THE DOWNFALL

(LA DÉBÂCLE)

A STORY OF THE HORRORS OF WAR

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA

TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

WAR CORRESPONDENT 1870-1

NEW AND REVISED EDITION

London

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1893

PREFACE

Before the present translation of M. Zola's novel, 'La Débâcle,' appeared in 'The Weekly Times and Echo,' in which it was originally issued, the author was interviewed for that journal by Mr. Robert H. Sherard, whom he favoured with some interesting particulars concerning the scope and purport of his narrative. By the courtesy both of Mr. Sherard and of the proprietor of 'The Weekly Times,' the translator is here able to republish the remarks made by M. Zola on the occasion referred to. They will be found to supply an appropriate preface to the story:—

'"La Débâcle" has given me infinitely more trouble than any of my previous works. When I began writing it, I had no conception of the immensity of the task which I had imposed on myself. The labour of reading up all that has been written on my subject in general, and on the battle of Sedan in particular, has been enormous, and the work of condensation of all that I have had to read has been all the more laborious that on no subject has more divergence of opinion been expressed ... I have read all that has been written about the battle of Sedan, as well as about the unhappy adventures of the luckless Seventh Army Corps, in which is placed the fictitious regiment which plays the leading rôle in my novel. And the digestion has not been an easy task. Each general, for instance, has a different version to give of the why and the wherefore of the defeat. Each claims to have had a plan, which, if it had been followed, would have averted the disaster. Another difficulty has been that I took no part in that campaign, not having been a soldier, and that for my information on the life and experience of those who went through the campaign in general, and the battle of Sedan in particular, I have had to depend on outside testimony, often of a conflicting nature. I may say, however, that in this matter I have been greatly helped by the kindness of persons who are good enough to be interested in my work, and as soon as it became known that I was writing a book about the war and about Sedan, I received from all parts of France manuscript relations written by people of all classes who had been present at the battle, and who sent me their recollections. That was most excellent material—indeed, the best, because not to be found anywhere else. An "Anecdotal Account of the Battle of Sedan" was sent me by a gentleman who is now professor at one of the Universities in the South. A long, ill-spelt letter came to me from a gamekeeper in the North, in which he gave me a full account of the battle as it impressed him, who was a private soldier in the Seventh Army Corps at the time. I have masses of such documents, and it was my duty to go through everything that could throw any light on my subject.

'The subject was to be War. I had to consider War in its relation to various classes of society—War vis-à-vis the bourgeois, War vis-à-vis the peasant, War vis-à-vis the workman. How the war was brought about—that is to say, the state of mind of men in France at the time—was a consideration which also supplied me with a number of characters. I had to show, in a series of types, France who had lost the use of liberty, France drunk with pleasure, France fated irrevocably to disaster. I had to have types to show France so prompt to enthusiasm, so prompt to despair. And then there were to be shown the immense faults committed, and to show by character how the commission of such faults was possible, a natural sequence of a certain psychological state of mind of a certain preponderating class, which existed in the last days of the Empire. Then each phase of action had to be typified. The question of the Emperor and his surroundings—I had to have characters to explain "the sick man" and his state at the time. I had to show how it was with the peasants of the period, and hence to equip a character or two for that purpose. The Francs-tireurs played an important part in the epoch; it therefore became necessary for me to incarnate these, to create a typical Franc-tireur. The spies and spying had their influence on the whole; I had to have a spy. By the way, the spy in my book is one of the few German characters that I have created—four or five—this spy and an officer or two. Then, having thus, with a stroke of the rake, dragged together all that I could find as likely to illustrate my period, both historically and psychologically considered, I wrote out rapidly—the work of one feverish morning—a maquette, or rough draft of all I wanted to do, some fifteen or twenty pages.

