The Debacle - Emile Zola [27]
Chouteau, noisily scraping his messtin, held forth against the generals without mentioning them by name.
‘What, those swine? What a lot of bloody fools! Proper runaways they’ve given us! If they hopped it like that when there was nobody there, wouldn’t they half have skedaddled if they had found themselves faced by a real enemy!’
They had flung a fresh armful of wood on the fire so as to enjoy the brightness of the leaping flames, and Lapoulle, luxuriously warming his legs, was exploding with silly, mindless laughter, when Jean, who had at first turned a deaf ear, chipped in in a fatherly way:
‘That’ll do! If somebody heard you there might be trouble.’
His own simple common sense was just as disgusted by the stupidity of their leaders. But still, you had to see that they were respected, and as Chouteau was still carrying on he cut him short:
‘Shut up! Here’s the lieutenant, you’d better complain to him if you’ve any remarks to make.’
Maurice was sitting away on his own, staring at the ground. This was really the end! Hardly had they started before it was all over. This lack of discipline and revolt of the men at the first setback was already turning the army into a rabble with no bond of union, demoralized and ripe for any disaster. Here under the walls of Belfort, these men had not set eyes on a single Prussian and they were defeated.
The following days were full of trepidation and anxiety in their very monotony. So as to find the troops something to do General Douay set them to work on the defences of the fortress, still far from complete. They turned over the ground in a rage and cut into the rock. And no news! Where was MacMahon’s army? What was going on in front of Metz? The most extravagant rumours were in circulation and a few Paris newspapers hardly made the enveloping mists of anxiety all that much worse by their contradictions. Twice the general had written and asked for orders, and had not even had an answer. But by 12 August the 7th corps was at last brought up to full strength by the arrival of the third division direct from Italy, yet in spite of that there were only two divisions, because the first, beaten at Froeschwiller, had been carried away in the rout and nobody now knew where the current had cast it up. After they had been left for a week, cut off from the rest of France, the order to depart came by wire. There was great rejoicing, for anything was better than this prison life. During the preparations the guessing began again, nobody knew where they were making for: some said to defend Strasbourg and others even talked of a bold thrust into the Black Forest to cut the Prussians’ line of retreat.
The next morning the 106th was among the first to leave, piled up in cattle trucks. It was particularly crowded in the truck where Jean’s unit was, so much so that Loubet made out he hadn’t room to sneeze. As once again the issue of rations had been a complete muddle, and the soldiers had received in spirits what they should have had in food, they were nearly all drunk with a violent and bawling drunkenness that worked itself off in obscene singing. The train went on and on and you couldn’t see the others in the truck, so thick was the haze of pipe smoke; the heat was unbearable, with the stink of all these bodies in a heap, and as the truck sped along there issued out of the blackness shoutings that drowned the noise of the wheels and died away across the dreary countryside. It was only at Langres that the troops realized they were being taken back to Paris.
‘Oh Christ,’ exclaimed Chouteau, already reigning in his corner as undisputed king because of his all-powerful gift of the gab, ‘they’re going for certain to park us at Charentonneau to prevent Bismarck from going to doss in the Tuileries.’
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