The Chambers assembled amid tumult indescribable. Ministers were insulted on their way to attend the deliberations. "À la Frontière!" cried the huge crowd, thronging the quay before the Palace of the Corps Législatif. "Vive Rochefort!" "À bas les Ministres!" "Chassepôts!"
Their reiterated demands for arms could be heard within the Chamber. Where, when M. Schneider mounted the tribune to read the Imperial Decree of Convocation, the opening formula: "Napoleon, by the Grace of God and the national will, Emperor of the French," was vigorously howled down. Ollivier, the unpopular Head of the Imperial Cabinet, who had egged on the war, fared no better. Later, the fall of his Ministry was greeted with salvo upon salvo of enthusiastic applause, and when the news was published all Paris went mad once more with joy.
While the moment of supreme collapse of the great peacock bubble was coming nearer, the Crown Prince of Prussia was hunting MacMahon through the defiles of the Vosges, his flying cavalry snapping up scores of wounded or footsore stragglers, his advance batteries of light artillery harassing the bleeding flanks of the fugitive. The Second and First Armies were moving Metzward, the Warlock having knowledge that the Emperor's main Army, the Imperial Guard, and Bazaine's, Ladmirault's and Frossard's Corps, with part of Canrobert's, were concentrating there.
The Great Bubble was sagging pitifully. The weather was wet and chilly, the Imperial troops not yet in action were disheartened by the news of battles lost. Their equipment was incomplete, their new boots had proved to be of no better material than brown paper and American cloth. Worst of all, the Commissariat, always inadequate, showed signs of caving in. And the blame for all was heaped upon the shoulders of the Emperor, whose faith in his fortunate star had quite deserted him; a man tormented by telegrams of wifely censure and wifely advice from Paris; disgruntled, if ever man was; haunted and oppressed by premonitions of impending disaster; sleepless, shaky, sick, and prematurely old.
The taking of the fortresses of Bitche and Phalsbourg—memorable by reason of its brave Governor's resolute defense—the seizure of the undefended City of Nancy, the Zorn Valley railway line, Forbach with its immense military stores, Sarreguemines, and other garrison towns were lesser shocks, falling on a mind already paralyzed. Hasty decisions, contradictory orders, had emanated, one after another, from the Headquarters. He was confused and flurried, finding his good brother of Prussia so near. For the Warlock, scenting a movement of French troops to the rear, had crowned the uplands eastward of Metz with the 1st and 7th Corps of the First Army of Germany under the veteran General Steinmetz, cavalry well to the fore and outposts skillfully posted, so as to look into the French position from all points of view, while the Red Prince felt for a solid footing for his Second Army on the left or French bank of the Moselle. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince, whose clutches Marshal MacMahon had evaded by taking a vast circuit to Châlons, had swept round and was marching northward from Vigneulles toward Metz.
Ah! in what a hornet's nest the Imperial Commander-in-Chief found himself. Almost incapable of mental effort, he recognized, like Mr. Wilkins Micawber,—whose epistolary style is occasionally suggested by his Proclamations and harangues,—that something had to be done at once. To shake off the intolerable burden of authority was the most urgent necessity. He transferred it to the youngest of his Marshals, Bazaine.
"You will get us out of this, won't you, Marshal?" cried an officer of the Imperial Staff, as the new Commander-in-Chief came out of the Prefecture.
The Marshal had left his Imperial master in bed, expecting answers to letters he had penned to the Emperor of Austria and the King of Italy, soliciting aid and alliance, which these potentates did not bestow. True to himself, he could not quit Metz without a proclamation, penned in the old flourishing, ambiguous style:
"Inhabitants of Metz. In leaving you to oppose the invading enemy, I rely upon your patriotism to defend this great city. You will not allow the foreigner to seize this bulwark of France, and you will emulate the Army in courage and devotion.... I hope to return in happier times to thank you for your noble conduct."
Then he quitted the place with his son, his cousin and his personal following and escort. As his cortège clattered through the streets choked with soldiers, guns, provision-carts and baggage-wagons, and faces of contempt, or derision, or hatred turned to see, did he hide his sick, humiliated face behind the green silk screen of the carriage window? How did he answer the inevitable questions of his son?