Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Meanwhile the Prussians advanced, the more rapidly from feeling confident that no force could bar their passage and from being familiarly acquainted with the country. High-roads, country lanes, the veriest footpaths, were known to them, for in their ranks, to quote the words of a French historian, “was that crowd of Germans who had so long eaten the bread of France, and who were now guiding the invaders. We had thought them our guests, when they were simply our spies.” On the 11th of September the Prussians were reported to have arrived at La Ferté, on their way to Meaux; at Rebais, Coulommères, Crécy, and even beneath the walls of Soissons. On the 12th they entered Nogent-sur-Seine and Provins, where the railway-stations were abandoned in all haste. On the 14th the telegraph[{350}] wires were cut between Melun and Mormant; and Prussian lancers, the so-called Uhlans—the name being borrowed from the lancers of Poland—showed themselves in the last-named town.

On the 15th a train fell into the hands of the Prussians as it arrived at Senlis; and on that same day the stationmaster at Joinville telegraphed to the Minister of the Interior—“Enemy to the number of about 10,000 marching upon Joinville. Our troops are concentrating on the forts. In an hour the enemy will be here.” Almost at the same time the Governor of Paris received the following despatch from Vincennes: “The Uhlans are between Créteil and Neuilly-sur-Marne. At this last point what seems to be the advanced-guard of the column reported this morning. Are informing and summoning everyone.”

Paris now clearly understood that the enemy was marching upon it, and in proportion as the Prussians narrowed the circle of iron with which they were surrounding Paris, the inhabitants hurried from all sides to the capital, accompanied by carriages laden with furniture hastily got together, with such articles of value as they had had time to bring away. “It was a sad procession,” says a writer who witnessed the scene. “The unhappy fugitives were abandoning their peaceful homes to an enemy who would destroy them. In what condition will they find on their return the house and the little garden, the grass plot and the beds of flowers in which they took so much delight?” As a matter of fact, the deserted houses were the very ones, and probably the only ones, that were plundered and devastated. Where a proprietor or his representative, even if it were only a servant, had been left, so that the foreign visitors could be accommodated and their needs attended to, things went on in a sufficiently regular manner. But where no responsible person had been left in charge, the soldiers, all of them young men of from twenty to twenty-seven years of age, used, in their rough play, the legs of chairs as missiles, and fragments of furniture of all kinds as firewood. In some suburban towns, Villeneuve, Saint-Georges, for instance, the houses occupied by successive detachments were before long a terrible scene of destruction—chairs, tables, and looking-glasses all smashed to pieces. In houses, on the other hand, where the owner or his substitute remained, no damage was done. In some cases the work of demolition was due not to recklessness and wantonness alone, but also to anger, the German invaders feeling indignant, they said, at being regarded in the light of barbarians. Then, as if to prove that they were not savages, they behaved with a certain savagery. It was on the 17th of September that Villeneuve, Saint-Georges, and Choisy-le-Roy were for the first time occupied, the object of the occupation being to get possession of the lines to Lyons and Orleans and dominate the course of the Seine so as to establish communications with Versailles, which was to be the headquarters of the invading army. The Prussians advanced without fear, knowing well that with the exception of a strong division commanded by General Vinoy, which had advanced from Mézières to Paris the day after the battle of Sedan, there were no regular troops to oppose them. The line of investment was, in the first instance, very thin, and it is said that some observation on the subject was made to Moltke by a member of his staff. “General Trochu could break through it, no doubt,” Moltke replied, “but he will not try.” On the 18th of September, it was reported that the Germans were approaching the walls of the capital in three large bodies, and the public was informed, through the columns of the official journal, that it must not be surprised if no further telegraphic communications reached it from outside. The same evening a number of dull, distant detonations were heard. The bridges of St. Cloud, Sèvres, and Vallancourt had been blown up. Paris was being gradually cut off from the rest of France, from the rest of the world. No more communications, no more despatches, no more news of any kind. The only means of correspondence left to the great city was by way of the air.

