Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris

by Henry Du Pré Labouchere

La France thus speaks of the last despatch of Gambetta:—"At length we have received official news from Tours. We read the despatch feverishly, then we read it a second time with respect, with admiration, with enthusiasm. We are asked our opinion respecting it. Before answering, we feel an irresistible impulse to take off our hat and to cry 'Vive la France.'" The Electeur Libre is still more enraptured with the situation. It particularly admires the petroleum lamp, so different, it says, to those orgies of light, which under the tyrant, in the form of gas, gave a fictitious vitality to Paris. The Combat points out that no fires have broken out since September 4—a coincidence which is ascribed to the existence since that date of a Republican form of government. I recommend this curious phenomenon to insurance companies. The newspapers, one and all, are furious, because they hear that the Prussians contest our two victories at Villiers. "How singular," observes the Figaro, with plaintive morality, "is this rage, this necessity for lying." It is notorious that, having gained two glorious victories, we returned into Paris to repose on our laurels, and I must beg the Prussians not to be so mean as to contest the fact.

December 23rd.

Since Wednesday the troops—Line, Mobiles, and marching battalions of the National Guard—have remained outside the enceinte. There has been a certain amount of spade work at Drancy, but beyond this absolutely nothing. The cold is very severe. This afternoon I was outside in the direction of Le Bourget. The soldiers had lit large fires to warm themselves. Some of them were lodged in empty houses, but most of them had only their little tentes d'abri to shelter them. The sentinels were stamping their feet in the almost vain endeavour to keep their blood in circulation. There have been numerous frost-bitten cases. When it is considered that almost all of these troops might, without either danger to the defence, or without compromising the offensive operations, have been marched back into Paris, and quartered in the barracks which have been erected along the outer line of Boulevards, it seems monstrous cruelty to keep them freezing outside. The operations, however, on Wednesday are regarded as very far short of a success. General Trochu does not venture, in the state of public opinion, to bring the troops back into Paris, and thus confess a failure. The ambulances are ordered out to-morrow morning; but I cannot help thinking that the series of operations which were with great beating of drums announced to have commenced on Wednesday, will be allowed gradually to die out, without anything further taking place. The National Guards are camped in the neighbourhood of Bondy and Rosny. They have again, greatly to the disgust of the Mobiles and Line, been congratulated in a general order upon their valorous bearing. As a matter of fact, there was a panic among these braves which nearly degenerated into a rout. Several battalions turned tail, under the impression that the Prussians were going to attack them. One battalion did not stop until it had found shelter within the walls of the town. General Trochu's attempt, for political ends, to force greatness upon these heroes, is losing him the goodwill of the army. On Wednesday and Thursday several regiments of the Line and of the Mobiles bitterly complained that they should always be ordered to the front to protect not only Paris but the National Guards. The marching battalions are composed of unmarried men between twenty-five and thirty-five, and why they should not be called upon to incur the same risks, and submit to the same discipline as the Mobiles, it is difficult to understand. We may learn from the experience of this siege that in war, armed citizens who decline to submit to the discipline of soldiers are worse than useless. The lesson, however, has not profited the Parisians. The following letter appears in the Combat, signed by the "adjoint" of the 13th arrondissement. The defence on the part of this municipal functionary of a marching battalion, which, at the outposts, broke into a church, and there parodied the celebration of the mass, is a gem in its way:—

"The marching companies of this battalion left Paris on the morning of the 16th to go to the outposts at Issy. The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be—copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses—in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that arsenal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race. The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding death; and all the writers whose pens are dipped in the ink of reaction and Jesuitism are eager to discover any eccentricity in which soldiers who are going under fire for the first time permit themselves to indulge. The Intendance, with that intelligence which characterises our military administrations, had put off the departure of the battalion for several hours. What were the men to do whilst they were kept waiting, except drink? This is what these brave fellows did. Mars, tired of Venus, sung at the companionship of Bacchus. If the God of Wine too well seconded the God of War, it is only water drinkers who can complain; it is not for us, Republicans of the past and of the future, to throw stones at good citizens in order to conceal the misconduct of the old Bonapartist Administration which still is charged with the care of our armies."

General Blaise has been killed at Villa Evrard. The buildings, which go by this name, were occupied on Wednesday by General Vinoy's troops. In the night a number of Prussians, who had concealed themselves in the cellars, emerged, and a hand-to-hand fight took place. Some of the Prussians in the confusion got away, and some were killed. Several French officers who ran away and rushed in a panic into the presence of General Vinoy, who was at Fort Rosney, announcing that all was lost, are to be tried by Court Martial. The troops when they heard this were very indignant; but old Vinoy rode along the line, and told them that they might think what they pleased, but that he would have no cowards serving under him. Pity that he is not General-in-Chief.

A curious new industry has sprung up in Paris. Letters supposed to be found in the pockets of dead Germans are in great request. There are letters from mothers, from sisters, and from the Gretchens who are, in the popular mind, supposed to adore warriors. Unless every corpse has half a dozen mothers, and was loved when in the flesh by a dozen sweethearts, many of these letters must be fabricated. They vary in their style very little. The German mothers give little domestic details about the life at home, and express the greatest dread lest their sons should fall victims to the valour of the Parisians, which is filling the Fatherland with terror and admiration. The Gretchens are all sentimental; they talk of their inner feelings like the heroines of third-rate novels, send the object of their affections cigars and stockings knitted by their own fair hands, and implore him to be faithful, and not forget, in the toils of some French syren, poor Gretchen. But what is more strange is that in the pocket of each corpse a reply is found which he has forgotten to post. In this reply the warrior tells a fearful tale of his own sufferings, and says that victory is impossible, because the National Guards are such an invincible band.

