The Debacle: (1870-71)

  For her it was the end of the world. This man who had forgiven her, bound himself with a promise, whom she was to marry as soon as he came back from the army after the campaign was over! And they had taken him away from her, he was out there with a hole under the heart! Never had she felt she loved him so much, and now an urge to see him again, to have him to herself in spite of all, even though buried in the ground, lifted her out of her usual passivity.

  She put Chariot down roughly and exlaimed:

  ‘Right, I shan’t believe it until I’ve seen for myself… As you know where the place is you’re going to take me there. And if it’s true and we find him we’ll bring him back home.’

  Tears choked her words and she collapsed on the table, shaken with bitter sobs, and the child, outraged at having been roughly handled by his mother, burst into tears as well. She took him back and clasped him to her, uttering disjointed words:

  ‘Poor child, poor child!’

  Old Fouchard was thunderstruck. He really did love his son in his own fashion. Old memories must have come back from long ago when his wife was still alive and Honoré was still going to school, and two big tears formed in his red eyes too and rolled down his brown leathery cheeks. He had not cried for over ten years. He began to mutter oaths, and worked himself up into a rage because his son belonged to him and yet he wouldn’t ever see him again.

  ‘Oh Christ, it makes you wild to have only one boy and then have him taken away!’

  But when some sort of calm was restored Fouchard was very put out to hear Silvine still talking about going to find Honoré’s body out there. She was quite set now in a desperate, unshakable silence, with no more lamenting, and he hardly recognized her, normally so docile, doing everything with resignation, for her big submissive eyes that alone gave her such beauty had taken on a fierce decision in her pale face under the thick, dark hair. She had snatched off a red scarf from round her shoulders and was all in black like a widow. He pointed out the difficulties of the search, the risks she might run, how little hope there was of finding the body, but all in vain. She gave up even anwering him, and he realized that she would go off on her own and do something silly unless he did something about it, and that worried him still more because of the possible complications he might run into with the Prussian authorities. So in the end he decided to go and see the Mayor of Remilly, who was a distant cousin of his, and between them they made up a tale: Silvine was given out to be the real widow of Honoré and Prosper became her brother, and on the strength of that the Bavarian colonel, billeted at the lower end of the village in the Hôtel de la Croix de Malte, agreed to issue a pass for the brother and sister authorizing them to bring back the husband’s body if they could find it. By now it was dark, and the utmost they could get out of Silvine was that she would wait until daylight before setting out.

  Next morning Fouchard said he would never consent to having one of his horses harnessed for fear of not seeing it again. Who could say that the Prussians wouldn’t confiscate the horse and cart? He did at last consent with a very bad grace to lend the donkey, a little grey donkey, whose small trap was just big enough to take a man’s body. He gave lengthy instructions to Prosper, who had slept well but was rather uneasy about the expedition now that, after a good rest, he was trying to get his memory clear. At the last minute Silvine ran and fetched the bedspread from her own bed, which she folded and put on the floor of the trap. As she was going she ran back to kiss Charlot.

  ‘Daddy Fouchard, I am entrusting him to you, mind he doesn’t play with the matches.’

  ‘Yes, yes, don’t you worry.’

  Preparations had taken a long time, and it was nearly seven when Silvine and Prosper, walking behind the little trap drawn by the grey donkey with its head down, descended the steep slopes of Remilly. It had rained heavily during the night, and the roads had turned into rivers of mud, and great angry clouds were racing across the dreary, depressing sky. Prosper had made up his mind to take the shortest route by going straight through Sedan. But just before Pont-Maugis a Prussian post stopped the trap and held it up for over an hour, and when the pass had been through the hands of several officers the donkey was allowed to go on its way on condition that it went the long way round through Bazeilles by taking a side road to the left. No reason was given – perhaps they were afraid of adding to the traffic in the town. When Silvine crossed the Meuse by the railway bridge, that fatal bridge that had not been blown up, and which incidentally had cost the Bavarians so many lives, she saw the body of an artilleryman floating down as though he were having a nice swim. He was caught by a tuft of grass, stayed still a moment, then turned over and set off again.

