ARTICLE: 1870, Eyewitness to Catastrophe

I’m up to my eyes in the Franco-Prussian War at the moment, and I’ve been reading a book called Récits de Guerre by one Ludovic Halévy. If you read French, it’s available to download via Gallica for free. I’m torn with this one. As a source with which to sit down and do some rigorous history, it’s problematic. I would feel uncomfortable putting this ahead of other first hand accounts I want to use in writing the story of the war for a couple of reasons, Halévy assembled all manner of accounts and anonymised them all, which means it’s difficult or nigh on impossible to trace said accounts back to particular units. Why? According to Halévy: ‘I would have liked to put on the first page of this volume, instead of my name, the names of those who are the real authors, but most of them belong to the army, and all ask to remain unknown.’ Then there is the problem of his having tampered with these accounts to an unknown degree:

I asked them to tell me what they had seen, what they had done. Nothing else. They spoke, they dictated, and I, with as much fidelity as possible, wrote. I acted as a stenographer, nothing more. And often also as a copyist. I was entrusted with small diaries covered with notes taken in pencil, the very evening of the battle, in the bivouacs of Frœschwiller and Gravelotte. The sentences were incomplete, the words erased, barely legible... I tried to preserve the abrupt… incorrect form of these notes alive with emotion and reality.

He tried. What he’s saying here is that he filled in gaps, picked new words, smoothed interrupted narratives over and basically made me uncomfortable when it comes to using the accounts in his book as direct quotes without question. He was criticised at the time. Le Temps accused him of emphasising supply issues too much instead of talking about the fighting. Whether he did this too much, just the right amount or not enough, it shows how as an editor he has excluded some things and leant towards others, pressing the narrative in a certain direction and materially altering what was originally said. So would this deprioritise his accounts below those for which I can name the first hand observer of events, track his unit, his field ambulance, or her hospital? Absolutely. That said, nobody doubted that Halévy’s accounts were rooted in fact. He was not accused of fabricating them out of thin air. And some of them read quite beautifully, so having done the translation work I thought it would be a shame for them to end up binned when they can paint an evocative picture of events witnessed by his contemporaries.

So as a morning diversion to go with your coffee, or a way to pass the time on the train, then, here is the Battle of Sedan, the polished version of a story given to Halévy by an anonymous Chasseur à Pied. The road to Sedan was miserable for him and thousands of his countrymen. The Franco-Prussian War broken out in July 1870, and by August the French Army was on the back foot. Then it was retreating, and not in good order. Brace yourself for scenes that are interchangeable with the industrialised First World War. This, was the prequel:

We are beaten… We follow the path that leads back to Frœschwiller. It's defeat! It's a rout! One of my unfortunate comrades is there, on the ground, both feet cut off by a shell. He recognises me, calls me by name, implores me in a supplicating voice. What should I do? I am alone. I turn away and pass by, filled with remorse. You could count them by the hundreds, those who remained in this wood, mutilated and helpless! But that one, I can still see him, I will always see him, leaning against a tree, his gaze fixed and stretching his arms towards me!

Staff officers tried to organise these remnants of an army, but still the retreat went on.

We followed the railway track. We arrived at the entrance to one of the tunnels that gave passage to the railway under the Vosges mountain range. We entered this tunnel without light. The track is not ballasted; the sleepers are not covered: we stumble every moment and we advance only very slowly, as if groping. The horses of our officers are afraid, defend themselves… refuse to advance. We hear them sighing with fear. While we walk in this darkness, two trains pass us, going in the direction of Paris, also retreating before the invasion. The engines whistle, whistle throughout the crossing of the tunnel. There are wounded in these trains. We hear groans, complaints. We finally arrive at the end of the tunnel, and there we take the road that runs alongside the railway. No moon, no stars, deep night...