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

by Émile Zola

The bridge was defended by a couple of guns pointed towards the peninsula; and the Prussian staff had turned a private residence, just beyond the canal, into a guard-house, where was stationed a commandant appointed to receive and guard the prisoners. The formalities were of a very summary description; the men arriving were simply counted like sheep, just as they came along, but little attention being paid either to the different uniforms or the different numbers; and the various flocks having scrambled past began to encamp wheresoever the chances of the road led them.

Maurice thought he might venture to apply to a Bavarian officer who sat there, astride a chair, smoking: 'In which direction, sir, shall I find the 106th of the Line?'

Was this officer an exception to the rule, and did he not understand French? Or did he think it amusing to send a poor devil of a prisoner astray? At all events he smiled, raised his hand and signed to Maurice to go straight on.

Although Maurice belonged to that part of the country he had never previously set foot on the peninsula, and he walked onward upon a journey of discovery much as though he had been thrown by a squall upon some far-away island. He at first skirted Glaire Tower, a handsome estate on his left, whose little park, planted beside the Meuse, was extremely charming. Then the road followed the river which flowed by on the right hand, below steep and lofty banks. Little by little the road sloped upwards, winding round the hillock in the centre of the peninsula; and here were some old quarries, excavations towards which strayed narrow pathways. Farther on stood a mill beside the water. Then the road turned, and came back to the village of Iges, built on a slope and connected with the opposite bank of the Meuse by a ferry just in front of the spinning works of St. Albert. Finally patches of cultivated ground and meadows were spread out—quite an expanse of flat, treeless land, limited by the rounded loop of the river. In vain did Maurice scan the undulating hill slope: he could only see some artillery and cavalry taking up their quarters there. Thereupon he again made inquiries, applying to a corporal of Chasseurs d'Afrique, who, however, could tell him nothing. Night was gathering and, feeling weary, he sat down for a moment on a mile-stone.

Then, in the despair which all at once came over him, he perceived across the Meuse those accursed fields where he had fought two days before. In the waning light of that rainy day everything had a livid hue—a dismal, mud-smeared vista was offered to his eyes. The defile of St. Albert, the narrow road by which the Prussians had approached, skirted the loop of the river as far as some whitish quarry pits. The crests of the wood of La Falizette waved beyond the slopes of the Seugnon hill; and almost in front of him, just a little on the left, was St. Menges with its road sloping down to the ferry. In the centre, just opposite, rose the Hattoy hill. Illy was far away in the rear. Fleigneux nestled behind a bend of the ground; whilst Floing was nearer in, on the right hand. He recognised the field in which he had waited, for so many hours, lying among the cabbages; the plateau which the reserve artillery had attempted to defend; and the crest where he had seen Honoré expire, stretched upon his shattered gun. And all the abomination of the disaster seemed to be coming to life again, filling him with anguish and disgust till he felt sick at heart.

A fear lest he should be overtaken by the darkness induced him to resume his search. Perhaps the 106th was camping on the low ground, beyond the village. But he only found some prowlers there, and accordingly resolved to make the circuit of the peninsula, following the loop of the river. Whilst crossing a potato field he took the precaution to tear up some of the plants and fill his pockets with potatoes; they were not yet ripe, but he had nothing else to eat, for it unluckily happened that Jean had taken charge of the two loaves which Delaherche had given them when starting. What especially struck Maurice was the large number of horses he met on the bare land sloping gently, from the central hillock, to the Meuse in the direction of Donchery. Why had all these animals been brought there? How were they to be fed? Black night had fallen when he reached a little wood, beside the water, where he was surprised to find the Cent-Gardes of the Emperor's escort already installed, drying themselves around large fires. These 'gentlemen,' who thus camped apart from the other troops, had good tents, pots full of boiling soupe, and even a cow, tethered to a tree. Maurice at once noticed that they gazed askance at him, wretched-looking Linesman that he was, with his uniform in tatters and covered with mud. Still they allowed him to cook his potatoes among the ashes of one of their fires; after which, withdrawing to a tree a hundred yards away, he sat himself down to eat. It was no longer raining, the sky had cleared and the stars were shining very brightly in the depths of the bluey darkness. He then reflected that it would be best for him to spend the night there, and to resume his search in the morning. Besides he was quite overcome with fatigue, and the tree would always afford him some shelter should the rain begin falling again.

