Complete Works of Emile Zola (1154 page)

[*] This was Abel Douay — not to be confounded with his brother, Felix, who commanded the 7th corps.-TR.

There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a glass of the white wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Of course,” said he. “It was just the same at Froeschwiller; the general who would give battle under such circumstances is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. That’s what my captain said, and he’s a little man who knows what he is talking about. The truth of the matter is that no one knew anything; we were only forty thousand strong, and we were surprised by a whole army of those pigs. And no one was expecting to fight that day; battle was joined by degrees, one portion after another of our troops became engaged, against the wishes of our commanders, as it seems. Of course, I didn’t see the whole of the affair, but what I do know is that the dance lasted by fits and starts all day long; a body would think it was ended; not a bit of it! away would go the music more furiously than ever. The commencement was at Woerth, a pretty little village with a funny clock-tower that looks like a big stove, owing to the earthenware tiles they have stuck all over it. I’ll be hanged if I know why we let go our hold of it that morning, for we broke all our teeth and nails trying to get it back again in the afternoon, without succeeding. Oh, my children, if I were to tell you of the slaughter there, the throats that were cut and the brains knocked out, you would refuse to believe me! The next place where we had trouble was around a village with the jaw-breaking name of Elsasshausen. We got a peppering from a lot of guns that banged away at us at their ease from the top of a blasted hill that we had also abandoned that morning, why, no one has ever been able to tell. And there it was that with these very eyes of mine I saw the famous charge of the cuirassiers. Ah, how gallantly they rode to their death, poor fellows! A shame it was, I say, to let men and horses charge over ground like that, covered with brush and furze, cut up by ditches. And on top of it all,
nom de Dieu!
what good could they accomplish? But it was very
chic
all the same; it was a beautiful sight to see. The next thing for us to do, shouldn’t you suppose so? was to go and sit down somewhere and try to get our wind again. They had set fire to the village and it was burning like tinder, and the whole gang of Bavarian, Wurtemburgian and Prussian pigs, more than a hundred and twenty thousand of them there were, as we found out afterward, had got around into our rear and on our flanks. But there was to be no rest for us then, for just at that time the fiddles began to play again a livelier tune than ever around Froeschwiller. For there’s no use talking, fellows, MacMahon may be a blockhead but he is a brave man; you ought to have seen him on his big horse, with the shells bursting all about him! The best thing to do would have been to give leg-bail at the beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to fight an army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see the thing through to the end. And see it through he did! why, I tell you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer human beings; they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For near two hours the gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however, we had to knuckle under in the end. And to think that after it was all over they should come and tell us that we had whipped the Bavarians over on our left! By the piper that played before Moses, if we had only had a hundred and twenty thousand men, if
we
had had guns, and leaders with a little pluck!”

Loud and angry were the denunciations of Coutard and Picot in their ragged, dusty uniforms as they cut themselves huge slices of bread and bolted bits of cheese, evoking their bitter memories there in the shade of the pretty trellis, where the sun played hide and seek among the purple and gold of the clusters of ripening grapes. They had come now to the horrible flight that succeeded the defeat; the broken, demoralized, famishing regiments flying through the fields, the highroads blocked with men, horses, wagons, guns, in inextricable confusion; all the wreck and ruin of a beaten army that pressed on, on, on, with the chill breath of panic on their backs. As they had not had wit enough to fall back while there was time and take post among the passes of the Vosges, where ten thousand men would have sufficed to hold in check a hundred thousand, they should at least have blown up the bridges and destroyed the tunnels; but the generals had lost their heads, and both sides were so dazed, each was so ignorant of the other’s movements, that for a time each of them was feeling to ascertain the position of its opponent, MacMahon hurrying off toward Luneville, while the Crown Prince of Prussia was looking for him in the direction of the Vosges. On the 7th the remnant of the 1st corps passed through Saverne, like a swollen stream that carries away upon its muddy bosom all with which it comes in contact. On the 8th, at Sarrebourg, the 5th corps came tumbling in upon the 1st, like one mad mountain torrent pouring its waters into another. The 5th was also flying, defeated without having fought a battle, sweeping away with it its commander, poor General de Failly, almost crazy with the thought that to his inactivity was imputed the responsibility of the defeat, when the fault all rested in the Marshal’s having failed to send him orders. The mad flight continued on the 9th and 10th, a stampede in which no one turned to look behind him. On the 11th, in order to turn Nancy, which a mistaken rumor had reported to be occupied by the enemy, they made their way in a pouring rainstorm to Bayon; the 12th they camped at Haroue, the 13th at Vicherey, and on the 14th were at Neufchateau, where at last they struck the railroad, and for three days the work went on of loading the weary men into the cars that were to take them to Chalons. Twenty-four hours after the last train rolled out of the station the Prussians entered the town. “Ah, the cursed luck!” said Picot in conclusion; “how we had to ply our legs! And we who should by rights have been in hospital!”

