While one scene in the stupendous drama was performed at the weaver’s cottage, another was acted or endured in Sedan, where De Wimpffen had summoned the generals to consider the dreadful terms of capitulation. He has given his own account of the incident; but the fullest report is supplied by Lebrun. There were present at this council of war more than thirty generals. With tearful eyes and a voice broken by sobs, the unhappy and most ill-starred De Wimpffen described his interview and conflict with Von Moltke and Bismarck, and its dire result—the Army to surrender as prisoners of war, the officers alone to retain their arms, and by way of mitigating the rigour of these conditions, full permission to return home would be given to any officer, provided he would engage in writing and on honour not to serve again during the war. The generals, save one or two, and these finally acquiesced, felt that the conditions could not be refused; but they were indignant at the clause suggesting that the officers might escape the captivity which would befall their soldiers, provided they would engage to become mere spectators of the invasion of their country. In the midst of these mournful deliberations Captain von Zingler, a messenger from Von Moltke, entered, and the scene became still more exciting. “I am instructed,” he said, “to remind you how urgent it is that you should come to a decision. At ten o’clock, precisely, if you have not come to a resolution, the German batteries will fire on Sedan. It is now nine, and I shall have barely time to carry your answer to head-quarters.” To this sharp summons De Wimpffen answered that he could not decide until he knew the result of the interview between the Emperor and the King. “That interview,” said the stern Captain, “will not in any way affect the military operations, which can only be determined by the generals who have full power to resume or stop the strife.” It was, indeed, as Lebrun remarked, useless to argue with a Captain, charged to state a fact; and at the General’s suggestion De Wimpffen agreed to accompany Captain von Zingler to the German head-quarters.
These were, for the occasion, the Château de Bellevue, where the Emperor himself had been induced to take up his abode, and about eleven o’clock, in a room under the Imperial chamber, De Wimpffen put his name at the foot of the document drawn up, during the night, by the German Staff. Then he sought out the Emperor, and, greatly moved, told him that “all was finished.” His Majesty, he writes, “with tears in his eyes, approached me, pressed my hand, and embraced me;” and “my sad and painful duty having been accomplished, I remounted my horse and rode back to Sedan, ‘la mort dans l’âme.’”
So soon as the convention was signed, the King arrived, accompanied by the Crown Prince. Three years before, as the Emperor reminds us in the writing attributed to him, the King had been his guest in Paris, where all the sovereigns of Europe had come to behold the marvels of the famous Exhibition. “Now,” so runs the lamentation, “betrayed by fortune, Napoleon III. had lost all, and had placed in the hands of his conqueror the sole thing left him—his liberty.” And he goes on to say, in general terms, that the King deeply sympathized with his misfortunes, but nevertheless could not grant better conditions to the Army. “He told the Emperor that the castle of Wilhelmshöhe had been selected as his residence; the Crown Prince then entered and cordially shook hands with Napoleon; and at the end of a quarter of an hour the King withdrew. The Emperor was permitted to send a telegram in cipher to the Empress, to tell her what had happened, and urge her to negotiate a peace.” Such is the bald record of this impressive event. The telegram, which reached the Empress at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 3rd, was in these words: “The Army is defeated and captive; I myself am a prisoner.”
For one day more the fallen sovereign rested at Bellevue to meditate on the caprices of fortune or the decrees of fate. But that day, at the head of a splendid company of princes and generals, King William, crossing the bridge of Donchery, rode throughout the whole vast extent of the German lines, to greet his hardy warriors and be greeted by them on the very scene of their victories. And well they deserved regal gratitude, for together with their comrades who surrounded Metz, by dint of long swift marches and steadfast valour, they had overcome two great Armies in thirty days.
During the battle of Sedan, the Germans lost in killed and wounded 8,924 officers and men. On the other hand, the French lost 3,000 killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 captured in the battle. The number of prisoners by capitulation was 83,000, while 3,000 were disarmed in Belgium, and a few hundreds, more or less, made their way by devious routes near and over the frontier, to Mézières, Rocroi, and other places in France. In addition, were taken one eagle and two flags, 419 field guns and mitrailleuses, 139 garrison guns, many wagons, muskets, and horses. On the day after the surrender, the French soldiers, having stacked their arms in Sedan, marched into the peninsula formed by the deep loop of the Meuse—“le Camp de Misère” as they called it—and were sent thence in successive batches, numbered by thousands, to Germany. Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and the Paris politicians. Directed by General Vinoy, who was an able soldier, the troops brought to Mézières, escaped by rapid and clever marches from the German cavalry and the 6th Corps, and formed the nucleus of the improvised Army which afterwards defended the capital.
The End.
On the 3rd of September the Emperor Napoleon III. departed from Bellevue on his journey to the Castle of Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel. The morning was wet and gloomy, and a thunderstorm was gathering among the hills of the Ardennes. The Imperial baggage-train had been permitted to leave Sedan, and was drawn up on the road ready to start. Columns of prisoners also were moving out of the fortress and marching towards the peninsula formed by the Meuse. It was a lugubrious scene, and the superstitious might remark that as the sun shone resplendently on the German victory, so his light was obscured when the captive Emperor drove through the muddy streets of Donchery and thence to the northward, wrapped in the sombre mist and thickly falling rain. And as he journeyed, disconsolately, in the forenoon, upon the road to Bouillon, orders went forth from the German head-quarters, where time was never lost, directing the conquering generals to leave the 11th and one Bavarian Corps on guard over Sedan and the thousands of unhappy prisoners, and resume, with all the rest, that march on the capital of France which had been so abruptly interrupted only eight days before. So the victors and the vanquished went their different ways.
The Emperor travelled without haste, and on the evening of the 4th he slept at Verviers. The next morning he learned, in common with all Europe, indeed all the civilized world, that the fires which seethe under the bright surface of society in Paris had once more burst through the thin crust of use and wont, and that the dynasty of the Bonapartes had been utterly overthrown at a blow to make way for the Republic. Like intelligence reached the King of Prussia, also, at his head-quarters, which, on the 5th, were already in Reims. The contrast is painful. The King saw his hopes of an early peace destroyed; but his was a solidly planted throne and he was the leader of irresistible armies. The Emperor knew that his fond dream of founding an Imperial House had been dispelled in an hour by a blast of national wrath; and, being a kindly man, his agony was the keener because, as he pathetically says, “he was separated from his son, and knew not what fate had befallen the Empress.” Racked by such sad reflections, at the very time when his wife was escaping to England, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte went, by railway, from Verviers to Wilhelmshöhe. There, during a luxurious captivity of six months, he had ample leisure to meditate on the causes which led to the catastrophe of Sedan and the surrender of Metz; and to ascertain, if he could, why, after a second trial, ending in the third entry of hostile troops into Paris, the French nation had lost its belief in the saving qualities of a family bearing a name which, if associated with undying “glory,” has also become indissolubly linked with bitter memories of lost provinces and gigantic military disasters.