The Debacle: (1870-71) Read online

  Suddenly Gaude sounded rations and Loubet was amazed. What was up? Was this the chicken he had promised Lapoulle the day before? Born in the rue de la Cossonnerie, in the central markets, by-blow of a costermonger, he had enlisted ‘for a few coppers’, as he put it and, after a go at all sorts of trades, he was the cook and his nose was always sniffing out something good to eat. So he went off to find out, while Chouteau the artist – a house-painter from Montmartre, a good-looking chap and a revolutionary, furious at having been called back to the colours after serving his time – was ferociously taking it out of Pache, whom he had come across on his knees behind the tent, saying his prayers. There was a reverend for you! Couldn’t he ask that God of his for a hundred thousand a year? But Pache, who came from some outlandish village in Brittany, a puny little specimen with a pear-shaped head, just let himself be teased, with the long-suffering silence of a martyr. He was the butt of the squad, he and Lapoulle, a hulking great brute who had grown up in the marshes of Sologne, who was so ignorant about everything that on the day he had joined the regiment he had asked to see the king. Although the news of the disaster of Froeschwiller had been going round since reveille, the four men were laughing away and going through the usual jobs with their mechanical unconcern.

  But then a growl of surprise and jeering went up as Jean, the corporal, accompanied by Maurice, came back from the ration issue with some firewood. At last they were handing out the wood that the troops had waited for in vain last night to warm up the stew. Only twelve hours late.

  ‘Three cheers for the quartermaster!’ called Chouteau.

  ‘Never mind, here it is,’ said Loubet. ‘Now you’ll see the lovely stew I’m going to make you!’

  He usually took on the eats, and they were all grateful, for he cooked marvellously. But he would pile the most extraordinary jobs on to Lapoulle.

  ‘Go and find the champagne, go and fetch the truffles…’

  That morning he hit on a weird idea, typical of a Paris smartie pulling the leg of an innocent.

  ‘Come on, quicker than that! Give me the chicken.’

  ‘Chicken, where?’

  ‘Down there, on the ground… The chicken I promised you, the one the corporal has just brought!’

  He pointed at a big white stone at their feet. Lapoulle was quite nonplussed, but in the end he picked it up and turned it over in his fingers.

  ‘Will you clean that chicken, for God’s sake! Go on, wash his feet, wash his neck! With plenty of water, you lazy sod!’

  And for no reason, except that it was a lark and the thought of the stew made him feel gay and full of fun, he chucked the stone into the pot of water, together with the meat.

  ‘That’s what’s going to give it the taste! Oh, didn’t you know that? Well, you don’t know nothing, you silly sausage. You’ll have the arsehole, it’s ever so tender, you’ll see!’

  The squad was tickled pink at the look of Lapoulle, who was now convinced and licking his chops. Oh that cove Loubet, never a dull moment with him! And when the fire began crackling in the sun and the pot began to sing, they all stood round and worshipped with an expression of bliss spreading over their faces as they watched the meat dancing and sniffed the lovely smell beginning to fill the air. Ever since the day before they had been as hungry as wolves and the thought of food was now predominant in their minds. They may have been beaten but that was no reason for not filling themselves. From one end of the camp to the other cookhouse fires were blazing, saucepans were bubbling and there was a voracious, bawling joy amid the chimes still ringing clear from every parish church in Mulhouse.

  But just before nine there was a sensation in the air, officers rushed about, and Lieutenant Rochas, who had an order from Captain Beaudoin, came past the tents of his section.

  ‘Come on, everything folded and packed up, we’re off!’

  ‘But the stew!’

  ‘Stew another day! We’re off at once!’

  Gaude blew an imperious call on his bugle. There was consternation and sullen anger. What, leave without food! Not wait even one hour until the stew was eatable! The squad was for drinking the broth anyway, but so far it was nothing but hot water and the uncooked meat was impenetrable, like leather between your teeth. Chouteau muttered terrible oaths. Jean had to intervene and hurry his men on with the preparations. What was all the hurry, then? Clearing off like this, shoving people about with no time to get their strength back! Somebody said in Maurice’s hearing that they were marching to meet the Prussians and take their revenge, but he shrugged his shoulders in disbelief. Camp was struck in less than a quarter of an hour, tents folded and strapped on to packs, piles of arms dismantled, and nothing was left on the bare ground but the cooking fires dying down.