'It then became necessary to see the places, to study the geography of my book, for at that period I did not know where my scenes were to be laid, whether on the banks of the Rhine, or elsewhere. So, with my rough draft in my pocket, and my head teeming with the shadows of my marionettes, and of the things that they were to do and to explain, I set off for Rheims and went carefully over the whole ground, driving from Rheims to Sedan, and following foot by foot the road by which the Seventh Corps—already then decided upon as the milieu in which my novel was to develop—marched to their disaster. During that drive I picked up an immense quantity of material, halting in farmhouses and peasants' cottages, and taking copious notes. Then came Sedan, and after a careful study of the place and the people, I saw that my novel must deal largely, for the full comprehension of my story, not only with the locality, but with the people of the town. This gave me the bourgeois of Sedan, who play an important part in my tale. Little by little, the geography gave me also the physiology of my book. Each new place that it became necessary to describe supplied its type, its characters.

'So, on my return to Paris, I was in an immense workshop or yard surrounded with huge mountains of hewn stones, mortar and bricks, and all that remained then to do was to build the best structure that I could build of these materials. But before that, the architect's plan was necessary, and that I next carefully evolved. My plan of work is most rigorous. Each chapter is marked out in advance, but it is only as I am writing that the various incidents which I have collected fall into place.... My labour has been one of reconciliation of divergent statements in the first place, and of condensation in the second. I had to reduce to one page what I could easily, and without prolixity, have treated in a dozen pages; so that with each page, nay with each sentence, I have been confronted with the question what to leave out and what to say. Then, when each page was written, I began to torture myself with the doubt whether I had left unsaid things I ought to have said, whether I had sacrificed good to inferior material.

'"La Débâcle" is divided into three parts. The first part treats of the action of the luckless Seventh Army Corps, in which is the fictitious regiment in which my hero or heroes are placed. I say heroes, because I have really two heroes in this story. One is Jean, of my novel 'La Terre,' who is a corporal in this regiment; the other is a new character named Maurice, who goes through Sedan as a private soldier. Between these two men a great friendship exists, and, indeed, it is from this friendship in the face of death and danger, this comradeship of arms malgré tout, that I draw the chief effects of sentiment with which my novel is seasoned. For "La Débâcle" is not a love story. The female characters in it play only secondary rôles; there is no love-making worth speaking about, at the most, only the "intention" of love, the indication of courtship. Jean and Maurice, my two heroes, moreover, present types of the France of the day. Maurice, who is represented as a young man who has recently been admitted to the bar, is the man of the world—light, cynical, sceptical, the type of the France of the Empire, embodying her grace and her faults. He is the type of the France that, sated with pleasure, rushed to disaster. Jean represents the new social couche, a new stratum, and is in some way emblematic of the France of the future. Now, I will confess that when I began writing my book, and had this idea of this friendship, I expected to be able to produce by its means a much greater effect than I think I have done. This friendship has not yielded all that I had hoped for from it.

'The first section of eight chapters opens with allusion to the trifling defeats on the frontier, it shows the Seventh Corps crowded back on to Rheims; but the principal subject of these chapters is the terrible march from Rheims to Sedan. It is an epic event, pregnant with the irony of fate, and, to my thinking, one of the most tragic military episodes that history records. There is no fighting described in this part; indeed, the only battle that I describe is Sedan. The tragedy lies in the exposition of the faults that gradually led up to the terrible disaster. The reader follows the movements of this ill-fated corps, knowing what a terrible shadow of defeat, disaster, and death overhangs it. It was a wonderful corps, and the way it was managed was wonderful in its crass stupidity.

'My second part is entirely devoted to a description of the battle of Sedan in all its phases, seen from all sides. I have omitted nothing which can help to a comprehension of that enormous episode in the histories of France and of the world. Now we are with Napoleon, now with the Emperor of Germany, now with the bourgeois of Sedan, now with the Francs-tireurs in the woods. Each movement of troops that contributed to the final dénouement is exposed. I have endeavoured to be complete, but as I have said, I had too little space for the immense amount of material in my hands. I have also endeavoured to speak the plain truth without either fear or favour. The reader will be aroused to compassion with the sufferings, bodily and mental, of the heroic and martyred army, just as he will be aroused to indignation at the conduct of its chiefs, which fell little short of downright dementia. It has been my duty to be severely critical, and I have not shrunk from the responsibility of wounding, where it was right and just to do so, susceptibilities which I see no reason for respecting. I dare say there will be some outcry at my blame, but I am indifferent, having spoken the truth.

