When Jules Favre, with Paris ringed by enemy steel and guns capable of shelling the Opéra point blank, and its population all but starved, said to Bismarck: “Not one foot of soil! Not one stone from our fortresses!” he was establishing for all time-to-come the immortal spirit of Republican France.
Think! Paris could have been laid in ashes on the morrow, the whole of France ravaged within a month, the last soldier put to the sword, all without any possibility of resistance—and there was found a Frenchman who could say defiantly to Bismarck: “Not one inch of soil! Not one stone from our fortresses!”
Who shall dim the glory of a nation like that?
If I seem to lay unwonted stress on the Franco-Prussian war—now a matter, even for the French, of cold, unsentimental history—it is because it occurred at perhaps the most impressionable moment of Sarah Bernhardt’s life, and has thus a direct bearing on our story.
We have just gone through a war so big that, although the Armistice was signed five years ago, it seems only yesterday. We have had living evidence ourselves of the influences of war upon the generation which fought it. We know how war can alter the characters of men, for we have seen it react on our own brothers and fathers and sisters. In France, in 1870, the women did not go to the war as they did in those terrible years from 1914 to 1918, but they bore their share—possibly the heaviest share—of suffering behind the scenes. In 1870 the army in the field was at least on the move, engaged in active operations; or, if it had been compelled to capitulate, it was, at least, not hungry. But at that time the women of Paris were very nearly starving. It is hard to keep up courage, let alone enthusiasm, on an empty stomach; but this the women of Paris did!
As the Germans drew closer and closer to Paris and the outer defences began to fall, the flood of wounded that poured into the hastily-contrived hospitals increased, until it became a matter of serious doubt whether there were sufficient beds to hold them. Almost everything was lacking—bedding, medicines, bandages, doctors, nurses and food.
Starting with five wounded soldiers, Sarah’s hospital in the Odéon was soon taking care of more than a hundred. I remember visiting it with my mother during the siege, and the frightfully fetid odour that assailed one on entering the door still lingers in my nostrils.
The wounded lay both in the theatre proper and on the stage. The beds were placed in great semi-circles, leaving wide aisles between, along which the doctors and nurses walked.
The nurses were nearly all actresses and friends of Sarah Bernhardt whom she herself had trained. Their efficiency, naturally, left much to be desired, but to the wounded they seemed like ministering angels.
Among the patients were many German prisoners, and during the siege these always had the best and choicest food obtainable, so that when cured they could be released and sent back to their army, to refute the impression of a starving Paris!