  General Douay had had serious reasons for deciding on an immediate withdrawal. The dispatch from the sub-prefect of Schlestadt, already three days old, was confirmed, and a telegram said that Prussian camp fires had been sighted again threatening Markolsheim; another telegram said that an enemy corps was crossing the Rhine at Huningue. Details were coming in, full and precise: cavalry and infantry had been sighted, troops on the move from all points and making for their rendezvous. One hour’s delay would mean that the line of retreat on Belfort would certainly be cut. Reacting after the defeat, after Wissembourg and Froeschwiller, the general, isolated and with his advance guard useless, could only fall back at once, especially as the morning’s news was even graver than that of the night before.

  The headquarters staff had set off at a canter, spurring on their horses for fear of being by-passed and finding the Prussians already at Altkirch. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, foreseeing a tough stretch ahead, had taken the precaution of going through Mulhouse in order to have a copious meal, grumbling at the rush. Mulhouse was in despair as the officers passed through – when news of the retreat spread the inhabitants ran out into the streets protesting at the sudden departure of the troops they had so desperately implored to come. Were they being abandoned, then? Was all the fabulous loot piled up in the station going to be left for the enemy? Was their city itself to be nothing but a conquered city by nightfall? All along the country roads the inhabitants of villages and isolated houses had also taken up positions on their doorsteps in astonishment and alarm. What! Were those same regiments they had seen only yesterday marching to battle, now falling back and running away without fighting? The officers were sullen and spurred on their horses, refusing to answer questions, as though ill-luck were galloping at their heels. Was it true, then, that the Prussians had crushed the army and were pouring into France from all sides like a river in spate that had burst its banks? Already the population was giving way to mounting panic, and in the still air thought it could hear the distant thunder of invasion, rumbling louder and louder every minute, and already carts were being loaded with chattels, houses were emptying, families were threading their way along the lanes where terror was running riot.

  In the confusion of the retreat, along the Rhône–Rhine canal, the 106th had to halt after only one kilometre. Marching orders, badly expressed and even more badly carried out, had jammed the whole 2nd division at this point, and the way through was so narrow, scarcely five metres wide, that the procession looked like going on for ever.

  Two hours later the 106th was still waiting at a standstill, facing the endless stream going on ahead of them. Standing in the blazing sun, pack on back and rifle held at ease, the men finally demonstrated their impatience.

  ‘We’re the rearguard, I suppose,’ said Loubet in his sarcastic voice.

  Chouteau blew his top:

  ‘They’re roasting us here just to show they don’t care a fuck about us. We were here first, we should have gone through.’

  On the other side of the canal, over the great fertile plain with its flat roads between hopfields and ripe corn, they could now see the movement of the retreating troops carrying out yesterday’s march in the opposite direction, and scornful laughs ran along, a universal burst of furi
ous sneering:

  ‘Here we go galloping along!’ Chouteau went on. ‘Well, it’s a rum idea, this march against the foe they’ve been stuffing into our ears since the other morning… No really, it’s too funny by half, we get here and then fuck off again with no time even to swallow our stew!’

  The exasperated laughter got louder, and Maurice, who was near Chouteau, agreed with him. As they had been stuck there like posts for two hours why hadn’t they been allowed to cook their stew and swallow it in peace? Hunger was catching up on them, and they were in a sullen rage about their saucepan emptied out too soon, for they didn’t see the necessity for this haste that seemed silly and cowardly to them. Like a lot of hares they were, really!

  At that moment Lieutenant Rochas swore at Sergeant Sapin, blaming him for the bad behaviour of his men. The noise brought up Captain Beaudoin.

  Silence in the ranks!