  In Bazeilles, which the donkey walked slowly through from end to end, it was total destruction, all the abominable ruin that war can inflict when it passes over like a mad, devastating hurricane. The dead had already been collected, so there was not a single corpse left on the road, and the rain was washing the blood away, though there were still some red puddles and remains that couldn’t be looked at too closely, fragments of flesh on which you thought you could still see hair. But the really heartbreaking impression

  came from the ruins themselves of this village of Bazeilles, so pretty only three days earlier, with its gay houses in their gardens, and now smashed to smithereens, reduced to nothing but bits of wall blackened by flames. The church was still burning like a huge funeral pyre of smoking beams in the middle of the square, and from it rose an unceasing column of black smoke, spreading out over the sky like the plumes on a hearse. Whole streets had gone, with nothing left on either side, nothing but heaps of calcined stones beside the gutters, a mess of soot and ash like thick inky mud covering everything. On all four corners of every crossroads the corner houses were flattened out and it looked as though they had been blown away by the tempest of fire. Others were less damaged, and one was standing in isolation whilst the ones on each side of it were riddled by bullets and their carcasses stood there like fleshless skeletons. An unbearable stench arose, the sickening smell of fire, and in particular the pungent smell of paraffin, which had been poured freely all over the floors. Then there was the silent pathos of what people had tried to save, poor little bits of furniture thrown out of windows and smashed on the pavements, rickety tables with broken legs, cupboards with sides off or fronts split, clothes lying about, torn or dirty, all the pitiful odds and ends of pillage disintegrating in the rain. Through a gaping house-front and collapsed floors, a clock could be seen quite intact on a mantelpiece high up a wall.

  ‘Oh the swine!’ growled Prosper, whose blood, the blood of a soldier until two days before, was boiling at the sight of such an abomination.

  He was clenching his fists, and Silvine, very scared, had to calm him down with a look every time they met a picket along the road. The Bavarians had posted sentries in front of houses still burning, and these men, with rifles loaded and fixed bayonets, seemed to be guarding the fires so as to let the flames finish their work. Sightseers or interested parties wandering round were headed off with a threatening gesture and a guttural oath if they persisted. Groups of inhabitants, keeping their distance, said nothing but were boiling with rage inside. One quite young woman, with unkempt hair and mud-stained dress, would not be moved from in front of the ruins of a little house, wanting to search among the red-hot cinders in spite of the sentry keeping people away. It was said that her child had been burnt to death in that house. Suddenly, as the Bavarian was savagely pushing her away, she spat her furious despair in his face, curses made up of blood and filth, obscene words in which she at last found some slight relief. He obviously did not understand, but looked at her nervously and moved back. Three of his companions ran up and freed him from the woman, whom they took away screaming. In front of the ruins of another house a man and two little girls had collapsed on the ground with fatigue and misery, and they were crying together, with nowhere to go, having seen everything they possessed disappear into ashes. A patrol came along and cl
eared off the sightseers, and the street was left empty with only the grim, hard sentries keeping a watch to make sure that their dastardly orders were respected.

  ‘The swine! The swine!’ Prosper repeated under his breath. ‘It’d be a pleasure to strangle one or two of them!’

  Once again Silvine made him keep quiet. She shuddered with horror. In a coach-house untouched by the fire a dog that had been shut in and forgotten for two days was howling with a continuous moan so heartrending that it seemed to fill with terror a louring sky from which a grey drizzle had started to come down. And then it was that they met something just outside the Montvillers park. There were three big carts loaded with dead, those refuse carts that come along the streets every morning, and into which men shovel the muck of the day before. In a similar way they had been filled with corpses, stopping by each one, which was then chucked in, and setting off again with wheels bumping along until the next stop a bit further on; and they had gone right through Bazeilles until they were heaped up. They were now standing in the road waiting to be taken to the town dump, the nearby charnel-house. Feet were sticking up in the air. A head, half off, was dangling. When the three carts moved off again, bumping over the potholes, a very long bloodless hand hanging down rubbed against a wheel; and it was gradually wearing away, rubbed right down to the bone.