'The last part of my novel is played out in Sedan, after the battle. From thence the reader follows the rest of the history of the war as it develops itself in other parts of France, until it culminates in the outbreak of the Commune and the final collapse of Paris in a sea of fire and an ocean of blood. The last chapter of the book is an account of Paris in flames, of Paris with its gutters running with blood. I hope by this means to produce a gradation of effect—the catastrophe of Sedan, which ends the second part, followed up by the still greater catastrophe of the last chapter. To resume: The first part of my novel is the march from Rheims to Sedan; the second is the catastrophe of Sedan, from inception to dénouement; and the third the collapse not of Paris alone, but of the whole of old-time France, with the dénouement of the burning of Paris, the flames of which clear away not only an old régime, but a whole psychological state, and prepare a fresh field for a new and regenerated people. For observe, that my book, as far as outward construction goes, divided into three parts, may also be divided into a novel of historical and a novel of psychological interest. It tells a tale of many adventures, but it also aims to give a full list of psychological studies of French society as it was at the outbreak of the war.

'My novels have always been written with a higher aim than merely to amuse. I have so high an opinion of the novel as a means of expression—I consider it parallel with lyrical poetry, as the highest form of literary expression, just as in the last century the drama was the highest form of expression—that it is on this account that I have chosen it as the form in which to present to the world what I wish to say on the social, scientific, and psychological problems that occupy the minds of thinking men. But for this I might have said what I wanted to say to the world in another form. But the novel has to-day risen from the place which it held in the last century at the table of the banquet of letters. It was then the idle pastime of the hour, and sat low down between the fable and the idyll. To-day it contains, or may be made to contain, everything; and it is because that is my creed that I am a novelist. I have, to my thinking, certain contributions to make to the thought of the world on certain subjects, and I have chosen the novel as the best way of communicating these contributions to the world. Thus "La Débâcle," in the form of a very precise and accurate relation of a series of historical facts—in other words, in the form of a realistic historical novel—is a document on the psychology of France in 1870. This will explain the enormous number of characters which figure in the book. Each character represents one état d'âme psychologique of the France of the day. If my work be well done, the reader will be able to understand what was in men's minds and what was the bent of men's minds—what they thought, and how they thought, at that period.'

As might have been expected with a work dealing with such a question as the last Franco-German War, 'La Débâcle' has given rise to considerable controversy in France. Some ultra-bellicose Frenchmen, and among them M. de Vogue of the Academy, have taunted the author with a lack of patriotism, their notion being apparently that they ought never to be told the truth concerning themselves. Other persons have impeached M. Zola's accuracy with regard to various matters of detail, and a few have gone so far as to accuse him of having written that which he must have known to be untrue. It may be as well to notice some of the charges here.

It is said that there are no hop-gardens on the road from Mulhausen to Altkirch, as will be found stated in Chapter II. (Part I.), and in this instance it would really appear that M. Zola has fallen into error. Viewing the road from a distance, and being very short-sighted, he doubtless mistook vineyards for hop-grounds. The error is in some degree excusable, however, when it is remembered that in this part of Alsace the vines are trained to poles ten and eleven feet high. It is also denied that vast sums of money were distributed among the men of the Seventh Army Corps without any written acknowledgment at the close of the battle of Sedan, as will be found stated in Chapter VII. (Part II.). I have reason to believe that it was the money of another army corps which was thus distributed, and that M. Zola transposed the incident for the purposes of his story. A little license of this kind is surely allowable in a work of fiction. M. Paul de Cassagnac, the well-known Bonapartist politician and journalist, denies that Napoleon III. had his face rouged and powdered on the morning of the battle of Sedan (Sept. 1), in proof of which he mentions that he was with Napoleon during the whole of the battle of Mouzon (Aug. 30), and also frequently ate at the Imperial table during the campaign. M. Zola does not state that Napoleon habitually painted his face. He says (Chapters I. and III., Part II.) that he did so on one occasion only, early on the morning of Sept. 1, and that the rouge, &c., was entirely washed away by perspiration at 11 a.m., when he returned into the town from the front. The battle of Mouzon and what occurred at other times during the campaign have nothing to do with the matter, and M. de Cassagnac's so-called denial is beside the question. The same may be said of the denials of M. Robert Mitchell, another Bonapartist politician and journalist, and of the Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, daughter of King Jerôme. The princess was not even at Sedan, and can know nothing of the matter. Moreover, is it likely that she would admit the accuracy of any statement at all disparaging to the memory of Napoleon III.? Is it likely that M. de Cassagnac would do so? Or M. Robert Mitchell either? These gentlemen upheld the Imperial régime through thick and thin, and the former, at any rate, was most liberally rewarded for his services. He has, therefore, good reason to be prejudiced. M. Zola declares that he had the information in dispute in part from 'a certain lady,' and in part from various people of Sedan, and so far there is nothing to prove that it is inaccurate.