Coutard emptied what was left in the bottle into his own and his comrade’s glass. “Yes, we got on our pins, somehow, and are running yet. Bah! it is the best thing for us, after all, since it gives us a chance to drink the health of those who were not knocked over.”

Maurice saw through it all. The sledge hammer blow of Froeschwiller, following so close on the heels of the idiotic surprise at Wissembourg, was the lightning flash whose baleful light disclosed to him the entire naked, terrible truth. We were taken unprepared; we had neither guns, nor men, nor generals, while our despised foe was an innumerable host, provided with all modern appliances and faultless in discipline and leadership. The three German armies had burst apart the weak line of our seven corps, scattered between Metz and Strasbourg, like three powerful wedges. We were doomed to fight our battle out unaided; nothing could be hoped for now from Austria and Italy, for all the Emperor’s plans were disconcerted by the tardiness of our operations and the incapacity of the commanders. Fate, even, seemed to be working against us, heaping all sorts of obstacles and ill-timed accidents in our path and favoring the secret plan of the Prussians, which was to divide our armies, throwing one portion back on Metz, where it would be cut off from France, while they, having first destroyed the other fragment, should be marching on Paris. It was as plain now as a problem in mathematics that our defeat would be owing to causes that were patent to everyone; it was bravery without intelligent guidance pitted against numbers and cold science. Men might discuss the question as they would in after days; happen what might, defeat was certain in spite of everything, as certain and inexorable as the laws of nature that rule our planet.

In the midst of his uncheerful revery, Maurice’s eyes suddenly lighted on the legend scrawled on the wall before him —
Vive Napoleon!
and a sensation of intolerable distress seemed to pierce his heart like a red hot iron. Could it be true, then, that France, whose victories were the theme of song and story everywhere, the great nation whose drums had sounded throughout the length and breadth of Europe, had been thrown in the dust at the first onset by an insignificant race, despised of everyone? Fifty years had sufficed to compass it; the world had changed, and defeat most fearful had overtaken those who had been deemed invincible. He remembered the words that had been uttered by Weiss his brother-in-law, during that evening of anxiety when they were at Mulhausen. Yes, he alone of them had been clear of vision, had penetrated the hidden causes that had long been slowly sapping our strength, had felt the freshening gale of youth and progress under the impulse of which Germany was being wafted onward to prosperity and power. Was not the old warlike age dying and a new one coming to the front? Woe to that one among the nations which halted in its onward march! the victory is to those who are with the advance-guard, to those who are clear of head and strong of body, to the most powerful.

But just then there came from the smoke-blackened kitchen, where the walls were bright with the colored prints of Epinal, a sound of voices and the squalling of a girl who submits, not unwillingly, to be tousled. It was Lieutenant Rochas, availing himself of his privilege as a conquering hero, to catch and kiss the pretty waitress. He came out into the arbor, where he ordered a cup of coffee to be served him, and as he had heard the concluding words of Picot’s narrative, proceeded to take a hand in the conversation:

“Bah! my children, those things that you are speaking of don’t amount to anything. It is only the beginning of the dance; you will see the fun commence in earnest presently.
Pardi
! up to the present time they have been five to our one, but things are going to take a change now; just put that in your pipe and smoke it. We are three hundred thousand strong here, and every move we make, which nobody can see through, is made with the intention of bringing the Prussians down on us, while Bazaine, who has got his eye on them, will take them in their rear. And then we’ll smash ‘em,
crac
! just as I smash this fly!”

Bringing his hands together with a sounding clap he caught and crushed a fly on the wing, and he laughed loud and cheerily, believing with all his simple soul in the feasibility of a plan that seemed so simple, steadfast in his faith in the invincibility of French courage. He good-naturedly informed the two soldiers of the exact position of their regiments, then lit a cigar and seated himself contentedly before his
demitasse
.

