Cassell's History of England, Vol. 6 (of 8) / From the Death of Sir Robert Peel to the Illness of the Prince of Wales

by Anonymous

An incident occurred on the Seine, towards the end of 1870, between Rouen and Havre, which caused some irritation in Britain until proper explanation and satisfaction had been made. The Prussians at Rouen, fearing that steam gunboats would be sent up the river to attack them, seized without ceremony six British colliers that were lying in the Seine off Duclair, and scuttled them in order that they might form an obstruction in the stream. Much stress was laid on this affair at the time, the tension of men's spirits on account of the continued misery of France being considerable, and the high-handed ways of Prussian officials not having been pleasant to put up with on the part of neutrals peaceably plying their vocations. But when Lord Granville wrote to Count Bismarck, nothing could be more frank, explicit, or satisfactory than the Chancellor's reply. He authorised Count Bernstorff to say to Lord Granville that the Prussian Government sincerely regretted that its troops, in order to avert immediate danger, had been obliged to seize ships that belonged to British subjects; that their claim to indemnification was admitted, and that the owners should receive the value of their ships, according to equitable estimation, without being kept waiting for the decision of the legal question, who was finally to indemnify them.

No gleam of hope came from the west after the beginning of the year. Chanzy, as we have seen, reached Le Mans with the Second Army of the Loire on the 21st of December, and being left in peace there for two or three weeks was able to do much towards the better organisation of his forces. A succession of small combats, between the line of the Sarthe and that of the Loire, took place between the 27th of December and the 10th of January, in some of which the French obtained the advantage; while others, particularly the later ones, marked a continual pressing back of the French outposts and small detachments by the army of Prince Frederick Charles, who had now made the necessary preparations to attack Chanzy, and drive him, if possible, still farther west. The decisive battle took place on the 11th of January. In numbers the French were probably much superior to the army that was about to attack them. But their moral was fearfully shaken by the continued ill success that had attended their arms. The battle raged all day along the whole line and at six o'clock in the evening the French still held their ground. But an hour or two after dark, a strange incident occurred. Shrewdly counting, it would seem, on the nervousness and unsteadiness of young troops at night, Prince Frederick Charles ordered a strong force of all arms to attack, about 8 P.M., the division of mobilised Bretons who were holding the strong position of La Tuilerie. The Bretons, hearing rather than seeing the enemy coming upon them, when the first shots fell in their ranks, broke and fled. Quickly the contagion ran through the rest of the army; by the morning it seemed hardly to have more cohesion than a rope of sand; thousands of prisoners fell into the hands of the Germans; and a retreat beyond the Sarthe became indispensable. Chanzy fell back to Laval on the Mayenne, fifty miles west of Le Mans, and began again his Sisyphean task.

Thus Chanzy, with a beaten and demoralised army, was driven back to a greater distance from Paris than ever; nor could any reasonable man now entertain the hope that whatever exertions he, or Gambetta on his behalf, might make, his army could again become formidable before the lapse of many weeks. But with the Parisians starvation was become an affair of a few days.

The bombardment began on the morning of the 5th of January. There were three attacks—that directed against St. Denis and its forts; that against Fort Rosny and other eastern forts; and, lastly, that against the three southern forts, Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge. Two hundred guns concentrated their fire against these southern forts. The unimportant attack on the east was maintained by sixty guns, while a hundred and fifty thundered on St. Denis from the north. Issy, on account of the too great distance between it and Mont Valérien, was the fort against which, more than any other, the Germans could bring to bear a concentric fire, and it was accordingly more knocked about than any of the rest. The most formidable of the German batteries, containing twenty-four pieces, was on the terrace of Meudon. From the whole of them an average shower of ten thousand projectiles per diem was rained during the continuance of the bombardment on the forts and on Paris. In the daytime the fire was chiefly directed at the forts, in the night it was turned against the city. The promise of Count Bismarck, expressed with brutal cynicism, that the Parisians should "stew in their own juice," was now fulfilled. Thanks to the distance, and to the number and extent of the open spaces within the enceinte, the mortality caused by the bombardment was far less than might have been expected; absolutely, however, its victims were not few. Ninety-seven persons (including thirty-one children and twenty-three women) not employed in the defence were killed by the bombardment and two hundred and seventy-eight (including thirty-six children and ninety women) were wounded. Among the public buildings and institutions injured by it were, the Jardin des Plantes, the Panthéon, the Val de Grâce, the Observatory, the Church of St. Sulpice, and the Hôtel des Invalides. Nothing, says General Vinoy, could be more admirable than the behaviour of the people while the bombardment was going on. The effect of it was to harden rather than to weaken the spirit of resistance; and Trochu, forced as it were by the enthusiasm of those by whom he was surrounded, declared (January 6th) that he would never capitulate. The effect of the fire upon the forts was far less than the Germans had expected. Even of Fort Issy the defences were far from being ruined; it could still have held out a long time after the capitulation was settled. On the other hand the last sortie from Paris on the 19th of January was a disastrous failure and it was followed by grave signs of disaffection among the National Guard.

