The Debacle - Emile Zola [8]
The reader must decide for himself why in Zola’s novel the ‘intense conservatism of French society in 1871’ is personified in Jean, the intelligent, thoughtful working man.
The text used for this translation is the most recent scholarly one in volume 6 of the Oeuvres complètes of Émile Zola, published under the general editorship of Henri Mitterand, Paris, Cercle du Livre Précieux, Fasquelle, 1967. The text in the paperback Livre de Poche edition, also published by Fasquelle, is very corrupt, with some grotesque misprints and some whole sentences omitted.
Further information about Zola and this intensely interesting period in French and European history can be found in:
F. W. J. Hemmings, Emile Zola, revised edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966.
D. W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France (1870–1939), London, Hamish Hamilton, 1940 and many later editions. A standard work, with information about almost all the personalities mentioned by Zola.
Frank Jellinek, The Paris Commune of 1871, London, Gollancz, 1937. A typical statement of the left-wing point of view.
Robert Baldick, The Siege of Paris, London, Batsford, 1964. A day-by-day account, with much contemporary matter and pictures, of the period between September 1870 and January 1871, ‘the last full-scale siege of a European capital, the first occasion of the indiscriminate bombardment of a civilian population, the source of immense hardship and suffering, and the origin of a division in the French nation which has still not been healed.’
Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris, London, Macmillan, 1965. The fullest recent account. Not only covers the siege and Commune, but has a clear, concise chapter on the six-week Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
Alistair Horne, The Terrible Year. The Paris Commune 1871, London, Macmillan, 1971. A ‘coffee-table’ book to mark the centenary of the Commune. Excellent short text and lavish illustrations, including many contemporary photographs.
It is no mere convention to thank my wife for her tireless help.
October 1971
L. W. T.
Map 1: The country around Sedan
Map 2: Central Paris
PART ONE
1
CAMP had been set up two kilometres from Mulhouse, nearer the Rhine, in the middle of the fertile plain. Towards nightfall on this August evening, under an angry sky with heavy clouds, the shelter-tents stretched out and piled arms gleamed, regularly spaced along the battle front, while the sentries with loaded rifles stood watch, motionless, their unseeing eyes staring out at the purple mists of the distant horizon rising from the river.
They had reached there from Belfort at about five. It was now eight and the men had only just got the provisions. But the firewood must have been mislaid, for none had been issued. No way of lighting a fire and making some stew. They had had to make do with chewing some biscuit cold, helped down with generous lashings of brandy, which finally put paid to legs already giving way with fatigue. But just behind the piled rifles, near the cookhouse, two soldiers were doggedly trying to ignite a heap of green sticks, trunks of young saplings they had slashed down with their bayonets, and which obstinately refused to catch. Dense smoke was rising black and slow into the evening air, infinitely depressing.
There were only twelve thousand men there, all General Fielix Douay had with him out of the 7th army corps. The first division had been summoned the day before and had set off for Froeschwiller; the third was still in Lyons, and he had decided to leave Belfort and advance like this with the second division, the reserve artillery and a division of cavalry not up to full strength. Lights had been reported at Lorrach. A wire from the sub-prefect of Schlestadt said that the Prussians were about to cross the Rhine at Markolsheim. Feeling he was too isolated from the extreme right