We have had no pigeon for the last eighteen days, and the anxiety to obtain news from without is very strong. A few days ago a messenger was reported to have got through the Prussian lines with news of a French victory. The next day a Saxon officer was said, with his last breath, to have confided to his doctor that Frederick Charles had been defeated. Yesterday Jules Favre told the mayor that there was a report that Chanzy had gained a victory. Everything now depends upon what Chanzy is doing, and, for all we know, he may have ceased to exist for the last week.
A census which has just been made of the population within the lines, makes the number, exclusive of the Line, Mobiles, and sailors, 2,000,500. No attempt has yet been made to ration the bread, but it is to be mixed with oats and rice. The mayor of this quarter says that in this arrondissement—the richest in Paris—he is certain that there is food for two months. Should very good news come from the provinces, and it appear that by holding out for two months more the necessity for a capitulation would be avoided, I think that we should hold on until the end of February, if we have to eat the soles of our boots. If bad news comes, we shall not take to this food; but we shall give in when everything except bread fails, and we shall then consider that our honour is saved if nothing else is. M. Louis Blanc to-day publishes a letter to Victor Hugo, in which he tells the Parisians that if they do capitulate they will gain nothing by it, for the Prussians will neither allow them to quit Paris, nor, if the war continues, allow food to enter it.
As yet there are no signs of a real outbreak; and if a successful one does occur, it will be owing to the weakness of the Government, which has ample means to repress it. The Parisian press is always adjuring the working men not to cut either each others' or their neighbours' throats, and congratulating them on their noble conduct in not having done so. This sort of praise seems to me little better than an insult. I see no reason why the working men should be considered to be less patriotic than others. That they are not satisfied with Trochu, and that they entertain different political and social opinions to those of the bourgeoisie, is very possible. Opinions, however, are free, and they have shown as yet that they are willing to subordinate the expression of theirs to the exigencies of the national defence. I go a good deal among them, and while many of them wish for a general system of rationing, because they think that it will make the provisions last longer, they have no desire to pillage or to provoke a conflict with the Government. I regard them myself, in every quality which makes a good citizen, as infinitely superior to the journalists who lecture them, and who would do far better to shoulder a musket and to fall into the ranks, than to waste paper in reviling the Prussians and bragging of their own heroism. As soldiers, the fault of the working men is that they will not submit to discipline; but this is more the fault of the Government than of them. As citizens, no one can complain of them. To talk with one of them after reading the leading article of a newspaper is a relief. A French journalist robes himself in his toga, gets upon a pedestal, and talks unmeaning, unpractical claptrap. A French workman is, perhaps, too much inclined to regard every one except himself, and some particular idol which he has set up, as a fool; but he is by no means wanting in the power to take a plain practical view, both of his own interests, and those of his country. Since the commencement of the siege, forty-nine new journals have appeared. Many of them have already ceased to exist, but counting old and new newspapers, there must at least be sixty published every day. How they manage to find paper is to me a mystery. Some of them are printed upon sheets intended for books, others upon sheets which are so thick that I imagine they were designed to wrap up sugar and other groceries. Those which were the strongest in favour of the Empire, are now the strongest in favour of the Republic. Editors and writers whose dream it was a few months ago to obtain an invitation at the Tuileries or to the Palais Royal, or to merit by the basest of flatteries the Legion of Honour, now have become perfect Catos, and denounce courts and courtiers, Bonapartists and Orleanists. War they regard as the most wicked of crimes, and they appear entirely to have forgotten that they welcomed with shouts of ecstacy in July last the commencement of the triumphal march to Berlin.
January 2nd.
Yesterday evening, notwithstanding the cold, there were groups on the Boulevards shouting "à bas Trochu." It is understood that henceforward no military operation is to take place before it has been discussed by a Council of War, consisting of generals and admirals. As the moment approaches when we shall, unless relieved, be obliged to capitulate, everyone is attempting to shift from himself all responsibility. This is the consequence of the scapegoat system which has so long prevailed in France. Addresses are published from the commanders outside congratulating the National Guard who have been under their orders. The Vérité, in alluding to them, asks the following questions:—"Why are battalions which are accused by General Thomas, their direct superior, of chronic drunkenness, thus placed upon a pinnacle by real military men? Why do distinguished generals, unless forced by circumstances, declare the mere act of passing four or five cold nights in the trenches heroic? Why is so great a publicity given to such contradictory orders of the day?"
The Journal Officiel contains a long address to the Parisians. Beyond the statement that no news had been received since the 14th ult., this document contains nothing but empty words. Between the lines one may, perhaps, read a desire to bring before the population the terrible realities of the situation.
The deaths for the last week amount to 3,280, an increase on the previous week of 552. I am told that these bills of mortality do not include those who die in the public hospitals. Small-pox is on the increase—454 as against 388 the previous week.
