Having minutely questioned the Generals as to the state of affairs, the Emperor sent General Lebrun to find General de Wimpffen, and tell him, since it was useless to continue the struggle, to ask for an armistice. A full hour having elapsed without any answer from De Wimpffen, and the murderous fire of the Germans continuing, while the French guns remained silent, the Emperor himself ordered the white flag to be hoisted on the citadel. The King immediately sent an aide-de-camp to demand the surrender of the town. The Emperor, believing that in delivering himself up to the victors he would obtain better terms for the army and for France, despatched one of his own aides-de-camp to the King with the message that the Emperor placed his sword in the Prussian Sovereign’s hands. On the following day (Friday, September 2), at a Council of War, composed of thirty Generals, presided over by General de Wimpffen, it was recognized that capitulation was inevitable, only two Generals voting against it.
The Emperor (General Pajol asserts it most positively) was entirely ignorant of the strategical movements which led the army from Châlons to Mouzon, and from thence to Sedan. To charge Napoleon III. with being militarily responsible for the capitulation of Sedan is an injustice, as Marshal MacMahon was perfectly free in all his movements. The Emperor has been personally charged with wrecking the army. He could but try to save the crew of the ship, of which he was no longer the captain. This is what he endeavoured to do when, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he ordered the white flag to be hoisted. Half an hour later one or other of the Generals would have given the order, but in the meantime thousands more lives would have been sacrificed.
The politicians tried to throw the whole of the responsibility of Sedan upon the Emperor, whom they would certainly not have credited with a victory, had there been one. But Marshal MacMahon, whose noble simplicity and loyal character are known to all, wrote, in October, 1870, a letter to the Emperor, dated from Pouru-aux-Bois, in which he said: “The Emperor may be assured that I should never think, for the purpose of defending myself personally, of misrepresenting the events which I witnessed in the last campaign.”
These words do the Duc de Magenta honour, and cast upon each individual the responsibility of his acts.
“Such is the true story of this deplorable day. I have given the details in sober language. Desiring only to tell the truth, I have related only what I myself saw.”[98]
Were the Emperor’s cheeks rouged on the day of Sedan? Zola has asserted that they were so coloured “to make him appear juvenile, and even jovial.”[99] Personally I can neither confirm nor deny the allegation, for, although I was with the Saxons during the battle, and remained on the field the two following days, I failed to get a glimpse of the Emperor, who had been within an ace of being captured on August 29 and 30 by the troops I was then accompanying. His Majesty (so they assured me) was bundled into a third-class carriage of the last train used by his forces, and so escaped capture by the skin of his teeth.
It is quite possible that some of those numerous informants of Zola, from whose stories he mainly compiled his marvellous narrative, may have inadvertently led him astray in this particular matter, if not on some other points. I have conversed with a French gentleman who was close to the Emperor an hour or
NAPOLEON III. AT SEDAN.