IT was the misfortune of Napoleon III that his Government was so unstable that the least swing of the international weather vane could create a situation in which he must either engage in a capital war or see his throne put in jeopardy provided he did not avenge "the national honor." Firmly rooted governments can do many distasteful or unpopular things: but the Second Empire was not a firmly rooted government. Hence one of the main reasons for the crisis and débâcle of 1870.
Why Otto von Bismarck felt that his policy for German consolidation would be advantaged by a war with France is a matter solely for German history. And as for the detailed moves on the military chess-board which registered the downfall of the Second Empire and the agony of the nation it had led to disaster, these also are outside the scope of this book. We have only to see how the gang of cheerful incompetents whom Napoleon III called his ministers plunged their country into the war, and what were the physical and moral effects of a frightful calamity upon the French nation. Few modern countries (prior to 1914) had been more tried than was France in 1870-71, and that the nation could survive the crucifixion it then suffered, and become again an upstanding power in the world, is one of the best evidences possible that the stock of the Gallo-Roman, Frank and Northman, was still productive, worthy, and strong after very many centuries of momentous history.
In 1870 Ollivier was head of the Cabinet, but he necessarily had to leave diplomatic affairs largely to the Duc de Gramont, an exceedingly jingoistic and incautious foreign minister. There were no outstanding questions which seemed to promise direct trouble, but the whole international situation was still rather turbid. Things had not changed since 1869 when General Ducrot wrote: "We are alike bellicose and pacific. We cannot resign ourselves to accept freely the situation which we created by the enormous blunders we committed in 1866, and yet we cannot decide frankly upon war. Peace rests on too frail foundations to last. Prussia may adjourn its projects but will never renounce them. In this state of transition, of friction, and of defiances, is it not clear that at any instant an unforeseen incident can bring on a terrible crisis?"
The outline of what happened, of the events which played directly into the hands of Bismarck, master of unscrupulous intrigue, and of Von Moltke, master of the legions, stands somewhat as follows: The throne of Spain was vacant. Early in July it became known in Paris that the disposing faction at Madrid had offered the crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, a kinsman of William I of Prussia. Instantly the Paris press blew up in a rage. Another insult from Prussia! A Hohenzollern south of the Pyrenees as well as just across the Rhine! Would the Government endure it? etc. There was an angry "interpellation" in the Chamber. On July 6, 1870, the Duc de Gramont, "in a tone of insolent provocation," told that body that it would destroy the balance of power in Europe if one of the great kingdoms put a prince on the throne of Charles V, and in that case "France would discharge her duty without hesitation and without weakness."
Leopold of Hohenzollern promptly withdrew his candidature. King William of Prussia was not anxious for war. He did nothing to reply to the fiery utterance of De Gramont; but the latter was resolved on a public rebuff for Prussia, to make it appear that the latter had recoiled before the threats of France. The French Foreign Office therefore pressed for a formal letter from William forbidding his kinsman to renew his candidature. The King was not willing to go so far, inasmuch as the matter was now for all practical purposes closed. Then by a blunder, to be paid for by a great nation's tears, De Gramont required Benedetti, the French ambassador, to wait on William at the wateringplace of Ems, on the fateful 13th of July, to demand a binding pledge from the King that the Prince shouldnever again aspire to the throne of Spain. The King declined somewhat coldly to do as requested; but he parted from Benedetti on terms of perfect cordiality, and it was understood that the negotiations were to continue amicably.
" Benedetti had not therefore been insulted, nor did he complain of an insult." But, as all the world knows to-day, Bismarck in Berlin deliberately gave to the press a garbled telegram from Ems representing the King as treating the envoy with gross discourtesy and "showing him the door." The great minister's motive was of course to render conflict inevitable in order to consolidate Germany after a victorious war against France.
