Chapter Eight

When, after countless delays, the train from Sedan finally arrived at the station at Saint-Denis* at about nine o’clock, a great red glow was already illuminating the southern sky, as if the whole of Paris was on fire. As night drew in, this...

Chapter Seven

The day after Sedan, the two German armies had started moving their waves of men back up towards Paris, the Meuse army coming from the north through the Marne Valley, while the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia, having crossed the Seine at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges,...

Chapter Four

It was a large, tiled room with plain whitewashed walls, which had formerly been used to store fruit. The sweet smell of apples and pears still lingered; and the only pieces of furniture were an iron bedstead, a white wooden table, and two chairs, as...

Chapter Five

At ten o’clock on the Plateau d’Algérie, Beaudoin’s company was still lying in the field of cabbages where it had been all morning. The crossfire from the batteries up on Hattoy Hill and on the Iges peninsula, which had grown fiercer than ever, had just...

Chapter Four

On the Balan road, Henriette had been able to walk quickly at first. It was barely after nine o’clock and the wide road, lined with houses and gardens, was still clear, although it grew steadily more obstructed the nearer it got to the village, filled...

Chapter Six

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Chouteau the next morning, waking up frozen and exhausted inside the tent. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a nice drop of broth with some meat in it!’ At Boult-aux-Bois, where they had camped, the only food they’d had the previous evening had...

Chapter Three

Much to his surprise, Maurice saw that the 106th was getting off at Rheims and being given orders to set up camp there. So they weren’t going on to Châlons to join up with the army after all? Two hours later, when his regiment had...

The Fictional Characters

(Identifiable historical figures have an explanatory note where they first appear in the text) Adolphe driver in the fifth artillery battery under Honoré Fouchard Bastian drummer in Capt. Beaudoin‘s 106th Regiment Beaudoin, Capt. captain in the 106th Regiment; lover of Gilberte Delaherche Bourgain-Desfeuilles, Gen....

Chapter One

Throughout the endless day of the battle, back at Remilly, where old Fouchard’s little farm sat perched on the hillside, Silvine hadn’t taken her eyes off Sedan, watching it through the thunder and smoke of the cannons, trembling all over, thinking of Honoré. The next...

Chapter Seven

At that hour, all around Sedan, a terrified mass of men, horses, and cannon was surging back towards the city, flooding in from all the positions which had been lost, from Floing, Illy Plateau, Garenne Wood, Givonne Valley, and the Bazeilles road. The fortified city,...