France in the Nineteenth Century Part 27

All kinds of meats were eaten. Mule was said to be delicious,--far superior to beef. Antelope cost eighteen francs a pound, but was not as good as stewed rabbit; elephant's trunk was eight dollars a pound, it being esteemed a delicacy. Bear, kangaroo, ostrich, yak, etc., varied the bill of fare for those who could afford to eat them.

Men of wealth who had lost everything, took their misfortunes cheerfully. While the worst qualities of the Parisians came out in some cla.s.ses, the best traits of the French character shone forth in others. A great deal of charity was dispensed, both public and private and on the whole, the very poorest cla.s.s was but little the worse for the privations of the siege.

The houses left empty by their owners were made over to the refugees from the villages, and many amusing stories are told of their embarra.s.sment when surrounded by objects of art, and articles of furniture whose use was unknown to them.

At first the theatres were closed, and some of them were turned into military hospitals; but by the beginning of November it was thought better to reopen them. At one theatre, Victor Hugo's "Les Chatiments" was recited,--that bitterest arraignment of Napoleon III. and the Second Empire; at another, Beethoven and Mendelssohn were played, with apologies for their being Germans.

The hospital parts of the theatres were railed off, and in the corridors ballet-girls, actors, and sisters of charity mingled together.

Victor Hugo was in Paris during the siege, but he lent his name to no party or demonstration. The recitation of his verses at the theatre afforded him great delight, but the triumph was short-lived.

The attraction of "Les Chatiments" soon died away.

The most popular places of resort for idle men were the clubs. On November 21, one of these was visited by our American observer.

He says,--

"The hall was filled to suffocation. Every man present had a pipe or cigar in his mouth. It was a sulphurous place, a Pandemonium, a Zoological Garden, a Pantomime, a Comedy, a Backwoods Fourth of July, and a Donnybrook Fair, all combined. Women too were there, the fiercest in the place. Orators roared, and fingers were shaken.

One speech was on the infringement of the liberties of the citizen because soldiers were made to march left or right according to the will of their officers. Another considered that the sluggards who went on hospital service with red crosses on their caps were no better than cowards. Then they discovered a spy (as they supposed) in their midst, and time was consumed in hustling him out. Lastly an orator concluded his speech with awful blasphemy, wis.h.i.+ng that he were a t.i.tan, and could drive a dagger into the Christian's G.o.d."

The most terrible suffering in Paris during the siege was probably mental, suffering from the want of news; but by the middle of November the balloon and pigeon postal service was organized. Balloons were manufactured in Paris, and sent out whenever the wind was favorable.

It was found necessary, however, to send them off by night, lest they should be fired into by the Germans. A balloon generally carried one or two pa.s.sengers, and was sent up from one of the now empty railroad stations. It also generally took five small cages, each containing thirty-six pigeons. These pigeons were of various colors, and all named. They were expected to return soon to their homes, unless cold, fog, a hawk, or a Prnssian bullet should stop them on the way. Each would bring back a small quill fastened by threads to one of its tail-feathers and containing a minute square of flexible, waterproof paper, on which had been photographed messages in characters so small as to be deciphered only by a microscope. Some of these would be official despatches, some private messages. One pigeon would carry as much as, printed in ordinary type, would fill one sheet of a newspaper. The Parisians looked upon the pigeons with a kind of veneration; when one, drooping and weary, alighted on some roof, a crowd would collect and watch it anxiously. Sometimes they were caught by the Germans, and sent back into Paris with false news.

On November 15 a pigeon brought a despatch saying that the South of France had raised an army for the relief of Paris, and that it was in motion under an old general with the romantic name of Aurelles des Paladines, that it had driven the Prussians out of Orleans, and was coming on with all speed to the capital. The Parisians were eager to make a sortie and to join this relieving army. General Trochu was not so eager, having no great confidence in his _francs-tireurs_, his National Guard, and his Mobiles. They numbered in all four hundred thousand men; but eighty thousand serviceable soldiers would have been worth far more.

On November 28, however, the sortie was made; and had the expected army been at hand, it might have been successful. The Parisians crossed the Marne, and fought the Prussians so desperately that in two days they had lost more men than in the battles at Gravelotte.

But on the third day an order was given to return to Paris; the Government had received reliable information that the Army of the Loire (under Aurelles des Paladines) had met with a reverse, and would form no junction with the Parisian forces.

By the end of November cannon had been cast in the beleaguered city, paid for, not by the Government, but by individual subscription.

These guns were subsequently to playa tragic part in the history of the city. Some carried farther than the Prussian guns. All of them had names. The favorite was called Josephine, and was a great pet with the people.

Christmas Day of that sad year arrived at last, and New Year's Day, the great and joyful fete-day in all French families. A few confectioners kept their stores open, and a few boxes of bonbons were sold; but presents of potatoes, or small packages of coffee, were by this time more acceptable gifts. Nothing was plenty in Paris but champagne and Colman's mustard. The rows upon rows of the last-named article in the otherwise empty windows of the grocers reminded Englishmen and Americans of Grumio's cruel offer to poor Katherine of the mustard without the beef, since she could not have the beef with the mustard.