No device of unmoral statecraft ever had prompter success than this "edited" Ems telegram. The situation at Paris had already become ticklish. Irresponsible journalists had been calling for an "energetic policy" and "for clearing the Prussians out of the right bank of the Rhine." De Gramont, however, had been sure he could obtain a great diplomatic success without fighting; and the Emperor and Ollivier, the premier, had been firmly on the side of peace. In fact on the 12th, when the order to Benedetti had been sent, the Council of Ministers had voted that whatever the reply of the King of Prussia, "the Government would content itself with what it had obtained." Now, however, the wine-glass seemed flung across the table in the face of France. The warm summer weather filled the Paris boulevards. The one roar was, "To Berlin!" For Napoleon III to have refused to answer the challenge would have cost the Second Empire the last remnants of its waning prestige. How long the "Man of Destiny" could then have kept his crown would have been a matter for nice calculation. The nation had been fed up on lying statements as to the efficiency of the army. In the Cabinet the war party instantly gained the upper hand. The Empress was all for action. Personal prejudices were swaying the queen of elegance and fashion. "This is my war!" she is alleged to have exclaimed. "We will crush those Protestant Prussians!" The Emperor was still half persuaded to peace, but he was racked by disease and overborne by the clamor. On the 15th of July, Ollivier appeared in the Chamber to ask for a credit of 50,000,000 francs for war purposes. Thiers vainly tried to pin him down to facts and discover whether the "insult" was really so deadly as represented. The premier waved him aside. In the spirit of explosive patriotism then reigning, anything like calm debate was impossible. By an enormous majority war was declared (July 19, 1870).
The leaders of the French nation were either men living in a fool's paradise, or else they were criminally leading the nation over a precipice, merely to postpone for a little interval their own personal ejection from power. Ollivier made his everfamous utterance, "I accept the challenge with a light heart." De Gramont (after the event) said: "I decided upon war with an absolute confidence in victory. I believed in the greatness of my country, its strength, its warlike virtues, even as I believe in my holy religion." But, after all, war is primarily a military undertaking. Neither the premier nor the foreign minister were military experts, and what were their military "experts" saying? Lebœuf, the Minister of War, was assuring his colleagues that "the army was ready"; and when pressed to tell what that meant, replied, "I mean that the army is perfectly equipped in every respect; that it will not need a single gaiter button for a year to come!" And so a great nation was sent down into the valley of humiliation.
The military story of 1870 has become fairly familiar now to every educated American. We all understand how complete was the preparation in Prussia and her South-German allies; how like an impersonal engine of destruction Von Moltke's thousands mobilized in perfect order and with admirable equipment set forth toward the Rhine. We also know how the instant the summons came to active service, the military machine of the Second Empire displayed its complete incompetence. Of course the prime evil had been that Napoleon III in military no less than civil affairs had not been able to command the best abilities in France. His generals were mostly adventurers, downright "grafters," or at best routine-hardened mediocrities who assumed that because Napoleon the Great had defeated the Prussians at Jena, the same methods would enable "Napoleon the Little" to defeat the Prussians again, say at Frankfort. The soldiers were brave, the subaltern officers competent; but the higher command, the methods of supply, etc., were execrable. The field guns were much inferior to the Prussian, and so through nearly every detail of the service. The military reforms proposed in 1868 had been most imperfectly executed. There were no adequate reserves. The bulk of the youth of France had not been trained to arms. The old professional army, in short, was practically all that could be relied upon, and up to August 1 it barely exceeded 250,000 men, to be pitted against much larger Prussian forces which were steadily augmenting. A competent critic, assessing the disaster which followed, assigned the ruin of the nation to three causes, easy to state – "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of weapons, inferiority of the higher command." More pithily still might be set down the one cause of causes – the incompetence of Napoleon III to exercise the power he had seized by a crime.
