Other editions of book The Downfall

Zola's great story of the Franco-Prussian War.Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes a biography of Emile Zola, theme discussions and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom and at home to further engage the reader in the story.The Classics Illustrated comic book series began in 1941 with its first issue, Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, and has since included over 200 classic tales released around the world. This new Paperback Replica edition is part of a continuing effort to make Classics Illustrated available to all, be they young readers just beginning their journeys into the great world of classic literature, or collectors who have fond memories of this much loved comic book series.

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Downfall’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Emile Zola’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Zola includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.eBook features:* The complete unabridged text of ‘The Downfall’* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Zola’s works* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

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"The Downfall (La Débâcle)" by Émile Zola (translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

“The Downfall”, La Débâcle is a novel by Émile Zola published in 1892, the penultimate in les Rougon-Macquart series. The story is set against the background of the political and military events that ended the reign of Napoléon III and the Second Empire in 1870, in particular the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

"The Downfall" by Émile Zola (translated by E. P. Robins). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

'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[Pg vii] 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, having thus, with a stroke of the rake, dragged together all that I could find as likely to illustrate my period, both historically and psychologically considered, I wrote out rapidly—the work of one feverish morning—a maquette, or rough draft of all I wanted to do, some fifteen or twenty pages.

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The camp was pitched in the centre of a fertile plain at a mile or so from Mulhausen, in the direction of the Rhine. In the twilight of a sultry day in August, under the dull sky, across which heavy clouds were drifting, the rows of shelter-tents could be seen stretching out amid a broad expanse of ploughed land. At regular intervals along the front gleamed the piles of arms, guarded by sentinels with loaded rifles, who stood there stock-still, their eyes fixed dreamily on the violet-tinted mist which was rising from the great river on the far horizon. The men had arrived from Belfort at about five o' clock. It was now eight, and they had only just received their rations. The firewood, however, had apparently gone astray, for none had been distributed, so that there was neither fire nor soupe. The men had been obliged to munch their hard, dry biscuit, washing it down with copious draughts of brandy, which had dealt the last blow, as it were, to their failing legs, already nerveless through fatigue. Near the canteen, however, beyond the stacks of arms, two men were stubbornly endeavouring to light some green wood—a pile of young tree trunks, which they had cut down with their sword-bayonets, and which obstinately refused to blaze. Merely a coil of thick black smoke of lugubrious aspect ascended from the heap into the evening air. There were here only 12,000 men, all that General Félix Douay had with him of the Seventh Army Corps. The first division, summoned by MacMahon the day before, had started for Frœschweiler; the third was still at Lyons; and the general had resolved to leave Belfort and advance to the front with merely the second division, supported by the reserve artillery and an incomplete division of horse. Camp fires had been signalled at Lorrach, and the Sub-Prefect of Schelestadt had telegraphed that the Prussians were about to cross the Rhine at Margolsheim. The general, who realised how dangerous was his isolated position at the extreme right of the other army corps, with none of which he was in communication, had hastened his advance to the frontier the more rapidly, as news had reached him, the day before, of the disastrous surprise of Weissenburg. Even supposing he did not have to resist an attack on his own lines, it was now to be feared that he might at any moment be called upon to support the First Army Corps. That very day—that disquieting, stormy Saturday, August 6—there must have been fighting somewhere, most probably near Frœschweiler. There were signs of it in the air, in the heavy, restless sky across which there now and again swept a chilly shudder—a sudden gust of wind which passed by moaning, as if with anguish. For the past two days the troops had been convinced that they were advancing to battle. They one and all expected to find the Prussians in front of them at the end of their forced march from Belfort to Mulhausen.

Preceded byL'Argent Followed byLe Docteur Pascal La Débâcle is a novel by Émile Zola published in 1892, the penultimate in les Rougon-Macquart series. The story is set against the background of the political and military events that ended the reign of Napoléon III and the Second Empire in 1870, in particular the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Sedan and the Paris Commune.--Wikipedia

In the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away in the direction of the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from Mulhausen, the camp was pitched. In the fitful light of the overcast August day, beneath the lowering sky that was filled with heavy drifting clouds, the long lines of squat white shelter-tents seemed to cower closer to the ground, and the muskets, stacked at regular intervals along the regimental fronts, made little spots of brightness, while over all the sentries with loaded pieces kept watch and ward, motionless as statues, straining their eyes to pierce the purplish mists that lay on the horizon and showed where the mighty river ran.

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