THE BITTER END
Battues for Deserters—End of the Operations against Chanzy—Faidherbe's
Battles—Bourbaki's alleged Victories and Retreat—The Position in Paris—
The terrible Death Rate—State of the Paris Army—The Sanguinary Buzenval
Sortie—Towards Capitulation—The German Conditions—The Armistice
Provisions—Bourbaki's Disaster—Could the War have been prolonged?—The
Resources of France—The general Weariness—I return to Paris—The
Elections for a National Assembly—The Negotiations—The State of Paris—
The Preliminaries of Peace—The Triumphal Entry of the Germans—The War's
Aftermath.
We remained for a few days longer at Laval, and were not again interfered with there. A painful interest attached to one sight which we witnessed more than once. It was that of the many processions of deserters whom the horse Gendarmerie of the headquarters staff frequently brought into the town. The whole region was scoured for runaways, many of whom were found in the villages and at lonely farms. They had generally cast off their uniform and put on blouses, but the peasantry frequently betrayed them, particularly as they seldom, if ever, had any money to spend in bribes. Apart from those battues and the measures of all kinds which Chanzy took to reorganise his army, little of immediate import occurred at Laval. Gambetta had been there, and had then departed for Lille in order to ascertain the condition of Faidherbe's Army of the North. The German pursuit of Chanzy's forces ceased virtually at Saint Jean-sur-Erve. There was just another little skirmish at Sainte Mélaine, but that was all. [I should add that on January 17 the Germans under Mecklenburg secured possession of Alengon (Chanty's original objective) alter an ineffectual resistance offered by the troops under Commandant Lipowski, who was seconded in his endeavours by young M. Antonin Dubost, then Prefect of the Orne, and recently President of the French Senate.] Accordingly my father and I returned to Saint Servan, and, having conjointly prepared some articles on Chanzy's retreat and present circumstances, forwarded them to London for the Pall Mall Gazette.
The war was now fast drawing to an end. I have hitherto left several important occurrences unmentioned, being unwilling to interrupt my narrative of the fighting at Le Mans and the subsequent retreat. I feel, however, that I now ought to glance at the state of affairs in other parts of France. I have just mentioned that after visiting Chanzy at Laval (January 19), Gambetta repaired to Lille to confer with Faidherbe. Let us see, then, what the latter general had been doing. He was no longer opposed by Manteuffel, who had been sent to the east of France in the hope that he would deal more effectually than Werder with Bourbaki's army, which was still in the field there. Manteuffel's successor in the north was General von Goeben, with whom, on January 18, Faidherbe fought an engagement at Vermand, followed on the morrow by the battle of Saint Quentin, which was waged for seven hours amidst thaw and fog. Though it was claimed as a French victory, it was not one. The Germans, it is true, lost 2500 men, but the French killed and wounded amounted to 3500, and there were thousands of men missing, the Germans taking some 5000 prisoners, whilst other troops disbanded much as Chanzy's men disbanded during his retreat. From a strategical point of view the action at Saint Quentin was indecisive.
Turning to eastern France, Bourbaki fought two indecisive engagements near Villersexel, south-east of Vesoul, on January 9 and 10, and claimed the victory on these occasions. On January 13 came another engagement at Arcey, which he also claimed as a success, being congratulated upon it by Gambetta. The weather was most severe in the region of his operations, and the sufferings of his men were quite as great as—if not greater than— those of Chanzy's troops. There were nights when men lay down to sleep, and never awoke again. On January 15,16, and 17 there was a succession of engagements on the Lisaine, known collectively as the battle of Héricourt. These actions resulted in Bourbaki's retreat southward towards Besançon, where for the moment we will leave him, in order to consider the position of Paris at this juncture.
Since the beginning of the year, the day of the capital's surrender had been fast approaching. Paris actually fell because its supply of food was virtually exhausted. On January 18 it became necessary to ration the bread, now a dark, sticky compound, which included such ingredients as bran, starch, rice, barley, vermicelli, and pea-flour. About ten ounces was allotted per diem to each adult, children under five years of age receiving half that quantity. But the health-bill of the city was also a contributory cause of the capitulation. In November there were 7444 deaths among the non-combatant population, against 3863 in November, 1869. The death-roll of December rose to 10,665, against 4214 in December the previous year. In January, between sixty and seventy persons died from small-pox every day. Bronchitis and pneumonia made an ever-increasing number of victims. From January 14 to January 21 the mortality rose to no less than 4465; from the latter date until January 28, the day of the capitulation, the figures were 4671, whereas in normal times they had never been more than 1000 in any week.
