbled against a tree root. Others, with their limbs pitted, mortally stricken, continued speaking and running for several yards before they fell to the ground in a sudden convulsion. At the first moment the deepest wounds were scarcely felt, and it was only afterwards that the frightful sufferings began, bursting forth with lamentation and tears.
Ah! the traitorous wood, the massacred forest, which, amid all the sobbing of the dying trees, filled, little by little, with the howling anguish of the wounded. At the foot of an oak tree, Maurice and Jean perceived a Zouave, who, with his intestines escaping from a ghastly wound, was raising a continuous roar, like a dying wild beast. Farther on, there was another one—on fire; his blue sash was burning, the flame was rising and singeing his beard, whilst he shed big tears, unable to move because his spine was broken. Then there was a captain whose left arm was torn off, and whose right side was laid open to the thigh, and who, stretched on his stomach, dragged himself along upon an elbow, begging all those who passed, in a shrill, horribly supplicating voice, to have the compassion to despatch him. And there were others and others still, all suffering abominably, strewing the grassy paths in such numbers that it was necessary to be careful lest one should tread upon them in passing. The dead, the wounded, no longer counted, however. The comrade who fell was abandoned, forgotten. Not a glance even was given behind. ‘Twas fate. Another’s turn next; perhaps, indeed, one’s own!
All at once, as they were at last reaching the verge of the wood, a call resounded: ‘Help!’ The sub-lieutenant carrying the colours had just been struck by a bullet in the left lung. He had fallen, spitting forth the blood that had gushed into his mouth; and seeing that nobody stopped, he found strength to call ‘Help!’ again, and to add, ‘The colours!’
Rochas, darting back, seized hold of the flag, the shaft of which was broken, and bounded away with it; whilst the sub-lieutenant, his speech thickened by the bloody froth filling his mouth, muttered: ‘I’m done for, but no matter—save the colours!’
And he remained alone, writhing on the moss in that delicious sylvan nook, tearing up the grass with his convulsive hands, whilst his chest heaved with a frightful rattle which lasted for long hours.
At last they were out of that fearful wood. Besides Jean and Maurice, the only remaining men of the little band were Lieutenant Rochas, Pache, and Lapoulle. Bugler Gaude, who had been lost to view, suddenly sprang out of a thicket, however, and with his bugle dangling from his shoulder, ran on to join his comrades. And the survivors were immensely relieved to find themselves again in the open country where they could breathe at their ease. The whistling of the bullets had ceased, and no shells fell on this side of the valley.
Immediately afterwards they heard some one swearing violently, and ahead of them, in front of a farm gate, they perceived an angry general, mounted on a horse steaming with sweat. It was Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, who like themselves was covered with dust and appeared overcome with fatigue. That red, fat face of his—the face of a jolly companion—expressed the exasperation he felt at the disaster which he looked upon as a personal mischance. His men had not seen him since the morning. He had doubtless lost himself on the battlefield, galloping hither and thither in search of the remnants of his brigade, quite capable by the way of getting himself killed in his rage against those Prussian batteries which were sweeping away not only the Empire, but also his own fortune, high in favour as he was at the Tuileries.
‘Thunder!’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t there anyone left, then? Can’t a man even get any information in this cursed place?’
The farmer and his family must have fled into the depths of the Ardennes. At last, however, an aged woman appeared at the gate, some old servant whose legs, almost past service, had kept her there.
‘Eh, mother, here!’ shouted the general. ‘Where’s Belgium?’
She looked at him with an expression of stupor, as though she did not understand him. Then, casting all restraint aside, and forgetting he was talking to a peasant woman, he shouted that for his own part he didn’t intend to be caught like a rat in a trap by returning to Sedan, but meant to sling his hook across the frontier at the double-quick. Some soldiers had drawn near to him and were listening.
‘But it’s no longer possible to get through, general,’ said a sergeant. ‘There are Prussians all around. This morning was the time to slope.’
Stories were, indeed, already circulating of companies, separated from their regiments, which, without intending it, had got across the frontier, and of others too which, later on, had even succeeded in piercing the enemy’s lines before the junction of the German armies was complete.
