The Debacle - Emile Zola [55]
It was indeed the third division returning to camp, and that was an immense relief. But precautions were redoubled because information received confirmed everything they thought they knew about the enemy’s approach. The few prisoners they brought back, sombre Uhlans in their long cloaks, refused to talk. Daybreak, the grey dawn of a rainy day, came up in the continuing expectancy which frayed everybody’s nerves. The men had not dared to sleep for fourteen hours. At about seven Lieutenant Rochas said that MacMahon was on the way with a whole army. The truth was that General Douay had had, by way of a reply to his dispatch sent the day before predicting the inevitable fight before Vouziers, a letter from the marshal telling him to hold on until he could send him some support: the advance had been stopped, the 1st corps was making for Terron, the 5th for Buzancy, while the 12th would stay at Le Chêne in reserve. So the wait took on an even greater significance, it was no longer a simple fight to come, but a great battle involving the whole of the army that had been headed away from the Meuse and was now on the march further south in the Aisne valley. So once again they dared not cook their hot stew but had to make do with coffee and biscuit, for the final reckoning was fixed for noon, everybody said without knowing why. An aide-de-camp had been sent off to the marshal to hasten the arrival of reinforcements, the approach of the two enemy armies being more and more certain. Three hours later a second officer galloped off for Le Chêne, where General Headquarters was, from which he was to bring back immediate orders, so much had anxiety increased following news from the mayor of some little country place who claimed to have seen a hundred thousand men at Grand-Pré while a hundred thousand more were coming up via Buzancy.
By noon still not a single Prussian. By one, by two, still nothing. Everybody was getting sick of it, and sceptical as well. Jeering voices began to poke fun at the generals. Perhaps they had seen their own shadows on the wall. They voted to get them some glasses. A fine lot of jokers to have upset everybody like this if nothing was coming! Some wag called out:
‘So it’s going to be Mulhouse all over again?’
This wrung Maurice’s heart with bitter memories. He recalled that idiotic flight and panic that had swept the 7th corps along without a single German being seen for ten leagues around. And now it was all starting again, he felt it quite clearly, with no mistake about it. Now that the enemy had not attacked twenty-four hours after the skirmish at Grand-Pré it must have been that the 4th hussars simply ran into some mounted reconnaissance. The main forces must still be a long way off, possibly even two days’ march. All at once this thought horrified him as he considered how much time had been lost. In three days they had not covered two leagues, from Contreuve to Vouziers. On the 25th and 26th the other army corps had gone northwards on the pretext that they had to restock with foodstuffs, whereas now, on the 27th, lo and behold they were going southwards to accept a challenge nobody was offering. Following the 4th hussars towards the abandoned passes in the Argonne, the Bordas brigade had thought it was lost and dragged in the whole division to help, then the 7th corps and then the whole army, all to no purpose. Maurice thought of the inestimable value of each hour in this wild scheme of joining up with Bazaine, a plan which none but a general of genius could have carried out, and with seasoned troops,