



Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature
(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)







THE DOWNFALL

(LA DÉBÂCLE)

_A STORY OF THE HORRORS OF WAR_


BY

ÉMILE ZOLA


TRANSLATED BY ERNEST A. VIZETELLY

WAR CORRESPONDENT 1870-1


_NEW AND REVISED EDITION_


CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1893




PREFACE


Before the present translation of M. Zola's novel, 'La Débâcle,'
appeared in 'The Weekly Times and Echo,' in which it was originally
issued, the author was interviewed for that journal by Mr. Robert H.
Sherard, whom he favoured with some interesting particulars concerning
the scope and purport of his narrative. By the courtesy both of Mr.
Sherard and of the proprietor of 'The Weekly Times,' the translator
is here able to republish the remarks made by M. Zola on the occasion
referred to. They will be found to supply an appropriate preface to the
story:--

'"La Débâcle" has given me infinitely more trouble than any of my
previous works. When I began writing it, I had no conception of the
immensity of the task which I had imposed on myself. The labour of
reading up all that has been written on my subject in general, and on
the battle of Sedan in particular, has been enormous, and the work
of condensation of all that I have had to read has been all the more
laborious that on no subject has more divergence of opinion been
expressed... I have read all that has been written about the battle
of Sedan, as well as about the unhappy adventures of the luckless
Seventh Army Corps, in which is placed the fictitious regiment which
plays the leading _rôle_ in my novel. And the digestion has not been
an easy task. Each general, for instance, has a different version to
give of the why and the wherefore of the defeat. Each claims to have
had a plan, which, if it had been followed, would have averted the
disaster. Another difficulty has been that I took no part in that
campaign, not having been a soldier, and that for my information on the
life and experience of those who went through the campaign in general,
and the battle of Sedan in particular, I have had to depend on outside
testimony, often of a conflicting nature. I may say, however, that
in this matter I have been greatly helped by the kindness of persons
who are good enough to be interested in my work, and as soon as it
became known that I was writing a book about the war and about Sedan,
I received from all parts of France manuscript relations written by
people of all classes who had been present at the battle, and who sent
me their recollections. That was most excellent material--indeed, the
best, because not to be found anywhere else. An "Anecdotal Account of
the Battle of Sedan" was sent me by a gentleman who is now professor at
one of the Universities in the South. A long, ill-spelt letter came to
me from a gamekeeper in the North, in which he gave me a full account
of the battle as it impressed him, who was a private soldier in the
Seventh Army Corps at the time. I have masses of such documents, and it
was my duty to go through everything that could throw any light on my
subject.

'The subject was to be War. I had to consider War in its relation
to various classes of society--War _vis-à-vis_ the bourgeois, War
_vis-à-vis_ the peasant, War _vis-à-vis_ the workman. How the war
was brought about--that is to say, the state of mind of men in
France at the time--was a consideration which also supplied me with
a number of characters. I had to show, in a series of types, France
who had lost the use of liberty, France drunk with pleasure, France
fated irrevocably to disaster. I had to have types to show France so
prompt to enthusiasm, so prompt to despair. And then there were to be
shown the immense faults committed, and to show by character how the
commission of such faults was possible, a natural sequence of a certain
psychological state of mind of a certain preponderating class, which
existed in the last days of the Empire. Then each phase of action had
to be typified. The question of the Emperor and his surroundings--I
had to have characters to explain "the sick man" and his state at the
time. I had to show how it was with the peasants of the period, and
hence to equip a character or two for that purpose. The Francs-tireurs
played an important part in the epoch; it therefore became necessary
for me to incarnate these, to create a typical Franc-tireur. The spies
and spying had their influence on the whole; I had to have a spy. By
the way, the spy in my book is one of the few German characters that
I have created--four or five--this spy and an officer or two. Then