Paris was at the end of her resources. She could not wait to know the result of the great combination—Gambetta's masterpiece—by which Bourbaki, at the head of 130,000 unhappy conscripts, had been impelled against Werder and the German communications. Of that expedition we shall speak presently; but whether it succeeded or not, not a day was to be lost in coming to any terms whereby a fresh supply of food might be obtained for the 1,800,000 persons cooped up in Paris. Jules Favre visited the German headquarters on the 24th of January, and on several days afterwards, to arrange for a capitulation and an armistice. At seven o'clock in the evening of the 26th General Vinoy received the order to cause all the forts and field works to cease firing by midnight on the same day. The order was obeyed, and the siege of Paris was at an end. The convention establishing both a capitulation and an armistice for the masses of the belligerent armies was signed by Bismarck and Favre, at Versailles, on the 28th of January. The armistice was to last twenty-one days, and was to be established wherever military operations were being actually carried on, except in the departments of Doubs, Jura, and Côte d'Or; the siege of Belfort also was to continue. Bismarck would have readily consented to extend the armistice to these departments also; but unfortunately Jules Favre fancied that Bourbaki had achieved, or was about to achieve, great things, of which the relief of Belfort was the least; he would not therefore include his army in the armistice. The object of the cessation of hostilities was declared to be the convocation by the Government of a freely elected National Assembly, which was to meet at Bordeaux to decide whether the war should be continued or not. The forts of Paris, with all guns and war material contained in them, were at once to be surrendered to the German army, which during the continuance of the armistice was not to enter the city. The guns forming the armament of the enceinte were also to be surrendered. The entire garrison of Paris were to become prisoners of war and to lay down their arms, except a division of 12,000 men, which the military authorities would retain for the maintenance of internal order. After the surrender of the forts, the reprovisioning of Paris would proceed without let or hindrance by all the ordinary channels of traffic, except that no supplies were to be drawn from the territory occupied by the German troops. A war contribution amounting to £8,000,000 sterling was imposed on the city. The terms of the armistice were punctually carried out, and on the 29th of January the German troops were put in possession of the forts.

All along the line, except in the three departments and before Belfort, the combatants dropped their arms. In that region a crowning disaster had already overtaken the last convulsive efforts of France. The three corps that had been placed under the command of Bourbaki, together with the 24th Corps (Bressolle), which was to be moved up from Lyons to co-operate in the movement, formed an army of about 130,000 men. With this force Bourbaki was expected to fall upon Werder and overpower him, raise the siege of Belfort, and, crossing the Rhine, carry the war into Germany; while Garibaldi and Cremer, after the defeat of Werder, were to fall on the German line of communications by the Strasburg-Paris railway. Entering Dijon on the 2nd of January, 1871, Bourbaki directed the main body of his army to concentrate round the fortress of Besançon, whence in two or three days he led it to the relief of Belfort. Werder, who had fallen back from Dijon on Vesoul, attacked Bourbaki's left flank on the 9th of January, at Villersexel, on the Oignon, his object being to gain time for the main body of his troops to fall back on the line of the Lisaine, in front of Belfort, and fortify a position there. The action at Villersexel was indecisive, but the march of the French was delayed by it, and Werder gained the time he so greatly needed. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th of January Bourbaki made successive attempts to force Werder's position behind the Lisaine, but always without success. With his immense preponderance in numbers, the boldest flank movements would have been permissible, and could hardly have failed to dislodge the Germans; but Bourbaki simply attacked them in front, and as they were strongly posted, and had a solidity which his own troops had not, his efforts failed. On the 18th Bourbaki resolved to retreat; and by the 22nd instant he had again concentrated his army in the neighbourhood of Besançon.

