"There now," said George, "look at that!"
Placiard was passing the house arm-in-arm with a Landwehr officer, followed by a few men; they were making requisitions, and entered the house opposite. "There is the Plébiscite in flesh and blood. Now that scoundrel is working for his Imperial Majesty William I., for the Germans have their emperor, as we have had ours; they will soon learn the cost of glory; each has his turn! By and by, when the reins are tightened, these poor Germans will be looking in every direction to see if the French are not revolting; but France will be tranquil: they themselves will have riveted their own chains, and their masters will draw the reins tighter and tighter, saying: 'Now, then, Mechle!* Attention! eyes right; eyes left. Ah! you lout, do you make a wry face? I will show you that might is right in Germany, as everywhere else, if you don't know it already. Whack! how do you like that, Mechle? Aha! did you think you were getting victories for German Fatherland and German liberty, idiot? You find out now that it was to put yourself again under the yoke, as after 1815; just to show you the difference between the noble German lord and a brute of your own sort. Get on, Mechle!'"
* Nickname for the Germans, answering to the English "John Bull," and the French "Jaques Bonhomme."
George exclaimed: "How miserable to be surprised and deluged as we have been daily by six hundred thousand Germans, and to have our hands bound like culprits, without arms, munitions, orders, chiefs, or anything! Ah! the deputies of the majority who voted for war would not demand compulsory service; they feared to arm the nation. They would not risk the bodies of their own sons; the people alone should fight to defend their places, their salaries, their châteaux, their property of every sort! Miserable self-seekers! they are the cause of our ruin! their names should be exposed in every commune, to teach our children to execrate them."
He was becoming embittered, and it is not surprising, for every day we heard of fresh reverses: first the surrender of Veronne, just when Faidherbe was coming to deliver it, and the retreat of our army of the North upon Lille and Cambrai, before the overwhelming forces of Van Goeben, fresh from Paris; then the grand attack of Bourbaki from Montbéliard to Mont Vaudois, which he had pursued three successive days, the 15th, 16th, and 17th January without success, on account of the reinforcements which Werder had received, and the horrible state of the roads, broken up by the rain and the snow; lastly, the arrival of Manteuffel, with his 80,000 men, also from Paris—to cut off his retreat.
Then we understood that the Landwehr had been right in telling us that they were getting reinforcements from Paris; and George, who understood such things better than I, suddenly conceived a horror for those who were commanding there.
"Either," he said, "the Parisians are afraid to fight—which I cannot believe, for I know them—or the men in command are incapable—or traitors. Hitherto relieving armies have been sent in support of a besieged city; now we see the besiegers of a city twice as strong as themselves in men, arms, and munitions of every kind, detaching whole armies to crush our troops fighting in the provinces: the thing is incredible! I am certain that the Parisians are demanding to be led out, especially as they are suffering from famine. Well, if sorties were taking place, the Germans would want all their men down there, and would be unable to come and overwhelm our already overtasked armies."
Let them explain these things as they will, George was right. Since the Germans were able to send away from Paris 40,000 men in one direction, and 80,000 in another, evidently they were free to undertake what they pleased; instead of surrounding the city with troops, they might have set helmets and cloaks upon sticks all round, for scarecrows, as they do to keep sparrows out of a corn-field.
Here, then, is how we have lost: it was the incapacity of the man who was commanding at Paris, and the weakness of the Government of Defence—and especially of Monsieur Jules Favre!—who, when they ought to have replaced this orator by a man of action, as Gambetta demanded, had not the courage to fulfil their duty. Everybody knows this; why not say it openly?
The only thing which cheered us a little about the end of this terrible month of January, was to learn that the francs-tireurs had blown up the bridge of Fontenoy, on the railroad between Nancy and Toul. But our joy was not of long duration; for three or four days after, proclamations posted at the door of the mayoralty-house gave notice that the Germans had utterly consumed the village of Fontenoy, to punish the inhabitants for not having denounced the francs-tireurs; and that all we Lorrainers were condemned, for the same offence, to pay an extraordinary contribution of ten millions to his Majesty, the Emperor of Germany. At the same time, as the French workmen were refusing to repair this bridge, the Prussian prefect of La Menotte wrote to the Mayor of Nancy: