Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

by Bertha von Suttner

Now our valet de chambre came rushing into the room, and at the same time a fresh salvo resounded.

“Oh monsieur et madame—c’est le bombardment.”

And now all the other men and maids, down to the kitchen-maid, came pushing into the room. In such catastrophies—in the exigencies of war, fire, or water, all distinctions of society fall away, and those threatened all cluster together. All feel equal before danger—much more than before the law—much more than before Death, which in its burial ceremonies knows so much of distinction of rank. “C’est le bombardment, c’est le bombardment.” Every one who came into the room uttered the same cry.

It was horrible, and yet I recollect quite well what I felt—a sort of admiring shudder, a kind of satisfaction at such a mighty experience—to be present at a situation so freighted with destiny and not to fear the danger to my own life in it. My pulses beat, and I felt—what shall I call it?—the pride of courage.

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The thing was on the whole less terrible than it had seemed at the first instant. No flaming buildings, no crowds shrieking with terror, no bombshells whizzing continually through the air; but only always this heavy, far-off thunder, with long and still longer intervals between. One came after a time to get almost accustomed to it. The Parisians chose as objects for a walk those points where the cannon music was best heard. Here and there a bomb would fall in the street and burst; but how rarely did it occur to any given person to happen to be near? It is true that many shells did fall which carried death, but in the city of a million men these cases were heard of in the same scattered way in which at other times one is accustomed to see in one’s newspaper various cases of accident, without its coming specially near to oneself. “A bricklayer fell from a scaffold four storeys high,” or “A genteelly dressed female threw herself over the balustrades of the bridge into the river,” and so forth. The real grief, the real terror of the populace, was not for the bombardment, but hunger, cold, and starvation. But one such account of the death-dealing shot gave me a deep shock. It came in the form of a black-bordered mourning-card sent to the house:—

Monsieur and Madame R—— inform you of the death of their two children, François aged eight, and Amélie aged four, who were struck by a bomb coming through the window. Your silent sympathy is requested.

Silent sympathy! I gave a loud shriek as I read the paper. A thought—a picture flashing before my inner eye with lightning clearness, showed me the whole of the woe which lay in this simple mourning-notice. I saw our two children, Rudolf and Sylvia—no! I could not pursue the thought!

The tidings which one got were scanty. All communication by post was, of course, cut off. It was by carrier pigeons and balloons only that we had intercourse with the world outside. The rumours that cropped up everywhere were of the most contradictory nature. Victorious sallies were announced, or the information was spread that the enemy was on the point of storming Paris, with a view of setting it on fire in all corners, and levelling it to the ground, or it was asseverated that sooner than allow one German to get within the walls, the commandants of the forts would blow up themselves and the whole of Paris into the air. It was related that the whole population of the country, especially of the south (le midi se lève), were falling on the besiegers’ rear, in order to cut off their retreat, and annihilate them to the last man.