Napoleon had done more than get himself embroiled with Prussia when he ought to have known enough to keep the peace. He had also failed to make any alliance for France. Austria might have moved against Prussia, but she feared a counter-attack by Russia, and waited for "the first French victories" – which never came. Italy might have come to Napoleon's aid, but her price was the evacuation of Rome by the French troops. The Emperor was too dependent upon the Clericals to dare to leave the Pope to his fate. The French garrison remained in Rome until the situation had become hopeless in the North. France, therefore, went into the war without a friend, with an army miserably organized and equipped, and, as it soon appeared, still more miserably commanded. The result was hardly doubtful the moment the two hosts came to grips. Even before the first defeats it began to be evident that things were very wrong. It was said that the telegraph offices swarmed With soldiers and officers all writing messages beginning, "Please send me." Reports of utter confusion came back to Paris from Metz, the grand headquarters. Nevertheless the capital continued excited and joyfully expectant. Late in July the Emperor and the young Prince Imperial took trains for Metz to join the army, leaving the Empress in Paris as regent. Father and son were never to see Paris again.For our purposes what now happened can be stated in the briefest possible manner.1. To satisfy the impatience of the French populace for a victory," on August 2 Napoleon ordered an attack on a weak Prussian detachment just across the frontier at Saarbrücken. It was absurd to call it a battle. The Prussian battalion retired after a little firing. The Emperor telegraphed that the Prince had had his "baptism of fire," and the skirmish was celebrated with Te Deums as being a really important victory.2. On August 4 an overwhelming force of Prussians surprised and defeated a French division at Weissenburg, thus winning the first serious engagement.3. On August 6, 45,000 French under MacMahon were attacked at Wörth in Alsace by about twice as many Prussians. After valiant resistance the French had to flee in what was little better than rout.On this same disastrous August 6 the French corps of Frossard was attacked at Forbach in Lorraine. It beat off the first attacks, but finally had to retire, more as a consequence of bad generalship than of the inability of the soldiery to stop the Prussians. Paris had waited impatiently for the successes promised by the Government. On the very day after the defeat at Wörth, the city was sent for some hours into a frenzied ecstasy over the false report (possibly instigated to promote stock speculations) of a great victory and the capture of the Prussian Crown Prince. Then came bulletins admitting that the enemy was across the frontier, "which fact presented us marked military advantages," and that "all could be recovered." The reaction of feeling, of course, needed a victim. Ollivier resigned. Count Palikao became head of the ministry (August 10). He was a pompous, utterly inefficient man, who continued the policy of lying about the situation, saying oracularly, "If Paris knew what I know, the city would be illuminated."The Germans drove right onward against Metz. The Emperor abandoned the command of the main army to Marshal Bazaine (a showy, selfish individual, overwhelmed by a situation far too great for him) and got away from Metz just in time to escape being hemmed in by the Prussians. The latter forced the French forces back into Metz in a series of battles beginning on August 14 and culminating in the decisive engagement of Gravelotte (August 18). The French fought bravely, but Bazaine ruined all his chances by great sluggishness in action, and utter failure to fling in his ample reserves to reinforce hardpressed divisions in the firing line. Soon he was blockaded in Metz, and was calling lustily for a relieving army. Napoleon dared not go back to Paris with the awful tale of defeat. He took refuge in the camp at Chalons where his best general, MacMahon, was trying to organize a very heterogeneous reserve army into something useful. MacMahon wished to leave Bazaine to hold out for a while, and to retire himself slowly toward Paris, exhausting the Germans by Fabian tactics. Since his was the only regular field army now available for France, this advice was the one thing really possible. But Palikao and the affrighted Empress telegraphed from Paris that if the army retreated without trying to rescue Bazaine, there would be a revolution which would destroy the dynasty. In defiance of all good strategy, MacMahon set off for the Meuse, vainly hoping to make a junction with Bazaine. With his army went the Emperor, a sad guest, a helpless witness of events he could not control. As might have been expected, MacMahon was chased down by Von Moltke, penned up by vastly superior forces in Sedan near the Belgian line, and after a brave and almost frantic struggle, he was forced to surrender on September 2, with 891,000 unwounded men, including – as the Germans gleefully reported – "one Emperor."
Napoleon III telegraphed laconically to Paris: "The army has been defeated and is captive. I myself am a prisoner." The Prussians sent him to a pleasant castle in Hesse where he remained until after the war. Then he departed to exile in England. He had done to France almost all the harm which one man could.
8. The Prussians now, of course, advanced directly on Paris. There was no longer any French field army capable of opposing them. Strasbourg and other frontier fortresses were still holding out gallantly but hopelessly. Bazaine lay supinely under the guns of Metz. By September 19 the Prussians had seized Versailles and begun the investment of the capital. They had no longer to fight against the Second Empire, but against the new Government of the National Defense."
The moment the fell news of Sedan spread in Paris the old bonds of authority were snapped. The lying bulletins and the creeping consciousness that the myrmidons of "Napoleon the Little" were leading the country into a frightful physical disaster had exasperated the Parisians. It speaks well for their self-restraint that there were not violent lynchings and even massacres.
