The Debacle: (1870-71) Page 7
The others were rolling with mirth, thinking that was a scream, they didn’t know why. Anyhow the most trivial incidents on the journey gave rise to deafening booings, yellings and laughter – peasants standing by the line, groups of worried-looking people waiting at little stations for trains to come through in the hope of getting some news – all France scared and jumpy in the face of invasion. And as the/engine and train rushed by in a fleeting impression of steam and noise, all the crowds got was the bawling of this cannon-fodder being whisked away. But in a station where they stopped three fashionably dressed ladies, well-to-do townspeople, passed cups of broth round and had a great success. Men wept and kissed their hands in gratitude.
Yet a little further on the filthy songs and savage yellings began again. A little beyond Chaumont the train happened to pass another one full of artillerymen being taken to Metz. Speed had been reduced, and the soldiers in the two trains fraternized in an infernal din. And possibly because they were more drunk, it was the artillerymen who won as they stood waving their fists out of the trucks and shouting everything else down with the violence of desperation:
‘To the slaughterhouse! To the slaughterhouse! To the slaughterhouse!’
A great chill, the icy wind of a charnel-house, seemed to be blowing through. A sudden silence fell, in which Loubet’s sneering voice could be heard:
‘Our chums aren’t all that lively!’
‘But they’re right.’ Chouteau took up the point in his pub-orator’s voice. ‘It’s wicked to send off a lot of ordinary chaps to get killed for a lot of balls they don’t know the first thing about.’
And so on and so on. He was the typical agitator, the bad workman from Montmartre, the house-painter who took time off and went on the binge, who half digested bits of speeches heard at public meetings and mixed up a lot of asinine rubbish with the great principles of equality and liberty. He was the know-all and he indoctrinated his comrades, especially Lapoulle, whom he had promised to turn into quite a bloke.
‘Can’t you see, old cock, it’s quite simple. If old Badinguet and Bismarck have a row then let them have it out between them with fists without upsetting hundreds of thousands of men who don’t even know each other and don’t want to fight.’
The whole truckload laughed and was won over, and Lapoulle, with no idea who Badinguet was and unable to say even whether he was fighting for an emperor or a king, took up the strain like a baby colossus:
‘Sure! With fists, and have a drink afterwards.’
But Chouteau had turned towards Pache and was giving him his turn:
‘Like you and that God of yours… He said you mustn’t fight, that God of yours did. So what are you doing here, you silly sod?’
‘Well, er…’ said Pache, quite taken aback, ‘I’m not here for my enjoyment… Only there’s the police…’
‘The police! Coo, listen to him! Fuck the police! Don’t you know, all you chaps, what we should do if we had any sense? When they unload us later on we should piss off – yes, just quietly slope off! And leave that great swine Badinguet and all his crew of tuppenny-ha’penny generals to work it out as they like with their bloody Prussians!’
There was a burst of applause, the brainwashing was working, and Chouteau triumphantly trotted out his theories, a muddied stream in which floated the Republic, the Rights of Man, the corruption of the Empire that had to be thrown down, the treasons of all these men in command of them, each one bribed with a million, as had been proved. He proclaimed himself a revolutionary – the others didn’t even know whether they were republicans, nor, for that matter, how you set about becoming one, except Loubet the guzzler, who also knew what he believed, never having been for anything but food. However, they were all carried away and shouted against the Emperor none the less, and against the officers and the whole bloody show that they would walk out of, straight they would, at the first sign of trouble. Working on their mounting drunkenness, Chouteau kept his eye on Maurice, the gent, for he was making him laugh and was proud to have him on his side. And so as to work him up as well, he hit on the idea of baiting Jean, who so far was standing still and half asleep, with eyes half closed amid the din. Considering the hard lesson given by the corporal to this volunteer by forcing him to pick up his rifle, if he bore his superior any malice now was the time to set the two men at each other.
