France in the Nineteenth Century Part 25

"At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compa.s.s, appeared a dense, dark ma.s.s of German troops, with their commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand men were in a circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They were there when the sun rose, and the French army were prisoners."

The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded every part of the crowded valley. Indeed, the fight was simply a ma.s.sacre.

There was no hope for the French, though they fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Imperiale, were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early in the day. The command pa.s.sed first to General Ducrot, who was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and reached Belgium.

That night--the night of September 1--an aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the king of Prussia:--

MONSIEUR MON FReRE,--Not having been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty.

I am your Majesty's good brother,

NAPOLEON.

The king of Prussia replied,--

MONSIEUR MON FReRE,--Regretting the circ.u.mstances under which we meet, I accept the sword of your Majesty, and I invite you to designate one of your officers, provided with full powers, to treat for the capitulation of the army which has so bravely fought under your command. On my side I have named General von Moltke for that purpose.

I am your Majesty's good brother,

WILLIAM.

Before Sedan, Sept. 1, 1870.

"The next morning early, a carriage containing four French officers drove out from Sedan, and came into the German lines. The carriage had an escort of only three hors.e.m.e.n. When it had reached the Germans, one of its occupants put out his head and asked, in German, for Count von Bismarck? The Germans replied that he was at Donchery.

Thither the carriage dashed away. It contained the French emperor."

With Napoleon III. fell not only his own reputation as a ruler, but the glory of his uncle and the prestige of his name.

The fallen emperor and Bismarck met in a little house upon the banks of the Meuse. Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the open air. It was a glorious autumn morning. The emperor looked care-worn, as well he might. He wished to see the king of Prussia before the articles of capitulation were drawn up: but King William declined the interview. When the capitulation was signed, however, he drove over to visit the captive emperor at a chateau where the latter had taken refuge.

Their interview was private; only the two sovereigns were present.

The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of pa.s.sing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Ca.s.sel called Wilhelmshohe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and was then called Napoleon's Rest.

Every consideration that the German royal family could show their former friend and gracious host was shown to Louis Napoleon. This told against him with the French. Was the man who had led them into such misfortunes to be honored and comforted while they were suffering the consequences of his selfishness, recklessness, negligence, and incapacity?

Thus eighty thousand men capitulated at Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand French soldiers remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousands more in Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched, leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve beyond the limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine, already considered a part of the Fatherland. The Prussians did not reach Paris till September 19, two weeks after the surrender at Sedan,--which seemed rather a lull in the military operations of a war in which so much had occurred during one short month.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SIEGE OF PARIS.

Though the surrender of the emperor and his army at Sedan took place on September 2, nothing whatever was known of it by the Parisian public until the evening of September 4, when a reporter arrived at the office of the "Gaulois" with a Belgian newspaper in his pocket. The "Gaulois" dared not be the first sheet to publish the news of such a disaster; but despatches had already reached the Government, and by degrees rumors of what had happened crept through the streets of the capital. No one knew any details of the calamity, but every one soon understood that something terrible had occurred.

The Legislative a.s.sembly held a midnight session; but nothing was determined on until the morning, when the Empire was voted out, and a Republic voted in.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Every Parisian was in the street, and, wonderful to say, all faces seemed to express satisfaction. The loss of an army, the surrender of the emperor, the national disgrace, the prospect of a siege, the advance of the Prussians,--were things apparently forgotten. Paris was charmed to have got rid of so unlucky a ruler,--the emperor for whom more than seven millions of Frenchmen had pa.s.sed a vote of confidence a few months before. He seemed to have no longer a single friend, or rather he had _one:_ in the a.s.sembly an elderly deputy stood up in his place and boldly said that he had taken an oath to be faithful to the Emperor Napoleon, and did not think himself absolved from it by his misfortunes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _JULES SIMON._]

It was almost in a moment, almost without a breath of opposition, that on the morning of Sept. 5, 1870, the Empire was voted at an end, and a Republic put in its place. The duty of governing was at once confided to seven men, called the Committee of Defence. Of these, Arago, Cremieux, and Gamier-Pages had been members of the Provisional Government in 1848, while Leon Gambetta, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, and Jules Simon afterwards distinguished themselves.

