The Downfall (La Debacle)

 Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE DOWNFALL PART I FROM THE RHINE TO THE MEUSE CHAPTER I IN CAMP?A GREAT DISASTER The camp was pitched in the centre of a fertile plain at a mile or so from Mulhausen, in the direction of the Rhine. In the twilight of a sultry day in August, under the dull sky, across which heavy clouds were drifting, the rows of shelter- tents could be seen stretching out amid a broad expanse of ploughed land. At regular intervals along the front gleamed the piles of arms, guarded by sentinels with loaded rifles, who stood there stock-still, their eyes fixed dreamily on the violet- tinted mist which was rising from the great river on the far . . oe horizon. The men had arrived from Belfort at about five o'clock. It was now eight, and they had only just received their rations. The firewood, however, had apparently gone astray, for none had been distributed, so that there was neither fire nor soupe. The men had been obliged to munch their hard, dry biscuit, washing it down with copious draughts of brandy, which had dealt the last blow, as it were, to their failing legs, already nerveless through fatigue. Near the canteen, however, beyond the stacks of arms, two men were stubbornly endeavouring to light some green wood? a pile of young tree trunks, which they had cut down with their sword-bayonets, and which obstinately refused to blaze. Merely a coil of thick black smoke of lugubrious aspect ascended from the heap into the evening air. There -were here only 12,000 men, all that General Felix Douay had with him of the Seventh Army Corps. The first division, summoned by MacMahou the day before, had started for Froeschweiler; the third was still at Lyons; and the general had resolved to leave Belfort and advance to the front with merely the second division, supported by the res...