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

by Émile Zola

Then he gave some details. The interview between General de Wimpffen, General von Moltke, and Bismarck had taken place at the château of Bellevue, near Donchery. A terrible man that General von Moltke, stern and hard, with the glabrous face of a mathematical chemist; a man who won battles by working out algebraical calculations in his study! He had immediately been desirous of showing that he was fully acquainted with the hopeless situation of the French army: it had no provisions and no ammunition, said he, it was a prey to demoralisation and disorder, and there was no possibility whatever of its breaking the iron circle that shut it in; whilst the German armies occupied by far the stronger positions, and could burn down the town in a couple of hours. Then he coldly dictated his will, which was the surrender of the entire French army, with arms and baggage.

On his side, Bismarck simply supported Moltke with the air of a good-natured bloodhound. And, thereupon, General de Wimpffen exhausted himself in combating these conditions, the most harsh that were ever imposed upon a beaten army. He spoke of his ill-luck, the heroism of the soldiers, and the danger of exasperating a proud people beyond endurance; he threatened, begged, talked during three hours with despairing, superb eloquence, asking that the vanquished army might simply be interned in some far-off region of France, or, if preferred, in Algeria; but, after all, the only concession made by the victor was that those of the officers who would give an engagement in writing, and pledge their honour not to serve again during the war, might return to their homes. Finally, the truce was prolonged until ten o'clock on the following morning, and if at that hour the conditions had not been accepted, the Prussian batteries would again open fire and burn down the town.

'But it's idiotic!' exclaimed Delaherche; 'you don't burn down a town that has done nothing to deserve it.'

The major, however, put the finishing touch to his alarm by adding that he had just seen some officers at the Hôtel de l'Europe who were talking of a sortie en masse before daybreak. Since the German exactions had become known, extreme excitement was being manifested, and the most extravagant plans were broached. Nobody was deterred by the idea that it would not be loyal to break the truce without a word of warning, under cover of the darkness, and all sorts of mad plans were indulged in:—A midnight march on Carignan through the ranks of the Bavarians, the recapture of the plateau of Illy, by means of a surprise, and the opening up of the road to Mézières; or else an irresistible rush, which at one bound would land them in Belgium. Others, it is true, said nothing, but realised the fatality of the disaster, and would have accepted and signed anything with a glad cry of relief, so as to have done at once with the whole business.

'Well, good night,' added Bouroche. 'I must try to sleep for a couple of hours. I need it.'

Thereupon he went off, leaving Delaherche suffocating. What? It was true, then; they were going to begin fighting again; they were going to burn and raze Sedan to the ground! It was becoming inevitable; this frightful thing would assuredly take place as soon as the sun had risen high enough above the hills to illumine the horror of the massacre. In a mechanical way he once more climbed the steep garret-stairs, and found himself again among the chimney stacks at the edge of the narrow terrace overlooking the town. But now he was in the midst of darkness, an infinite rolling sea of huge black waves, among which he was at first unable to distinguish anything. The factory buildings below him were the first to stand out in the gloom, in confused masses which he recognised; the engine-room, the loom-shops, the drying-rooms, the warehouses; and the view of all that huge pile of building, his pride and his wealth, overwhelmed him with pity for himself at the thought that in a few hours' time there would only be some ashes of it left. He raised his eyes towards the horizon and looked all around that black immensity, where the menace of the morrow was sleeping. On the south, in the direction of Bazeilles, some flakes of fire were flying skyward above the houses sinking into cinders; whilst, towards the north, the farm of the wood of La Garenne, set on fire during the evening, was still burning, ensanguining the trees with a great red glow. There were no other fires, nothing but those two blazes; all the rest was a fathomless abyss traversed only by scattered, terrifying noises. Some one was weeping over yonder, perhaps far away, perhaps upon the ramparts. In vain did he try to penetrate the veil, to discern the Liry and Marfée hills, the Frénois and Wadelincourt batteries, all the long belt of bronze beasts, with outstretched necks and open muzzles, whose presence he divined there. And as he lowered his eyes upon the town around him, he heard its pant of anguish—not merely the restless slumber of the soldiers fallen in the streets, the dull rustling of that mass of men, animals, and guns, but also, at least he fancied so, the anxious insomnia of the citizens, his neighbours, who, like himself, were unable to sleep, consumed by fever whilst they waited for the dawn. They all must know that the capitulation was not signed; they all must be counting the hours, shivering at the idea that if it were not signed nothing would remain for them but to go down into their cellars to die there, blocked up, crushed beneath the ruins of their homes. Then, all at once it seemed to him as though a desperate voice were ascending from the Rue des Voyards, crying 'Murder!' amid a sudden clank of arms. And thereupon he leant over the terrace railing and remained there listening in the dense night, lost amid the misty, starless sky, and seized from head to foot with such a shuddering that every hair upon his skin stood up.

Maurice awoke on the sofa at the first gleam of light. He was aching all over and did not stir, but lay there with his eyes fixed on the window panes, whilst they were slowly whitened by a livid dawn. In the acute lucidity of those waking moments, all the abominable memories returned to him, the battle of the day before, the flight, the disaster. Everything again passed before his eyes, even to the slightest details, and he experienced frightful suffering at the thought of that defeat, the crying shame of which penetrated to the very roots of his being, as though he had felt himself the culprit. And he reasoned his sufferings, analysed himself, finding the faculty of devouring himself quickened by what had happened. Was he not, after all, the first comer, a mere passer-by of the period, certainly of brilliant education, but at the same time crassly ignorant of all that he ought to have known, vain, too, even to blindness, and perverted by impatience for enjoyment, and by the lying prosperity of the reign? Then came another evocation as it were; he pictured his grandfather, born in 1780, one of the heroes of the Grand Army, one of the victors of Austerlitz, Wagram, and Friedland; next his father, born in 1811, fallen into bureaucracy, a petty official of indifferent ability, receiver of taxes at Le Chêne Populeux, where he had worn himself away; then himself, born in 1841, brought up as a gentleman, called to the bar, capable of the worst folly and of the greatest enthusiasm, vanquished at Sedan, in what he realised was an immense catastrophe, the end, indeed, of a world; and this degeneration of the race, which explained how it had become possible that France, victorious with the grandfathers, should be defeated in the person of the grandsons, crushed his heart as though it were some slowly aggravated family complaint, culminating in the fatal catastrophe when the appointed hour had struck. He would have felt so brave and triumphant had they been victorious! But in presence of defeat he was seized with the nervous weakness of a woman, and gave way to one of those fits of immense despair, during which it seemed to him as though the whole world were foundering. There was nothing left, France was dead. Sobs stifled him, and he wept, joining his hands together and stammering once more the prayers of infancy: 'Take me, my God! Take all these poor suffering wretches!'

Jean, rolled up in the blanket on the floor, heard him, and began to stir. 'What is the matter, youngster? Are you ill?' asked the corporal, eventually sitting up and feeling greatly astonished. Then, realising that Maurice had been taken again with those peculiar ideas of his, he spoke to him in a fatherly way: 'Come, what is the matter? You shouldn't worry yourself like that for nothing.'

'Ah!' exclaimed Maurice, 'it's all up; we can prepare ourselves to become Prussians.'

Jean, illiterate peasant that he was, with a hard skull, expressed great astonishment on hearing this, whereupon Maurice tried to make him understand that the race was exhausted, and must disappear and make room for the necessary stream of new blood. With an obstinate shake of the head, however, the corporal refused to accept the explanation: 'What! my field no longer belong to me? I should allow the Prussians to take it when I'm not yet dead and still have my two arms left? Come, come!'