  Jean said nothing. A veteran of the Italian wars and broken in to discipline, he studied Maurice who appeared to be enjoying Chouteau’s bursts of bloody-minded sneering, and was astonished that a real gent like him, a fellow who had had such good schooling, could agree with things that ought not to be said, even if they might be true. If every soldier took it into his head to criticize the officers and give his opinion they wouldn’t get very far, and that was a fact.

  At last, after yet another hour’s wait, the 106th received the order to proceed. But the bridge was still so jammed with the tail end of the division that there was hell’s own muddle. Several regiments got mixed up, some companies got carried along willy-nilly, but others were pushed to the side of the road and had to mark time. And to complete the confusion, a squadron of cavalry insisted on riding through and pushed back into the fields some of the stragglers already dropping out of the infantry. After one hour of marching it was an out-and-out rabble, dragging its feet, stringing out in a line and dallying about as though nothing mattered.

  So it was that Jean found himself in the rear, lost in a sunken lane with his squad, that he was determined not to let out of his sight. The 106th had vanished and there was not a single man or even officer of the company left. There were only isolated soldiers, a mob of unknown men, worn out at the very start of the day’s march, each going at his own pace wherever the paths took him. The sun was killing, it was terribly hot, and their packs, made heavier by the tents and complicated gear which distended them, weighed cruelly on their shoulders. Many of them were unaccustomed to carrying a pack, and in any case they were hampered by their thick service capes that felt as though they were made of lead. All of a sudden a pallid young soldier, whose eyes were filled with tears, stopped and threw his kit into a ditch with a heavy sigh of relief, like the deep breathing of a dying man coming back to life.

  ‘There’s somebody with some sense,’ murmured Chouteau.

  But he went on marching, with his back bent beneath the load. However, when two others had unburdened themselves also, he could hold out no longer.

  ‘Oh, to hell with it,’ he said.

  And with a jerk of his shoulder he pitched his pack against a bank. No thank you! Twenty-five kilos on his spine, he’d had enough! They weren’t beasts of burden, to have to carry all that.

  Almost at once Loubet imitated him and forced Lapoulle to do the same. Pache, who made the sign of the cross at every Calvary he came to, loosened the straps and carefully placed all his kit at the foot of a low wall, as though he would be coming back for it. Maurice was the only one still loaded when Jean turned round and saw the men with their shoulders free.

  ‘Pick up your packs; I’m the one who’ll cop it!’

  But although the men were not yet in open revolt they walked on, grim-faced and silent, pushing the corporal ahead of them along the narrow lane.

  ‘Will you pick up your packs, or I’ll report you!’

  It was like a whiplash across Maurice’s face. Report them! This clodhopper was going to report them because some poor devils were seeking relief for their aching muscles! In a fit of blind rage he loosened his straps too, and dropped his pack by the roadside, staring at Jean in defiance.

  ‘All right,’ said Jean in his sensible voice, for he couldn’t risk starting a fight, ‘we’ll settle this tonight.’

  Maurice was having terrible trouble with his feet. The big, hard boots that he was quite unused to had turned his flesh into a bloody mess. He was not very robust, and although he had thrown off his knapsack he still felt a sort of open sore all down his spine from the intolerable rubbing of the kit, he didn’t know which arm to carry his rifle with, and the weight of it was enough to wind him. But he was even more tormented by the moral agony of one of the fits of depression to which he was subject. These would suddenly come over him quite irresistibly, and then he would witness the collapse of his own will-power and give way to evil instincts, abdicate from his real self, and later cry with shame. His misdeeds in Paris had never been anything but mad fits of ‘the other one,’ as he called him, the weakling he turned into in his cowardly moments, and who was capable of the meanest actions. And since he had been dragging along in the scorching sun, in this retreat that was more like a rout, he was nothing but an animal in this lost, wandering herd strung out along the roads. It was the after-effect of defeat, of the distant thunder leagues away, whose dying echo was now hounding these panic-stricken men in full flight without having set eyes on an enemy. What was there to hope for now? Surely it was all over? They were beaten, and there was nothing left but to lie down and go to sleep.

  ‘Well, what the hell,’ Loubet shouted at the top of his voice with his Cockney laugh, ‘but all the same we aren’t marching to Berlin!’

