“The Rout” (1892) is Émile Zola’s nineteenth novel from the Rougon-Macquart cycle, devoted to members of one family who lived during the Second Empire—the period of Napoleon III’s dictatorship.
It is a novel about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, which ended in defeat and the collapse of France, and about the suppression of the Paris Commune. The French Empire fell; on September 4, 1870, the Third Republic took its place.