Complete Works of Emile Zola (1149 page)

But just as the clocks were on the point of striking nine a commotion arose and spread among the men; officers came running up, and Lieutenant Rochas, to whom Captain Beaudoin had come and communicated an order, passed along in front of the tents of his platoon and gave the command:

“Pack everything! Get yourselves ready to march!”

“But the soup?”

“You will have to wait for your soup until some other day; we are to march at once.”

Gaude’s bugle rang out in imperious accents. Then everywhere was consternation; dumb, deep rage was depicted on every countenance. What, march on an empty stomach! Could they not wait a little hour until the soup was ready! The squad resolved that their bouillon should not go to waste, but it was only so much hot water, and the uncooked meat was like leather to their teeth. Chouteau growled and grumbled, almost mutinously. Jean had to exert all his authority to make the men hasten their preparations. What was the great urgency that made it necessary for them to hurry off like that? What good was there in hazing people about in that style, without giving them time to regain their strength? And Maurice shrugged his shoulders incredulously when someone said in his hearing that they were about to march against the Prussians and settle old scores with them. In less than fifteen minutes the tents were struck, folded, and strapped upon the knapsacks, the stacks were broken, and all that remained of the camp was the dying embers of the fires on the bare ground.

There were reasons, of importance that had induced General Douay’s determination to retreat immediately. The despatch from the
sous-prefet
at Schelestadt, now three days old, was confirmed; there were telegrams that the fires of the Prussians, threatening Markolsheim, had again been seen, and again, another telegram informed them that one of the enemy’s army corps was crossing the Rhine at Huningue: the intelligence was definite and abundant; cavalry and artillery had been sighted in force, infantry had been seen, hastening from every direction to their point of concentration. Should they wait an hour the enemy would surely be in their rear and retreat on Belfort would be impossible. And now, in the shock consequent on defeat, after Wissembourg and Froeschwiller, the general, feeling himself unsupported in his exposed position at the front, had nothing left to do but fall back in haste, and the more so that what news he had received that morning made the situation look even worse than it had appeared the night before.

The staff had gone on ahead at a sharp trot, spurring their horses in the fear lest the Prussians might get into Altkirch before them. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, aware that he had a hard day’s work before him, had prudently taken Mulhausen in his way, where he fortified himself with a copious breakfast, denouncing in language more forcible than elegant such hurried movements. And Mulhausen watched with sorrowful eyes the officers trooping through her streets; as the news of the retreat spread the citizens streamed out of their houses, deploring the sudden departure of the army for whose coming they had prayed so earnestly: they were to be abandoned, then, and all the costly merchandise that was stacked up in the railway station was to become the spoil of the enemy; within a few hours their pretty city was to be in the hands of foreigners? The inhabitants of the villages, too, and of isolated houses, as the staff clattered along the country roads, planted themselves before their doors with wonder and consternation depicted on their faces. What! that army, that a short while before they had seen marching forth to battle, was now retiring without having fired a shot? The leaders were gloomy, urged their chargers forward and refused to answer questions, as if ruin and disaster were galloping at their heels. It was true, then, that the Prussians had annihilated the army and were streaming into France from every direction, like the angry waves of a stream that had burst its barriers? And already to the frightened peasants the air seemed filled with the muttering of distant invasion, rising louder and more threatening at every instant, and already they were beginning to forsake their little homes and huddle their poor belongings into farm-carts; entire families might be seen fleeing in single file along the roads that were choked with the retreating cavalry.

In the hurry and confusion of the movement the 106th was brought to a halt at the very first kilometer of their march, near the bridge over the canal of the Rhone and Rhine. The order of march had been badly planned and still more badly executed, so that the entire 2d division was collected there in a huddle, and the way was so narrow, barely more than sixteen feet in width, that the passage of the troops was obstructed.

Two hours elapsed, and still the 106th stood there watching the seemingly endless column that streamed along before their eyes. In the end the men, standing at rest with ordered arms, began to become impatient. Jean’s squad, whose position happened to be opposite a break in the line of poplars where the sun had a fair chance at them, felt themselves particularly aggrieved.