  The rain stopped when they were in the village of Balan. Prosper persuaded Silvine to eat a bit of bread that he had had the forethought to bring with him. It was eleven already. As they neared Sedan a Prussian post stopped them once again, and this time it was terrible, for the officer shouted at them and even refused to return their pass, which he said was forged – in very good French, moreover. On his orders soldiers had taken the donkey and trap into a shed. What was to be done? How could they go on? Almost at her wit’s end, Silvine had an idea; she thought of cousin Dubreuil, a relation of old Fouchard, whom she knew and whose property, L’Ermitage, was only about a hundred paces away up the lanes, overlooking the neighbourhood. Perhaps they would take some notice of him, a local resident. She took Prosper with her, for they were quite free to come and go so long as they left the cart. They hurried up there and found the gate of L’Ermitage wide open. As they began to walk along the avenue of great elms they were amazed at the sight that met their eyes.

  ‘Golly!’ exclaimed Prosper. ‘Some people are having a good time!’

  At the bottom of the steps, on the gravel terrace, quite a jolly party was going on. Round a marble-topped table was a circle of armchairs and a settee, covered with sky-blue satin, making a strange open-air drawing room that must have been rained on since the day before. At each end of the settee two Zouaves were lolling, apparently bursting with laughter. A little infantryman in an armchair was leaning forward, holding his sides. Three others were nonchalantly supporting their elbows on the arms of their chairs and a cavalryman was putting out his hand to take up a glass from the table. They had obviously raided the cellar and were having a party.

  ‘But how can they still be here?’ muttered Prosper, still more amazed as he went nearer. ‘Don’t the buggers care two hoots about the Prussians?’

  But Silvine’s eyes stared and she screamed with a sudden movement of horror. The soldiers were stock still, they were dead. The two Zouaves were stiff, their hands were twisted and they had no faces left – their noses had been cut off and the eyes were out of their sockets. The grin of the one holding his sides was due to a bullet having split open his lips and broken his teeth. It really was horrifying, these poor creatures chatting there in the angular postures of dummies, with glassy stares and mouths open, all frozen and still for ever. Had they dragged themselves there while still alive so as to die together? Or was it rather that the Prussians had thought it was fun to collect them and sit them in a ring by way of having a laugh at the traditional French sociability?

  ‘Funny idea of a joke!’ said Prosper, turning pale.

  He looked at the other dead, lying all over the avenue, under trees and on the grass, thirty or so brave fellows amongst whom lay the body of Lieutenant Rochas, riddled with bullets and wrapped in the flag, and he went on in a serious voice and with great respect:

  ‘They’ve had a fine set-to here! I’d be surprised if we found the gentleman you’re looking for.’

  Silvine was already entering the house, the battered doors and windows of which were gaping and open to the wet. There was nobody there, of course, the owners must have gone before the battle. But as she insisted on going on as far as the kitchen she uttered another scream. Two bodies had rolled under the sink, a Zouave, a fine man with a black beard, and a huge Prussian with red hair, and the two were locked in a furious embrace. One had his teeth sunk into the other’s cheek, their arms had stiffened in death but not let go and were still cracking each other’s broken spines. The two bodies were tied together in such a knot of eternal hatred that they would have to be buried together.

  Prosper hurried Silvine away, since there was nothing for them to do in this wide open house full of death. When they got back in despair to the post which had detained the donkey and trap, they had the good fortune to find with the churlish officer a general who was touring the battlefield. The latter asked to look at the pass and then returned it to Silvine with a gesture of sympathy, meaning that they were to let this poor woman go with her donkey and look for her husband’s body. She and her companion lost no time in going up towards the Fond-de-Givonne with the little cart, in accordance with the new order not to go through Sedan.