Quite beside himself, the general shrugged his shoulders. ‘Come!’ said he, ‘can’t one cut through anything with dare-devils like you? I’ll find another fifty brave fellows willing to risk their skins.’ And again turning towards the old peasant woman: ‘Eh! thunder!’ he cried, ‘just answer, will you, where’s Belgium?’
This time she understood him, and pointed towards the forests with her shrivelled hand: ‘Over there, over there!’
‘Eh? What do you say? Those houses at the end of the fields?’
‘Oh, much farther than that, much farther away! Over yonder, right over yonder!’
The general was stifling with rage. ”Pon my word, this wretched place is disgusting! A man can never tell where he is! Belgium was quite close by, and we were afraid of tumbling into it unawares, and now that we want to get there, it’s gone to the devil! No, no, this is altogether too much, they can take me, and do what they like with me for all I care. I’m off to bed.’ And, urging on his horse, leaping in the saddle like a wine-skin inflated by a blast of anger, he galloped off in the direction of Sedan.
The road turned, and they descended into the Fond de Givonne,[32] a suburb of the town, shut in by hills, where the road in climbing towards the woods was skirted by little houses and gardens. Such a stream of fugitives now crowded it that Lieutenant Rochas soon found himself blockaded with Pache, Lapoulle, and Gaude, under the walls of a tavern, at the corner of a crossway. Jean and Maurice had some trouble in joining them. And greatly were they surprised on hearing a drunkard’s husky voice suddenly calling to them: ‘Hallo! here’s a meeting! Eh, you fellows! What a meeting to be sure!’
On looking round they recognised Chouteau, who was leaning out of one of the ground-floor windows of the tavern. He was very drunk, and between a couple of hiccoughs he continued: ‘Don’t stand on ceremony if you are thirsty. There’s still a drop left for friends.’ And then, waving his hand over his shoulder, he called some one from the other end of the room: ‘Make haste, you lazybones. Give these gentlemen something to drink.’
Thereupon Loubet made his appearance, grinning, and waving a bottle of wine in either hand. He was less intoxicated than his comrade, and, with the nasal twang of the ‘coco'[33] vendors perambulating the streets on a public holiday, he cried, like the Parisian wag he was: ‘Nice and cool! nice and cool! who’ll have a drink!’
He and Chouteau had not been seen by their comrades since they had gone off under the pretence of carrying Sergeant Sapin to the ambulance. They had no doubt wandered and lounged about, carefully avoiding the spots where the shells were falling, till they had finally stranded in that tavern and helped to pillage it. Lieutenant Rochas was quite indignant: ‘Wait a bit, you bandits!’ he shouted, ‘I’ll teach you to guzzle while we others are risking our skins!’
Chouteau, however, would have none of his reprimand. ‘Just remember, you old lunatic,’ said he, ‘that there are no lieutenants left now; we are all free men! Haven’t the Prussians licked you enough—do you want another dose, eh?’
Rochas had to be held back, such was his eagerness to smash Chouteau’s head. Loubet, with the bottles under his arms, endeavoured to make peace: ‘Nonsense!’ said he, ‘we mustn’t eat one another, we are all brothers.’ And catching sight of his comrades, Lapoulle and Pache, he added: ‘Don’t be idiots, you fellows, come in and rinse your throats.’
Lapoulle hesitated for a moment, dimly conscious that it was wrong to go and make merry whilst so many poor devils had only their tongues to swallow. But then he was so thoroughly tired out, so exhausted too with hunger and thirst. All at once he made up his mind, and without a word sprang into the tavern, pushing Pache, also silent and sorely tempted, before him. Pache yielded, and neither of them reappeared.
‘The brigands!’ repeated Rochas; ‘they all ought to be shot.’