‘I have heard tell of them as talked about shooting us,’ Chouteau went on menacingly. ‘Swine who treat us worse than animals, and don’t realize that when you’ve had enough of your pack and rifle it’s good-bye, you chuck the whole fucking lot into the field to see if some more’ll grow! Well, chums, what would those people say if now we’ve got them in a corner we chucked them out as well on to the railway line? What about it? Must have an example so that they stop tormenting us with this bleeding war! Death to old Badinguet’s lice! Death to the sods who want us to fight!’
Jean had gone very red, with the blood rushing up to his face as it sometimes did in his rare fits of temper. Although he was pinned by his neighbours in a living vice, he got up and went forward with clenched fists and blazing eyes, and he looked so terrible that the other man cringed.
‘Christ Almighty! Will you shut your trap, you swine! I haven’t said anything for hours because there’s nobody left in command and I can’t even put you in clink. Yes, one thing is certain, I would have done a good turn to the regiment if I had rid it of a filthy shit like you. But just you listen, if punishments are only talk now you’ll have me to deal with. It isn’t a matter of corporal any more – just an ordinary bloke who’s sick to death of you and is going to shut your jaw. You miserable coward, you don’t want to fight! Just say that again and I’ll sock you one!’
At once the whole waggon-load turned round, and, caught up by Jean’s fine burst of confidence, they left Chouteau high and dry, spluttering and backing away from Jean’s big fists.
‘I don’t give a damn for Badinguet, nor for you either, d’you see? Me, I’ve never cared two hoots about politics, Republic or Empire, and today, just the same same as when I was working in my field, I never wanted but one thing – happiness for all, law and order and prosperity… Of course it gets everybody down to have to fight, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t deal with these slobs coming up discouraging us when it’s hard enough to carry on properly as it is. Good God, mates, don’t you get worked up when you’re told the Prussians are in your own country and that they must fucking well be kicked out?’
With the fickleness of mobs who swing from one passion to another the soldiers applauded the corporal as he repeated his promise to bash the face in of the first man in the squad to talk of refusing to fight. Bravo corporal! We’ll soon cook that Bismarck’s goose!
And in the middle of this wild oration Jean calmed down and politely said to Maurice, as though he weren’t talking to one of the men:
‘Now you, sir, you can’t be one of these skunks. Come on, we’re not beaten yet, and we’ll end up by giving these Prussians what for.’
At that moment Maurice felt a warm ray of sunshine pierce him to the heart, and he felt troubled and humbled. So this chap wasn’t just a clod, then? He recalled the burning hatred he had felt when he picked up the rifle he had thrown away in an unthinking moment. But he also remembered the revelation when he had seen the two big tears forming in the corporal’s eyes when the old grandma with grey hair flying in the wind had insulted them and pointed to the Rhine over there, beyond the horizon. Was it a sense of brotherhood from having gone through the same fatigues and the same sorrows together, which was now carrying away his resentment? Belonging to a Bonapartist family, he had never considered a republic except in a theoretical way; and he felt a certain affection for the person of the Emperor, and he was for war, the essential of nations. Suddenly hope came back to him in one of those leaps of the imagination he knew so well, and the enthusiasm that had made him enlist one evening surged through him once again, filling his heart with the certainty of victory.
/> ‘Yes, that’s a fact, corporal,’ he said perkily. ‘We’ll give them what for!’
The truck rushed on and on, bearing its load of men in the thick pipe smoke and stifling fug of crowded bodies, hurling the drunken bawling of obscene songs at the anxious crowds on the stations they passed through and the scared peasants standing along the hedges. On 20 August they were in Paris at the Pantin station, and the same evening off they went again, detraining the next day at Rheims, en route for camp at Châlons.
