Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris

by Henry Du Pré Labouchere

The military events of this week have been unimportant. The forts have continued silent, and reconnaissances have been made here and there. The faubourgs, too, have been quiet. Everything is being done to make the siege weigh as little upon the population as possible. Thus, for instance, few lamps are lit in the streets, but the shops and cafés are still a blaze of light; they close, however, early. Here is rather a good story; I can vouch for its truth. The Government recently visited the Tuileries. They were received by the governor, whom they found established in a suite of apartments. He showed them over the palace, and then offered them luncheon. They then incidentally asked him who had nominated him to the post he so ably filled. "Myself," he replied; "just by the same authority as you nominated yourselves, and no less." There was heavy firing all through the night in the direction of Vannes.

M. Mottu, the mayor of the 11th arrondissement, who had entered into a campaign against crucifixes, has been removed. The Government were "interviewed" last night by the chiefs of thirty battalions of Gardes Nationales of the 11th arrondissement on the subject. The deputation was assured that M. Mottu would be reinstated in his mairie if he would promise to moderate his zeal.

October 20th.

"The clients of M. Poiret are informed that they can only have one plate of meat," was the terrible writing which stared me on the wall, when I went to dine at my favourite bouillon—and, good heavens, what a portion it was! Not enough for the dinner of a fine lady who has previously gorged herself at a private luncheon. If meat is, as we are told, so plentiful that it will last for five weeks more, the mode in which it is distributed is radically bad. While at a large popular restaurant, where hundreds of the middle classes dine, each person only gets enough cat or horse to whet his appetite for more; in the expensive cafés on the Boulevards, feasts worthy of Lucullus are still served to those who are ready to part with their money with the proverbial readiness of fools. Far more practical, my worthy Republicans, would it be to establish "liberté, égalité, fraternité" in the cook shops, than to write the words in letters of gold over your churches. In every great city there always is much want and misery; here, although succour is supposed to be afforded to all who require it, many I fear are starving owing to that bureaucrat love of classification which is the curse of France. After my meagre dinner, I was strolling along the quays near the river, l'estomac as leger as M. Ollivier's heart, when I saw a woman leaning over the parapet. She turned as I was passing her, and the lamp from the opposite gate of the Tuileries shone on her face. It was honest and homely, but so careworn, so utterly hopeless, that I stopped to ask her if she was ill. "Only tired and hungry'" she replied; "I have been walking all day, and I have not eaten since yesterday." I took her to a café and gave her some bread and coffee, and then she told me her story. She was a peasant girl from Franche Comté, and had come to Paris, where she had gone into service. But she had soon tired of domestic servitude, and for the last year she had supported herself by sewing waistcoats in a great wholesale establishment. At the commencement of the siege she had been discharged, and for some days she found employment in a Government workshop, but for the last three weeks she had wandered here and there, vainly asking for work. One by one she had sold every article of dress she possessed, except the scanty garments she wore, and she had lived upon bread and celery. The day before she had spent her last sou, and when I saw her she had come down to the river, starving and exhausted, to throw herself into it. "But the water looked so cold, I did not dare," she said. Thus spoke the grisette of Paris, very different from the gay, thoughtless being of French romance, who lives in a garret, her window shrouded with flowers, is adored by a student, and earns enough money in a few hours to pass the rest of the week dancing, gossiping, and amusing herself. As I listened to her, I felt ashamed of myself for repining because I had only had one plate of meat. The hopeless, desolate condition of this poor girl is that of many of her class to-day. But why should they complain? Is not King William the instrument of Heaven, and is he not engaged in a holy cause? That Kings should fight and that seamstresses should weep is in the natural order of things. Frenchmen and Frenchwomen only deserve to be massacred or starved if they are so lost to all sense of what is just as to venture to struggle against the dismemberment of their country, and do not understand how meet and right it is that their fellow-countrymen in Alsace should be converted into German subjects.

General Vinoy, who was in the Crimea, and who takes a somewhat larger view of things than the sententious Trochu, has been good enough to furnish me with a pass, which allows me to wander unmolested anywhere within the French outposts. "If you attempt to pass them," observes the General, "you will be shot by the sentinels, in obedience to my orders." A general order also permits anyone to go as far as the line of the forts. Yesterday I chartered a cab and went to Boulogne, a village on the Seine, close by the wood of the same name. We drove through a portion of the Bois; it contained more soldiers than trees. Line and artillerymen were camped everywhere, and every fifty yards a group was engaged in skinning or cutting up a dead horse. The village of Boulogne had been deserted by almost all the inhabitants. Across some of the streets leading to the river there were barricades, others were open. In most of the houses there were soldiers, and others were in rifle-pits and trenches. A brisk exchange of shots was going on with the Prussians, who were concealed in the opposite houses of St. Cloud. I cannot congratulate the enemy upon the accuracy of their aim, for although several evilly disposed Prussians took a shot at my cab, their bullets whistled far above our heads, and after one preliminary kick, the old cab-horse did not even condescend to notice them. As for the cabman, he was slightly in liquor, and at one of the cross-streets leading to the river he got off his box, and performed a war-dance to show his contempt for the skill of the enemies of his nation. In the Grand Place there was a long barricade, and behind it men, women, and children were crouching watching the opposite houses, from which every now and then a puff of smoke issued, followed by a sharp report. The soldiers were very orderly and good-natured; as I had a glass, some of them took me up into the garrets of a deserted house, from the windows of which we tried in vain to espy our assailants. My friends fired into several of the houses from which smoke issued, but with what effect I do not know. The amusement of the place seemed to be to watch soldiers running along an open road which was exposed to fire for about thirty yards. Two had been killed in the morning, but this did not appear in any way to diminish the zest of the sport. At least twenty soldiers ran the gauntlet whilst I was there, but not one of them was wounded. As well as I could make out, the damage done to St. Cloud by the bombs of Mont Valérien is very inconsiderable. A portion of the Palace and a few houses were in ruins, but that was all. There is a large barrack there, which the soldiers assured me is lit up every night, and why this building has not been shelled, neither they nor I could understand. The newspapers say that the Prussians have guns on the unfinished redoubt of Brinborion; it was not above 1,000 yards from where I was standing, but with my glass I could not make out that there were any there. Several officers with whom I spoke said that it was very doubtful. On my return, my cabman, who had got over his liquor, wanted double his fare. "For myself," he said, "I am a Frenchman, and I should scorn to ask for money for running a risk of being shot by a canaille of a German, but think of my horse;" and then he patted the faithful steed, whom I may possibly have the pleasure to meet again, served up in a sauce piquante. The newspapers, almost without exception, protest against the mediation of England and Russia, which they imagine is offered by these Powers. "It is too late," says the organ of M. Picard. "Can France accept a mediation which will snatch from her the enemy at the moment when victory is certain?"