On the night of September 3 the Chamber was in session. Jules Favre, a Republican leader, instantly proposed that the Bonapartist régime be considered ended and that a provisional government be set up. In the prevailing torpor, his proposal was neither rejected nor accepted. At 10 A.M. on the 4th, workingmen were parading and crying, "Downfall! Downfall!" At the Tuileries the ministers were having a last distracted conference with the Empress Regent. Palikao offered to try to hold down the mob with "40,000 men," but no 40,000 reliable troops were available. So the day passed in futile debates amid all the supposedly ruling bodies. At last, while the Chamber was voting on a motion of Thiers for a committee of national defense, the mob swept into the building. The session was broken up. The members, to please the people, withdrew to the City Hall. Here they were joined by Trochu, the military governor of Paris, a man who had the confidence of the garrison, and who had no great personal friendship for Eugénie. Trochu put himself at the head of a new provisional government. His fellow members were mostly Republicans. The most prominent were Jules Favre, who took the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, and Gambetta who became Minister of the Interior.
The crisis was not one that permitted constitutional quibbling or nice processes of adjustment and transition. Eugénie fled (somewhat beset by the mob), chased from the Tuileries by the yells of "Deposition!" and "Long live the Republic!" Thanks to the aid of her American dentist, Dr. Evans, she presently, with some adventures, escaped to England, there to enter upon a long exile. The Senate and the Legislative Chamber dispersed without much dignity. Thiers spoke the obituary words for the helpless deputies: "We can neither resist nor assist those who are fighting against the enemy. We can only say, 'God help them!'"
The Government of National Defense was received promptly with obedience by all France. There was nothing else to do, unless the land were to be consigned to anarchy in the face of a victorious advancing enemy. And so again France had a "republic" – but a republic handicapped by terrors without and utter demoralization within; a republic given the almost impossible task of saving the nation from physical ruin. No new government ever came into being on harder terms, yet this was to be the Government which was to emerge twice victor of the Marne, victorious at Verdun, victorious in Champagne, and through its commander-in-chief to speak for the democracies of the world in dictating the armistice to the Hohenzollern in 1918. But before that "day of glory" France was to go down into the Valley of the Shadow for many distressful years.
The new Government tried to negotiate with the Prussians. Napoleon III had made the war. Napoleon was now gone. The French people were willing to pay for peace by a heavy indemnity – so Jules Favre argued in an interview with Bismarck; but when the latter talked of annexing Alsace and northern Lorraine he met the proud answer, "Not one inch of our lands, not one stone of our fortresses." The war must go on. "We are not in power, but in combat!" announced the Republican chiefs to the country, and they called on France to defend the national integrity. Thiers was started off on a round of the European capitals, in vain quest of an alliance; while all energies at home were devoted to resistance to the bitter end. If the French did not save their territory in the struggle which followed, they assuredly saved their honor. The case was so desperate that there would have been no shame in prompt surrender to the enemy. Outside of the besieged garrisons of Metz and Strasbourg there were barely 95,000 regular troops (widely scattered) at the orders of the Government, and almost no dependable reserves. Of these troops about 50,000 were in Paris. The Prussians were advancing with over 230,000, flushed with victory and admirably organized.
But between September 4 and 19 (when the enemy closed in) enormous efforts were made at the capital. Heavy naval guns were rushed up from the arsenals at Cherbourg and Brest; 125,000 "Gardes Mobiles" (a kind of militia) were brought from the provinces, and a great fraction of the city folk were enrolled in the new "National Guard." In all 500,000 persons were listed for the defense of the capital. Unfortunately this number was utterly deceptive. Undisciplined, without competent officers, embodied in the haste of panic, most of these troops had nothing but fervid patriotism to pit against Von Moltke's veterans. It was impossible to use the bulk of them for offensive fighting, and the Germans were, of course, too canny to try to storm the defense system which girdled Paris. Nevertheless, this energy, plus the foresight which hurried huge quantities of provisions into the city, enabled the capital to hold out, not the four weeks that Von Moltke had reckoned, but four months.
To save Paris before provisions failed, it was needful that the departments should raise a huge relieving army and cut through the besiegers' lines. But the policy of placing so large a garrison in the capital made the prospects of the attempt very discouraging, despite the great potential resources of provincial France. The new Government remained for the most part in Paris, but stationed at Tours three delegates to organize the exterior war. They were rather inefficient men. Only 23,000 reliable troops and one battery of six guns were said to have been actually at their disposal when they began their work, but a mighty moral reinforcement was at hand.