3
VERY much to his surprise Maurice found that the 106th was detraining at Rheims and had orders to camp there. So they weren’t going to join up with the army at Châlons? And two hours later, when his regiment had piled arms a league out of the town on the Courcelles side in the broad plain along the Aisne-Marne canal, his surprise was still greater as he learned that the whole army of Châlons had been falling back since that morning and was coming to camp at the same place. And indeed, as far as the eye could see, as far as Saint-Thierry and La Neuvillette and even beyond the Laon road, tents were going up and the fires of four army corps were blazing by evening. Obviously the plan that had prevailed was to take up a position before Paris and wait for the Prussians. He was very pleased about it. Wasn’t it wiser?
That afternoon of the 21st Maurice spent wandering round the camp hunting for news. They were quite free, and discipline seemed still more relaxed, and men just came and went as they liked. Eventually he calmly went back to Rheims where he wanted to cash a draft for a hundred francs he had had from his sister Henriette. In a café he heard a sergeant talking about the mutinous spirit of the eighteen battalions of the Garde Mobile de la Seine, which had been sent back to Paris – the sixth in particular had almost killed their officers. Over in the camp generals were being insulted every day, and since Froeschwiller soldiers weren’t even saluting Marshal MacMahon. Voices filled the café and a violent argument broke out between two peaceful-looking gentlemen about the number of men the marshal would have under his command. One talked of 300,000, that was silly. The other more reasonably named the four army corps: the 12th brought up to strength with difficulty in the camp with the help of infantry regiments and a division of marines; the 1st, remnants of which had been coming in since 14 August, and which they were re-forming as best they could; and finally the 5th, defeated without a fight and scattered in a rout, and the 7th, which had just arrived, also demoralized and minus its first division which it had just rediscovered in odd units at Rheims – a hundred and twenty thousand men at the most, counting reserve cavalry and the Bonnemain and Margueritte divisions. But the sergeant who had joined in the argument treated this army with withering scorn as a rag-bag of men with no cohesion, a flock of innocents led to the slaughter by fools, and the two gentlemen, afraid of being compromised, made themselves scarce.
Out in the street Maurice tried to find some newspapers, and stuffed his pockets with all the ones he could buy, reading them as he walked along under the big trees in the magnificent boulevards which surround the town. Where were the German armies, then? They seemed to have got lost. There were probably two on the Metz front: the first under the command of General Steinmetz covering the fortress, the second under Prince Friedrich Karl trying to follow the right bank of the Moselle so as to cut Bazaine’s route to Paris. But the third army, that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the victorious army of Wissembourg and Froeschwiller which was pursuing the 1st and 5th corps, where was it really, in the muddle of contradictory reports? Still in camp at Nancy? Had it been threatening Châlons, which would explain their leaving the camp in such haste, burning stores, equipment, forage and all kinds of provisions? And then again more confusion and the most contradictory theories about plans the generals might have. As though he had been cut off from the world, Maurice only learned then what had happened in Paris: the stupefying shock of defeat on a whole people certain of victory, the terrible outburst of emotion in the streets, the recall of both Chambers, the fall of the liberal administration that had organized the plebiscite, the Emperor deprived of the title of Commander-in-Chief and forced to hand over the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine. Since the 16th the Emperor had been in the Châlons camp, and all the papers mentioned a grand council held on the 17th at which Prince Napoleon and several generals had been present. But there was no agreement between them about the real decisions made, as distinct from facts which had resulted: General Trochu appointed governor of Paris, Marshal MacMahon put at the head of the army of Châlons, which implied complete elimination of the Emperor. One could sense infinite dismay and indecision, contrary plans fighting each other and replacing each other hour by hour. And always the question, where were the German armies? Who were right, those who made out that Bazaine was a free agent, carrying out his withdrawal towards the northern fortresses, or those who said he was already beleaguered in Metz? A persistent rumour told of gigantic battles and heroic struggles going on between the 14th and 20th, a whole week, but nothing was clear except a tremendous clash of arms somewhere far away and out of ken.
