The Debacle: (1870-71)

  Weary of these fields of death through which she felt she had been walking for leagues, Silvine looked round her with growing anguish.

  ‘Where is it? Where is it, then?’

  Prosper made no answer for he was getting worried himself. What upset him even more than the corpses of his mates were the bodies of the horses, poor horses lying on their sides, which they kept meeting in large numbers. There were some really pitiful ones in dreadful attitudes, decapitated or with bellies split open and entrails coming out. Many were on their backs, with bellies swollen and four legs sticking up in the air like snow posts, dotting the plain as far as you could see. Some of them were still not dead after two days of agony, and at the least sound they raised their suffering heads, turned right and left and dropped them again; others did not move but occasionally uttered a loud scream, the plaint of a dying horse, so unmistakable and so terribly grief-stricken that the very air trembled. Prosper’s heart ached as he thought of Zephir and that he might possibly see him again.

  Suddenly he felt the ground shake under the galloping hoofs of a furious charge. He turned round and just had time to shout to Silvine:

  ‘Mind the horses! The horses! Get down behind that wall!’

  Over the top of a near-by slope some hundred horses, riderless, some still carrying a full pack, were bearing down on them at breakneck speed. These were the stray animals left on the field of battle, who had instinctively gathered in a herd. They had had no hay or oats for two days, and had eaten the scanty grass, cropped hedges and even gnawed the bark of trees. Whenever hunger caught them in the belly like a prick of the spurs, they all set off together in a mad stampede, charging straight through the empty, silent country, trampling on the dead and finishing off the wounded.

  The storm was approaching and Silvine just had time to pull the donkey and trap into the shelter of the low wall.

  ‘Oh God! They’ll smash everything!’

  But they leaped over the obstacle and nothing was left but the rumbling of thunder, and already they were galloping off in another direction and diving into a sunken road and on to the corner of a wood behind which they vanished.

  When Silvine had brought the donkey back on to the road she insisted on an answer from Prosper:

  ‘Look here, where is it?’

  He stood there looking at the four corners of the horizon.

  ‘There were three trees, I must find those three trees… Bless you, you don’t see all that clearly when you’re fighting, and it isn’t easy to know afterwards which way you went!’

  Seeing some people to his left, two men and a woman, he thought he would ask them. But as he went up to them the woman ran off and the men brandished threatening fists. He saw yet more and they all avoided him and ran off into the bushes like cunning, prowling animals, they were dressed in rags, unspeakably dirty, with crafty, evil-looking faces. Then he realized that where these horrible people had passed, the dead, were bootless with bare, grey-looking feet, and he understood that these were the prowling thieves who followed the German armies, the plunderers of corpses, a gypsy crew of vultures who moved in the wake of the invasion. A tall thin fellow rushed away from him with a sack over his shoulder and pockets jingling with watches and silver coins stolen from pockets.

  But one boy of thirteen or fourteen let Prosper approach, and when Prosper, realizing the boy was French, told him off roundly, he protested. What, couldn’t you earn your own living now? He picked up rifles and was given five sous for each one he found. That morning he had run away from his village, having had nothing to eat since the day before, and he had been taken on by a Luxembourg dealer who had an arrangement with the Prussians about this harvest of guns on the battlefield. The truth of the matter was that the Prussians were afraid that these weapons, if picked up by peasants in this frontier region, might be taken into Belgium and thence get back into France. So there was quite a swarm of poor devils looking for rifles at five sous a time, ratting about in the grass like those women you see bent double picking dandelions in the meadows.

  ‘What a dirty trade!’ growled Prosper.

  ‘Well, you must live,’ said the boy. ‘I’m not robbing anyone.’

  As he was a stranger in those parts and could not give any directions he merely pointed out a little farmhouse where he had seen some people.

  Prosper thanked him and was moving off to go back to Silvine when he caught sight of a rifle half buried in a furrow. At first he took care not to point it out. But then he suddenly turned back and found himself calling:

  ‘Look, there’s one over there. That’ll mean another five sous!’

