No. 19 · 1892
La Débâcle
The Debacle
La Débâcle is the cycle's great war novel — the destruction of the Second Empire witnessed from ground level by soldiers who understand nothing of the strategy that is killing them. Jean Macquart, former farm labourer in the Beauce, has enlisted in the French army and finds himself in the 106th regiment alongside Maurice Levasseur, an educated young Parisian idealist. The friendship between them — the inarticulate, decent peasant and the bookish bourgeois who believes in France — is the human centre of a narrative that systematically dismantles every institutional and moral structure the Second Empire had built. The novel covers three phases. First: the catastrophic campaign and its climax at Sedan in September 1870, where Napoleon III surrenders with 100,000 men to the Prussian army — Zola renders the chaos, the incompetence of the high command, the soldiers' bewilderment and rage, with the documentary precision of a historian embedded in the ranks. Second: the misery of the prisoner-of-war camp at Iges on the peninsula of the Meuse — 'le camp misère' — where the surrendered army is held in conditions of degradation and starvation, and thousands die. Third: the Paris Commune of 1871. Maurice, radicalized by the defeat, becomes a Communard; Jean, the instinctive conservative, fights with the Versaillais army that suppresses the uprising. During the street fighting in the burning city, Jean bayonets a Communard without seeing who he is. He looks down and finds Maurice dying at his feet. Maurice's death in Jean's arms — each of them, in a sense, having killed what he most loved — is the novel's devastating conclusion. Jean walks away from the ruins, the only survivor, carrying the weight of everything the cycle has been about: the Empire's death and the uncertain future waiting beyond it.
Roman de guerre. Jean Macquart et Maurice Levasseur, soldats dans la débâcle franco-prussienne, assistent à la capitulation de Sedan — 100 000 hommes rendus. La misère du camp de prisonniers d'Iges. Maurice, radicalisé, devient communard ; Jean combat avec les Versaillais. Lors des combats dans Paris en feu, Jean baïonnette un insurgé sans le reconnaître : c'est Maurice. Maurice meurt dans ses bras. Jean repart, seul. L'Empire est mort, l'avenir incertain.
Setting: Franco-Prussian War