“Guess we must be the rear-guard,” Loubet observed with good-natured raillery.

But Chouteau scolded: “They don’t value us at a brass farthing, and that’s why they let us wait this way. We were here first; why didn’t we take the road while it was empty?”

And as they began to discern more clearly beyond the canal, across the wide fertile plain, along the level roads lined with hop-poles and fields of ripening grain, the movement of the troops retiring along the same way by which they had advanced but yesterday, gibes and jeers rose on the air in a storm of angry ridicule.

“Ah, we are taking the back track,” Chouteau continued. “I wonder if that is the advance against the enemy that they have been dinning in our ears of late! Strikes me as rather queer! No sooner do we get into camp than we turn tail and make off, never even stopping to taste our soup.”

The derisive laughter became louder, and Maurice, who was next to Chouteau in the ranks, took sides with him. Why could they not have been allowed to cook their soup and eat it in peace, since they had done nothing for the last two hours but stand there in the road like so many sticks? Their hunger was making itself felt again; they had a resentful recollection of the savory contents of the kettle dumped out prematurely upon the ground, and they could see no necessity for this headlong retrograde movement, which appeared to them idiotic and cowardly. What chicken-livers they must be, those generals!

But Lieutenant Rochas came along and blew up Sergeant Sapin for not keeping his men in better order, and Captain Beaudoin, very prim and starchy, attracted by the disturbance, appeared upon the scene.

“Silence in the ranks!”

Jean, an old soldier of the army of Italy who knew what discipline was, looked in silent amazement at Maurice, who appeared to be amused by Chouteau’s angry sneers; and he wondered how it was that a
monsieur
, a young man of his acquirements, could listen approvingly to things — they might be true, all the same — but that should not be blurted out in public. The army would never accomplish much, that was certain, if the privates were to take to criticizing the generals and giving their opinions.

At last, after another hour’s waiting, the order was given for the 106th to advance, but the bridge was still so encumbered by the rear of the division that the greatest confusion prevailed. Several regiments became inextricably mingled, and whole companies were swept away and compelled to cross whether they would or no, while others, crowded off to the side of the road, had to stand there and mark time; and by way of putting the finishing touch to the muddle; a squadron of cavalry insisted on passing, pressing back into the adjoining fields the stragglers that the infantry had scattered along the roadside. At the end of an hour’s march the column had entirely lost its formation and was dragging its slow length along, a mere disorderly rabble.

Thus it happened that Jean found himself away at the rear, lost in a sunken road, together with his squad, whom he had been unwilling to abandon. The 106th had disappeared, nor was there a man or an officer of their company in sight. About them were soldiers, singly or in little groups, from all the regiments, a weary, foot-sore crew, knocked up at the beginning of the retreat, each man straggling on at his own sweet will whithersoever the path that he was on might chance to lead him. The sun beat down fiercely, the heat was stifling, and the knapsack, loaded as it was with the tent and implements of every description, made a terrible burden on the shoulders of the exhausted men. To many of them the experience was an entirely new one, and the heavy great-coats they wore seemed to them like vestments of lead. The first to set an example for the others was a little pale faced soldier with watery eyes; he drew beside the road and let his knapsack slide off into the ditch, heaving a deep sigh as he did so, the long drawn breath of a dying man who feels himself coming back to life.

“There’s a man who knows what he is about,” muttered Chouteau.

He still continued to plod along, however, his back bending beneath its weary burden, but when he saw two others relieve themselves as the first had done he could stand it no longer. “Ah!
zut
!” he exclaimed, and with a quick upward jerk of the shoulder sent his kit rolling down an embankment. Fifty pounds at the end of his backbone, he had had enough of it, thank you! He was no beast of burden to lug that load about.

Almost at the same moment Loubet followed his lead and incited Lapoulle to do the same. Pache, who had made the sign of the cross at every stone crucifix they came to, unbuckled the straps and carefully deposited his load at the foot of a low wall, as if fully intending to come back for it at some future time. And when Jean turned his head for a look at his men he saw that every one of them had dropped his burden except Maurice.

“Take up your knapsacks unless you want to have me put under arrest!”