  As they were making for the farm Silvine saw other peasants digging long trenches. But these people were working under the direct orders of Prussian officers who were standing stiff and silent with just a switch in their hands, superintending the work. The inhabitants of the villages had been set to work to bury the dead for fear that the rainy weather might hasten decomposition. There were two cartloads of bodies and a gang was unloading them and quickly laying them side by side very close together, without searching them or even looking at their faces, and three men with large shovels followed on and covered the row with such a thin layer of earth that already the rain was opening up little cracks. So hastily was the job done that before a fortnight was up a pestilence would be rising through all these cracks. Silvine could not help stopping on the edge of the trench and looking at these pitiful bodies as they were brought along. She was shuddering with the horrible fear that in each bloody face she would recognize Honoré. Was he that dreadful one with no left eye? Or the one with the broken jaw? If she didn’t hurry up and find him on this featureless, endless plain they would certainly take him away from her and bury him in the dump with the others.

  So she rushed back to Prosper, who had gone with the donkey to the farmhouse door.

  ‘Oh God, where is he? Ask them, keep on asking!’

  But there were only Prussians in the farmhouse, with a servant and her child who had come back from the woods where they had nearly died of hunger and thirst. It was a little corner of sociable family life, well-earned rest after the labours of the previous days. Soldiers were carefully brushing their uniforms which were hanging over the clothes-lines. One was finishing off a skilful darning job on his trousers, and the cook of the party had a big fire going in the middle of the yard, on which the soup was bubbling in a large saucepan, giving off a nice smell of cabbage and bacon. The conquest was already being organized with perfect, quiet efficiency. You would have taken these men for a lot of business people back home and smoking their long pipes. On a seat by the door a big red-haired man had lifted the servant’s child in his arms, a kid of five or six, and was jumping him up and down and saying nice things to him in German, enjoying seeing the child laugh at this funny language with its harsh syllables that he couldn’t understand.

  Prosper turned away at once, fearing some fresh trouble. But these Prussians really were good fellows. They grinned at the little donkey and didn’t even take the trouble to see their pass.

  Then began a frantic hunt. The sun appeared for a moment between two clouds, but it was already low down on the horizon. Were they going to be benighted in this endless graveyard? A new downpour obscured the sun again, and there was nothing round them but the dismal waste of rain, like a dust-storm of water effacing everything, roads, fields. trees. He no longer knew where he was, had lost his bearings and said so. The donkey trotted along behind them at the same even pace, head down and pulling his little cart with his resigned, docile gait. They went north, then came back towards Sedan. They lost all sense of direction, twice went back on their tracks when they realized they were passing the same things again. Probably they were going round in a circle, and ultimately they pulled up, tired and desperate, at a point where three roads met, lashed by the rain and too exhausted to go on looking.

  But then they heard some moaning, and pushed on as far as a lonely cottage to the left, where they foun
d two wounded men in a room. The doors were wide open and for two days they had been shivering in a fever with their wounds not even dressed, and had not seen a living soul. Above all they were tormented by thirst amid all this pouring rain lashing the windows. They could not move and at once cried ‘Water! Water!’ – the cry of agonized longing with which the wounded pursue anybody who passes, at the slightest sound of footsteps that drags them out of their torpor.

  When Silvine had brought them some water Prosper recognized that the more seriously wounded one was a comrade of his, a Chasseur d’Afrique of his own regiment, and he realized that they could not be far from the place where the Margueritte division had charged. The wounded man managed to wave vaguely: yes, it was over that way when you turn left after a big field of lucerne. Silvine was for setting off again at once with the information. She called in a passing team of men who were collecting the dead and asked them to help the two wounded men. She had already taken the donkey’s halter and was pulling him over the slippery ground so as to get quickly down there past the lucerne.

  Prosper suddenly stood still.

  ‘It must be somewhere here. Look, there are the three trees on the right. Can’t you see the wheel marks? There’s an ammunition waggon broken down over there… Here we are at last!’

  Silvine rushed over in a very agitated state and looked into the faces of two dead men, gunners lying at the side of the road.