Maurice sat on a seat to rest his legs which were worn out with fatigue. Round him the town seemed to be living its normal daily life – nurserymaids under the lovely trees, looking after children, and retired people taking their usual stroll with stately tread. He went back to his papers and came upon an article he had missed before in a violently republican sheet. Suddenly all was clear. The paper affirmed that at the council held on the 17th at the Châlons camp the retreat of the Paris army had been decided upon and the nomination of General Trochu was solely to prepare people for the Emperor’s return. But it added that these resolutions had come to grief when confronted with the attitude of the Empress-Regent and the new government. In the Empress’s opinion a revolution was inevitable if the Emperor reappeared, and she was credited with the words: ‘He would never reach the Tuileries alive.’ And so with all her obstinate determination she was set on an advance and a join-up with the army of Metz, whatever happened, and in this she was supported by General Palikao, the new Minister for War, who had a plan for a spectacular and victorious march to link up with Bazaine. Maurice let the paper slip on to his lap and gazing into space thought he could see it all: the two plans struggling against each other, the hesitations of Marshal MacMahon to undertake such a dangerous flanking movement with such unreliable troops, and impatient and increasingly peremptory orders from Paris urging him on to the foolish temerity of this adventure. Then in the midst of this tragic struggle he suddenly had a clear vision of the Emperor deprived of his imperial authority which he had entrusted to the Empress-Regent, stripped of his position as commander-in-chief with which he had just invested Marshal Bazaine, no longer anything at all, a shadow emperor, vague and indefinite, a nondescript, useless object and a nuisance that nobody knew what to do with, spurned by Paris and with no function left in the army, since he had undertaken not even to give an order.
But the following morning, after a thundery night when he had slept outside the tent rolled in his blanket, it was a relief to Maurice to learn that the withdrawal on Paris had prevailed. There was talk of another council held the day before at which the former Vice-Emperor, Monsieur Rouher, had been present as an envoy from the Empress to expedite the march on Verdun, and it was said that the marshal had convinced him of the danger of such a move. Had they had bad news from Bazaine? Nobody dared state this. But the absence of news was in itself significant, and all the more sensible officers were for waiting outside Paris and therefore being the city’s army of defence. Convinced that they would retire the next day, since it was said that the orders had been issued, Maurice was in a happy mood and felt like satisfying a childish wish that was bothering him – to escape for once from the messtin and eat somewhere off a tablecloth, have a bottle in front of him, a glass, a plate and all the things he seemed to have been deprived of for months past. He had money and so off he went in search of an inn, as though on an escapade.
It was past the canal, as yo
u enter the village of Courcelles, that he found the meal of his dreams. He had been told the day before that the Emperor was putting up in one of the grander houses of the village, and he had gone that way for a walk out of curiosity. He remembered noticing this inn on a corner, its arbour hanging with fine bunches of grapes already golden and ripe. Beneath this climbing vine there were some tables painted green, and through the open door could be seen the huge kitchen with its ticking clock, Epinal prints gummed to the walls amidst the crockery, and the massive hostess turning the spit. Behind the inn there was a bowling alley. It was friendly, gay and pretty, the typical old-fashioned French eating-house.
A nice buxom girl came up, showing her fine teeth.
‘Are you having lunch, sir?’
‘Yes, rather! Give me some eggs, a cutlet and cheese… Oh, and some white wine!’
He called her back.
‘Tell me, isn’t it in one of these houses that the Emperor is staying?’
‘Yes, look, sir, the one straight in front of you. You can’t see the house itself, it’s behind that high wall with the trees hiding it.’
He went into the arbour, loosening his belt for comfort, choosing a table on which the sun, filtering through the creepers, cast flecks of gold. But his mind kept coming back to the high yellow wall guarding the Emperor. It was indeed a hidden, mysterious house, not even the roof of which could be seen from outside. The entrance was on the other side, on the village street, a narrow street without a shop or even a window, winding its way between dreary walls. Behind them its grounds made a sort of island of dense greenery among the few neighbouring buildings. And then he noticed at the far end of the road a large courtyard surrounded by sheds and stables all cluttered up with a great many carriages and vans, and in all this there was a continual coming and going of men and horses.