The Man was Colonel Baron Stoffel.
And Colonel Stoffel was the French Military Attaché at Berlin from 1866 until 1870.
This clear-headed artillery officer, ever on the alert, saw what would inevitably happen sooner or later, and he bombarded his Government with warning reports, which were either pigeon-holed by Ministers, after a perfunctory glance at their contents, or perused and treated as waste-paper. Those who assume (which I do not, and never shall) that Napoleon III. was, as a Ruler, as black as his detractors have painted, and continue to paint, him, will now learn for the first time that, while in the highest military circles Stoffel’s repeated warnings of Prussia’s preparations for war were scoffed at, and he himself regarded by many at the Tuileries as a bird of ill omen, the Emperor attached the utmost importance to his Military Attaché’s reports,[150] insisted, through M. Pietri, upon being kept fully informed of what was being done by Prussia, and did his best to prepare his forces for the struggle which he, like Stoffel, foresaw in the near future. We know all this now, and how we know it I will presently show. As, however, Stoffel[151] is the hero of this chapter, his personality must not be neglected.
His career was a remarkable one. From 1862 until 1865 he was prosaically employed in superintending the excavations at Alise, which had been begun in 1861 by that enthusiastic archæologist, Napoleon III. In 1860 Stoffel, then an artillery Captain in garrison at Auxonne, saw for the first time Mont Auxois. He went over the ground, Cæsar’s “Commentaries” in hand, and noticed how closely the locality tallied with the description given of it by the conqueror of Gaul. Shortly afterwards Stoffel published in the “Moniteur” (August 6 and 7, 1860) “Une Étude sur l’Emplacement d’Alesia,” which attracted the attention of the Emperor, who was then working upon his “Histoire de Jules César,” a work of which he himself said, one day, he wrote very little, owing to his somewhat slight knowledge of Latin.
Stoffel was rewarded by being made Chef d’Escadrons and Officier d’Ordonnance to the Emperor. In 1862 the Commission de la Topographie des Gaules published Stoffel’s “Étude” through the medium of the imperial printing-office. Stoffel showed that Cæsar’s statements were absolutely accurate, and that the whole army of Vercingetorix might well have been located on Mont Auxois and not have lacked a water-supply. In 1866 Stoffel became Military Attaché at Berlin.
At the Tuileries, one morning, the Emperor, accosting Stoffel, said: “General Bourbaki assures me that you take an exaggerated view of the qualities of the Prussian General Staff, and that you do not sufficiently recognize the abilities of our own Staff.” Stoffel, a very outspoken man, replied: “Sire, the General is deceived. In order to form a correct opinion of the Prussian and the French Staffs, one must have seen both of them.... Supposing there were two pictures of Rubens, one measuring six feet and the other eight feet——” Here he was stopped by the Empress, who, seeing that he was warming to his subject, began talking to him, so that Stoffel had to break off what he was saying to the Emperor in order to listen to the Empress! And nothing more was said about the respective merits of the Prussian and French General Staffs.
General Bourbaki was as optimistic as Stoffel, fortified by his knowledge of facts and his prescience, was the reverse. Two years before the war the General, as Chef de Mission, followed the Prussian army manœuvres along the Rhine. He could not help noticing the rapid fire of the Prussian infantry, but his only official comment was this very inept one: “The needle-gun (fusil à aiguille) is certainly a formidable weapon, but in other matters we have nothing to learn from the Prussians!” Bourbaki was a brave soldier, but a corporal of the Scots Guards could have taught him much that would have been very useful to him.
One day, after the war, when the wounds of France were still open, as Stoffel was lunching at a Paris restaurant, Bourbaki entered, saw Stoffel, and, with tears in his eyes, said: “Ah, Colonel, I deceived the Emperor, but unintentionally. Had we listened to you we should have escaped our misfortunes. As a loyal soldier, I ask you to forgive me!” This showed a noble heart, certainly; but all the mischief had been done.
Not long after the death of the Emperor, Marshal Lebœuf, who, I remember, had been present at the imperial obsequies, again made his way to Chislehurst, mainly, it would seem, to perform an act of duty, for Colonel Stoffel (who chanced to be visiting England at the time) saw the Marshal[152] kneeling at the Emperor’s tomb, contritely murmuring, “Pardon, Sire!”
While the war was still raging, the “Times” printed some extracts from Stoffel’s reports, and in its editorial columns expressed the opinion—which all military experts must have endorsed—that it was a puzzle how anyone who had read those documents could ever have dreamt of plunging France into a conflict with Prussia.