But the men, although they did not mutiny as yet, were silent and looked ugly; they kept advancing along the narrow road, pushing the corporal before them.

“Will you take up your knapsacks! if you don’t I will report you.”

It was as if Maurice had been lashed with a whip across the face. Report them! that brute of a peasant would report those poor devils for easing their aching shoulders! And looking Jean defiantly in the face, he, too, in an impulse of blind rage, slipped the buckles and let his knapsack fall to the road.

“Very well,” said the other in his quiet way, knowing that resistance would be of no avail, “we will settle accounts to-night.”

Maurice’s feet hurt him abominably; the big, stiff shoes, to which he was not accustomed, had chafed the flesh until the blood came. He was not strong; his spinal column felt as if it were one long raw sore, although the knapsack that had caused the suffering was no longer there, and the weight of his piece, which he kept shifting from one shoulder to the other, seemed as if it would drive all the breath from his body. Great as his physical distress was, however, his moral agony was greater still, for he was in the depths of one of those fits of despair to which he was subject. At Paris the sum of his wrongdoing had been merely the foolish outbreaks of “the other man,” as he put it, of his weak, boyish nature, capable of more serious delinquency should he be subjected to temptation, but now, in this retreat that was so like a rout, in which he was dragging himself along with weary steps beneath a blazing sun, he felt all hope and courage vanishing from his heart, he was but a beast in that belated, straggling herd that filled the roads and fields. It was the reaction after the terrible disasters at Wissembourg and Froeschwiller, the echo of the thunder-clap that had burst in the remote distance, leagues and leagues away, rattling at the heels of those panic-stricken men who were flying before they had ever seen an enemy. What was there to hope for now? Was it not all ended? They were beaten; all that was left them was to lie down and die.

“It makes no difference,” shouted Loubet, with the
blague
of a child of the Halles, “but this is not the Berlin road we are traveling, all the same.”

To Berlin! To Berlin! The cry rang in Maurice’s ears, the yell of the swarming mob that filled the boulevards on that midsummer night of frenzied madness when he had determined to enlist. The gentle breeze had become a devastating hurricane; there had been a terrific explosion, and all the sanguine temper of his nation had manifested itself in his absolute, enthusiastic confidence, which had vanished utterly at the very first reverse, before the unreasoning impulse of despair that was sweeping him away among those vagrant soldiers, vanquished and dispersed before they had struck a stroke.

“This confounded blunderbuss must weigh a ton, I think,” Loubet went on. “This is fine music to march by!” And alluding to the sum he received as substitute: “I don’t care what people say, but fifteen hundred ‘balls’ for a job like this is downright robbery. Just think of the pipes he’ll smoke, sitting by his warm fire, the stingy old miser in whose place I’m going to get my brains knocked out!”

“As for me,” growled Chouteau, “I had finished my time. I was going to cut the service, and they keep me for their beastly war. Ah! true as I stand here, I must have been born to bad luck to have got myself into such a mess. And now the officers are going to let the Prussians knock us about as they please, and we’re dished and done for.” He had been swinging his piece to and fro in his hand; in his discouragement he gave it a toss and landed it on the other side of the hedge. “Eh! get you gone for a dirty bit of old iron!”

The musket made two revolutions in the air and fell into a furrow, where it lay, long and motionless, reminding one somehow of a corpse. Others soon flew to join it, and presently the field was filled with abandoned arms, lying in long winrows, a sorrowful spectacle beneath the blazing sky. It was an epidemic of madness, caused by the hunger that was gnawing at their stomach, the shoes that galled their feet, their weary march, the unexpected defeat that had brought the enemy galloping at their heels. There was nothing more to be accomplished; their leaders were looking out for themselves, the commissariat did not even feed them; nothing but weariness and worriment; better to leave the whole business at once, before it was begun. And what then? why, the musket might go and keep the knapsack company; in view of the work that was before them they might at least as well keep their arms free. And all down the long line of stragglers that stretched almost far as the eye could reach in the smooth and fertile country the muskets flew through the air to the accompaniment of jeers and laughter such as would have befitted the inmates of a lunatic asylum out for a holiday.