He now only had Jean, Maurice, and Gaude with him, and despite their efforts to resist the impetus, they were all four gradually drifting along with the torrent of fugitives, which stretched across the full breadth of the road. They already found themselves far away from the tavern. It was the rout rolling towards the ditches of Sedan in a muddy stream, like a heap of soil and stones which a storm, in sweeping the hillsides, drags down into the valleys. From all the surrounding plateaux, by every slope and every fold, by the Floing road, by way of Pierremont, by way of the cemetery, by way of the Champ de Mars, as well as by the Fond de Givonne, the same mob was pouring along with an ever-accelerated gallop of panic. And how could one reproach these wretched men, who, for twelve hours, had been waiting motionless under the death-dealing artillery of an invisible foe, against which they could do nothing? Now, moreover, the batteries assailed them in front, in flank, and in the rear, the fires converged more and more as the army retreated upon the town; the men were struck down in heaps, cut into a mass of mincemeat in the traitorous hole whither they were swept. A few regiments of the Seventh Corps, notably on the side of Floing, were falling back in fairly good order. But there were no longer ranks or leaders in the Fond de Givonne; the men scrambled and hustled one another distractedly; among them were remnants of every arm, Zouaves, Turcos, Chasseurs, Linesmen, mostly unarmed, and all with torn, soiled uniforms, black hands, black faces, bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, and swollen mouths, tumefied through having yelled so many oaths. Now and again a riderless charger rushed along at a gallop, throwing men to the ground and penetrating the mob with a long eddy of fright. Then guns passed by at breakneck speed—disbanded batteries whose artillerymen, carried away as it were by intoxication, raised no warning shout, but pursued their course crushing everything in their way. And yet the flock-like tramping did not cease; it was a compact defiling, shoulder to shoulder; a flight en masse, every break in which was immediately filled up, in the universal, instinctive eagerness to arrive yonder and secure a shelter behind a wall.
Again did Jean raise his head and turn towards the west. The sunrays were still burning the men’s perspiring faces through the thick dust which was raised by their tramping feet. It was a lovely day, the sky was divinely blue. ‘What a beastly nuisance!’ repeated Jean; ‘that horrid sun won’t sling its hook.’
All at once, in a young woman standing close to a house and on the point of being crushed against it by the torrent, Maurice, to his stupefaction, recognised his sister, Henriette. For nearly a minute he remained gaping at her. And it was she who, without appearing surprised, spoke the first words: ‘They shot him at Bazeilles—yes, I was there—and then, as I want to recover his body, I had an idea——’
She named neither the Prussians nor Weiss. Everybody was bound to understand her, and Maurice understood. He fondly loved his sister, and, with a sob, exclaimed, ‘My poor darling!’
When Henriette had recovered her senses, at about two o’clock, she had found herself at Balan, weeping in the kitchen of some people whom she did not know, with her head lying on a table. But her tears soon ceased to flow. The heroine was already awakening in that slight, delicate, silent woman She feared nothing, she had a proud, unconquerable soul. And, in her grief, she no longer had but one idea, that of recovering her husband’s body to bury it. Her first plan was simply to return to Bazeilles. But everybody deterred her from attempting this, showed her that it was absolutely impossible for her to succeed. So she at last declared that she would seek some one, a man willing either to accompany her or to take the necessary steps. And her choice fell upon a cousin of hers, who had been the assistant-manager of the refinery at Le Chêne, at the time when Weiss was employed there. He had been much attached to her husband and would surely not refuse his help. For a couple of years past, thanks to his wife having inherited some property from her parents, he had retired and taken up his abode at a charming place called the Hermitage, whose tiers of terraces rose up near Sedan, on the farther side of the Fond de Givonne. And thither she was now making her way through all the many obstacles, forced at each moment to halt, and in constant danger of being thrown down, trodden under foot, and killed.
She briefly explained her plan to Maurice, who approved of it. ‘Cousin Dubreuil,’ said he, ‘has always been a good friend to us. He will help you.’
Then another idea came into his head. Lieutenant Rochas was anxious to save the regimental colours. It had already been suggested that the flag should be cut up, and that each man should carry a strip of the silk under his shirt; or it might be buried at the foot of a tree, and disinterred later on, if the situation of the spot were carefully noted. But the idea of lacerating that banner or burying it like a corpse affected them too painfully, and they would have preferred some other expedient. Accordingly, when Maurice proposed that they should confide the colours to some safe person, who would hide them, and if need wore, defend them until he could restore them intact, they all approved of the suggestion. ‘Well, then,’ resumed the young fellow, addressing his sister, ‘we will go with you to see if Dubreuil is at the Hermitage Besides, I’m determined not to leave you.’