Here is the bill-of-fare of a dinner given at a French restaurant upon that Christmas Day:--

Soup from horse meat.

Mince of cat.

Shoulder of dog with tomato sauce.

Jugged cat with mushrooms.

Roast donkey and potatoes.

Rat, peas, and celery.

Mice on toast.

Plum pudding.

One remarkable feature of the siege was that everybody's appet.i.te increased enormously. Thinking about food stimulated the craving for it, and by New Year's Day there were serious apprehensions of famine. The reckless waste of bread and breadstuffs in the earlier days of the siege was now repented of. Flour had to be eked out with all sorts of things, and the bread eaten during the last weeks of the siege was a black and sticky mixture made up of almost anything but flour. All Paris was rationed. Poor mothers, leaving sick children at home, stood for hours in the streets, in the bitter cold, to obtain a ration of horseflesh, or a few ounces of this unnutritious bread.

After news came of the retreat of the Army of the Loire, great discouragement crept over the garrison. The Mobiles from the country, who had never expected to be shut up in Paris for months, began to pine for their families and villages. What might not be happening to them? and they far away!

Every day there was a panic of some kind in the beleaguered city,--some rumor, true or false, to stir men's souls. Besides this, the garrison had for months been idle, and was consumed with _ennui_. Among the prevailing complaints was one that General Trochu was too pious!

They might have said of him with truth, that, though brave and determined when once in action, he was wanting in decision. The garrison in Paris had no general who could stir their hearts,--no leader of men. General Trochu, and the rulers under him, waited to be moved by public opinion. They were ready to do what the ma.s.ses would dictate, but seemed not to be able to lead them. In a besieged city the population generally bends to the will of one man; in this case it was one man, or a small body of men, who bent to the will of the people.

The winter of 1871 was the coldest that had been known for twenty years. Fuel and warm clothing grew scarce. The Rothschilds distributed $20,000 worth of winter garments among the suffering; and others followed their example, till there was no warm clothing left to buy; but the suffering in every home was intense, and at last soldiers were brought in frozen from the ramparts. There was of course no gas, and the city was dimly lighted by petroleum. Very great zeal was shown throughout Paris for hospital service. French military hospitals and the service connected with them are called "ambulances."

"We were all full of recollections," says M. de Sarcey, "of the exertions made on both sides in the American Civil War. Our model hospital was formed on the American Plan."

The American Sanitary Commission had sent out specimens of hospital appliances to the Exposition Universelle of 1867. These had remained in Paris, and the hospital under canvas, when set up, excited great admiration. Everything was for use; nothing for show. "The four great medicines that we recognize," said the American surgeon in charge, "are fresh air, hot and cold water, opium, and quinine."

Among the bravest and most active litter-bearers were the Christian Brothers,--men not priests, but vowed to poverty, celibacy, and the work of education. "They advanced wherever bullets fell," says M. de Sarcey, "to pick up the dead or wounded; recoiling from no task, however laborious or distasteful; never complaining of their food, drinking only water; and after their stretcher-work was done, returning to their humble vocation of teachers, without dreaming that they had played the part of heroes."

Before Bazaine surrendered at Metz, eager hopes had been entertained that the army raised in the South by Chanzy and Gambetta might unite with his one hundred and seventy-two thousand soldiers in Metz, and march to the relief of Paris; but to this day no one knows precisely why Bazaine took no steps in furtherance of this plan, but, instead, surrendered ignominiously to the Germans. It is supposed that being attached to the emperor, and dreading a Republic, he declined to fight for France if it was to benefit "the rabble Government of Paris," as he called the Committee of Public Defence. He seems to have thought that the Germans, after taking Paris, would make peace, exacting Alsace and Lorraine, and then restore the emperor.

Nothing could have been braver or more brilliant than the efforts of Chanzy and Gambetta on the Loire. At one time they were actually near compelling the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris; for two hundred and fifty thousand men was a small army to invest so large a city. But the one hundred and fifty thousand German soldiers who were besieging Metz were enabled by Bazaine's surrender to reinforce the troops beleaguering the capital.

Gambetta seems to have been at that time the only man in France who showed himself to be a true leader of men, and amidst numerous disadvantages he did n.o.bly. He and Chanzy died twelve years later, within a week of each other.

From September 19, when the siege began, up to December 27, the Parisian soldiers, four hundred thousand in number (such as they were) had never, except in occasional sorties, encountered the Prussians, nor had any shot from Prussian guns entered their city.