Nothing new outside. The bombardment of the eastern forts still continues. It is, however, becoming more intermittent. Every now and then it almost ceases, then it breaks out with fresh fury. The Prussians are supposed to be at work at Chatillon. If they have heavy guns there, it will go hard with the Fort of Vanves. The rations are becoming in some of the arrondissements smaller by degrees and beautifully less. In the 18th (Montmartre) the inhabitants only receive two sous worth of horse-flesh per diem. The rations are different in each arrondissement, as the Mayor of each tries to get hold of all he can, and some are more successful than others. These differences cause great dissatisfaction. The feeling to-day seems to be that if Trochu wishes to avoid riots, he must make a sortie very shortly.
The Gaulois says:—
"How sad has been our New Year's-day! Among ourselves we may own it, although we have bravely supported it, like men of sense, determined to hold good against bad fortune, and to laugh in the face of misery. It is hard not to have had the baby brought to our bedside in the morning; not to have seen him clap his hands with pleasure on receiving some toy; not to have pressed the hands of those we love best, and not to have embraced them and been able to say—'The year which has passed has had its joys and its sorrows, sun and shadow—but what matters it? We have shared them together. The year which is commencing cannot bring with it any sorrows that by remaining united we shall not be able to support?' Most of us breakfasted this morning—the New Year's breakfast, usually so gay—alone and solitary; a few smoky logs our only companions. There are sorrows which no philosophy can console. On other days one may forget them, but on New Year's-day our isolation comes home to us, and, do what we may, we are sad and silent. Where are they now? What are they doing now? is the thought which rises in every breast. The father's thoughts are with his children; he dimly sees before him their rosy faces, and their mother who is dressing them. How weary, too, must the long days be for her, separated from her husband. Last year she had taught the baby to repeat a fable, and she brought him all trembling to recite it to the father. She, too, trembles like a child. She follows him with her looks, she whispers to him a word when he hesitates, but so low that he reads it on her lips, and the father hears nothing. Poor man! Sorry indeed he would have been to have had it supposed that he had perceived the mother's trick. He was himself trembling, too, lest the child should not know his lesson. What a disappointment it would have been to the mother! For a fortnight before she had taken baby every night on her knees and said, 'Now begin your fable.' She had taught it him verse by verse with the patience of an angel, and she had encouraged him to learn it with many a sugarplum. 'He is beginning to know his fable,' she said a hundred times to her husband. 'Really,' he answered, with an air of doubt. The honest fellow was as interested in it as his wife, and he only appeared to doubt it in order to make her triumph greater. He knew that baby would know the fable on New Year's morn. You Prussian beggars, you Prussian scoundrels, you bandits, and you Vandals, you have taken everything from us; you have ruined us; you are starving us; you are bombarding us; and we have a right to hate you with a royal hatred. Well, perhaps one day we might have forgiven you your rapine and your murders; our towns that you have sacked; your heavy yokes; your infamous treasons. The French race is so light of heart, so kindly, that we might perhaps in time have forgotten our resentments. What we never shall forget will be this New Year's Day, which we have been forced to pass without news from our families. You at least have had letters from your Gretchens, astounding letters, very likely, in which the melancholy blends with blue eyes, make a wonderful literary salad, composed of sour-krout, Berlin wool, forget-me-nots, pillage, bombardment, pure love, and transcendental philosophy. But you like all this just as you like jam with your mutton. You have what pleases you. Your ugly faces receive kisses by the post. But you kill our pigeons, you intercept our letters, you shoot at our balloons with your absurd fusils de rempart, and you burst out into a heavy German grin when you get hold of one of our bags, which are carrying to those we love our vows, our hopes, our remembrance, our regrets, and our hearts. It is a merry farce, is it not? Ah, if ever we can render you half the sufferings which we are enduring, you will see des grises. Perhaps you don't know what the word means, and, like one of Gavarni's children, you will say, 'What! des grises?' You will, I trust, one of these days learn what is the signification of the term at your own cost. One of your absurd pretensions is to be the only people in the world who understand how to love, or who care for domestic ties. You will see, by the hatred which we shall ever bear to you, that we too know how to love—our time will come some day, be assured. This January 1 of the year 1871 inaugurates a terrible era of bloody revenge. Poor philosophers of universal peace, you see now the value of your grand phrases and of your humanitarian dreams! Vainly you imagined that the world was entering into a period of everlasting peace and progress. A wonderful progress, indeed, has 1870 brought us! You never calculated on the existence of these Huns. We are back again now in the midst of all the miseries of the 13th and 14th centuries. The memory of to-day will be written on the hearts of our children. 'It was the year,' they will say, 'when we received no presents, when we did not kiss our father, because of the Prussians. They shall pay for it!' Let us hope that the payment will commence this very day. But if we are still to be vanquished, we will leave to our children the memory of our wrongs, and the care to avenge them."