It was not easy to get out of the crowd, but they succeeded in doing so, and turned into a hollow road climbing on the left. Then they fell into a perfect labyrinth of lanes and paths, a suburb of market and flower gardens, villas and other country places all jumbled and entangled together; and these paths and lanes wound round between stone walls, or turned sharply, and ended at times in blind alleys. There was here, indeed, a marvellous entrenched camp for an ambuscade kind of warfare, full of nooks which ten men might have defended against a regiment for hours. Shots were already crackling here and there, for the suburb overlooked Sedan, and the Prussian Guard was coming up from the other side of the valley.
When Maurice and Henriette, followed by the others, had turned first to the left and then to the right between two interminable walls, they suddenly came out in front of the large open gateway of the Hermitage, whose grounds rose up in three broad terraces, upon one of which stood the house, a large rectangular building, approached by an avenue of venerable elms. On the verge of a wood, in front, beyond a narrow, deeply banked valley, were some other country residences.
Henriette felt anxious on seeing the gate wide open. ‘They are no longer there—they must have gone away,’ said she.
Her surmise was correct. Foreseeing the impending disaster, Dubreuil had, on the previous day, resigned himself to taking his wife and children to Bouillon. Still, the house was not empty. On glancing at it from a distance through the trees, it became evident that it was the scene of commotion. The young woman at last ventured to step into the avenue, but recoiled on beholding the corpse of a Prussian soldier.
‘Hallo!’ exclaimed Rochas, ‘has there been a tussle here already?’
They were all eager to know what had happened, and hurried towards the house, where the sight they beheld enlightened them. Plainly enough the doors and windows of the ground floor had been broken open with the butts of guns, and through all the gaping apertures could be seen the pillaged rooms; whilst numerous articles of furniture which had been thrown outside were lying on the gravel of the terrace, below the steps. There was notably a sky-blue drawing-room suite, a sofa and twelve arm-chairs, ranged anyhow, pell-mell, round a large stand, the white marble top of which was split in halves. And several Zouaves, Chasseurs, Linesmen, and men of the Marine Infantry were running about behind the buildings and along the paths, firing at the little wood beyond the dingle in front of them.
‘We found some of those filthy Prussians here, sir,’ a Zouave explained to Rochas. ‘They were sacking the place. But you can see that we settled their hash for them. Only the brutes are now coming back, ten to one, and it won’t be an easy job.’
The corpses of three other Prussian soldiers were stretched here and there upon the terrace. And while Henriette was fixedly looking at them—doubtless thinking of her husband who, in a like way, was sleeping the last sleep, lying disfigured amid dust and blood over yonder—a bullet whizzed past her head and struck a tree behind her. Jean darted forward: ‘Don’t stay there—quick, quick! go and hide yourself in the house!’
Since he had met her again, looking so changed, so distracted by wretchedness, he had been gazing at her with a melting heart, picturing her as she had appeared to him on the previous day with her good housewife’s smile. At first he could think of nothing to say to her, not knowing even if she would recognise him. But he would gladly have devoted himself to her could he have given her back any tranquillity and happiness. ‘Wait for us in the house,’ said he. ‘As soon as there is any danger we’ll contrive to get you off up there.’
‘What use is it?’ she replied, with a gesture of indifference. However, her brother was also pushing her towards the house, and she had to climb the steps, and for a moment enter the hall, whence she could survey the avenue from end to end. From that moment she became a spectatress of the fight.
Maurice and Jean were posted behind one of the first elms. Each of those ancient trunks, of giant proportions, furnished ample shelter for a couple of men. Farther on, Bugler Gaude had joined Lieutenant Rochas, who obstinately kept the flag with him since there was no one to whom he could confide it. Whilst he was firing he stood it against the tree, beside him. Each trunk had its little garrison, the Zouaves, Chasseurs, and Marines concealing themselves behind the elms, from one to the other end of the avenue, and only peering forth at the moment when they fired.
