These sentiments found expression, nearly as energetic, in language uttered by the representatives of the country. The wish of the Corps Législatif was no longer doubtful. It appears that there had been a moment when the Ministers inclined towards peace. An order of the day by MM. Clément-Duvernois and Jérôme David—the latter Vice-President of the Chamber[128]—nearly overturned the Cabinet. This occurred on July 13. Two days later the Chamber was called upon definitively to pronounce on the conclusions drawn up in conformity to the Commission of which M. de Kératry was a member, and which had been unanimously approved of. The vote was for War! The majority numbered 247 against 10. Seven members only were absent. The Radical Opposition was divided in opinion. To use the words of M. Thiers: “This was, in truth, the expression of an overwhelming approval of the country; the Legislative Body siding with the people.”
When the Emperor, in his proclamation to the French army, foretold the difficulties of the enterprise, so certain appeared success to all that the sober “Journal des Débats” expressed an opinion that His Majesty “showed too much diffidence in his address to his troops.”
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Every soldier in the streets was made the subject of popular ovation. In the theatres public feeling manifested itself by the noisiest demonstrations. Who can forget that representation at the Opera when the whole audience rose to a man and thundered out the “Marseillaise”?
In Paris such was the enthusiasm felt that the Emperor could not leave his Palace without being cheered by an immense mob, crying out, “Vive la guerre!” At the moment of his departure for the army His Majesty purposely refrained from driving through the capital owing to reports that the populace would indulge in wild demonstrations, intending to unharness the horses from his carriage and drag it themselves in triumph to the railway station. This same people, one month later, destroyed the emblems of the Empire and broke the statues of their Ruler![129]
If we have recalled facts known to all, it is not to exonerate the Emperor from the responsibilities he assumed, but to prove what was then the state of public opinion in France.
On Sunday, July 19, 1870, Napoleon III. held, at the Tuileries, a Council of War, which lasted several hours. The Emperor and his Ministers agreed, without exception, after mature deliberation, that a declaration should be made rendering peace still possible. But the same evening the Ministers repaired to St. Cloud and amended their resolution of the morning, M. Ollivier informing His Majesty that if the document agreed upon at their last meeting had been published the disappointment would have been such that “the Ministers would have been received with hisses and their carriages pelted with mud.”
Certainly, although the Chief of the State was a Constitutional Sovereign, he might have prevented the war, but at the cost of his own popularity. They would again have reproached him—as they already had—for being humble to the strong and arrogant to the weak. His conduct would have been for ever denounced by a malevolent Opposition as basely culpable towards a designing adversary.
At the same time, we own that the duty of the Emperor was to have shown himself wiser than the nation, and avoided war even at the cost of his crown.
His excuse is that he accepted the contest, but without ardour, as a man who engages in a duel because his honour and duty demand it, not considering that his opponent may be stronger than himself. Doubtless, he may have been carried away at the moment by national élan; by unlimited confidence in the power of his army; and that dreams of military glory, perhaps even of territorial aggrandizement, then stifled in his breast the calm reasoning of the statesman.