By the failure of the French to force Werder's position the fall of Belfort was made a certainty; but a greater disaster was behind. An Army of the South had been formed by Moltke, and placed under the command of Manteuffel, who took charge of it, on the 13th of January, at Châtillon-sur-Seine. Marching southwards to the assistance of Werder, Manteuffel seized Dôle, to the south-west of Besançon, and sent detachments to occupy various points near the Swiss frontier, so as to intercept the retreat of Bourbaki's army in that direction. After reaching Besançon, Bourbaki remained for some days irresolute what to do; the desperate situation of his army and the consciousness, perhaps, of his own incapacity to command, overset his reason; and on the 24th he attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself through the head. The want of supplies sufficient both for the fortress and for the support of so large an army was probably the cause why Clinchamp, upon whom the command devolved, instead of keeping the army under the shelter of the mountain forts and lofty citadel of Besançon, resolved on continuing the march southward, in order either to elude the Germans by escaping along roads close to the Swiss frontier, or, if the worst came to the worst, to cross the border and surrender to the Swiss authorities. Eventually the 24th Corps, under General Bressolle, succeeded in making its escape and reaching Lyons. The rest of the army, overtaken and attacked by Manteuffel in and around Pontarlier, after losing thousands of prisoners, was driven into Switzerland and there interned.

In pursuance of the terms of the armistice elections were held throughout France in order to the convocation of a National Assembly. By the 12th of February about three hundred members only, out of the seven hundred and fifty who were to compose the new Legislature, had arrived at Bordeaux; but so urgent was the case that the Assembly proceeded to constitute itself on that day. On the 16th of February M. Grévy was chosen President of the Assembly, and on the following day M. Thiers was appointed, by a large majority, Chief of the Executive Power. Some days before this, it being evident that the armistice which was only to last till the 19th of February, would expire before the Assembly could come to a decision upon the momentous question before it, Jules Favre hurried up to Versailles in order to obtain a prolongation of the time. It was granted, but at the same time the fate of Belfort, the governor of which had hitherto repelled all attacks, was sealed; the fortress was to be surrendered to the Germans, but the garrison, with their arms and stores, and the military archives, was to march out with the honours of war and be allowed to retire to the south of France. Accordingly the garrison, still 12,000 strong, marched out and proceeded to Grenoble; and the fortress was occupied by the Germans on the 18th of February. This may be regarded as the closing scene of the Franco-German War.

Gambetta fell from power as suddenly as he had risen to it. He appealed to the nation to use the interval for the collection of new forces, and caused the Delegation of the Government at Bordeaux to publish an electoral decree on the 31st of January, excluding from the possibility of being elected to the Assembly all persons who had stood in any official relation to the Second Empire. Against this outrageous decree Count Bismarck could not refrain from protesting, and fortunately he could appeal to the phrase in the article of the capitulation bearing on the question, which spoke of a "freely elected" National Assembly. It was a critical moment, for had M. Gambetta found a large body of Frenchmen unwise enough to back him in this course, great delays must inevitably have arisen, the legality and plenary authority of the Assembly might have been disputed, and perhaps the Germans might have been called in, or might themselves have stepped in, to arbitrate in a question of French internal politics. This consummation was happily avoided. The Government at Paris undertook to cancel the decree of the Delegation, and sent one of their number, Jules Simon, to Bordeaux, with instructions to publish and enforce their decision. Gambetta, finding his proceedings disavowed, resigned office on the 6th of February. In his stead Thiers was chosen to be Chief of the Executive. He appointed a Ministry, persuaded the Assembly to postpone all discussion as to the future Government of France, and proceeded to Versailles to agree with Count Bismarck upon the terms of peace.