An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

"But," I remarked, "about this time yesterday I was positively assured, and on the best authority, that the Emperor was absolutely opposed to any but a pacific remonstrance."

"Your informant was perfectly correct," was the answer; "and as late as ten o'clock last night, at the termination of the second council of ministers, his sentiments underwent no change. Immediately after that, the Empress had a conversation with the Emperor, which I know for certain lasted till one o'clock in the morning. The result of this conversation is the answer, the text of which you will see directly, and which is tantamount to a challenge to Prussia. Mark my words, the Empress will not cease from troubling until she has driven France into a war with the only great Protestant power on the Continent. That power defeated, she will endeavour to destroy the rising unity of Italy. She little knows that Victor-Emanuel will not wait until then, and that, at the first success of the French on the Rhine, he will cross the Alps at a sign of Prussia; that at the first success of Prussia, the Italian troops will start on their march to Rome. Nay, I repeat, it is the Empress who will prove the ruin of France."

That playful cry of the Empress, which she was so fond of uttering in the beginning of her married life, "As for myself, I am a Legitimist," without understanding, or endeavouring to understand its import, had gradually grafted itself on her mind, although it had ceased to be on her lips. Impatient of contradiction, self-willed and tyrannical, both by nature and training, her sudden and marvellous elevation to one of the proudest positions in Europe could not fail to strengthen those defects of character. Superstitious, like most Spaniards, she was firmly convinced that the gipsy who foretold her future greatness was a Divine messenger, and from that to the conviction that she occupied the throne by a right as Divine as that claimed by the Bourbons there was but one short step. A corollary to Divine right meant, to her, personal and irresponsible government. That was her idea of legitimism. Though by no means endowed with high intellectual gifts, she perceived well enough, in the beginning, that the Second Empire was not a very stable edifice, either with regard to its foundations or superstructure, and, until England propped it up by an alliance, and a State visit from our sovereign, she kept commendably coy. But from that moment she aspired to be something more than the arbiter of fashion. As I have already said, she failed in prevailing upon the Emperor to go to the Crimea. In '59 she was more successful, in '65 she was more successful still. In the former year, she laid the foundation of what was called the Empress's party; in the latter, the scaffolding was removed from the structure, henceforth the work was done inside. She, no more than her surroundings, had the remotest idea that France was gradually undergoing a political change, that she was recovering her constitutional rights. Her party was like the hare in the fable that used the wrong end of the opera-glass, and lived in a fool's paradise with regard to the distance that divided them from the sportsman, until he was fairly upon them, in the shape of the liberal ministry of the 2nd of January, 1870.

M. Émile Ollivier, to his credit be it said, refused to be guided by his predecessors. He studiously avoided informing the Empress of the affairs of State, let alone discussing them with her. Apart from the small fry of the Imperial party, he made two powerful enemies—the Empress herself, and Rouher, who saw in this refusal to follow precedent an implied censure upon himself. Rouher, I repeat once more, was honest to the backbone, but fond of personal power. The Empire to him meant nothing but the Emperor, the Empress, and the heir to the throne; just as Germany meant nothing to Bismarck but the Hohenzollern dynasty. He was one of the first to proclaim, loudly and openly, that the plébiscite of the 8th of May meant an overwhelming manifestation, not in favour of the liberal Empire, but in favour of the Emperor; and when the latter, to do him justice, declined to look at it in that light, he deserted him for the side of his wife. It is an open secret that the first use the Empress meant to make of her power as regent, after the first signal victory of French arms, was to sweep away the cabinet of the 2nd of January. The Imperial decree conferring the regency upon her, "during the absence of the Emperor at the head of his army," and dated the 22nd of July, invested her with very limited power.

Meanwhile, pending the departure of the Emperor, Paris was in a ferment, but, to the careful observer, it was no longer the unalloyed enthusiasm of the first few days. There were just as many people in the streets; the shouts of "À Berlin!" though, perhaps, not so sustained, were just as loud every now and then; the troops leaving for the front received tremendous ovations, and more substantial proofs of the people's goodwill; the man who dared to pronounce the word "peace" ran a great risk of being rent to pieces by the crowds—a thing which almost happened one night in front of the Café de Madrid, on the Boulevard Montmartre: still, the enthusiasm was not the same. "There seems to be a great deal of prologue to 'The Taming of that German Shrew,'" said a French friend, who was pretty familiar with Shakespeare; and he was not far wrong, for the Christopher Sly abounded. The bivouacs of the troops about to take their departure reminded one somewhat more forcibly of operatic scenes and equestrian dramas of the circus type than of the preparations for the stern necessities of war—with this difference, that the contents of the goblet were real, and the viands not made of cardboard. "They are like badly made cannons, these soldiers," said some one else: "they are crammed up to the muzzle, and they do not go off." In short, the more sensible of the Paris population began to conclude that a little less intoning of patriotic strophes and a good deal more of juxtaposition with the German troops was becoming advisable. The reports of the few preliminary skirmishes that had taken place were no doubt favourable to the French; at the same time, there was no denying the fact that they had taken place on French and not on German territory, which was not quite in accordance with the spirit of the oft-repeated cry of "À Berlin!" In accordance with the programme of which that cry was the initial quotation, the French ought, by this time, to have been already half on their way to the Prussian capital. That is what sensible, nay, clever people expressed openly. Nevertheless, the cry continued, nor was there any escape from the "Marseillaise," either by day or night. Every now and then a more than usually dense group might be seen at a street corner. The centre of the group was composed of a woman, with a baby in her arms; the little one could scarcely speak, but its tiny voice reproduced more or less accurately the air of the "Marseillaise:" a deep silence prevailed during the performance in order to give the infant a fair chance; deafening applause greeted the termination of the solo, and a shower of coppers fell into the real or pseudo mother's lap. On the 18th of July, the day of the official declaration of war in Paris, the Comédie-Française performed "Le Lion Amoureux" of Ponsard.[78] At the end of the second act, the public clamoured for the "Marseillaise." There was not a single member of the company capable of complying with the request, "so the stage manager for the week" had to come forward and ask for a two-days' adjournment, during which some one might study it. Of course, the honour of singing the revolutionary hymn was to devolve upon a woman, according to the precedent established in '48, when Rachel had intoned it. From what I learnt a few days afterwards, the candidates for the distinguished task were not many, in spite of the tacit consent of the Government. The ladies of the company, most of whom, like their fellow-actors, had been always very cordially treated by the Emperor on the occasion of their professional visits to Saint-Cloud, Compiègne, and Fontainebleau, instinctively guessed the pain the concession must have caused the chief of the State, and under some pretext declined. Mdlle. Agar accepted, and sang the "Marseillaise," in all forty-four times, from the 20th of July to the 17th of September, the day of the final investment of the capital by the German armies.

It must not be supposed, though, that the Government had waited until the day of the official declaration of war to sanction the performance of the "Marseillaise" in places of public resort. I remember crossing the Gardens of the Tuileries in the afternoon of Sunday, the 17th of July. One of the military bands was performing a selection of music. The custom of doing so during the summer months has prevailed for many years, both in the capital and in the principal garrison towns of the provinces. All at once they struck up the "Marseillaise." I looked with surprise at my companion, a member of the Emperor's household. He caught the drift of my look.

"It is by the Emperor's express command," he said. "It is the national war-song. In fact, it is that much more than a revolutionary hymn."

"But war has not been declared," I objected.

"It will be to-morrow," was the answer.

The public, which in this instance was mainly composed of the better classes, apparently refused to consider the "Marseillaise" a national war-song, and applause at its termination was but very lukewarm.