  ‘But he’s not here, he’s not here! You can’t have seen properly… Yes, it must have been one of those funny ideas that made you see things!’

  She was gradually giving way to a wild hope and uncontrollable joy.

  ‘Suppose you had made a mistake and he’s still alive! Yes, he must still be alive as he isn’t here!’

  Then she uttered a little moan, for turning round she found herself on the actual position of the battery. It was appalling, the very ground was ploughed up as if there had been an earthquake, with wreckage strewn everywhere and dead men blown in all directions in frightful postures, with twisted arms, legs bent back, heads awry, yelling with wide open mouths showing all their white teeth. A corporal had died with his hands over his eyes, clenched in terror, trying not to see. Some gold coins a lieutenant had had in a money-belt had come out with his blood and entrails. The ‘married couple’, Adolphe the driver and Louis the gun-layer, were lying one on top of the other with their eyes out of their sockets and were locked in a fierce embrace, united in death. And there at last was Honoré, stretched out on his crippled gun as though lying in state, his side and one shoulder mangled but his face intact and beautiful in its anger, still looking out towards the Prussian batteries.

  ‘Oh my darling,’ Silvine moaned, ‘my darling…’

  She fell on her knees on the wet ground and joined her hands in a spasm of wild grief. This word darling, the only one she could find, expressed the love she had lost, this man who in his goodness had forgiven her and consented to take her for his wife in spite of everything. Now her hope was at an end and she would cease to be really alive. She had never loved another and would love him for ever. The rain was giving over, and a flight of crows cawing above the three trees frightened her like some evil menace. Was her beloved dead, recovered with such difficulty, to be taken from her again? She dragged herself over on her knees and with a trembling hand drove away the greedy flies buzzing above the wide open eyes she still hoped would look at her.

  Then she caught sight of a bloodstained piece of paper clutched in Honoré’s fingers, and anxiously tried to pull it out in little jerks. The dead man refused to give it up and held on so tight that it could only have been torn away in pieces. It was the letter she had written him, that he had kept between his skin and his shirt, and he had squeezed it in his hand for a farewell in death’s final convulsion. Recognizing it, she was filled with a deep joy in the midst of her grief and quite overwhelmed by this proof that he had died thinking of her. Oh yes, yes, she would let him keep the beloved letter, and not take it from him as he was so determined to take it with him into the earth. A fresh outburst of weeping brought her some relief, for her tears were warm and sweet now. She stood up, kissed his hands and his forehead, repeating the one word of infinite love:

  ‘My darling, my darling.’

  But the sun was going down, and Prosper had gone and brought the coverlet, and spread it on the ground. Slowly and respectfully they lifted Honoré’s body, laid him on this, wrapped it round him and carried him to the cart. The rain was threatening to start again, and they were setting off once more with the donkey, a sad little procession across the malignant plain, when they heard a distant rumbling of thunder. Again Prosper cried:

  ‘The horses! The horses!’

  It was another charge of the horses roaming at large and famished. This time they were coming across a huge flat field in a solid mass, manes flying and nostrils flecked with foam, and a slanting ray of the red sun sent the shadow of their frantic race right across the plain. Silvine at once threw herself in front of the trap with her arms in the air as though to stop them with a gesture of fury and fear. Mercifully they swerved to the left, turned aside by the slope of the land. They would have pounded everything to pieces. The earth shook and their hoofs sent up a shower of stones like a hail of shrapnel that hurt the donkey’s head. Then they vanished into a deep ravine.

  ‘Hunger is spurring them on,’ cried Prosper. ‘Poor creatures!’

  Silvine bandaged the donkey’s ear with a handkerchief and took the bridle again. The little funeral procession re-crossed the plain in the opposite direction to start the two leagues between them and Remilly. At every step Prosper paused to look at dead horses, grief-stricken at going away like this without seeing Zephir again.

