January 23rd, morning.
The clubs are closed, and the Réveil and the Combat suppressed. Numbers of people are coming in from St. Denis, where the bombardment is getting very hot. Bombs last night fell in one of the islands on the Seine; so the flood is mounting, and our dry ground is every day diminishing. I see in an extract from a German paper, that it has been telegraphed to England that the village of Issy has been entirely destroyed by the Prussian fire. This is not the case. I was there the other day, and the village is still there. It is not precisely the spot where one would wish one's property to be situated, but most of the houses are, as yet, intact.
CHAPTER XVIII.
January 27th.
I write this, as I hear that the last balloon is to start to-night. How lucky for the English public that, just when the siege of Paris ceases, the conscript fathers of the nation will furnish them with reading at their breakfast tables. The light, airy wit of Professor Fawcett, and the pleasant fancy of Mr. Newdegate, will be served up for them with their hot rolls every morning instead of the bulletins of Count Moltke—lucky public!
Most of us here are much like heirs at a rich man's funeral. We have long faces, we sigh and we groan, but we are not quite so unhappy as we look. The Journal Officiel of this morning announces that Paris will not be occupied, and that the National Guard will not go to Germany. This is, we say, very different from a capitulation—it is a political incident; in a few days I expect to hear it called a victory. The editor of the Liberté—why is this gentleman still alive? for the last three months he has been making pacts with death—explains that Paris never would have and never will capitulate, but that an armistice is a very different sort of thing. Last night, notwithstanding the cold which has again set in, the Boulevard was blocked up with groups of patriots and wiseacres discussing the state of things, and explaining what Paris would agree to and what she would not agree to. Occasionally some "pure"—a "pure" is an Ultra—threw out that the Parisians themselves were only reaping what they had sown; but the pure, I need hardly say, was soon silenced, and it seemed to be generally agreed that Paris has been sublime and heroic, but that if she has been neither, it has been the fault of the traitors to whom she has confided her destinies. Some said that the admirals had stated that they would blow up their forts rather than surrender them; but if the worthies who vouched for this had been informed by the admirals of their intentions, I can only say that these honest tars had chosen strange confidants.
Paris, as I have already said more than once, has been fighting as much for her own supremacy over the provinces as for victory over the Prussians. The news—whether true or false I know not—that Gambetta, who is regarded as the representative of Paris, has been replaced by a sort of Council of Regency, and that this Council of Regency is treating, has filled everyone here with indignation. Far better, everyone seems to think, that Alsace should be lost to France, than that France should be lost to Paris. The victories of Prussia have been bitter to Frenchmen, because they had each of them individually assumed a vicarious glory in the victories of the First Empire; but the real patriotism of the Parisians does not extend farther than the walls of their own town. If the result of this war is to cause France to undertake the conduct of its own affairs, and not to allow the population of Paris and the journalists of Paris to ride roughshod over her, the country will have gained more than she has lost by her defeats, no matter what may be the indemnity she be called upon to pay. The martial spirit of the National Guard has of course been lauded to the skies by those newspapers which depend for their circulation on these braves. The question what they have done may, however, be reduced to figures. They number above 300,000. According to their own statements they have been fighting for nearly five months, and I venture to say that during the whole campaign they have not lost 500 men. They have occasionally done duty in the trenches, but this duty has been a very brief one, and they have had very long intervals of repose. I do not question that in the National Guard there are many brave men, but one can only judge of the fighting qualities of an army by comparison, and if the losses of the National Guard be statistically compared with those of the Line, of the Mobiles, and of the sailors, it will be shown that—to use an Americanism—their record is a bad one. The soldiers and the sailors have fought, and the women have suffered during the siege. The male population of Paris has done little more than bluster and drink and brag.
To-day there is no firing, and I suppose that the last shell has fallen into Paris. I went out yesterday to St. Denis. Along the road there were a few people coming into Paris with their beds and tables in hand-carts. In the town the bombardment, although not so heavy as it had been, was far too heavy to be pleasant. Most of the people still remaining have established themselves in their cellars, and every moment one came against some chimney emerging from the soil. Some were still on the ground-floor of their houses, and had heaped up mattresses against their windows. The inhabitants occasionally ran from one house to another, like rabbits in a warren from hole to hole. All the doors were open, and whenever one heard the premonitory whistle which announced the arrival of one of the messengers of our psychological friends outside, one had to dodge into some door. I did not see any one hit. The houses were a good deal knocked about; the cathedral, it was said, had been hit, but as shells were falling in the Place before it, I reserved investigations for a more quiet moment. Some of the garrison told me that the forts had been "scratched," but as to how far this scratching process had been carried I cannot say from personal observation, as I thought I might be scratched myself if I pushed my reconnaissance farther. I am not a military man, and do not profess to know anything about bombs technically, but it seems to me, considering that it is their object to burst, and considering the number of scientific persons who have devoted their time to make them burst, it is very strange how very few do burst. I am told that one reason for this is the following:—when they lose the velocity of the impelling force they turn over in the air, and as the percussion cap is on the lighter end, the heavier one strikes the ground. Many of these, too, which have fallen in the town, and which have burst, have done no mischief, because the lead in which they are enveloped has kept the pieces together. The danger, indeed, to life and limb of a bombardment is very slight. I would at any time prefer to be for 24 hours in the most exposed portion of a bombarded town, than walk 24 times across Oxford Street in the middle of the day. A bomb is a joke in comparison with those great heavy wagons which are hurled at pedestrians by their drivers in the streets of London.
January 28th.