The Debacle

Zola wrote that 'my title speaks not merely of a war, but also of the crumbling of a regime and the end of a world'. The penultimate novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, La Debacle (1892) takes as its subject the dramatic events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of 1870-71. During Zola's lifetime it was the bestselling of all his novels, praised by contemporaries for its epic sweep as well as its attention to historical detail. The novel seeks to explain why the Second Empire ended in a crushing military defeat and revolutionary violence. It focuses on ordinary soldiers, showing their bravery and suffering in the midst of circumstances they cannot control. Zola's descriptions are some of the most powerful he ever wrote. He skilfully integrates his narrative of events and the fictional lives of his characters to provide the finest account of this tragic chapter in the history of France. Often compared to War and Peace, La Debacle has been described as a 'seminal' work for all modern depictions of war.