  To Berlin! To Berlin! Maurice could still hear that cry yelled by the milling crowds on the boulevards during that night of wild excitement which had made him decide to enlist. The wind had changed in a violent storm and here was a terrible about-turn: the whole temperament of the race showed itself in this sublime confidence suddenly crashing down at the very first reverse into the despair which galloped away with these lost soldiers, defeated and scattered before ever striking a blow.

  ‘Oh this rifle’s sawing off my paws!’ Loubet went on, once again changing shoulders, ‘and there’s a bleeding tin whistle that can go for a walk!’

  Then, referring to the sum he had been paid as a replacement:

  ‘All the same, fifteen hundred francs for this job is daylight robbery! That rich bloke I’m going to get killed for must be enjoying some lovely pipes at his fireside!’

  ‘What about me,’ Chouteau groused. ‘I had served my time and was just getting out. Well, ’struth, no luck at all to fall into the shit like this!’

  He swung his rifle impatiently, then he too flung it violently over the hedge.

  ‘There, off you go, you fucking tool!’

  The rifle turned two somersaults and landed in a furrow where it lay at full length, still as a corpse. Others were already flying to join it. Soon the field was full of weapons lying there stiff and forlorn beneath the sweltering sun. An infectious madness spread, hunger was twisting their guts, boots were hurting their feet, this march was a torture, with unforeseen defeat growling threateningly in their rear. Nothing good left to expect, their leaders losing their grip, the commissariat not even feeding them, anger, frustration, desire to have done with it at once, before even beginning. So what! Let their guns join their packs. In a silly burst of temper and amid the gigglings of a lot of grinning idiots, the guns flew away all down the long, long tail of stragglers stretching back over the countryside.

  Before getting rid of his, Loubet made it twirl round beautifully, like a drum-major’s stick. Lapoulle, seeing all his mates chucking theirs away, must have thought it was part of the drill, so he imitated their movements. But Pache, in a confused sense of duty to his religious upbringing, refused to do the same and had insults heaped on him by Chouteau, who called him a priest’s baby.

  ‘Look at that creep! All because his old cow of a mother made hi
m swallow Our Father every Sunday! Why don’t you go and serve Mass, you’re too scared to be with your mates!’

  Maurice marched on in sullen silence, head down under the scorching sky. All that was left was to go on in a nightmare of atrocious weariness, haunted by phantoms, as though he were going on into an abyss straight in front of him. His whole upbringing as an educated man was collapsing and he was sinking to the low level of these creatures round him.

  ‘Yes,’ he suddenly said to Chouteau, ‘you’re right!’

  He had already put his rifle down on a heap of stones when Jean, who was vainly trying to check this disgraceful abandoning of arms, saw him. He went straight for him:

  ‘Pick up that gun of yours at once, at once, do you hear?’

  A flood of terrible rage surged up into Jean’s face. Usually so placid, always for conciliation, he now had eyes blazing and spoke with the voice of thunderous authority. His men had never seen him like this, and they stood still in amazement.

  ‘Pick up that gun at once or you’ll have me to deal with!’

  Shaken, Maurice uttered only one word, which he meant to sound insulting:

  ‘Clodhopper!’

  ‘Clodhopper! Yes, a clodhopper is what I am, and you are a grand gent! And that’s why you’re a swine, yes, a filthy swine! I’m telling you straight!’

  Shouts of protest went up, but the corporal went on with extraordinary vehemence:

  ‘When a man’s been educated he shows it. If we are yokels and clods you should be setting us all an example because you know more about everything than we do… Now pick up your gun again, fuck you, or I’ll have you shot at the end of the march.’

  Maurice picked up the gun, thoroughly cowed. There were tears of rage in his eyes. He marched on, staggering like a drunken man, surrounded by his mates who were now jeering because he had knuckled under. Oh, how he hated that Jean with an undying hate, wounded to the quick by such a hard lesson which he felt he deserved. And when Chouteau muttered at his side that with a corporal like that you waited for a battle and then put a bullet through his head, he saw red and had a clear vision of himself bashing Jean’s head in behind some wall.