II.
The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in Greater Britain which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about."
'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.'
In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.'
Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt—where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence dominant—saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud:
'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot. It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'
'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps Législatif—"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome—jamais" (shouts of "Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette violence faite à son honneur et à la catholicité." When I heard the word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but hardly so soon.'
His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.
War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy. Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other members of Parliament joined him:
'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest, though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and at Lunéville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so unpleasant for my companion, Count Böthmer—though, unlike his brother, the Count was a non-combatant—that this Knight of St. John had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-à-Mousson I forget with whom we were, but we were together and were nearly starved.
'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg; marched by Lunéville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-à-Mousson during the battles before Metz.
'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Wörth I noted that the Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn- books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at different portions of the day different corps to the same French regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up, which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where they were not in a few hours easily repaired….
'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every politician ought to know—the working of the transport system of a modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns….
'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:
'"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They seem to have fled in haste, for… the judges' pen-and-ink portraits of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place (Wissembourg) is in much confusion…. When, by straining, and a good deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council, a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night…. We are leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still posted here on the Sous-Préfecture, inside which is confined Baron de Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard." I go on to say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in London when at home…. He is a most accomplished man." He was accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot, and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person established there, although he may have thought him a curious commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.
'One of my letters appeared in the Daily News. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:
'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you'—he thought for a while—'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the Times, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the Daily News, and Mr. Landells of the Illustrated London News, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.
'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-à-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: "Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attaché, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew—but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'
No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.
'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have no notion how I shall get back…. Perhaps I shall come from Paris when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent in Europe….
'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his patriotic exultation.
'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from the field of Wörth, and the pen of the Procureur-Impérial of Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August 16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Bavière." This pleasant boy was afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the gainers by the officer's hospitality.
'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.
'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the "Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La déchéance! La déchéance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the Corps Législatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their undress képis on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the Empire that force wore…. Labouchere kept on making speeches to the crowd in various characters—sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la République!" and the Captain in command at last cried "Vive la République!" too, and withdrew his men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of the doom of the man he hated.
'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional Government, and I drew the moral—on a day of revolution always have a bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.
'I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in, and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming "Death to thieves" being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me, relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my grandmother: "I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more news from me."
'I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had listened with him to the bands playing the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir pour la Patrie," and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc. On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred Tresca, of the Arts et Métiers, who had been set by Government, although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines, so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April, 1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was.
'I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100 miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert's army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August 13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held out a fortnight longer they must have failed….
'What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success—success which would have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote: Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial condemnations, but "the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights" (France, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was also there.
'On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege (Vinoy's or) Ducrot's army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l'Opéra, and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain, comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier, and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone, near Monte Rotondo, and reported: "Les chasse-pôts ont fait merveille."
'The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. "I come from down there. They have eaten my cow!" "Ah," cried the witty Paris crowd, "if they had only eaten Leboeuf!" The Marshal was looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his influence with the Empress.
The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the 16th 'I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and the enemy's cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is pounding all the powers together in a mortar.
'I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall, but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to Tours, where I saw M. Crémieux, a Jew, the representative of the Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his balloon….
'I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtalès and Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion—National Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the coastguardsman's head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked, I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.'
Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year by giving his judgment of that moment upon the—
'events which will never be forgotten by those of my time … the downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age—the Second Empire….
'As I noted in my diary at the time, "it is possible that the Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the throne. But the 'Sphinx' who dominated Europe for so long is fallen, and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the Daily Telegraph. What will future ages say of the shameful story of the coup d'état of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico—of Maximilian, abandoned after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!"'