  Then they turned left to get up to the plateau of Illy by the road through the Garenne wood. But there again they were delayed, and many times thought they would not get through the wood because there were so many obstacles. At every step the way was blocked by trees cut down by shells and felled like giants. This was the forest that had been bombarded, from end to end of which the gunfire had hacked down century-old beings, as though through a square of the old guard, standing firm and immovable like veterans. On all sides tree-trunks lay denuded, cut through, split open like human breasts. This destruction, with its slaughter of branches shedding tears of sap, had the tragic horror of a human battlefield. And there were human bodies too, soldiers who had died with the trees, like brothers. A lieutenant, with blood coming from his mouth, still had both hands digging into the ground, tearing out handfuls of grass. Further on a dead captain was lying on his front with his head up, shrieking with pain. Others seemed to be asleep in the undergrowth, and a Zouave, whose blue belt was burnt, had his beard and hair completely singed off. Several times they had to move a body to one side so that the donkey could get along the narrow woodland track.

  When they reached a little coomb the horror suddenly came to an end. The battle must have passed over without touching this lovely corner of nature. Not a single tree had been touched, no wound had bled on the mossy bank. A brook swirled its little eddies along and the path that followed it was shaded by lofty beech trees. The cool running water and soft rustle of greenery had a pervasive charm and was delightfully peaceful.

  Prosper stopped the donkey and let it drink from the stream.

  ‘Oh isn’t it lovely here!’ He could not help expressing his relief.

  Silvine looked round and was astonished and slightly shamefaced to feel that she was refreshed and happy too. Why should there be such peaceful happiness in this lovely spot when all around there was nothing but mourning and grief? She made a gesture indicating urgent haste.

  ‘Quick, quick, let’s get on… Where is the place? Are you sure you saw Honoré?’

  Fifty paces further on they really came out on to the plateau of Illy, and the bare plain suddenly opened out in front of them. This time it was a real battlefield, with bare ground stretching away to the horizon under the wide and dreary sky from which the heavy rain was still coming down in torrents. Here there were no piles of dead, all the Prussians must have been buried already, for there was not one to be seen among the bodies of the French scattered along roads
, in fields and hollows, according to the tide of battle. The first one they saw against a hedge was a sergeant, a fine figure of a man, young and strong, who seemed to have a smile on his parted lips, and his face was peaceful. But a hundred paces further on there was another lying across the road, and he was horribly mutilated, with half his head blown off and his brains had splashed down over his shoulders. And then after the isolated bodies here and there, came little groups. They saw seven men in a row, one knee on the ground and rifle to shoulder, picked off as they were firing, and near them a non-commissioned officer had fallen as he was giving a command. The road wound on through a narrow defile and there the horror came upon them again as they saw a sort of ditch into which a whole company seemed to have rolled, mown down by machine-gun fire: it was filled with an avalanche of bodies which had fallen into a twisted and broken lot of men whose claw-like hands had scraped at the yellow clay but failed to get a hold. A black flight of crows moved off cawing, and already swarms of flies were buzzing above the bodies, returning obstinately in their thousands to drink fresh blood from the wounds.

  ‘But where is it?’ Silvine repeated.

  Then they skirted a ploughed field covered all over with knapsacks. Some regiment being hard pressed must have got rid of them there in a fit of panic. Odds and ends scattered over the ground bore witness to episodes in the fight. Képis here and there in a field of beet looked like big poppies, and bits of uniform, shoulder-tabs, sword-belts spoke of fierce contact in one of the few hand-to-hand fights in the formidable twelve-hour artillery duel. Most frequently of all they were continually tripping over weapons, swords, bayonets, rifles, and in such quantities that they seemed to be growing out of the ground, a harvest that had sprung up in one abominable day. Messtins and water-bottles were strewn over the roads, all sorts of things that had fallen out of torn knapsacks – rice, brushes, cartridges. Field after field of immense devastation, fences torn down, trees looking as if they had been burnt in a fire, the earth itself pitted with shell-holes, trodden down hard by stampeding mobs and so ravaged that it seemed condemned to eternal sterility. Everything was soaked in the dismal rain, and there rose a pungent smell, the smell of battlefields, made up of rotting staw and burnt cloth, a mixture of decay and gunpowder.