The Debacle - Emile Zola [105]
And indeed the second Bavarian attack had been repulsed. Once again the machine guns had raked the church square, and piles of corpses blocked the roadway in the bright sunlight, and from all the little alleys the enemy was being thrust back with the bayonet into the fields in headlong flight riverwards, which would certainly have become a rout if fresh troops had reinforced the exhausted and thinned ranks of the marines. Moreover, in the Montvillers park the fusillade was not making very much progress, which showed that on that side also a few reinforcements would have cleared the wood of the enemy.
‘Tell your men that, sir… with bayonets, with bayonets!’
White as wax, and in an expiring voice the lieutenant still found the strength to murmur:
‘You hear, boys, with the bayonet!’
That was his last breath, and he expired, head up and steadfast, eyes open, still watching the battle. Already the flies were hovering and settling on the smashed face of Françoise, and the child Auguste from his bed in a feverish delirium, kept calling and asking for a drink in a low, imploring voice.
‘Mummy, wake up, get up… I’m thirsty, I’m ever so thirsty.’
But the command was clear, officers had to order a retreat, however upset they were at not being able to take advantage of the success they had had. Obviously General Ducrot, haunted by fear of being encircled by the enemy, was sacrificing everything to the crazy attempt to get out of their clutches. The church square was evacuated, the troops fell back from alley to alley and soon the street was empty. Women were heard crying and wailing, men were swearing and brandishing their fists in anger at seeing themselves abandoned in this way. Many shut themselves in their houses, resolved to defend themselves and die.
‘Well I’m not clearing out!’ shouted Weiss, beside himself with rage. ‘No, I’d rather leave my dead body here. Just let them come and break up my furniture and drink my wine!’
Nothing else now existed but his rage, the inextinguishable fury of the conflict when he thought that the foreigner might enter his home, sit on his chair, drink out of his glass. It made his whole being turn over, took away his ordinary existence, his wife, his business and his reasonable, middle-class prudence. He shut and barricaded himself in his house, and there he roamed round and round like a caged beast, going from room to room making sure that all openings were blocked. He counted his ammunition, he had about forty rounds left. Then, as he was going to have a last look towards the Meuse to make sure that there was no attack to fear from the meadows, his eye was caught once again by the range of hills on the left bank. Puffs of smoke clearly indicated the positions of the Prussian batteries. Once again he saw, dominating the formidable batteries of Frénois, at the angle of the little wood on La Marfée, the group of uniforms, this time more of them and looking so brilliant in the bright sunshine that by putting his folding glasses over his spectacles he could see the gold of epaulettes and helmets.
‘Filthy buggers! Filthy buggers!’ he repeated, shaking his fist.
Up there on La Marfée it was King William and his general staff. He had come there at seven from La Vendresse, where he had slept the night, and he was up there, away from all danger, with the valley of the Meuse, the battlefield, stretching out before him on all sides. The immense relief map went from one end of the sky to the other, and he, standing on the hill, looked on as though from a throne reserved for him in this gigantic box at a gala performance.
In the middle, against the dark background of the forest of the Ardennes, draped across the horizon like a curtain of antique verdure, Sedan stood out with the geometrical lines of its fortifications, lapped by the flooded meadows and river on the south and west. In Bazeilles houses were already on fire and the village was half obscured with the dust of battle. Then eastwards, from La Moncelle to Givonne, all that