The Downfall. Emile Zola

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СКАЧАТЬ is built on a hill that rises from the left bank of the Meuse, presenting the appearance of an amphitheater; the one village street that meanders circuitously down the sharp descent was thronged with men, horses, and vehicles in dire confusion. Half-way up the hill, in front of the church, some drivers had managed to interlock the wheels of their guns, and all the oaths and blows of the artillerymen were unavailing to get them forward. Further down, near the woolen mill, where the Emmane tumbles noisily over the dam, the road was choked with a long line of stranded baggage wagons, while close at hand, at the inn of the Maltese Cross, a constantly increasing crowd of angry soldiers pushed and struggled, and could not obtain so much as a glass of wine.

      All this mad hurly-burly was going on at the southern end of the village, which is here separated from the Meuse by a little grove of trees, and where the engineers had that morning stretched a bridge of boats across the river. There was a ferry to the right; the ferryman’s house stood by itself, white and staring, amid a rank growth of weeds. Great fires had been built on either bank, which, being replenished from time to time, glared ruddily in the darkness and made the stream and both its shores as light as day. They served to show the immense multitude of men massed there, awaiting a chance to cross, while the footway only permitted the passage of two men abreast, and over the bridge proper the cavalry and artillery were obliged to proceed at a walk, so that the crossing promised to be a protracted operation. It was said that the troops still on the left bank comprised a brigade of the 1st corps, an ammunition train, and the four regiments of cuirassiers belonging to Bonnemain’s division, while coming up in hot haste behind them was the 7th corps, over thirty thousand strong, possessed with the belief that the enemy was at their heels and pushing on with feverish eagerness to gain the security of the other shore.

      For a while despair reigned. What! they had been marching since morning with nothing to eat, they had summoned up all their energies to escape that deadly trap at Harancourt pass, only in the end to be landed in that slough of despond, with an insurmountable wall staring them in the face! It would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer’s turn to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians should not be enterprising enough to continue their pursuit in the darkness they would be there with the first glimpse of daylight. Orders came for them to stack muskets, however, and they made their camp on the great range of bare hills which slope downward to the meadows of the Meuse, with the Mouzon road running at their base. To their rear and occupying the level plateau on top of the range the guns of the reserve artillery were arranged in battery, pointed so as to sweep the entrance of the pass should there be necessity for it. And thus commenced another period of agonized, grumbling suspense.

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