I may, perhaps, be allowed to add that I have given considerable time and care to the translation of 'La Débâcle.' I have always tried to give the sense and substance of M. Zola's narrative, though at times I have found myself unable to use his actual words. In matters of translation, however, I am of the opinion of Thackeray, which was also that expressed by James Howell in one of his often-quoted 'Familiar Letters.' Here and there I have appended to the text some notes which may assist the reader, for whose benefit the publishers have provided two sketch-maps of the battle of Sedan.

E. A. V.

November 1892.

(See Note on p. 535.)

THE DOWNFALL

PART I

FROM THE RHINE TO THE MEUSE

CHAPTER I

IN CAMP—A GREAT DISASTER

The camp was pitched in the centre of a fertile plain at a mile or so from Mulhausen, in the direction of the Rhine. In the twilight of a sultry day in August, under the dull sky, across which heavy clouds were drifting, the rows of shelter-tents could be seen stretching out amid a broad expanse of ploughed land. At regular intervals along the front gleamed the piles of arms, guarded by sentinels with loaded rifles, who stood there stock-still, their eyes fixed dreamily on the violet-tinted mist which was rising from the great river on the far horizon.

The men had arrived from Belfort at about five o' clock. It was now eight, and they had only just received their rations. The firewood, however, had apparently gone astray, for none had been distributed, so that there was neither fire nor soupe. The men had been obliged to munch their hard, dry biscuit, washing it down with copious draughts of brandy, which had dealt the last blow, as it were, to their failing legs, already nerveless through fatigue. Near the canteen, however, beyond the stacks of arms, two men were stubbornly endeavouring to light some green wood—a pile of young tree trunks, which they had cut down with their sword-bayonets, and which obstinately refused to blaze. Merely a coil of thick black smoke of lugubrious aspect ascended from the heap into the evening air.

There were here only 12,000 men, all that General Félix Douay had with him of the Seventh Army Corps. The first division, summoned by MacMahon the day before, had started for Frœschweiler; the third was still at Lyons; and the general had resolved to leave Belfort and advance to the front with merely the second division, supported by the reserve artillery and an incomplete division of horse. Camp fires had been signalled at Lorrach, and the Sub-Prefect of Schelestadt had telegraphed that the Prussians were about to cross the Rhine at Margolsheim. The general, who realised how dangerous was his isolated position at the extreme right of the other army corps, with none of which he was in communication, had hastened his advance to the frontier the more rapidly, as news had reached him, the day before, of the disastrous surprise of Weissenburg. Even supposing he did not have to resist an attack on his own lines, it was now to be feared that he might at any moment be called upon to support the First Army Corps.[1] That very day—that disquieting, stormy Saturday, August 6—there must have been fighting somewhere, most probably near Frœschweiler. There were signs of it in the air, in the heavy, restless sky across which there now and again swept a chilly shudder—a sudden gust of wind which passed by moaning, as if with anguish. For the past two days the troops had been convinced that they were advancing to battle. They one and all expected to find the Prussians in front of them at the end of their forced march from Belfort to Mulhausen.