The number of Prussians in the little wood across the dingle was no doubt steadily increasing, for the hostile fusillade became more and more lively. No one was to be seen—you barely espied a flitting profile, darting every now and then from one tree to another. Some of the enemy’s skirmishers occupied a country house with green shutters standing on the verge of the wood, and were firing from the partially opened windows of the ground floor. It was now about four o’clock, the cannonade was slackening, dying away; but in this sequestered hollow, whence the white flag hoisted on the keep of Sedan could not be seen, these men, French and Germans, were yet killing one another as though they had some personal quarrel together. And in this direction indeed, in spite of the truce, many hole-and-corner encounters were stubbornly prolonged until black night fell. Both through the suburb of the Fond de Givonne, and across the gardens of the Petit-Pont, the fusillade rattled persistently.
Prussians and Frenchmen continued for a long while riddling one another with bullets across that narrow valley, beyond the Hermitage. From time to time, whenever a man was imprudent enough to show himself, he fell with a bullet in his chest. Three more corpses were already lying in the avenue, and a wounded man, stretched upon his face there, was giving vent to a frightful rattle, without anyone thinking of going to turn him over, so as to lessen his agony.
All at once, as Jean raised his eyes, he saw Henriette slipping a knapsack as a pillow under the unfortunate fellow’s head, after laying him upon his back. She had stolen out of the house without being perceived. The corporal ran up to her and dragged her behind the tree which screened Maurice and himself. ‘Do you want to get killed?’ he asked her.
She did not seem conscious of her rash temerity: ‘No—but I was frightened, all alone in that vestibule,’ she answered: ‘I would much rather stay out here.’
And thenceforth she remained with them. They set her down at their feet close against the trunk of the elm, whilst they continued firing their last cartridges in such mad desperation that both weariness and fear flew away. Indeed, complete unconsciousness was coming over them, their actions were growing quite mechanical, their heads had become so empty that they had lost even the instinct of self-preservation.
‘Just look, Maurice!’ Henriette suddenly exclaimed; ‘isn’t that a man of the Prussian Guard—that dead fellow lying in front of us?’
For a moment or so she had been scrutinising one of the enemy’s dead, a thick-set man with big moustaches, who was lying on his side on the gravel of the terrace. His spiked helmet had rolled a few steps away, with its strap broken. And the uniform was indeed that of the Prussian Guard: dark grey trousers, blue tunic with white galloons and great-coat rolled up and worn in bandolier fashion.
‘I assure you it is the Guards’ uniform,’ continued Henriette. ‘I’ve an engraving at home. And, besides, there’s the photograph which Cousin Gunther sent us.’ She paused, and then in her tranquil way rose and stepped up to the corpse before she could be prevented. She stooped over the body and at once exclaimed: ‘The shoulder-strap is red! Ah! I felt certain of it.’ And then back she came, never heeding the bullets which whistled past her ears. ‘Yes, the shoulder-strap’s red—it was fated—Cousin Gunther’s regiment.’
From that moment neither Maurice nor Jean could prevail on her to remain still, under cover of the tree. She moved about, and protruded her head, insisting, despite everything, upon looking in the direction of the little wood, as though harassed by some absorbing thought. Her brother and the corporal still continued firing, pushing her back with their knees whenever she exposed herself too much. The Prussians, no doubt, were beginning to consider themselves in sufficient force for an attack, for they were now boldly showing themselves; quite a stream of them was gathering and pouring forth from among the trees. This led to their sustaining heavy losses, for every French bullet took effect, bringing a man to the ground.
‘There! perhaps that’s your cousin!’ suddenly said Jean, ‘that officer who has just come out of the house with the green shutters.’
A captain, recognisable by the gold-laced collar of his tunic and the gilded eagle which, in the oblique sunlight, was flaming on his helmet, could now be seen just outside the little house. Sword in hand, he was calling out an order in a sharp voice, and the distance was so short—barely two hundred yards—that one could plainly distinguish his slim figure and his stern face of a pinkish hue with little fair moustaches. Henriette closely scrutinised him with her sharp eyes, and without any sign of astonishment replied: ‘It is certainly he. I recognise him perfectly.’
Maurice made a wild gesture and took aim. ‘Cousin Gunther? Ah! thunder! he shall pay for Weiss!’
