The Downfall (La Débâcle). Emile Zola

Vineuil to give his opinion.

      Lieutenant Rochas nodded assent, but the colonel made a gesture of helplessness: 'There are too many of them. Nearly seven hundred. How could you manage—whom could you select? Besides, to tell the truth, the general won't have it. He's quite paternal, and says he never punished a single man in Algeria. No, no; I can do nothing. It's terrible.'

      'It is terrible,' boldly rejoined the captain, 'it's the end of everything.'

      Jean was retiring, when he heard Surgeon-Major Bouroche, whom he had not seen, growl in an undertone on the threshold of the inn that without discipline and punishments the army was done for. Before a week was over the men would be kicking their officers, whereas if a few of these fine fellows had been shot at once, the others, perhaps, would have profited by the lesson.

      Nobody was punished. With commendable forethought some officers of the rear-guard escorting the army train had caused the knapsacks and guns bestrewing either side of the roads to be picked up. Only a small number was missing, and the men were re-armed at daybreak, furtively as it were, so as to hush up the affair. Orders had been given to raise the camp at five o'clock, but the men were roused at four, and the retreat on Belfort was hastened, the commanders being convinced that the Prussians were now only two or three leagues away. The men had to content themselves with biscuit, and with nothing to warm their stomachs they remained quite foundered after that brief, feverish night. And again that morning anything like an orderly march was prevented by the precipitate departure.

      The day was an infinitely sad one, far worse than the day before. The character of the scenery had changed; they had entered a mountainous country, the roads climbed and descended slopes planted with fir trees; and the narrow valleys, bushy with furze, were spangled with golden flowers. But across that stretch of country so bright in the August sunrays, panic, growing more and more frenzied, had been sweeping since the previous day. A fresh despatch, instructing the mayors to warn the inhabitants to place their valuables in safety, had brought the general terror to a climax. Was the enemy at hand then? Would they even have time enough to escape? And they all fancied they could hear the roar of the invasion coming nearer and nearer; that sound like the dull roll of an overflowing river which had been swelling in volume ever since their departure from Mulhausen, and which now, at each village they came to, was increased by some fresh scene of terror, fraught with wailing and uproar.

      Maurice marched along like a somnambulist, with his feet tingling, and his shoulders crushed by his gun and knapsack. He no longer thought of anything; at the sights that met his gaze he fancied himself in a nightmare; and he was no longer conscious of his comrades' tramp, realising merely that Jean was at his side, worn out with the same weariness and the same grief as himself. The villages they passed through presented a lamentable, pitiful aspect, such as to fill the heart with poignant anguish. As soon as the retreating troops, the worn-out, footsore, straggling soldiers appeared, the inhabitants began to bestir themselves, and hasten their flight. They had felt so easy in mind only a fortnight previously; all Alsace, indeed, had awaited the war with a smile, convinced that the fighting would take place in Germany. But now France was invaded, and the tempest was falling upon their heads, around their houses, and over their fields like one of those terrible hail and thunder storms which ruin an entire province in a couple of hours.

      Before the doors of the houses, amid a scene of fearful confusion, men were loading carts and piling up articles of furniture, careless whether they broke them or not; and from the upper windows women flung out a last mattress or lowered a baby's cradle which had been well-nigh forgotten. And the baby having been strapped inside it, the cradle was perched atop of the load, among the upturned legs of the chairs and tables. In another vehicle, standing behind, the poor, infirm, old grandfather was being bound to a wardrobe that he might be carted away like some household utensil. Then there were those who had no cart, and who piled a few goods and chattels into a wheelbarrow, and others who went off with simply a bundle of clothes under their arm, and others too who had only thought of saving their parlour clock, which they pressed to their hearts as though it had been an infant. It was impossible to remove everything, and many articles of furniture and heavy bundles of linen lay abandoned in the ditches. Some folks before leaving fastened up their homes, and the houses with their doors and shutters securely closed looked quite dead; but the majority of the people, in their haste and the despairing conviction that everything would be destroyed, left their old homesteads open, with doors and windows gaping widely; and these poor empty houses, through which the wind could blow as it listed, and whence the very cats had fled, shuddering at what was about to happen, were the saddest of all, sad like the houses of a captured town depopulated by fright. At each succeeding village the spectacle became more and more pitiable, the number of those who were moving and hastening away became larger and larger, and there was shaking of fists, swearing of oaths, and shedding of tears amid all the growing scramble and confusion.

      But it was especially whilst he followed the high road through the open country that Maurice felt his anguish stifling him. As they drew nearer to Belfort the train of runaways closed up and became a continuous procession. Ah! the poor people who imagined they would find a shelter-place under the walls of the stronghold. The man belaboured the horse, and the woman followed, dragging the children with her. Entire families, bending beneath their burdens, and with the little ones, who were unable to keep up, lagging behind, were hastening over the blinding white roads which the fiery sun was heating. Many of the fugitives had taken off their shoes that they might cover the ground more rapidly, and were walking along barefooted; and mothers with their dress-bodies unfastened were giving the breast to crying infants, without pausing for a moment in their march.

      In the panic-fraught breeze which dishevelled their hair and lashed their hastily donned garments, many of the runaways looked round with scared faces, and made gestures with trembling hands as though to shut out all view of the horizon. Others, farmers, accompanied by all their servants, were hastening across the fields, driving before them their herds and flocks—their sheep, cows, oxen and horses, which they had turned out with blows from their sheds and stables. They were making for the mountain gorges, the high table-lands, the deserted forests, and the sight of them recalled the memory of those great migrations of ancient times, when invaded nations made way for the conquering barbarians. They intended to live under canvas in some lonely rock-girt spot, so far from the roads that not one of the enemy's soldiers would dare to approach it. And the flying clouds that enveloped them were soon wafted away behind the clumps of fir trees, whilst the lowing of the cattle and the thuds of their hoofs grew more and more indistinct. Meantime, the flood of vehicles and wayfarers pressed along the road, hampering the march of the troops and becoming, as one approached Belfort, so compact and strong—with a force like the irresistible current of a spreading torrent—that the soldiers were repeatedly compelled to halt.

      During one of those brief halts Maurice beheld a scene which he long remembered, as one might remember a blow dealt one in the face. There was a solitary house by the roadside, the abode of some poor peasant, whose meagre patch of land stretched behind it. Firmly rooted to his native soil, this man had been unwilling to leave his fields, feeling that if he did so he must needs tear his flesh to shreds. So he remained there, and could be seen crouching on a bench in a low room, whence with empty eyes he watched the passing soldiers, whose retreat was about to place his ripe corn at the mercy of the invader. Beside him stood a young woman, his wife, with a child in her arms, whilst another child was pulling at her skirts; and all three, mother and children, were sobbing and moaning. Suddenly, however, the door was roughly flung open, and on the threshold appeared the grandmother, a tall, thin, aged woman, who was furiously flourishing her bare arms which looked like knotted cords. Her grey hair, escaping from under her cap, was waving round her gaunt head, and so intense was her rage that the words she shouted were half-stifled in her throat, whence they escaped but indistinctly in an agonising hiccough. At first the soldiers began to laugh. The old lunatic had a fine phiz! But some of her words reached them, and they heard that she was shouting: 'Blackguards! brigands! cowards! cowards!'

      In a more and more piercing voice she spat forth, as it were, that insulting epithet—coward. And then the laughter ceased, and a great chill sped through the ranks. The men lowered their heads and looked elsewhere.

      'Cowards! cowards! cowards!'

      Suddenly