It was before the days of aeroplanes, but the Parisians were sending up balloons (when the wind favored) to drift across the German lines. On October 9, Léon Gambetta, thirty-two years old, the same young advocate who had recently excoriated the Second Empire, escaped from Paris by balloon and appeared in Tours. He now came as a "delegate" from the imprisoned Government in the capital. Soon he seemed himself the incarnation of the entire Government of France. With an energy worthy of Carnot in the original Revolution, he flung himself into the task of organizing "the nation in arms." Every able-bodied Frenchman was called to the colors. Without competent staff officers, forced to build his own organization, obeyed more because of his imperious patriotism than because of any lawful commission, Gambetta called into being vast armies. In four months he armed, organized, and sent into battle 600,000 men, fired by the lyrical proclamations which the French masses loved so well.
Gambetta's handicaps, however, could not have been overcome by a Napoleon I. He could enroll large armies, but he was allowed no time to train them. He had almost no well-tested professional officers; only brave amateurs who had to learn the grim art of war by leading their fellow citizens against the most scientifically prepared army in the world. No genius for organization, no fervid appeal to patriotism could make well-intentioned bourgeois and peasants into hardened and experienced soldiers overnight. Nevertheless, Gambetta would probably have saved Paris had only he been spared a new calamity; had not the German army around Paris been almost doubled in strength.
After their first victories, the Prussians had besieged Strasbourg. On August 13 they had begun the bombardment, intending by their deadly shell-fire, aimed at private buildings, schools, etc., rather than at the forts, to induce the citizens to put pressure on the commander to surrender. In this they utterly failed. The people took refuge in cellars. Many public edifices were burned including two valuable libraries. The famous cathedral was somewhat shattered. But the citizens bore up bravely. As their commandant told them, "Your heroism, at this hour, consists in patience." The city, however, had not been properly provisioned, and on September 27 there was nothing for it but to hoist the white flag over the cathedral. Strasbourg entered upon her forty-eight years of captivity.
The fall of Strasbourg, of course, released a considerable German force for use before Paris, but that was nothing to what became available a month later. Bazaine had clung around the fortress of Metz in an utterly cowardly manner. He made no resolute efforts to cut his way through the German blockade, though the besieging force was not overwhelmingly superior to his own. When news of the fall of the Empire drifted into his camp his "stupid and criminal" mind turned to politics. He would negotiate with the enemy, patch up some kind of truce, lead back to Paris the only army left to France, and reëstablish the Second Empire or some other kind of dictatorship. Bismarck spun him along with sham negotiations and half-promises until Bazaine's supplies were exhausted and the morale of his soldiers was so undermined that there was nothing possible but surrender. It was an infinitely more disgraceful capitulation than that of Sedan. On October 27, 1870, Bazaine surrendered at Metz with 179,000 men, 1570 cannon, and 260,000 muskets. His act was the last evil legacy of the Second Empire, and came just in time to complete the act of ruin.
Bazaine's duty had been to try to cut his way through the enemy. Failing that, he ought to have held out to the last gasp, even if his men were starving. His mere existence in Metz kept 200,000 Germans immobilized, and consequently made the relief of Paris by Gambetta possible. Now at one stroke this whole great German force was released to aid in the blockade of Paris. Gambetta's relieving armies were just beginning to take shape and to get into action. On November 9, a fairly competent French general, D'Aurelles de Paladine, won a victory at Coulmiers (almost the first gleam of sunlight on the French arms) and retook Orléans from the Teutons. But before any use could be made of this success, the German besieging hosts had been so reinforced by "the avalanche descending from Metz" that the case became absolutely hopeless.
The remainder of the melancholy story is soon told. A winter of unusual severity added to the miseries of the unhappy French armies. Ill-equipped, shoeless, coatless often, unacquainted with their new and half-trained officers, the French soldiery did all that mortals might, but they could do no more. Every attempt to break through the German blockade was defeated. Every attempt (several times bravely undertaken) by the Paris garrison to break out was likewise defeated. Gambetta still toiled on; optimistic, indefatigable, willing to struggle against every adverse circumstance. The central departments of France, however, were becoming terribly ravaged by the war. The peasants were losing heart. The military men were telling Gambetta that the case was hopeless, and in January conditions within Paris brought the war to its inevitable climax.
