The Debacle - Emile Zola [159]
Once out on the main road General Lebrun went at a gallop, and he was fortunate enough to see General de Wimpffen as soon as he reached Balan. The latter had written only a few minutes before to the Emperor: ‘Sir, come and put yourself at the head of your troops, and they will think it an honour to open up a way for you through the enemy lines.’ And so the very mention of the word armistice threw him into a furious rage. No, no, he wouldn’t sign anything, he was determined to fight! It was then half past three, and it was soon afterwards that the heroic and desperate attempt was made, the last thrust to open up a gap through the Bavarians by marching once again on Bazeilles. So as to put some heart back into the troops they spread a lie by shouting ‘Bazaine is coming, Bazaine is coming!’ Since first thing in the morning this had been the dream of so many who thought they could hear the guns of the army of Metz every time a new battery of the Germans was uncovered. About twelve hundred men were scraped together, stray soldiers from every corps and every arm, and the little column dashed gloriously at full speed along the bullet-swept road. At first it was sublime, falling men did not check the impetus of the rest, and they covered nearly five hundred metres with truly reckless courage. But soon the ranks began thinning, and even the bravest fell back. What could they do against overwhelming odds? It was simply the crazy folly of an army chief who did not want to be beaten. In the end General de Wimpffen found himself alone with General Lebrun on the Balan-Bazeilles road, which they had to abandon for good. There was nothing to be done but retreat into Sedan.
As soon as he had lost sight of the general, Delaherche hurried back to his mill with but one idea in his head, which was to go up again to his observation post and follow events from a distance. But on reaching home he was held up for a moment by running into Colonel de Vineuil, who was being brought in with his blood-soaked boot, half unconscious on some hay in the bottom of a farm cart. The colonel had insisted on trying to rally the remnants of his regiment until he had fallen off his horse. He was taken straight up to a first-floor room, and Bouroche hurried up but found it was only a cracked ankle-bone and so merely bandaged the wound after extracting bits of boot-leather. He was overwhelmed and at the end of his tether, and rushed down again shouting that he would rather cut off one of his own legs than go on doing his job in such a messy way, without proper materials or the essential assistance. And indeed down below they had reached the stage of not knowing where to put the wounded, and had decided to put them on the lawn, in the grass. There were already two rows of them waiting and loudly complaining in the open air, with shells still coming down. The number of men brought in to the station since noon was over four hundred, and the major had asked for more surgeons, but all they had sent was one young doctor from the town. He simply could not cope with it, and he examined, cut through flesh, sawed through bones and sewed up again almost beside himself and in despair at seeing more work being brought than he was getting through. Gilberte was sick with horror and overcome with nausea at so much blood and tears, and she had stayed with her uncle the colonel, leaving Madame Delaherche down below to give drinks to the fevered and wipe the sweating faces of the dying.
Up on his flat roof Delaherche tried to get a quick impression of the situation. The town had been less damaged than had been feared and only one fire was sending up thick black smoke in the Cassine district. The Palatinate fort had stopped firing, having probably run out of ammunition. Only the guns at the Paris gate were still firing an odd round now and again. What interested him immediately was that they had once again run up the white flag over the Keep, but they couldn’t be seeing it from the battlefield, for the firing was still as heavy as ever. Some roofs in the foreground concealed