“The pleasure was all mine, comrades!” Maurice replied to Coutard and Picot, who, as they were leaving, thanked him for the cheese and wine.

He had also called for a cup of coffee and sat watching the Lieutenant, whose hopefulness had communicated itself to him, a little surprised, however, to hear him enumerate their strength at three hundred thousand men, when it was not more than a hundred thousand, and at his happy-go-lucky way of crushing the Prussians between the two armies of Chalons and Metz. But then he, too, felt such need of some comforting illusion! Why should he not continue to hope when all those glorious memories of the past that he had evoked were still ringing in his ears? The old inn was so bright and cheerful, with its trellis hung with the purple grapes of France, ripening in the golden sunlight! And again his confidence gained a momentary ascendancy over the gloomy despair that the late events had engendered in him.

Maurice’s eyes had rested for a moment on an officer of chasseurs d’Afrique who, with his orderly, had disappeared at a sharp trot around the corner of the silent house where the Emperor was quartered, and when the orderly came back alone and stopped with his two horses before the inn door he gave utterance to an exclamation of surprise:

“Prosper! Why, I supposed you were at Metz!”

It was a young man of Remilly, a simple farm-laborer, whom he had known as a boy in the days when he used to go and spend his vacations with his uncle Fouchard. He had been drawn, and when the war broke out had been three years in Africa; he cut quite a dashing figure in his sky-blue jacket, his wide red trousers with blue stripes and red woolen belt, with his sun-dried face and strong, sinewy limbs that indicated great strength and activity.

“Hallo! it’s Monsieur Maurice! I’m glad to see you!”

He took things very easily, however, conducting the steaming horses to the stable, and to his own, more particularly, giving a paternal attention. It was no doubt his affection for the noble animal, contracted when he was a boy and rode him to the plow, that had made him select the cavalry arm of the service.

“We’ve just come in from Monthois, more than ten leagues at a stretch,” he said when he came back, “and Poulet will be wanting his breakfast.”

Poulet was the horse. He declined to eat anything himself; would only accept a cup of coffee. He had to wait for his officer, who had to wait for the Emperor; he might be five minutes, and then again he might be two hours, so his officer had told him to put the horses in the stable. And as Maurice, whose curiosity was aroused, showed some disposition to pump him, his face became as vacant as a blank page.

“Can’t say. An errand of some sort — papers to be delivered.”

But Rochas looked at the chasseur with an eye of tenderness, for the uniform awakened old memories of Africa.

“Eh! my lad, where were you stationed out there?”

“At Medeah, Lieutenant.”

Ah, Medeah! And drawing their chairs closer together they started a conversation, regardless of difference in rank. The life of the desert had become a second nature, for Prosper, where the trumpet was continually calling them to arms, where a large portion of their time was spent on horseback, riding out to battle as they would to the chase, to some grand battue of Arabs. There was just one soup-basin for every six men, or tribe, as it was called, and each tribe was a family by itself, one of its members attending to the cooking, another washing their linen, the others pitching the tent, caring for the horses, and cleaning the arms. By day they scoured the country beneath a sun like a ball of blazing copper, loaded down with the burden of their arms and utensils; at night they built great fires to drive away the mosquitoes and sat around them, singing the songs of France. Often it happened that in the luminous darkness of the night, thick set with stars, they had to rise and restore peace among their four-footed friends, who, in the balmy softness of the air, had set to biting and kicking one another, uprooting their pickets and neighing and snorting furiously. Then there was the delicious coffee, their greatest, indeed their only, luxury, which they ground by the primitive appliances of a carbine-butt and a porringer, and afterward strained through a red woolen sash. But their life was not one of unalloyed enjoyment; there were dark days, also, when they were far from the abodes of civilized man with the enemy before them. No more fires, then; no singing, no good times. There were times when hunger, thirst and want of sleep caused them horrible suffering, but no matter; they loved that daring, adventurous life, that war of skirmishes, so propitious for the display of personal bravery and as interesting as a fairy tale, enlivened by the
razzias
, which were only public plundering on a larger scale, and by marauding, or the private peculations of the chicken-thieves, which afforded many an amusing story that made even the generals laugh.