The Debacle - Emile Zola [75]
This desperate pressure came up against a stoppage further on, at the southern end of the village, separated by a clump of trees from the river, over which the engineers had thrown a pontoon bridge that morning. To the right there was a ferry, and the ferryman’s house stood white and isolated amid tall weeds. Big fires had been lit on both banks, and the flames leaped up now and again and filled the night with a glare that made the water and banks as light as day. Then it was possible to see the huge pile-up of waiting troops, for the footbridge allowed only two men to cross at once, while on the bridge proper, three metres wide at the most, the cavalry, artillery and baggage-train moved at a mortally slow walking-pace. It was said that a brigade of the 1st corps was coming up, thirty-odd thousand men who, believing the enemy was at their heels, were in feverish haste to reach safety on the opposite bank.
There was a moment of despair. What! They’d been marching since first thing with no food, they had just got themselves out of the terrible gorge of Haraucourt by putting a sprint on, and all that so as to bang their heads, in this alarm and confusion, against an impassable wall! It might be hours and hours before the turn of the last comers, and everyone was fully aware that even if the Prussians dared not continue pursuing them through the night they would be there by daybreak. But the order to pile arms was given, and they camped on the great bare hills along the sides of which the Mouzon road runs, and the lower slopes of which run down to the meadows by the Meuse. Behind them, on the top of a plateau, the reserve artillery took up battle positions and trained their guns on the gorge so as to bombard the exit should need arise. And once again the waiting set in, full of resentment and anxiety.
The 106th was halted in a field of stubble above the road and looking over the great plain. The men had been loath to put down their rifles, and kept glancing behind them in their nagging fear of an attack. They all looked hard-faced and grim, and said nothing beyond occasional sullen mutterings of anger. It was nearly nine and they had been there for two hours, but although they were desperately tired they could not sleep but lay stretched out on the ground, their nerves on edge and ears cocked for the smallest distant sound. They could not struggle any more against their gnawing hunger – they would eat something over on the other side of the river, and they would eat grass if they couldn’t find anything else. But the congestion only seemed to be getting worse, the officers General Douay had posted by the bridge came back every twenty minutes with the same maddening story that hours and hours would still be needed. Eventually the general made up his mind to fight a way through to the bridge for himself. He could be seen struggling about in the mob, hurrying people on.
Sitting against a bank with Jean, Maurice made the same gesture towards the north that he had made before.
‘Sedan is in the background… Oh, and that is Bazeilles over there… And then Douzy and Carignan to the right… I expect it’ll be at Carignan that we shall be concentrated… Oh, if it were light you would see there’s plenty of room!’
His gesture took in the immense valley, full of darkness. The sky was not so black that you could not make out the pale course of the river across the panorama of black fields. Clumps of trees made darker patches, especially a row of poplars to the left, which cut off the horizon like a fantastic dike. Then in the background behind Sedan, with its sprinkling of bright little lights, was a heap of blackness as if all the forests of the Ardennes had