Rochefort, the insurrectionist, made but one step from prison to the council board, and was admitted among the new rulers. But the two chief men in the Committee of Defence were Jules Favre and Gambetta.

Gambetta, who before that time had been little known, was from the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive. The day came when these qualities, tempered and refined, did good service to France, when he also proved himself one of those great men in history who are capable of supreme self-sacrifice. At present he was untried.

Jules Favre was respected for his unstained reputation and perfect integrity, his disinterestedness and civic virtues, as also for his fluency of speech. In person he was a small, thin man, with a head that was said to resemble the popular portraits of General Jackson.

General Jules Trochu, who was confirmed as military commander of Paris, had written a book, previous to the war, regarding the inefficiency of the French army; he had been therefore no favorite with the emperor. His chief defect, it was said, was that he talked so well that he was fond of talking, and too readily admitted many to his confidence.

The Council of Regency had in the night melted away. A mob was surging round the Tuileries. Where had the empress-regent fled?

When disasters had followed fast upon one another, the empress had in her bewilderment found it hard to realize that the end of the empire was at hand. Bazaine was the man whom she relied on.

She had no great liking for Marshal MacMahon, and she does not appear to have been conscious that all was lost till, on the night of September 4, she found M. Conti, the emperor's secretary, busy destroying his private papers. To burn them was impossible; they were torn into small bits and put in a bath-tub, then hot water was poured over them, which reduced them to pulp. Vast quant.i.ties, however, remained undestroyed, some of them compromising to their writers.

When the truth of the situation broke upon the empress, she was very much frightened. Her dread was that she might be torn in pieces by a mob that would invade the Tuileries. In a fortnight her fair face had become haggard, and white streaks showed themselves in her beautiful hair.

It is safest in such cases to trust foreigners rather than subjects.

Two foreigners occupied themselves with plans for the empress's personal safety. The first idea was that if flight became inevitable, she should take refuge with the Sisters of the Sacre C?ur, in their convent in the Rue Picpus; and arrangements had been made for this contingency.

The life of the empress was strange and piteous during her last days upon the throne. She was up every morning by seven, and heard ma.s.s. Her dress was black cashmere, with a white linen collar and cuffs. All day she was the victim of every person who claimed an audience, all talking, protesting, gesticulating, and generally begging. The day the false rumor arrived that the Prussians had been defeated at the Quarries of Jaumont she flew down to the guard-room, where the soldiers off duty were lounging on their beds, waving the telegram over her head.

The news of the capitulation at Sedan and of the decree deposing the emperor, roused the Parisian populace. By one o'clock on September 5 the mob began to threaten the Tuileries. Then the Italian amba.s.sador, Signor Nigra, and the Austrian amba.s.sador, Prince Richard Metternich, insisted that the empress must seek a place of safety. As it was impossible to reach the street from the Tuileries, they made their way through the long galleries of the Louvre, and gained the entrance opposite the parish church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.[1] The street was blocked with people uttering cries against the emperor.

A _gamin_ recognized the fugitives, and shouted, "Here comes the empress!" De Nigra gave him a kick, and asked him how he dared to cry: "Vive l'Empereur?" At this the crowd turned upon the boy, and in the confusion the empress and her lady-in-waiting were put into a cab, driven, it is said, by Gamble, the emperor's faithful English coachman. If this were so, the empress did not recognize him, for after proceeding a little way, she and Madame le Breton, her companion, finding they had but three francs between them, and dreading an altercation with the cabman if this were not enough to pay their fare, got out, and proceeded on foot to the house of the American dentist, Dr. Thomas Evans. There they had to wait till admitted to his operating-room. The doctor's amazement when he saw them was great; he had not been aware of what was pa.s.sing at the Tuileries, but he took his hat, and went out to collect information. Soon he returned to tell the empress that she had not escaped a moment too soon.

[Footnote 1: Temple Bar, 1883.]

His wife was at Deauville, a fas.h.i.+onable watering-place in Normandy.

The doctor placed her wardrobe at the disposal of the empress, who had saved nothing of her own but a few jewels. It is said she owned three hundred dresses, and her collection of fans, laces, etc., was probably unique. Her own servants had begun to pillage her wardrobe before she left the Tuileries. It is said that she would have gone forth on horseback and have put herself at the head of the troops, but that no riding-habit had been left her, except a gay green-and-gold hunting dress worn by her at Fontainebleau.

That morning no servant in the Tuileries could be found to bring her breakfast to her chamber.

The next day Dr. Evans, in his own carriage, took her safely out of Paris, in the character of a lady of unsound mind whom he and Madame le Breton were conveying to friends in the country. Two days later they reached Deauville after several narrow escapes, the empress, on one occasion, having nearly betrayed herself by an effort to stop a man who was cruelly beating his horse.

There were two English yachts lying at Deauville. On board of one of these Dr. Evans went. It belonged to Sir John Burgoyne, grandson of the General Burgoyne who surrendered at Saratoga. Sir John, with his wife, was on a pleasure cruise. His yacht, the "Gazelle,"

was very small, only forty-five tons' burden, and carried a crew of six men.

As soon as Sir John Burgoyne had satisfied himself that it was really the empress who was thus thrown on his protection, he placed himself and his yacht at her disposal, insisting, however, that she must not come on board till nearly midnight, when he would meet her on the _quai_. It was fortunate that he made this arrangement, for, after dark, a police agent and a Russian spy came on board and searched every corner of the little vessel. When at last they departed, Sir John went on to the _quai_, and shortly afterwards met two ladies, and a gentleman who carried a hand-bag. One of the ladies stepped up to him and said, "I believe you are the English gentleman who will take me to England. I am the empress." She then burst into tears. On reaching the yacht, her first eager demand was for newspapers. Happily Lady Burgoyne could tell her that the Prince Imperial was safe in England; from the English papers she also learned particulars of the disaster at Sedan, of the proclamation of the Republic in the Corps Legislatif at Paris, and of the treatment of the emperor.

It was an anxious time for all on board the "Gazelle," for the tide would not serve to leave the harbor till seven o'clock the next morning, and Deauville was wildly riotous all night. At last they worked out of the harbor and were at sea; but a tempest was raging in the Channel, and so violent was it that at half-past one the next morning the great English ironclad "Captain," commanded by Sir Hugh Burgoyne, Sir John's cousin, went down, with all on board, not far from where the little "Gazelle" was battling with the gale. The "Gazelle" had a terrible pa.s.sage, s.h.i.+pping tremendous seas. She danced and rolled like a cork; but the ladies were brave, and were encouraged by Lady Burgoyne's composure. "There was no affectation of courage in Lady Burgoyne," said the empress afterwards; "she simply acted as if nothing were the matter."

After about eighteen hours of this stormy pa.s.sage the "Gazelle"

was safe at anchor off Ryde, in the Isle of Wight. The empress was anxious that no one should know she was in England; but Sir John told her it was his duty to inform the Foreign Office immediately.

An answer was at once returned by Lord Granville, a.s.suring the empress of welcome and protection; but he added in a postscript to Sir John: "Don't you think you may have been imposed upon?"

The fact was that the Foreign Office had already received news of the escape of the empress by way of Ostend, under the charge of two English gentlemen, who had been themselves deceived. The ladies they had a.s.sisted to leave Paris were Princess Clotilde and an attendant.

After the emperor's release from Wilhelmshohe he received Sir John Burgoyne at Chiselhurst, and thanked him, with tears in his eyes, for his care of the empress, adding that no sailors but the English could have got across the Channel on such a night in so small a craft.