The number of the wounded in my hotel has considerably diminished owing to the deaths among them. For the Société Internationale to have made it their central ambulance was a great mistake. Owing to the want of ventilation the simplest operations are usually fatal. Four out of five of those who have an arm or a leg amputated die of pyæmia. Now, as in the American tents four out of five recover; and as French surgeons are as skilful as American surgeons, the average mortality in the two ambulances is a crucial proof of the advantage of the American tent system. Under their tents there is perfect ventilation, and yet the air is not cold. If their plan were universally adopted in hospitals, it is probable that many lives which are now sacrificed to the gases which are generated from operations, and which find no exit from buildings of stone or brick, would be saved. "Our war," said an American surgeon to me the other day, "taught us that a large number of cubic inches of air is not enough for a sick man, but that the air must be perpetually renewed by ventilation."

December 24th.

The papers publish extracts from German newspapers which have been found in the pockets of the prisoners who were taken on Wednesday. The news from the provinces is not considered encouraging. Great stress is laid upon a proclamation addressed by King William to his troops on December 6, in which it is considered that there is evidence that the Prussians are getting tired of the war. We hear now, for the first time, that Prussia has "denounced" the Luxemburg Treaty of '67, and forgetting that the guarantee of neutrality with respect to these lotus-eaters was collective, and not joint and several, we anxiously ask whether England will not regard this as a casus belli. "As soon as Parliament assembles," says La Vérité, "that great statesman Disraeli will turn out Mr. Gladstone, and then our old ally will be restored to us." The Gaulois observes that "the English journalists residing at Paris keep up the illusion that Paris must fall by sending to their journals false news, which is reproduced in the organs of Prussia." "These journalists," adds the Gaulois, "who are our guests, fail in those duties which circumstances impose upon them." Every correspondent residing abroad must be the guest, in a certain sense, of the country from which he is writing; but that this position should oblige him to square his facts to suit the wishes of his hosts appears to me a strange theory. Had I been M. Jules Favre, I confess that I should have turned out all foreign journalists at the commencement of the siege. He, however, expressed a wish that they should remain in Paris, and his fellow-citizens must not now complain that they decline to endorse the legend which, very probably, will be handed down to future generations of Frenchmen as the history of the siege of Paris. The Prussians will not raise the siege for anything either French or English journalists say. The Parisians themselves must perceive that the attempt to frighten their enemies away by drum-beating and trumpet-blowing has signally failed. Times have altered since Jericho. It is telling the Prussians nothing new to inform them that the National Guard are poor troops. For my part, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to learn some morning that the German armies round Paris had met with the fate which overwhelmed Sennacherib and his hosts. I should be delighted to be able to hope that the town will not eventually be forced to capitulate; but I cannot conceal from myself the truth that, if no succour comes from without, it must eventually fall. I blame the French journalists for perpetually drawing upon their imagination for their facts, and in their boasts of what France will do, not keeping within the bounds of probability; but I do not blame them for hoping against hope that their armies will be successful. I am ready to admit that the Parisians have shown a most stubborn tenacity, and that they have disappointed their enemies in not cutting each other's throats; but this is no reason why I should assert that they are sublime. After all, what is patriotism? The idea entertained by each nation that it is braver and better and wiser than the rest of the world. Does not every Englishman feel this to be true of his own countrymen? It is consequently not absurd that Frenchmen should think the same of themselves. The French are intensely patriotic—country with them is no abstraction. They moan over its ruin as though it were a human being, and far then be it from me to laugh at them for doing so. When, however, I find persons dressing themselves up in all the paraphernalia of war, visiting tombs and statues in order to register with due solemnity that they intend to die rather than yield, and when, after all this nonsense, these same persons decline to take their share in the common danger on the score that they have a mother, or a sister, or a wife, or a child, dependent upon them, and when month after month they drum and strut up and down the Boulevards, I consider that they are ridiculous, and I say so. When a man does a silly thing it is his own fault—not that of the person who chronicles it. Was it wise, for instance, of General Ducrot to announce a fortnight ago that he was about to lead his soldiers against the enemy, and that he himself intended either to conquer or die? Was it wise of General Trochu six weeks ago to issue a proclamation pledging himself to force the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris. The Prussians will have read these manifestoes, and they will form their own estimate respecting them. That I call them foolish does not "keep up illusions in Germany." The other day the members of an Ultra club, in the midst of a discussion respecting the existence of a divinity, determined to decide the question by a general scrimmage. I think that these patriots might have been better employed. It does not follow, however, that I do not regret that they were not better employed. The siege of Paris is in the hands of General Moltke, and the Gaulois may depend upon it that this wary strategist is not at all likely to give up the task by any number of journalists informing him that he is certain to fail.

I have got a cold, so I have not been out this morning. I hear that some of the troops have come in from Aubervilliers, and several regiments have marched by my windows. At Neuilly-sur-Marne and Bondy, it is said, earthworks are being thrown up; and it is supposed that Chelles will, as the Americans say, be the objective point of any movement which may take place in that direction. The Patrie has been suspended for three days for alluding to military operations. It did more than allude, it ventured to doubt the wisdom of our generals. As many other journals have done the same I do not understand why the Patrie should have been singled out for vengeance.