General Trochu, Governor of Paris, had plenty of troops, or at least of armed men, under his command. The number of regulars, scarcely more than thirteen thousand, which General Vinoy had brought from Mézières, was small indeed; but these, with National Guards, Gardes Mobiles, and volunteers of various kinds, made up an entire force of 400,000, nearly twice the number of the besiegers.

It may not be generally known, but it is nevertheless the fact, that just after the battle of Sedan, when the Prussians were already advancing upon Paris, the command of the Paris forts was offered to General Ripley, who had distinguished himself during the American Civil War by his energetic defence of Charlestown. The general visited Paris, was perfectly satisfied with all the material preparations, but had no confidence in the National[{351}] Guards, whose slovenly appearance, absence of discipline, and, above all, want of respect for their officers, impressed him very unfavourably. It must be remembered, however, that Paris had but few regular troops in its garrison, only, in fact, the division which, the day after Sedan, General Vinoy had conducted from Mézières, in the immediate neighbourhood of Sedan, to the capital. Plenty of brave men, moreover, had joined the army as volunteers at the beginning of the campaign; and Paris had furnished a large proportion of the Francs-Tireurs who rendered such questionable service to the national cause. “What a villain,” says a writer on this subject, “was the Franc-Tireur in the eyes of the Prussians, who regarded him as a poacher of the worst kind, shooting men without a licence; and what a hero in the eyes of his own countrymen, and, above all, countrywomen, who saw in him the ideal of a patriot!” “Who are these Francs-Tireurs?” a Frenchman was one day asked by the present writer, at that period one of the war correspondents of the Times. “Young men of good education who wish to defend their country,” he replied. “Who are the Francs-Tireurs?” the same correspondent inquired of a young French lady. “Charming young men, and as brave as lions,” she replied; “I have the portrait of one of them in my brooch.”

Almost as much nonsense has been written about the Francs-Tireurs in the German papers as about the Uhlans in the French. They were not necessarily savages nor assassins, nor anything of the kind. In the occupied provinces they were simply insurgents, and they led everywhere the life of insurgents, belonged to the same class or classes of society from which insurgents usually come, and, like insurgents, were adored by their own people and shot as felons if they fell into the hands of the enemy.

The few I came across were certainly not the kind of persons likely to commit the acts of violence and rapine with which the Francs-Tireurs were generally credited. The Francs-Tireurs I met were loungers from the Parisian boulevards, who had put on the semblance of a uniform and gone out to see whether they could be of any use in stopping the advance of the Prussians, and they would no more have committed an act of highway robbery than General Garibaldi would have picked a pocket. But side by side with the Francs-Tireurs of good education—the Francs-Tireurs whose photographs were found worthy of being enclosed in lockets—there were Francs-Tireurs of a lower type: there were escaped prisoners, deserters, and fugitives, the last remnants of the great armies that had from time to time been cut in pieces, and the amalgam formed by these different elements was doubtless not a nice one. Even the gentlemanly Franc-Tireur, if fallen into bad circumstances, might be a dangerous person to meet; he would be ashamed to show himself in the character of a robber, and from sheer self-respect might begin by killing his victim.

The Prussians, however, could not, like the young ladies of France, distinguish between the noble-minded Franc-Tireur and the Franc-Tireur who was a mere cut-throat. What they required was that he should carry papers showing that he belonged to some regularly organised corps, that he should wear a uniform recognisable at gun-shot distance, and that the distinctive marks of the uniform should be “inseparable from the person.” Let him comply with these conditions, and the Franc-Tireur, if he fell into the hands of the enemy, instead of being shot or condemned to ten years’ imprisonment, was treated as a prisoner of war.

It seems hard to insist that William Tell shall put on a uniform “recognisable at gun-shot distance,” and that the distinctive signs of the uniform worn by Masaniello shall be “inseparable from the person”; but if William Tell dresses like a civilian he places his enemy at a notable disadvantage, and the same may be said of Masaniello, if Masaniello has nothing military about him but his cap, which he can get rid of at a moment’s notice and replace by a wide-awake or a cotton nightcap.