The capital held out until the daily bread ration had been reduced to 300 grammes, and that of a "black and gluey mixture of rice, oats, hempseed, and bran." Horse meat was selling at 12, francs ($2.40) per pound (500 grammes), but a person was only allowed to buy 30 grammes per day. Rats were worth 2 francs apiece. The lions, elephants, and giraffes in the menagerie had long since been served up in exclusive restaurants. Firewood and coal had become exhausted in a winter so severe that wine froze in the vats. Young children were dying by hundreds for lack of milk, and of course the mortality among the invalids and the old was frightful. The Germans early in January began also a long-range bombardment, killing and wounding in all about 400 persons, although this cannonading did little to produce the final surrender. The end came when the authorities knew that in a few days even the scanty bread ration would fail, and feared lest in that case they could not handle the inevitable rioting.
Jules Favre went out to Versailles to the Prussians on January 23. Bismarck was inexorable to pleas for mercy and on January 28 Paris surrendered, most of the regular garrison becoming prisoners of war. When the news spread to the departments, although Gambetta wished to go on fighting, the leaders of the army told him the situation was hopeless. France must make peace on whatever terms or face absolute ruin. The brokenhearted "dictator" quietly laid down his office and retired to Spain, while Favre and Thiers conducted the final sad negotiations with Bismarck. A National Convention was to be called, to give a popular approval to the treaty, and to establish a permanent government for France. The country which had seemed incomparably the first Power of Europe as recently as 1856, had now to submit to the demands of ceding Alsace and northern Lorraine (including Metz) to Germany, and of paying an indemnity of five billion francs (one billion dollars). It was only thanks to the firmness and even to the despairing threats of Thiers that the strong fortress of Belfort was not also required, and six billion francs instead of five. The humiliation of the "Grand Nation" was abject and unparalleled.
The National Assembly met at Bordeaux on February 12, 1871. The circumstances under which it was elected and the character of its members will be discussed in the next chapter. On February 26 the preliminaries of the treaty of peace were drafted between Thiers and Bismarck at Versailles. There was an agonizing debate when the deputies from Alsace-Lorraine pleaded with their fellow countrymen against being handed over to the hated alien and proclaimed "their immutable will to remain French." There was nothing to do, however, but to record their protest and sorrowfully to bid them depart. One of the dissenting and protesting minority, that declared the whole act of separation void, was a young politician, a certain Georges Clemenceau, who many years later was to ride again into Strasbourg with the Tricolor going on before him.
The cup of national sorrow was not yet full. After the slaughter of Frenchmen by Prussians must come the slaughter of Frenchmen by Frenchmen. The sufferings of the Parisian masses during the siege undoubtedly had been bitter. There had been several times, even while the investment lasted, when a popular uprising, a mad spasm of discontent, had almost overthrown the Provisional Government. On the 31st of October, 1870, a turbulent band of insurgents had tried to usurp power at the City Hall and had been dispersed only by armed force. Now the vain struggle was over. The Germans had made their brief parade through the Arc de Triomphe. The great masses of the city were left disheartened, restless, with most of them out of employment and still very unsatisfactorily fed. As Machiavelli has wisely generalized, "Almost all the great sieges known to history have terminated with seditions, for the moral and physical sufferings of the people predispose them to be influenced by agitators, while the arms with which they are unavoidably provided furnish the weapons for a rising." This was exactly the case in Paris in that most unhappy spring of 1871.
The next chapter will explain how the new National Assembly was largely dominated by partisans whom the Parisian populace considered monarchical and reactionary. The deputies first met at Bordeaux to be safe from German molestation, but on the 10th of March, as the Germans retired, the Assembly departed for Versailles. This selection of the old Royalist residence town and not of Paris seemed an insult to the capital, a sign that the Assembly did not sympathize with the sufferings of the Parisians and would do nothing for them. Bad blood was brewing, and every radical agitator found his opportunity.
The industrial population of the eastern quarters of Paris had "gone through the siege in a violent state of exaltation, physical and moral, with diseased nerves and a distracted mind." The workers had had little to eat and had been deprived of much of their familiar light wine, but there had been an unfortunate abundance of whiskey and brandy. When the city fell, not understanding that modern warfare is less a matter of bravery than of careful, scientific preparation, they readily charged the defeat to sheer "treason" on the part of the Government. They were passionate Republicans and believed the Assembly was about to call back the kings. They had been organized as part of the National Guard, and now they clung tightly to their weapons, and refused to be deprived of some two hundred and thirty cannon which they claimed were the property of the people of Paris and not of the Central Government. While they were resentful and distrustful, and were being worked upon by the Socialist chiefs (who saw their opportunity), the Assembly committed a grievous blunder. It suppressed the pay of 11/2 francs (30 cents) per day which had been given the National Guardsmen, and which, considering the suspension of all regular industry, was the sole sustenance of many working-men. The Assembly also ordered the resumption of the collection of debts, rents, etc., which had been interrupted during the siege. One hundred and fifty thousand Parisians suddenly found themselves liable to legal process for unpaid rents. Needless to say discontent grew apace.
