Monsieur Sauvage and Monsieur Morissot love to go fishing together, but their usual fishing spot on the river is now behind enemy lines. It is during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 in which France was disastrously defeated and forced to accept humiliating peace terms which included an exorbitant reparations payment. The two peace-loving Frenchmen would not venture out into the open country except for two reasons which Maupassant makes clear at the opening of the story. One is that Paris is under siege and the people are starving. The Parisians have been reduced to eating anything.
Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce.
So hunger is one of the things that motivates the two friends to take a chance of going fishing. The other factor, as Maupassant makes clear, is that they both are a little intoxicated when they make their decision to go. They stop at a little cafe and drink absinthes. Then after they walk a little farther they stop for another absinthe.
They were quite unsteady when they came out, owing to the effect of the alcohol on their empty stomachs.
This is when they make their rash decision to go fishing. Everything seems tranquil at their fishing spot, but then the Prussian cannons on Mont-Valerian resume firing and sending up puffs of white smoke.
And Mont-Valerien thundered ceaselessly, demolishing the houses of the French with its cannon balls, grinding lives of men to powder, destroying many a dream, many a cherished hope, many a prospective happiness; ruthlessly causing endless woe and suffering in the hearts of wives, of daughters, of mothers, in other lands.
The mountain is far away, and the two friends do not expect to see any Prussian soldiers where they are fishing. Even if they did run into Prussians, they wouldn't expect to be harmed because they are civilians and too old for military service. Up to this point in the story neither man has ever seen a Prussian soldier. It is a shock to them when four soldiers, including a Prussian officer, suddenly appear out of nowhere. The two harmless fishermen friends end up dead after bravely refusing to divulge the password they had been given to enable them to return through the French lines; and the Prussian officer ends up eating their big catch of fish.
Maupassant hated the Prussians and later the Germans after Germany was united. He depicts them as cruel and sinister. His best-known story about the Franco-Prussian War is "Boule de Suif," in which another Prussian officer is depicted as a cunning and loathsome sadist.
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