But Henriette sprang up quivering, and dealt his chassepot a blow, so that the bullet flew skyward: ‘No, no,’ said she, ‘not relatives; not people we know. It is abominable!’
Her womanly instincts were again aroused within her, and she dropped to the ground behind the tree, weeping and sobbing violently. Horror was overwhelming her; she was now all fear and grief.
Rochas, however, was triumphant. The fire of his few soldiers, whom he excited with his thunderous voice, had acquired such intensity at sight of the Prussians that the latter were falling back, again seeking the cover of the little wood. ‘Keep firm, my lads!’ shouted the lieutenant; ‘don’t give way. Ah! the capons, they are turning tail, we’ll settle their hash for them!’
He was quite joyful: he seemed to have recovered all his amazing confidence. There had been no defeats! Those few men in front of him, yonder, were the German armies, which he was about to overthrow at one easy stroke. All his tall, lean frame, his long, bony face, with its hooked nose curving over a passionate, good-natured mouth, was merry with a braggart delight, the joy of the trooper who has conquered the world between courting his sweetheart and tippling a bottle of good wine!
‘Parbleu! my lads, what are we here for if not to give them a licking! It would be something new for us to be beaten, eh? Beaten! is it possible? Another effort, my lads, and they’ll scamper away like hares!’
He yelled and gesticulated, withal such a capital fellow amid his ignorant illusions, that the men readily joined in his gaiety. All at once he shouted: ‘We’ll kick them back to the frontier, yes, kick them back to the frontier! Victory! Victory!’
At that same moment, however, while the enemy on the other side of the dingle seemed to be falling back, a terrible fusillade broke out on the left. It was the everlasting turning movement—a large detachment of the Guard had made its way round by the Fond de Givonne. From that moment it was no longer possible to hold the Hermitage. The dozen men or so who were still defending its terraces found themselves between two fires, in danger, too, of being cut off from Sedan. Some of them fell, and for a moment there was extreme confusion. The Prussians were already climbing over the walls of the grounds, rushing up along the pathways in such numbers that a bayonet fight immediately began. One Zouave, a tall handsome, black-bearded man, whose head was bare, and who had doffed his jacket, especially distinguished himself by his fearful exploits, transpiercing cracking chests and yielding bellies, wiping his bayonet, red with one man’s blood, in the flesh of another’s flank; and the weapon having broken he took to splitting skulls with the butt of his gun, till at last a stumble altogether disarmed him, when he sprang with such force at the throat of a burly Prussian that, locked in a mortal embrace, they both rolled over the gravel as far as the gaping kitchen doorway. And here and there, amid the trees and at the edges of the lawns, there were other slaughterous encounters which swelled the number of dead. But it was in front of the house-steps, around the sky-blue sofa and arm-chairs that the struggle proved most desperate—a mad scramble of men firing for a moment at such close range that they burned one another’s faces, and then closing and tearing with tooth and nail, for lack of a handy knife to plunge into each other’s throats.
And then it was that Gaude the bugler, whose pained expression of face always spoke of sorrows which he never mentioned to his comrades, was seized with a fit of heroic lunacy. Amid this last defeat, although he knew well enough that the company was annihilated, that not a man could answer his summons, he caught hold of his bugle, raised it to his lips and sounded the rally with such a tempestuous blast that it seemed as though he wanted to arouse the dead. The Prussians were coming up, yet he did not stir, but blew louder and louder, sounding a full flourish until a volley threw him to the ground, when his last breath escaped in a bugle note, quivering skywards through the air.
Rochas standing there, unable to comprehend what was passing, had made no attempt at flight. He waited and stammered: ‘Eh, what is it? what, what?’ The idea that this was again defeat did not enter his brain. Everything was being changed, even the rules of fighting. Ought not those fellows to have waited across the dingle until the French went thither to beat them? It was impossible to kill enough of them; fresh ones were ever popping up. What could it all mean, this cursed war, in which ten men collected together to kill a single antagonist, when the enemy only showed himself of an evening, after routing you throughout the day by a prudent cannonade? Aghast, distracted, having understood nothing of the campaign from first to last, Rochas felt himself enveloped, carried off, as it were, by some superior force which he no longer resisted, albeit he mechanically repeated in his obstinate way: ‘Courage, my lads, victory is yonder!’
All the same, he had with a swift movement again taken up the colours. ‘Twas his last thought—to hide them so that they might not be captured by the Prussians. However, although the shaft was broken, it somehow caught in his legs, and almost tripped him up. Bullets were whistling past him, he felt that death was near, and stripping the silk from the staff, he tore and tried to annihilate it. And, at that same moment, he was struck in the neck, in the chest, and in the legs, and sank upon the ground, swathed in those tricolour shreds. For another minute he remained alive, with dilated eyes, espying perhaps on the horizon a vision of what War really was—an atrocious, vital struggle which man should accept only with a grave and resigned heart, as he would some fatal law. Then a little sob escaped him, and he passed away in his childish bewilderment, like some poor being of limited understanding, some joyous insect crushed beneath the necessity of gigantic and impassive nature. And, with him, died a legend.
As soon as the Prussians were seen arriving, Jean and Maurice had beaten a retreat from tree to tree, screening Henriette as far as was practicable. They did not cease firing, but every now and again discharged a shot and then sought a fresh shelter-place. Maurice knew of a little door in the wall, in the upper part of the grounds, and they luckily found it open. Without a moment’s hesitation, they all three darted outside, bounding into a narrow by-way which wound along between high walls. Just as they were reaching the end of it some shots compelled them to spring to the left into what unfortunately proved to be a blind alley. They thereupon had to gallop back and turn to the right under a hail of bullets. Later on, indeed, they were never able to remember the road they had taken. Men were still firing at one another from well-nigh every corner of that inextricable network of paths and lanes. Some lingered battling, till the last moment, beside the cart-gates of market gardeners’ premises; the slightest obstacles were being defended and carried by assault with terrible desperation. Then, all at once, Maurice, his sister, and the corporal found themselves once more on the road of the Fond de Givonne, near Sedan.
And now for the last time Jean raised his head and looked towards the west, whence a great rosy glow was rising; and he heaved a sigh of immense relief: ‘Ah! that horrid sun is setting at last.’
Meanwhile, they were all three galloping, galloping along without drawing breath. Around them, the fag end of the stream of fugitives was still pouring down the road with the ever-increasing speed of an overflowing torrent. When they reached the Balan gate they had to wait amid a ferocious crush and scramble. The drawbridge chains had broken, and as the ditch could only be crossed by the narrow foot-bridge, neither guns nor horses were, on this side, able to enter the town. The crush was said to be still more frightful at the Château postern and the Cassine gate. It was a wild engulfment, all the remnants of the army rolling down the slopes, throwing themselves upon the town and tumbling into it with a sluicy uproar as though into the depths of some sewer. The baleful fascination of those walls had ended by perverting even the bravest.
Maurice had taken Henriette in his arms, and quivering with impatience he exclaimed: ‘I hope for God’s sake they won’t close the gate till everyone has got in.’
His fear was that of the throng. Meantime, however, soldiers were already camping upon the slopes, both on right and left, whilst batteries of artillery, guns, caissons, and horses were stranding, pell-mell, in the ditch. Then repeated bugle calls rang out, followed by the clear notes of the ‘retreat’ summoning the belated soldiers. Several more men thereupon came up at the double-quick, and although isolated shots still resounded through the suburbs, the reports now became less and less frequent. Detachments were posted on the inner banquette of the parapet to defend the approaches, and the gate was at last closed. The Prussians were now no more than a hundred yards away. They could be seen coming and going across the Balan road, quietly occupying the houses and gardens there.
Maurice and Jean—pushing Henriette before them so as to protect her from the jostling of their comrades—had been among the last to enter Sedan. Six o’clock was striking. The cannonade had now ceased for nearly an hour, and little by little there came an end even to the isolated rifle shots. And then of all the deafening uproar, the hateful thunder that had growled since sunrise, nothing whatever remained; it had passed into death-like nihility. Night came, falling amid a lugubrious, an awful silence.
< < < Chapter VI
Chapter VIII > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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