And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand, brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the nine surgeons; and the Marshal's promise to Régnier that he and the officer who should accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along with the Luxembourg surgeons.
Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:—
The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and, if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.
Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just the reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what Bazaine actually informed him was that the bread ration had been already diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few days; that the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and that in such conditions and taking into account the necessity of carrying four or five days' rations for the army and keeping a certain number of horses in condition to drag the guns and supplies, there would be great difficulty in holding out until the 18th of October. Bazaine, for his part, vehemently denied having given Regnier any such information, and it seems utterly improbable that he should have done so. It is nevertheless the fact that the 18th of October was the last day on which rations were issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must have been a wizard; or Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there must have been lying on the Marshal's table during the interview with Regnier, the most recent state furnished by the French intendance, that of the 21st of September which specified the 18th of October as the precise date of the final exhaustion of the army's supplies.
At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning to Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the departure for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back again at Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet him and the Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the proposed mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched for and was ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he dismounted at the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer—they had both been of the intimate circle of the Empire—whether he knew the person walking in the garden with the Marshal?
"No," replied Boyer.
"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"
"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces—I never saw this fellow. He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employé." Whereupon the two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But Bourbaki, nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the "fellow," who promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect that the German Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris Government, which it did not consider so lawful as that of the Empress, and that if it treated with her the conditions would be less burdensome; that the intervention of the army of Metz was indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its chiefs should repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with her; and that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position on the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?" The Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.
"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will have the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure in army orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise that, pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were accepted; he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to his quarters to make his preparations.
It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of being incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian clothes and Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from one of the Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which completed the costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle, Prince Frederick Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects to a man whose brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer to Regnier who communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would see "none of them, nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he said, would choke him. He presently started with the surgeons, travelling in Regnier's name and on Regnier's passport, on an enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a fine career. At the same time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to Ferrières to report to Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would return to Metz within six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not realised this fact. He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote his own words, "the Minister had given me to understand that if I were backed by Bazaine and his army he would treat with me as if I were the representative of the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the Marshal a capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister—for the furtherance of our political ends—had consented to accord to him." He hurried expectant to Ferrières; there to be summarily disillusioned. Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few trenchant sentences:—