The daylight was waning, when, from a distant corner of the camp, the tattoo sounded—a roll of the drums followed by a bugle call, faint as yet, wafted away, as it was, through the open air. It was heard, however, by Jean Macquart,[2] who had been endeavouring to strengthen his tent by driving the pickets deeper into the ground, and who now rapidly rose to his feet. Still bleeding from the grievous tragedy in which he had lost Françoise, his wife, and the land she had brought him in marriage, he had left Rognes, and, although nine-and-thirty years of age, had re-enlisted at the first rumour of war. Immediately enrolled, with his old rank of corporal, in the 106th Regiment of the Infantry of the Line, then being brought up to its full strength, Jean sometimes felt astonished to find himself again in uniform—he who had been so delighted to leave the service after the battle of Solferino, so pleased to cease playing the swashbuckler, the part of the man who kills. But what is a fellow to do when he has no trade or profession left him, neither wife nor even a scrap of property that he can call his own in all the wide world, and when grief and rage bring his heart with a leap into his very throat? Surely he has a right to trounce his country's enemies, especially if they plague him. Besides, Jean remembered the cry he had raised: 'Ah! dash it all, he would defend the old soil of France, since he no longer had courage enough to till it!'

On rising up he glanced at the camp, where a final stir was being occasioned by the passage of the tattoo party. Some men were running to their quarters; others, already drowsy, sat up or stretched themselves out with an air of irritated weariness; whilst Jean, the patient fellow, awaited the roll-call with that well-balanced tranquillity of mind which made him such a capital soldier. His comrades said he would probably have risen rapidly in rank had he been more of a scholar, but it happened that he only just knew how to read and write, and he did not even covet a sergeant's stripes. He who has been a peasant always remains one.

Jean was concerned at the sight of the green logs which were still smoking, and called to the two men—Loubet and Lapoulle, both belonging to his squad—who were desperately endeavouring to kindle the fire: 'Just let that be. You're poisoning us with that smoke.'

Loubet, who was lithe and active, with the look of a wag, sneeringly replied, 'It's catching alight, corporal; I assure you it is.' And giving his comrade Lapoulle a push, he added, 'Here, you, why don't you blow?'

In point of fact, Lapoulle, a perfect colossus, was exhausting himself in his efforts to raise a tempest, with his cheeks puffed out like goat-skins full of liquor, his whole face suffused by a rush of blood, and his eyes red and full of tears. Two other men of the squad, Chouteau and Pache—the former of whom lay on his back like a lazybones fond of his ease, whilst the other had assumed a crouching posture that he might carefully repair a rent in his trousers—were greatly amused by the fearful grimace which that brute Lapoulle was making, and burst at last into a roar of laughter.

Jean let them laugh. There would, perhaps, not be many more opportunities for gaiety; and despite the serious expression which sat on his full, round, regular-featured face, he was by no means a partisan of melancholy. Indeed, he closed his eyes readily enough whenever his men wished to amuse themselves. However, another group now attracted his attention. For nearly an hour one of the privates of his squad, Maurice Levasseur, had been chatting with a civilian, a red-haired individual, looking some six-and-thirty years of age, with a good-dog-Tray sort of face, and large blue goggle eyes—short-sighted eyes, which had led to his being exempted from military service. A quartermaster of the reserve artillery, who with his dark moustache and imperial had a bold confident air, had joined the couple; and the three of them tarried there, making themselves at home.

To spare them a reprimand, Jean, in his obliging way, thought it his duty to intervene. 'You would do well to leave, sir,' he said to the civilian. 'Here comes the tattoo, and if the lieutenant saw you——'

Maurice did not let him finish. 'Don't go, Weiss,' said he; and, addressing the corporal, he dryly added, 'This gentleman is my brother-in-law. The colonel knows him, and has given him permission to remain in camp.'

Why did this peasant, Jean Macquart, whose hands still smelt of the dungheap, interfere in a matter that did not concern him? thought Maurice. He, who had been called to the bar during the previous autumn, and who, on joining the army as a volunteer, had been forthwith enrolled in the 106th of the Line, thanks to the colonel's protection, and without having to undergo the usual probation at the depôt—carried his knapsack willingly enough; but, at the very outset, a feeling of repugnance, of covert revolt, had turned him against this illiterate corporal, the clodhopper who commanded him.