He did not manage to sleep, however, haunted as he was by thoughts of that vast prison open to the night air, in which he realised he was confined. The Prussians had displayed remarkable acumen in driving thither the eighty thousand men who remained of the army of Châlons. The peninsula was a league[37] or so in length, with a width of about a mile, ample space in which to pen the immense disbanded flock of vanquished soldiers. And Maurice clearly realised that water surrounded them without a break, the loop of the Meuse winding round them on three sides, whilst at the base of the peninsula was the derivational canal, linking the two adjacent river-beds. At this point only was there an outlet, the bridge guarded by a couple of cannon. And thus, despite its extent, nothing would be easier than to guard this camp. He had already noticed the German sentries, who had been posted in a cordon on the opposite bank of the Meuse, near the water's edge, at intervals of fifty yards or so, with orders to fire upon every man who might try to escape by swimming across the river. Uhlans, moreover, galloped along in the rear connecting the various pickets; and farther away, scattered over the country-side, were the black lines of the Prussian regiments, so that a triple living enceinte penned in the captive army.

At present, however, although insomnia kept his eyes wide open, Maurice could only see the darkness, amid which the bivouac fires were being lighted, together with the silhouettes of the motionless sentries, ranged beyond the pale ribbon of the Meuse. These sentries stood there erect and black in the starlight, and at regular intervals Maurice heard their guttural call, a threatening watch-cry which died away, afar off, amid the loud gushing of the river. As he heard those harsh foreign syllables speeding along beneath a lovely starlit night of France, all the nightmare of two days previously was born anew within him; he once more seemed to behold all that he had again seen whilst it was light an hour or so previously—that plateau of Illy still strewn with slain, those accursed outskirts of Sedan, where a world had crumbled away. Lying on the damp soil at the verge of the wood, his head resting on the root of a tree, he again sank into the despair which had taken possession of him on Delaherche's sofa the previous morning; and that which now tortured him, increasing the anguish of his pride, was the question of the morrow, a desire to measure the depth of that great Downfall, to ascertain amid what ruins that world of yesterday had sunk. Was that abominable war not over, as the Emperor had surrendered his sword to King William? But he remembered what two Bavarian soldiers had said whilst conducting him and his comrades to Iges: 'We all in France, we all to Paris!' Amid his semi-somnolence there came to him a sudden vision of what was happening—the Empire swept away, carried off by universal execration; the Republic proclaimed amidst an outburst of patriotic fever; the shadows of the Legend of '92 arising, the soldiers of the levée en masse, the armies of volunteers driving the invader from the soil of France. And everything was intermingled in his poor, ailing head—the demands of the victors; the harshness of the conquest; the obstinacy of the vanquished, intent on resisting even to the last drop of their blood; and the captivity reserved to those eighty thousand men, of whom he was one, first on that peninsula, and then in the fortresses of Germany during weeks, months, and perhaps years. Everything was splitting to pieces—falling for evermore into the depths of limitless misfortune.

The call of the sentries, growing gradually louder and louder, burst forth in front of him and then slowly died away, afar off. He had awakened from a short doze, and was turning over on the hard ground when the profound silence was suddenly rent by the report of a firearm. Then a death-rattle sped through the black night, and there came a sound of splashing water, the brief struggle of a body sinking head-foremost in the stream. Some unlucky fellow had, no doubt, been hit by a bullet in the chest, whilst attempting to escape by swimming across the Meuse.