An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

I have already spoken of the scene I witnessed in connection with the departure of the Germans on that same Sunday early in the morning, and have also noted the demonstration in front of the German Embassy on the previous Friday night. I will not be equally positive with regard to the exact dates of the succeeding exhibitions of bad taste on the part of the Parisians, but I remember a very striking one which happened between the official declaration of war and the end of July. It was brought under my notice, not by a foreigner, but by a Frenchman, who was absolutely disgusted with it. We were sitting one evening outside the Café de la Paix, which, being the resort of some noted Imperialists, I had begun to visit more frequently than I had done hitherto. There was a terrible din on the Boulevards: the evening papers had just published a very circumstantial account of that insignificant skirmish which cost Lieutenant Winslow his life, and in which the French had taken a couple of prisoners. "They" (the prisoners), suggested an able editor, "ought to be brought to Paris and publicly exhibited as an example." "And, what is more," said my friend who had read the paragraph to me, "he means what he says. These are the descendants of a nation who prides herself on having said at Fontenoy, 'Messieurs, les Anglais tirez les premiers,' which, by-the-by, they did not say.[79] If you care to come with me, I'll show you what would be the probable fate of such prisoners if the writer of that paragraph had his will."

So said; so done. In about a quarter of an hour we were seated at the Café de l'Horloge, in the Champs Élysées, and my friend was holding out five francs fifty centimes in payment for two small glasses of so-called "Fine Champagne," plus the waiter's tip. The admission was gratis; and the difference between those who went in and those who remained outside was that the latter could hear the whole of the performance without seeing it, and without disbursing a farthing; while the former could see the whole of the performance without hearing a note, for the din there was also infernal. Shortly after our arrival, the band struck up the inevitable "Marseillaise," but the audience neither listened nor applauded.

This was, after all, but the overture to the entertainment to which my friend had invited me, and which consisted of a spectacular pantomime representing an engagement between a regiment or a battalion of Zouaves and Germans. As a matter of course, the latter had the worst of it; and, at the termination, a couple of them were brought in and compelled to sue for mercy on their knees. I am bound to say that the thing hung fire altogether, and that, but for the remarkable selection of handsome legs of the Zouaves, not even the hare-brained young fellows with which the audience was largely besprinkled would have paid any attention.

In the whole of Paris there was no surer centre of information of the state of affairs at the front than the Café de la Paix. It was the principal resort of the Bonapartists. There were Pietri, the prefect of police, Sampierro, Abatucci, and a score or two of others; all cultivating excellent relations with the Château. There was also the General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, to whom Bismarck subsequently, through the pen of Dr. Moritz Busch, did the greatest injury a man can do to a soldier, in accusing him of drunkenness when he came to settle some of the military conditions of the armistice at Versailles. He was, as far as I remember, one of the two superior French officers who estimated at its true value the strategic genius of Von Moltke. The other was Colonel Stoffel. But General d'Hautpoul was even better enabled to judge; he had seen Moltke at work in Syria more than thirty years before. He was in reality the Solomon Eagle of the campaign, before a single shot had been fired. "I know our army, and I know Helmuth von Moltke," he said, shaking his head despondingly. "If every one of our officers were his equal in strategy, the chance would then only be equal. Moltke has the gift of the great billiard-player; he knows beforehand the exact results of a shock between two bodies at a certain angle. We are a doomed nation."

As a matter of course, his friends were very wroth at what they called "his unpatriotic language," and when the news of the engagement at Saarbruck arrived they crowed over him; but he stuck to his text. "It is simply a feint on Moltke's part, and proves nothing at all. In two or three days we'll get the news of a battle that will decide, not only the fate of the whole campaign, but the fate of the Empire also."

Two days afterwards, I met him near the Rue Saint-Florentin; he looked absolutely crestfallen. "We have suffered a terrible defeat near Wissembourg, but do not breathe a word of it to any one. The Government is waiting for a victory on some other point, and then it will publish the two accounts together."

The Government was reckoning without the newspapers, French and foreign. The latter might be confiscated, and in fact were, such as the Times and l'Indépendance Belge; but the French, notwithstanding the temporary law of M. Émile Ollivier, were more difficult to deal with. I am inclined to think that if they had foreseen the terrible fate that was to befall the French armies they would have been more amenable, but in the beginning they anticipated nothing but startling victories, and, as such, looked upon the campaign in the light of a series of brilliant spectacular performances, glowing accounts of which were essentially calculated to increase their circulation. When MM. Cardon and Chabrillat, respectively of the Gaulois and Figaro, were released by the Prussians, they told many amusing stories to that effect, unconsciously confirming the opinion I have already expressed; but the following, which I had from the lips of Edmond About himself, is better than any I can remember.

A correspondent of one of the best Paris newspapers, on his arrival at the head-quarters of "the army of the Rhine," applied to the aide-major-general for permission to follow the operations. He had a good many credentials of more or less weight; nevertheless the aide-major-general, in view of the formal orders of the Emperor and Marshal Lebœuf, felt bound to refuse the request. The journalist, on the other hand, declined to take "no" for an answer. "I have come with the decided intention to do justice, and more than justice, perhaps, to your talent and courage, and it would be a pity indeed if I were not given the opportunity," he said.

"I am very sorry," was the reply; "but I cannot depart from the rules for any one."

"But our paper has a very large circulation."