Among the troops the position was going from bad to worse. Thousands of men were in the hospitals, and thousands contrived to desert and hide themselves in the city. Out of 100,705 linesmen, there were, on January 1, no fewer than 23,938 absentees; while 23,565 units were absent from the Mobile Guard, which, on paper, numbered 111,999. Briefly, one man out of every five was either a patient or a deserter. As for the German bombardment, this had some moral but very little material effect. Apart from the damage done to buildings, it killed (as I previously said) about one hundred and wounded about two hundred persons.
The Government now had little if any confidence in the utility of any further sorties. Nevertheless, as the extremist newspapers still clamoured for one, it was eventually decided to attack the German positions across the Seine, on the west of the city. This sortie, commonly called that of Buzenval, took place on January 10, the day after King William of Prussia had been proclaimed German Emperor in Louis XIV's "Hall of Mirrors" at Versailles. [The decision to raise the King to the imperial dignity had been arrived at on January 1.] Without doubt, the Buzenval sortie was devised chiefly in order to give the National Guard the constantly demanded opportunity and satisfaction of being led against the Germans. Trochu, who assumed chief command, establishing himself at the fort of Mont Valérien, divided his forces into three columns, led by Generals Vinoy, Bellemare, and Ducrot. The first (the left wing) comprised 22,000 men, including 8000 National Guards; the second (the central column) 34,500 men, including 16,000 Guards; and the third (the right wing) 33,500 men, among whom were no fewer than 18,000 Guards. Thus the total force was about 90,000, the National Guards representing about a third of that number. Each column had with it ten batteries, representing for the entire force 180 guns. The French front, however, extended over a distance of nearly four miles, and the army's real strength was thereby diminished. There was some fairly desperate fighting at Saint Cloud, Montretout, and Longboyau, but the French were driven back after losing 4000 men, mostly National Guards, whereas the German losses were only about six hundred.
The affair caused consternation in Paris, particularly as several prominent men had fallen in the ranks of the National Guard. On the night of January 21, some extremists forced their way into the prison of Mazas and delivered some of their friends who had been shut up there since the rising of October 31. On the morrow, January 22, there was a demonstration and an affray on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, shots being exchanged with the result that people were killed and wounded. The Government gained the day, however, and retaliated by closing the revolutionary clubs and suppressing some extremist newspapers. But four hours later Trochu resigned his position as Military Governor of Paris (in which he was replaced by General Vinoy), only retaining the Presidency of the Government. Another important incident had occurred on the very evening after the insurrection: Jules Favre, the Foreign Minister, had then forwarded a letter to Prince Bismarck.
The Government's first idea had been merely to surrender—that is to open the city-gates and let the Germans enter at their peril. It did not wish to negotiate or sign any capitulation. Jules Favre indicated as much when, writing to Bismarck, and certainly the proposed course might have placed the Germans—with the eyes of the world fixed upon them—in a difficult position. But Favre was no match for the great Prussian statesman. Formal negotiations were soon opened, and Bismarck so contrived affairs that, as Gambetta subsequently and rightly complained, the convention which Favre signed applied far more to France as a whole than to Paris itself. In regard to the city, the chief conditions were that a war indemnity of £8,000,000 should be paid; that the forts round the city should be occupied by the Germans; that the garrison—Line, Mobile Guard, and Naval Contingent (altogether about 180,000 men)—should become prisoners of war; and that the armament (1500 fortress guns and 400 field pieces) should be surrendered, as well as the large stores of ammunition. On the other hand, a force of 12,000 men was left to the French Government for "police duty" in the city, and the National Guards were, at Favre's urgent but foolish request, allowed to retain their arms. Further, the city was to be provisioned. In regard to France generally, arrangements were made for an armistice of twenty-one days' duration, in order to allow of the election of a National Assembly to treat for peace. In these arrangements Favre and Vinoy (the new Governor of Paris) were out-jockeyed by Bismarck and Moltke. They were largely ignorant of the real position in the provinces, and consented to very disadvantageous terms in regard to the lines which the Germans and the French should respectively occupy during the armistice period. Moreover, although it was agreed that hostilities should cease on most points, no such stipulation was made respecting the east of France, where both Bourbaki and Garibaldi were in the field.