The Downfall (La Débâcle): A Story of the Horrors of War

by Émile Zola

Then away he galloped, going off by a road that ascended towards La Moncelle; and the rumour spread that he had just had a violent discussion with General Ducrot, during which each had upheld his own plan and attacked the other's; one declaring that a retreat on Mézières had been an impossibility since the night before, whilst the other predicted that if they did not now retire to the plateau of Illy the entire army would be surrounded before evening. And they also accused one another of knowing neither the district nor the real state of the troops. The worst was, that both of them were in the right.

For a moment or so, pressing as was Henriette's desire to go forward, her attention had been diverted from her purpose. She had just recognised some fugitives from Bazeilles stranded by the roadside—a family of poor weavers, the husband, the wife and their three girls, the eldest of whom was only nine years old. They were so overcome, so utterly distracted by weariness and despair, that they had been able to go no farther, but had sunk down against a wall. 'Ah! my dear lady,' said the woman to Henriette, 'we have nothing left. Our house, you know, was on the Place de l'Eglise. A shell set it on fire, and I don't know how the children and we two didn't leave our lives there.'

At this remembrance the three little girls again began sobbing and shrieking, whilst the mother, with the gestures of one deranged, gave a few particulars of their disaster: 'I saw the loom burn like a faggot of dry wood,' said she; 'the bed, the furniture flamed up faster than straw—and there was the clock too; yes, the clock which I didn't even have time to carry away with me.'

'Thunder!' swore the man, with his eyes full of big tear-drops, 'what on earth will become of us?'

To tranquillise them, Henriette replied in a voice that quivered slightly: 'At all events, you are together; neither of you has come to any harm, and you have your little girls with you too. You must not complain.'

Then she began to question them, anxious to know what was taking place at Bazeilles, whether they had seen her husband there, and what had been the condition of her house at the time they came away. In their shivering fright, however, they gave contradictory answers. No, they had not seen Monsieur Weiss. But at this, one of the little girls declared that she had seen him; he was lying on the footway, said she, with a big hole in his head. Her father thereupon gave her a smack to teach her not to tell such stories, for a story it was, undoubtedly. As for the house, that must have been standing when they came away; in fact, they now remembered noticing, as they passed it, that the door and the windows were all carefully closed, as if nobody were there. Besides, at that time, the Bavarians were only in possession of the Place de l'Eglise, and they had to conquer the village, street by street, house by house. Since then, however, they must have made no little progress, and at the present time, no doubt, all Bazeilles was on fire.[27] And the wretched couple continued talking of all these things with fumbling gestures of fear, evoking the whole frightful vision of flaming roofs, flowing blood, and corpses strewing the ground.

'And my husband?' repeated Henriette.

They no longer answered her, however; they were sobbing, with their hands before their eyes. And she remained there consumed by atrocious anxiety, but erect and without weakening, merely a faint quiver causing her lips to tremble. What ought she to believe? In vain did she repeat that the child must have been mistaken; still and ever she seemed to see her husband lying across the road with a bullet in his head. Then, too, she was disquieted on thinking of the house where, so it seemed, every shutter was closed. Why was that? Was he no longer there? All at once a conviction that he was dead froze her heart to the core. Perhaps, though, he was only wounded, and at this thought her urgent longing to go there and be with him seized hold of her once more, and so imperiously that she would again have tried to make her way through the ranks of the soldiers had not the bugles at that moment sounded the advance.

Many of the young fellows gathered together here had come from Toulon, Rochefort, or Brest, barely drilled, without ever having fired a shot in their lives, and yet they had been fighting since the morning as bravely and as stoutly as veterans. They, who had marched so badly from Rheims to Mouzon, weighed down by the unwonted task, were proving themselves the best disciplined, the most fraternally united of all the troops—linked together in presence of the enemy by a solid bond of duty and abnegation. The bugles had merely to sound and they were returning to the fight, marching once more to the attack despite all the anger that swelled their veins. Thrice had they been promised the support of a division which did not come, and they felt that they were being abandoned, sacrificed. To send them back to Bazeilles, like this, after making them evacuate the village, was equivalent indeed to asking each one of them for his life. And they all knew it, and they all gave their lives without a thought of revolting. The ranks closed up, and they advanced beyond the trees that screened them, to find themselves once more among the bullets and the shells.

Henriette gave a deep sigh of relief. So at last they were marching! She followed, hoping to reach Bazeilles in company with the troops, and quite prepared to run, should they, on their side, do so. But they had already halted again. The enemy's projectiles were now fairly raining around them, and to reoccupy Bazeilles each yard of the road had to be conquered, the lanes, houses, and gardens recaptured both on the right and on the left. The men in the first ranks had opened fire, and they now only advanced by fits and starts, long minutes being consumed in overcoming the slightest obstacles. And Henriette soon realised that she would never get there if she continued remaining in the rear waiting for victory. So she made up her mind, and threw herself between two hedges on the right hand, taking a path that descended towards the meadows.