  A little way below the Garenne wood, as they were bearing left to go back the same way as in the morning, a German post demanded to see their permit. This time, instead of keeping them out of Sedan, the guard ordered them to go through the town, or else they would be arrested. There was no answering back, it was fresh orders. In any case that would shorten their return journey by two kilometres, and as they were dead tired they were glad. However, in Sedan itself they were very badly held up. As soon as they had passed through the fortifications they were overcome by a foul stench, and a bed of filth came up to their knees. The town was disgusting, an open sewer in which the defecation and urine of a hundred thousand men had been piling up for three days. All sorts of other muck had thickened this human dunghill – straw and hay itself rotting with the droppings of animals. Even worse, the carcasses of horses which had been slaughtered and cut up in the open street poisoned the air. Offal was decaying in the sun, heads and bones were lying in the street, alive with flies. Plague would certainly break out unless this layer of horrible filth was quickly swept down into the drains, for in the rue du Ménil and rue Maqua and even the Place Turenne it was as much as twenty centimetres deep. Moreover white posters had been put up by the Prussian authorities mustering all inhabitants for the next day and ordering all persons, whoever they were, workmen, shopkeepers, professional people, magistrates, to set to work with brooms and shovels under the threat of the severest penalties if the town was not clean by evening. Already the chief magistrate could be seen in front of his home raking over the roadway and shovelling the muck into a wheelbarrow.

  Silvine and Prosper, who had taken the Grande-Rue, could only proceed very slowly through the fetid slime. And besides at every moment the way through the town was barred by some uproar, because it was the time when the Prussians were combing through the houses to dig out hidden soldiers determined not to give themselves up. At about two o’clock on the day before, when General de Wimpffen had come back from the Château de Bellevue after

  signing the capitulation, a rumour had run round at once that the army taken prisoner was to be interned in the Iges peninsula while waiting for arrangements to be made for it to be moved to Germany. A very few officers thought they would take advantage of the clause giving them the
ir freedom on condition that they signed an undertaking not to fight again. Only one general, it was said, had made the undertaking, and that was General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, using his rheumatism as a pretext. That morning he had been booed on his departure, as he climbed into a carriage in front of the Hôtel de la Croix d’Or. Disarmament had been going on since first light; the soldiers were made to file across the Place Turenne and throw their arms – rifles and bayonets – on to a pile in a corner that grew like a tip of scrap-iron. A Prussian detachment was there, commanded by a young officer, a tall, pale fellow in a sky-blue tunic and wearing a round cap with cock’s feathers, who superintended the operation with an air of lofty correctness, wearing white gloves. When a Zouave in a moment of revolt had refused to give up his rifle the officer had him taken away, saying without a trace of German accent: ‘Shoot that man!’ The others went on miserably filing past, throwing their rifles down mechanically, anxious to have done with it. But how many were already disarmed, the ones whose rifles lay scattered all over the countryside! And how many had been in hiding since yesterday, dreaming of disappearing in the indescribable confusion! Houses had been taken over and were full of these stubborn men who refused to answer and buried themselves in corners. The German patrols scouring the town found some of them even crouching under furniture. And as many of them, even when discovered, obstinately refused to come out of the cellars, the patrols simply fired on them through gratings. It was a manhunt, a horrible battue.

  On the Meuse bridge the donkey was stopped by a great crush of people. The officer commanding the post guarding the bridge was suspicious, thinking there might be some smuggling of bread or meat, and insisting on checking what was in the cart. He pulled back the cover, took one horrified look at the corpse and waved them through. But still they could not get on because the crowd got denser; it was one of the first convoys of prisoners being taken to the Iges peninsula by a detachment of Prussians. The herd went on and on, men shoving each other and treading on each other’s heels, looking ashamed in their tattered uniforms and averting their eyes, and their hunched backs and dangling arms suggested beaten men without even a knife left to cut their own throats. The harsh commands of their guards urged them on like the lashing of a whip in their mute confusion, in which the only other sound was the flop-flop of heavy boots in the thick mud. There had been yet another shower, and nothing could be more distressing than this rabble of humiliated soldiers, looking like tramps or beggars on the road.