At a later hour, when we reached the Boulevards, we found the wildest rumours in circulation there. Nobody knew exactly what had happened, but there was talk of 20,000 French troops having been annihilated by five times that number of Germans. At last a proclamation emanating from Gambetta was posted up and eagerly perused. It supplied no details of the fighting, but urged the Parisians to give way neither to excitement nor to despondency, and reminded them that a court-martial had been instituted to deal with cowards and deserters. Thereupon the excitement seemed to subside, and people went to dinner. An hour afterwards the Boulevards were as gay as ever, thronged once more with promenaders, among whom were many officers of the Garde Mobile and the usual regiment of painted women. Cynicism and frivolity were once more the order of the day. But in the midst of it there came an unexpected incident. Some of the National Guards of the district were not unnaturally disgusted by the spectacle which the Boulevards presented only a few hours after misfortune had fallen on the French arms. Forming, therefore, into a body, they marched along, loudly calling upon the cafés to close. Particularly were they indignant when, on reaching Brébant's Restaurant at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, they heard somebody playing a lively Offenbachian air on a piano there. A party of heedless viveurs and demoiselles of the half-world were enjoying themselves together as in the palmy imperial days. But the piano was soon silenced, the cafés and restaurants were compelled to close, and the Boulevardian world went home in a slightly chastened mood. The Siege of Paris had begun.
V
BESIEGED
The Surrender of Versailles—Captain Johnson, Queen's Messenger—No more
Paris Fashions!—Prussians versus Germans—Bismarck's Hard Terms for
Peace—Attempts to pass through the German Lines—Chartreuse Verte as an
Explosive!—Tommy Webb's Party and the Germans—Couriers and Early
Balloons—Our Arrangements with Nadar—Gambetta's Departure and Balloon
Journey—The Amusing Verses of Albert Millaud—Siege Jokes and Satire—The
Spy and Signal Craze—Amazons to the Rescue!
It was at one o'clock on the afternoon of September 19 that the telegraph wires between Paris and Versailles, the last which linked us to the outside world, were suddenly cut by the enemy; the town so closely associated with the Grand Monarque and his magnificence having then surrendered to a very small force of Germans, although it had a couple of thousand men—Mobile and National Guards—to defend it. The capitulation which was arranged between the mayor and the enemy was flagrantly violated by the latter almost as soon as it had been concluded, tins being only one of many such instances which occurred during the war. Versailles was required to provide the invader with a number of oxen, to be slaughtered for food, numerous casks of wine, the purpose of which was obvious, and a large supply of forage valued at £12,000. After all, however, that was a mere trifle in comparison with what the present Kaiser's forces would probably demand on landing at Hull or Grimsby or Harwich, should they some day do so. By the terms of the surrender of Versailles, however, the local National Guards were to have remained armed and entrusted with the internal police of the town, and, moreover, there were to have been no further requisitions. But Bismarck and Moltke pooh-poohed all such stipulations, and the Versaillese had to submit to many indignities.
In Paris that day the National Defence Government was busy in various ways, first in imposing fines, according to an ascending scale, on all absentees who ought to have remained in the city and taken their share of military duty; and, secondly, in decreeing that nobody with any money lodged in the Savings Bank should be entitled to draw out more than fifty francs, otherwise two pounds, leaving the entire balance of his or her deposit at the Government's disposal. This measure provoked no little dissatisfaction. It was also on September 19, the first day of the siege, that the last diplomatic courier entered Paris. I well remember the incident. Whilst I was walking along the Faubourg Saint Honoré I suddenly perceived an open calèche, drawn by a pair of horses, bestriding one of which was a postillion arrayed in the traditional costume—hair à la Catogan, jacket with scarlet facings, gold-banded hat, huge boots, and all the other appurtenances which one saw during long years on the stage in Adolphe Adam's sprightly but "impossible" opéra-comique "Le Postillon de Longjumeau." For an instant, indeed, I felt inclined to hum the famous refrain, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, qu'il était beau"—but many National Guards and others regarded the equipage with great suspicion, particularly as it was occupied by on individual in semi-military attire. Quite a number of people decided in their own minds that this personage must be a Prussian spy, and therefore desired to stop his carriage and march him off to prison. As a matter of fact, however, he was a British officer, Captain Johnson, discharging the duties of a Queen's Messenger; and as he repeatedly flourished a cane in a very menacing manner, and the door-porter of the British Embassy—a German, I believe—energetically came to his assistance, he escaped actual molestation, and drove in triumph into the courtyard of the ambassadorial mansion.
At this time a great shock was awaiting the Parisians. During the same week the Vicomtesse de Renneville issued an announcement stating that in presence of the events which were occurring she was constrained to suspend the publication of her renowned journal of fashions, La Gazette Rose. This was a tragic blow both for the Parisians themselves and for all the world beyond them. There would be no more Paris fashions! To what despair would not millions of women be reduced? How would they dress, even supposing that they should contrive to dress at all? The thought was appalling; and as one and another great couturier closed his doors, Paris began to realize that her prestige was indeed in jeopardy.
A day or two after the investment the city became very restless on account of Thiers's mission to foreign Courts and Jules Favre's visit to the German headquarters, it being reported by the extremists that the Government did not intend to be a Government of National Defence but one of Capitulation. In reply to those rumours the authorities issued the famous proclamation in which they said;
"The Government's policy is that formulated in these terms:
Not an Inch of our Territory.
Not a Stone of our Fortresses.
The Government will maintain it to the end."
On the morrow, September 21, Gambetta personally reminded us that it was the seventy-eighth anniversary of the foundation of the first French Republic, and, after recalling to the Parisians what their fathers had then accomplished, he exhorted them to follow that illustrious example, and to "secure victory by confronting death." That same evening the clubs decided that a great demonstration should be made on the morrow by way of insisting that no treaty should be discussed until the Germans had been driven out of France, that no territory, fort, vessel, or treasure should be surrendered, that all elections should be adjourned, and that a levée en masse should be decreed. Jules Favre responded that he and his colleagues personified Defence and not Surrender, and Rochefort—poor Rochefort!—solemnly promised that the barricades of Paris should be begun that very night. That undertaking mightily pleased the agitators, though the use of the said barricades was not apparent; and the demonstrators dispersed with the usual shouts of "Vive la République! Mort aux Prussiens!"