On the night of December 27 the bombardment began. It commenced by clearing what was called the Plateau d'Avron, to the east of Paris. The weather was intensely cold, the earth as hard as iron and as slippery as gla.s.s. The French do not rough their horses even in ordinary times, and slipperiness is a public calamity in a French city. The troops, stationed with little shelter on the Plateau d'Avron, had no notion that the Germans had been preparing masked batteries. The first sh.e.l.ls that fell among them produced indescribable confusion. The men rushed to their own guns to reply, but their b.a.l.l.s fell short about five hundred yards. It became evident that the Plateau d'Avron must be abandoned, and that night, in the cold and the darkness, together with the slippery condition of the ground, which was worst of all, General Trochu superintended the removal of all the cannon. The Prussian batteries were admirably placed and admirably served.

But tremendous as the bombardment was (sometimes a sh.e.l.l every two minutes), it is astonis.h.i.+ng how little real damage it did to the city. The streets were wide, the open s.p.a.ces numerous, the houses solidly built, with large courtyards. In the middle of January, when the extreme cold moderated, hundreds of people would a.s.semble in the Place de la Concorde, looking skyward. A black object would appear, with a small bright spot in it, and making a graceful curve in the air, with a whizzing, humming sound, would drop suddenly, with a resounding boom, in some distant quarter in the city. Then the spectators, greatly interested in the sight, waited for another.

The sh.e.l.ls, which the Parisians called "obus," were like an old-fas.h.i.+oned sugar-loaf, and weighed sometimes one hundred and fifty pounds. But though, by reason of the great distance of the Prussian batteries, the damage was by no means in proportion to the number of sh.e.l.ls sent into the city, many of them struck public buildings, hospitals, and orphan asylums, in spite of the Red Cross flags displayed above them.

By January 19, when the siege had lasted four months, and the bombardment three weeks, the end seemed to be drawing near. Another sortie was attempted; but there was a dense fog, the usual accompaniment of a January thaw, and its only result was the loss of some very valuable lives.

Then General Trochu asked for an armistice of two days to bury the dead; but his real object was that Jules Favre might enter the Prussian lines and endeavor to negotiate. Before this took place, however, Trochu himself resigned his post as military governor. He had sworn that under him Paris should never capitulate. General Vinoy took his command.

The moment the Government of Defence was known to be in extreme difficulty, the Communists issued proclamations and provoked risings.

The Hotel-de-Ville was again attacked. In this rising famished women took a prominent part. Twenty-six people were killed in the _emeute_, and only twenty-eight by that day's bombardment.

On January 23 Jules Favre went out to Versailles. Paris was hushed.

It was not known that negotiations were going on, but all felt that the end was near at hand. No one, dared to say the word "capitulate," though some of the papers admitted that by February 3 there would not be a mouthful of bread in the city.

On January 27 the Parisians learned their fate. The following announcement appeared in the official journal:

"So long as the Government could count on an army of relief, it was their duty to neglect nothing that could conduce to the prolongation of the defence of Paris. At present our armies, though still in existence, have been driven back by the fortune of war.... Under these circ.u.mstances the Government has been absolutely compelled to negotiate. We have reason to believe that the principle of national sovereignty will be kept intact by the speedy calling of an a.s.sembly; that during the armistice the German army will occupy our forts; that we shall preserve intact our National Guards and one division of our army; and that none of our soldiers will be conveyed beyond our frontier as prisoners of war."

The result was so inevitable that it did not spread the grief and consternation we have known in many modern cases of surrender.

Those who suffered most from the sorrow of defeat were not the Red brawlers of Belleville, who cried loudest that they had been betrayed, but the honest, steady-going _bourgeoisie_, who for love of their country had for four months borne the burden and distress of resistance.

During the four months of siege sixty-five thousand persons perished in Paris: ten thousand died in hospitals, three thousand were killed in battle, sixty-six hundred were destroyed by small-pox, and as many by bronchitis and pneumonia. The babies, who died chiefly for want of proper food, numbered three thousand,--just as many as the soldiers who fell in battle.

Two sad weeks pa.s.sed, the Parisians meanwhile waiting for the meeting of a National a.s.sembly. During those weeks the blockade of Paris continued, and the arrival of provisions was frequently r.e.t.a.r.ded at the Prussian outposts; nor were provision-carts safe when they had pa.s.sed beyond the Prussian lines, for there were many turbulent Parisians lying in wait to rob them. All Paris was eager for fresh fish and for white bread. The moment the gates were opened, twenty-five thousand persons poured out of the city, most of whom were in a state of anxiety and uncertainty where to find their families.

At last peace was made. One of its conditions was that the Germans were to occupy two of the forts that commanded Paris until that city paid two hundred millions of francs ($40,000,000) as its ransom. It was also stipulated that the Prussian army was to make a triumphal entry into the city, not going farther, however, than the Place de la Concorde.

This took place March I, 1871, but was witnessed by none of the respectable Parisians, although the German soldiers were surrounded by a hooting crowd, whom they seemed to regard with little attention.

Thus ended the siege of Paris, and the day afterwards the homeward march of the Germans was begun.

CHAPTER XIV.