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By Root 2025 0

Prussian Guard were seen to debouch from behind a wood, but they stopped in the face of a demonstration by a regiment of hussars which came along and kept the road clear. Thanks to this respite the retreat went on in fairly good order, and they were nearing Raucourt when something they saw redoubled everyone’s uneasiness and put the finishing touch to the men’s demoralization. They suddenly saw a mob rushing down a side road – wounded officers, soldiers out of control and without weapons, supply waggons galloping, men and animals all in flight, panic-striken before the wind of disaster. It was all that was left of a brigade of the first division which had been escorting the supply train that had set out that morning for Mouzon via La Besace. A terrible piece of ill-luck, a mistake in the route had thrown them and part of the train right into the rout of the 5th corps at Varni-forêt, near Beaumont. Surprised by a flank attack and outnumbered, they had fled, and panic was driving them on, bleeding, haggard, half-crazed, knocking over their own comrades in their terror. Their tales spread alarm; it was as though they had been flung there by the rumbling thunder of the cannon that had gone on since noon without a break.

By the time they were going through Raucourt, anxious haste was turning into a stampede. Should they turn right towards Autrecourt so as to cross the Meuse at Villers as had been decided? Worried and hesitating, General Douay feared he might find the bridge jammed, or perhaps even in Prussian hands. So he preferred to go straight ahead along the valley of Haraucourt in order to reach Remilly before nightfall. After Mouzon, Villers, and after Villers, Remilly. They were still going northwards with the galloping Uhlans behind them. There were only six more kilometres to do, but it was already five o’clock, and what overwhelming fatigue! They had been on their feet since dawn, had taken twelve hours to cover barely three leagues, standing about and getting tired in endless delays, and subjected to the strongest emotional strains and fears. For two nights the men had hardly slept at all and they had never satisfied their hunger since Vouziers. They were collapsing for want of food. In Raucourt things were pitiful.

This little town is prosperous, with its numerous factories, main street with fine buildings on each side, its charming church and town hall. But the night spent there by the Emperor and Marshal MacMahon, with all the paraphernalia of General Headquarters and the imperial household, followed by the passage through the town of the whole of the 1st army corps which had flowed along the street all the morning like a river, had exhausted all the town’s resources, emptying bakeries and grocers’ and making a clean sweep even of the crumbs in the townspeople’s homes. There was no more bread, wine or sugar to be found – nothing drinkable or eatable. There had been ladies standing at their front doors giving away glasses of wine and cups of broth until the last drops had gone from casks and saucepans. And now it was all gone, and by the time the first regiments of the 7th corps began to come through at about three the people were in despair. What, was it starting all over again? And still going on and on? Once again the main street was thronged with men, dead beat, covered with dust, dying of hunger, and they hadn’t a mouthful of anything to offer them. Many of the men stopped and knocked at doors, held out their hands in front of windows, begging for a crust of bread to be thrown to them. There were women in tears as they made signs that they couldn’t, that they had nothing left.

At the corner of the rue des Dix-Potiers, Maurice came over faint and reeled. When Jean rushed up to him:

‘No, leave me here, this is the end… I’d rather peg out here.’

He flopped by the roadside. The corporal put on purposely the brutality of an angry N.C.O.

‘Christ! What’s the good of a fucking soldier like that! Do you want to be picked up by the Prussians? Come on, up you get!’

Then seeing that the young man made no answer,