On the 18th of March, 1871, Thiers, now head of the new executive government set up by the Assembly, ordered some troops to seize a park of cannon belonging to the Paris National Guard. The populace resisted. The troops wavered and fraternized with the malcontents. The guns were not taken, and in the disturbance a band of desperadoes murdered the generals Lacomte and Clement Thomas. This was the beginning of a hideous civil war which lasted until May 28.
The capital now found itself in the hands of the " Council General of the Commune of Paris," made up of delegates elected by the industrial quarters alone. This Commune professed to be the regular government of the city, appointed ministers, adopted the "red" flag of ultra-radicalism, and pretended to issue decrees binding upon all France. The ruling idea, however, seems to have been to reduce France to a loose federation of autonomous communes, each working out its own particular brand of socialism. In one sense the movement represented Paris battling against the departments; the struggle of the ideals of the industrial population fighting against the ideals of the peasants and the bourgeoisie. Some of the Communist chiefs were men of sincere enthusiasms and considerable ability; some were unpoised fanatics; some were mere uncaged criminals of the most dangerous type. As the struggle went on, and tended to go against the Socialists, increasingly desperate counsels of course prevailed, and the viler elements came ever more conspicuously to the top. The Commune began then, like many another social movement, in a genuine attempt to redress undoubted wrongs and to bring nearer the Earthly Paradise: it ended with blood-stained desperadoes trying to burn down Paris to make its ash-heaps the monument to their own ruin.
Early in April the Communist troops marched out on Versailles to break up the Assembly. That body, however, had collected loyalist forces and drove them back. The Germans had now released many of their prisoners. MacMahon's and Bazaine's veterans came back from captivity, only to find France rent with civil war and threatened with anarchy on top of foreign invasion. Thiers put Marshal MacMahon in charge of the Government forces (some 150,000 men) with which to recapture the capital. So Paris underwent the miseries of a second siege: not this time one of mere starvation or long-range bombardment, but like the fighting of 1830 and 1848, barrier by barrier, and street by street, although both attack and defense were now more sustained, elaborate, and desperate. The Germans from their forts in the outskirts looked on with sardonic neutrality while their late foes slaughtered one another. MacMahon had on his side numbers, equipment, better leadership, and discipline, as well as the moral asset of the better cause. It took him several weeks to storm the outer forts and make a breach in the inner "girdle" of Paris. Then on the 21st of May these were forced, and the fighting began for actual possession of the city.
It was hellish, utterly destructive warfare. The Government troops were madly exasperated at the action of their foes who would thus add to the agonies of France while the victorious alien was still upon their soil. Quarter was seldom asked and more seldom given. In brutal desperation the Communists finally set fire with kerosene to many of the most magnificent edifices in the city. The Tuileries Palace was burned. The Louvre barely escaped. Many other buildings were destroyed or scathed. "The Seine ran down between two walls of fire." Various prominent personages, whom the Communists had seized in April as "hostages," were put to death in cold blood. So perished the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Darboy, and several other prominent churchmen, and the president of the High Court of Cassation.
The victorious troops on their part fought their way forward without mercy. The last stand of the Communists was around the desecrated tombs of the great cemetery of Pere-Lachaise. By the 28th of May "the Bloody Week" was over, and the last barricade was forced. After that Paris was to have respite from actual warfare until Prussian shells dropped again from gigantic cannon and aeroplanes in 1914-18. According to official figures 6500 persons perished in the fighting or were shot upon being taken with arms in their hands. The actual number, however, was probably fully 17,000. At least $36,000 prisoners were marched out to Versailles to be tried by court martial. Of these fully 10,000 were condemned to transportation; often to the desolate Pacific island of New Caledonia. The severity and recklessness of the punishment corresponded with the anger and horror of the victors. And so at length "the torment passed." Thiers and his colleagues could devote themselves to the rebuilding of France.
