France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

Among the bravest and most active litter-bearers were the Christian Brothers,—men not priests, but vowed to poverty, celibacy, and the work of education. "They advanced wherever bullets fell," says M. de Sarcey, "to pick up the dead or wounded; recoiling from no task, however laborious or distasteful; never complaining of their food, drinking only water; and after their stretcher-work was done, returning to their humble vocation of teachers, without dreaming that they had played the part of heroes."

Before Bazaine surrendered at Metz, eager hopes had been entertained that the army raised in the South by Chanzy and Gambetta might unite with his one hundred and seventy-two thousand soldiers in Metz, and march to the relief of Paris; but to this day no one knows precisely why Bazaine took no steps in furtherance of this plan, but, instead, surrendered ignominiously to the Germans. It is supposed that being attached to the emperor, and dreading a Republic, he declined to fight for France if it was to benefit "the rabble Government of Paris," as he called the Committee of Public Defence. He seems to have thought that the Germans, after taking Paris, would make peace, exacting Alsace and Lorraine, and then restore the emperor.

Nothing could have been braver or more brilliant than the efforts of Chanzy and Gambetta on the Loire. At one time they were actually near compelling the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris; for two hundred and fifty thousand men was a small army to invest so large a city. But the one hundred and fifty thousand German soldiers who were besieging Metz were enabled by Bazaine's surrender to reinforce the troops beleaguering the capital.

Gambetta seems to have been at that time the only man in France who showed himself to be a true leader of men, and amidst numerous disadvantages he did nobly. He and Chanzy died twelve years later, within a week of each other.

From September 19, when the siege began, up to December 27, the Parisian soldiers, four hundred thousand in number (such as they were) had never, except in occasional sorties, encountered the Prussians, nor had any shot from Prussian guns entered their city. On the night of December 27 the bombardment began. It commenced by clearing what was called the Plateau d'Avron, to the east of Paris. The weather was intensely cold, the earth as hard as iron and as slippery as glass. The French do not rough their horses even in ordinary times, and slipperiness is a public calamity in a French city. The troops, stationed with little shelter on the Plateau d'Avron, had no notion that the Germans had been preparing masked batteries. The first shells that fell among them produced indescribable confusion. The men rushed to their own guns to reply, but their balls fell short about five hundred yards. It became evident that the Plateau d'Avron must be abandoned, and that night, in the cold and the darkness, together with the slippery condition of the ground, which was worst of all, General Trochu superintended the removal of all the cannon. The Prussian batteries were admirably placed and admirably served.

But tremendous as the bombardment was (sometimes a shell every two minutes), it is astonishing how little real damage it did to the city. The streets were wide, the open spaces numerous, the houses solidly built, with large courtyards. In the middle of January, when the extreme cold moderated, hundreds of people would assemble in the Place de la Concorde, looking skyward. A black object would appear, with a small bright spot in it, and making a graceful curve in the air, with a whizzing, humming sound, would drop suddenly, with a resounding boom, in some distant quarter in the city. Then the spectators, greatly interested in the sight, waited for another. The shells, which the Parisians called "obus," were like an old-fashioned sugar-loaf, and weighed sometimes one hundred and fifty pounds. But though, by reason of the great distance of the Prussian batteries, the damage was by no means in proportion to the number of shells sent into the city, many of them struck public buildings, hospitals, and orphan asylums, in spite of the Red Cross flags displayed above them.

By January 19, when the siege had lasted four months, and the bombardment three weeks, the end seemed to be drawing near. Another sortie was attempted; but there was a dense fog, the usual accompaniment of a January thaw, and its only result was the loss of some very valuable lives.

Then General Trochu asked for an armistice of two days to bury the dead; but his real object was that Jules Favre might enter the Prussian lines and endeavor to negotiate. Before this took place, however, Trochu himself resigned his post as military governor. He had sworn that under him Paris should never capitulate. General Vinoy took his command.

The moment the Government of Defence was known to be in extreme difficulty, the Communists issued proclamations and provoked risings. The Hôtel-de-Ville was again attacked. In this rising famished women took a prominent part. Twenty-six people were killed in the émeute, and only twenty-eight by that day's bombardment.

On January 23 Jules Favre went out to Versailles. Paris was hushed. It was not known that negotiations were going on, but all felt that the end was near at hand. No one, dared to say the word "capitulate," though some of the papers admitted that by February 3 there would not be a mouthful of bread in the city.