October 25th.

Has General Trochu a plan?—if so, what is it? It appears to me, as Sir Robert Peel would have said, that he has only three courses to pursue: first, to do nothing, and to capitulate as soon as he is starved out; this would, I reckon, bring the siege to an end in about two months: secondly, to fight a battle with all his disposable forces, which might be prolonged for several days, and thus risk all upon one great venture: thirdly, to cut his way out of Paris with the line and the Mobiles. The two united would form a force of about 150,000 men, and supported by 500 cannon, it may reasonably be expected that the Prussian lines would be pierced. In this case a junction might be effected with any army which exists in the provinces, and the combined force might throw itself upon the enemy's line of communications. In the meantime Paris would be defended by its forts and its ramparts. The former would be held by the sailors and the mobilized National Guards of Paris, the latter by the Sedentary Garde Nationale. Which of these courses will be adopted, it is impossible to say; the latter, however, is the only one which seems to present even a chance of ultimate success. With respect to the second, I do not think that the Mobiles could stand for days or even for hours against the artillery and musketry force of their opponents. They are individually brave, but like all raw troops they become excited under fire, shoot wildly, then rush forward in order to engage in a hand-to-hand encounter, and break before they reach the Prussian lines. In this respect the troops of the line are not much better. The Prussian tactics, indeed, have revolutionized the whole system of warfare, and the French, until they have learnt them, will always go to the wall.

Every day that this siege lasts, convinces me more and more that General Trochu is not the right man in the right place. He writes long-winded letters, utters Spartan aphorisms, and complains of his colleagues, his generals, and his troops. The confidence which was felt in him is rapidly diminishing. He is a good, respectable, honest man, without a grain of genius, or of that fierce indomitable energy which sometimes replaces it. He would make a good Minister of War in quiet times, but he is about as fit to command in the present emergency as Mr. Cardwell would be. His two principal military subordinates, Vinoy and Ducrot, are excellent Generals of Division, but nothing more. As for his civilian colleagues, they are one and all hardly more practical than Professor Fawcett. Each has some crotchet of his own, each likes to dogmatize and to speechify, and each considers the others to be idiots, and has a small following of his own, which regards him as a species of divinity. They are philosophers, orators, and legists, but they are neither practical men nor statesmen. I understand that General Trochu says, that the most sensible among them is Rochefort.

We want to know what has become of Sergeant Truffet. As the Prussians are continually dinning it into Europe that the French fire on their flags of truce, the following facts, for the truth of which I can vouch, may, perhaps, account for it; if, indeed, it has ever occurred. A few days ago, some French soldiers, behind a barricade a little in advance of the Moulin Saqui, saw a Bavarian crawl towards them, waving a white flag. When he stopped, the soldiers called to him to come forward, but he remained, still waving his flag. Sergeant Truffet then got over the barricade, and went towards him. Several Germans immediately rushed forward, and sergeant, flag, and Germans, disappeared within the enemy's lines. The next day, General Vinoy sent an officer to protest against this gross violation of the laws of war, and to demand that the sergeant should be restored. The officer went to Creteil, thence he was sent to Choisy le Roi, where General Jemplin (if this is how he spells his name) declined to produce the sergeant, who, he said, was a deserter, or to give any explanation as to his whereabouts. Now Truffet, as his companions can testify, had not the remotest intention to desert. He was a good and steady soldier. He became a prisoner, through a most odious stratagem, and a Prussian general, although the facts have been officially brought before him, has refused to release him. The Germans are exceedingly fond of trumping up charges against the French, but they have no right to expect to be believed, until they restore to us our Truffet, and punish the Bavarians who entrapped him by means of a false flag of truce.

The subscription for the 1500 cannon hangs fire. The question, however, whether both cannon and Chassepots can be made in Paris is solved, as the private workshops are making daily deliveries of both to Government. At the commencement of the siege it was feared that there would not be enough projectiles; these, also, are now being manufactured. For the last week, the forts have been firing at everything and anything. The admirals in command say that the sailors bore themselves so, that they are obliged to allow them to fire more frequently than is absolutely necessary.