The Franco-Prussian War, followed as it was by the Commune, inflicted on France a downfall, a sudden humiliation, and an enormous physical loss almost unparalleled prior to 1914. At one blow the country seemed stricken from the list of great nations and its very existence threatened. The disaster had appeared to point to something inherently rotten in the whole foundation of French society, and to be proof positive that here was a decadent and tottering state. The world for the instant lost confidence in France, and took her at her coarsest critic's measure, and France almost lost confidence in herself. No longer the "first Power of Europe" the issue now was whether she was about to sink to the level of decrepit Spain, forever overshadowed and coerced by her mail-clad Hohenzollern neighbor.
The mere physical loss was great. Between the economic prostration of the war, the destruction of property in battle, and the great indemnity due Germany, the nation was at least three billion dollars the poorer; a sum esteemed colossal before 1914, and that loss coming too with 4300 square miles of territory and over 1,500,000 citizens violently wrenched away. As for the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine, it fixed a great gulf of enmity between Frenchman and Teuton which, in the words of a distin- guished American, was "to unsettle the peace of the world for nearly fifty years."
"Think of it always, speak of it never," was the advice Gambetta gave his countrymen concerning the national loss; but such heroic counsel could hardly be followed. The question of "revanche" thrust itself into almost every political discussion directly or indirectly. It was the phantom behind every act of French diplomacy, and behind every act of German diplomacy plotting to keep the snatched plunder and to render its former possessor helpless forever. The duty of "revenge" was taught as a bitter gospel to the next generation, who grew up without the personal memories of seeing the Prussian spiked helmets going down the village streets. In the decade before the Great War it was pretended that the memory was gradually seeming less acute, that the mourning over Strasbourg was becoming more perfunctory. The call to arms, at the threat of the new German invasion, evoked all the old agonies and yearnings of 1871, and to the sons of France the war was not merely a new defense of the beloved patrie, it was a crusade to undo an intolerable wrong.
The following is from the most popular textbook upon French history, used by the children of France during the two decades before 1914, its author one of the most distinguished historians of his day and a member of the famous Academy:
After speaking of the great prosperity of France under the Third Republic, the author goes on to say that "this must not suffer us to forget the disasters of 1870 and 1871, following the peace of Frankfort which humiliated and diminished France. Our old-time military honor has been wounded.
"We were beaten, because our army was too small, was badly organized, badly commanded, and because our fortresses were not in a proper condition for defense.
"The Imperial Government failed in its duty to maintain the army and the fortresses. Our disasters impose upon us the obligation to watch ourselves, through the deputies which we elect, over the safety of our native land, and never to entrust our destinies to the power of only one man.
"We were beaten, because many Frenchmen loved too well the pleasures of peace, the tranquillity which it gives, and the riches which it enables them to procure. They said that an army cost heavily, and that it was better to use the money to build machines for industry than to cast cannon. But war came. Our losses, added to the war indemnity, amounted to at least fifteen billion francs [$3,000,000,000]. Our disasters teach us that all economy practiced upon the army costs too dearly, and that France, which has formidable armed neighbors, must place and keep herself in a state to resist them.
"We were beaten, because very many Frenchmen believed there was no need for them to learn the art of being a soldier.
"We were beaten, because very many Frenchmen believed the time for wars was passed. They said that men ought to love one another, and that a war was a barbarism which dishonored humanity. But the Germans were writing and teaching that war is an honor for humanity, and they hated France and never lost an occasion to treat us as 'hereditary enemies.' For a long time they were preparing to make war on France and THEY ARE PREPARING AGAIN. Our disasters teach us that it is needful to love France above everything else, and then, in the second place only, 'humanity.'"
"All war begun without just cause is a crime, and so is the conquest of lands belonging to others. France must renounce all ideas of wars of conquest. But at the peace of Frankfort France had to cede provinces inhabited by 1,500,000 Frenchmen. The Germans have never asked the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine if they wish to become Germans. Since 1871 they have governed our fellow citizens with extreme forms of severity. Every time they have had a chance the Alsatians have proved that their sentiments have not changed. When they have elected deputies to the German parliament they have charged them to protest against the treaty of Frankfort, which has delivered them over to Germany.
"They have proved that they have kept faithfully their attachment to France. The first duty of France is not to forget Alsace-Lorraine which does not forget her."