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We had also received divers reports concerning Prussia’s allies.
Certain individuals, who claimed and believed themselves to be well informed, carried rumours which were really very extraordinary to the Hôtel de Ville. Bavaria and Wurtemburg, it was said, were tired of the war, tired in particular of always seeing their soldiers in the front rank, and ardently desirous of peace. One even went so far as to say that South Germany was animated by great discontent against Prussia, and that a breach was not far distant.
It really needed absolute ignorance of the true situation in Germany to believe even for an instant such chimeras as these. It was certainly true that in the month of July, 1870, neither Bavaria nor Wurtemburg were enthusiastic for a war which the parliaments of these two countries had only voted with difficulty. It is equally true that at the beginning of the campaign, a single small advantage won over the Prussians, even a swift march of the French army beyond the Rhine, would have been sufficient to expose Prussia to the risk of being isolated and left alone in her struggle with France. But the situation had been completely changed since the prodigious and terrible successes of the armies of M. de Moltke.
At the beginning France was feared, and there was no desire to embark on a war whose issue was in doubt. So great was the anxiety, that the Rhine provinces made hasty preparations for receiving the “pantalons rouges.” It was already believed that France was on the threshold, and it was feared that she would cross it from one day to the other. But when it was seen that the French did not arrive, when the Prussians crossed the Rhine and won victory after victory, then immense enthusiasm, an unparalleled delirium, seized the whole of Germany, and the people would have dethroned their kings and driven out their ministers had there been a single one willing to separate himself from the common cause of the German Fatherland’s sacred war against the hereditary enemy.
It was indeed all Germany that was against us. And it required absolute ignorance of her inclinations, of her tendencies, and of her aspirations, to seriously believe that discord could still exist in Germany after the unhoped-for successes of her armies.
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It was arranged that I was to leave at once.
In order to receive M. Jules Favre’s last instructions, the day before my departure I went back to see him at the Hôtel de Ville, where the National Defence Government sat every evening until a very late hour of the night. That evening the Council sat till one in the morning. At nine o’clock on the 28th of October my balloon was to leave the Gare d’Orléans.