In the darkness for hours did the ambulance men of various societies traverse the field in pursuance of their work. As conveyances were in progress towards the general rendezvous, confusion and crush increased, as a combined result of darkness and an absence of regular roadways; progress consequently so retarded that night was far advanced when we reached the rampart gates, our conveyances complet with wounded men. As on the first occasion, roadsides and avenues within Port Maillot were crowded with people. Loud and anxious inquiries for relatives and friends who had taken part in the recent battle were frequent; frivolity in abeyance, as if experience had impressed upon them the significance of combat against our besiegers. That the result of the day had been disastrous to the French was speedily realized. Next day the casualties among the forces engaged were estimated at 1000 killed, the greater number by artillery fire; the wounded as “very many.”
Meanwhile the work of bombarding Paris, scarcely if at all interfered with by the incident of severe conflict just narrated, was increased rather than diminished in its intensity; new batteries opened upon the city, with acharnement, shells falling upon places hitherto untouched. St. Denis was assailed, and underwent greater destruction in respect to property and life than had been sustained by the capital itself. A rush of people from that suburb took place, causing serious inconvenience to those whose duty it was to provide them with accommodation and food. All hopes of deliverance had become extinguished; negotiations were accordingly opened with the German Chancellor in view to an armistice being arranged. While they were in progress, bombardment continued with its usual violence. Early in the night of the 26th there was a sudden lull; a few minutes before midnight there was discharged upon us a volley from all points of the circle, such as we had never previously experienced; then followed stillness. Bombardment had ceased; we knew that the Convention had been signed. For 130 days Paris had been besieged; during thirty, the advanced forts had been bombarded; during twenty-one, the city.[311]
Demonstrations by “the dangerous classes” of Belleville and Vilette took place; their plea, the terms on which the armistice had been concluded. The Hôtel de Ville was menaced by crowds of excited men, gesticulating wildly as they shouted, “Vive la Commune!” They are dispersed by force of arms; several of their numbers killed, many more wounded. There is a flight towards the Mazas prison; an entrance thereto is effected, some of the more noted of its inmates released. A rush is made upon the small remaining food stores of their arrondissements; they are broken into, their contents distributed among the assailants. After a time these disturbances are suppressed. Trochu has resigned his command; Vinoy is his successor.
When on January 27, 1871, the morning papers published the terms of amnesty, the fact was one of common knowledge that the stock of food remaining was not equal to more than six or seven days’ “rations,” even according to the reduced scale to which the besieged were at the time brought down; in fact, all were now at starvation point as a result of gradually diminishing allowances of food. Next day the Germans occupied Mont Valérien as the French troops marched out of it. Some hours later appeared a proclamation by the Government of the Defence announcing that “the Convention which terminates the resistance of Paris will be signed in a few hours”; that “we could not have prolonged the resistance without condemning to certain death two millions of men, women, and children. Mortality has increased threefold.” “We come out with all our honour,” the same document said, “and with all our hopes, in spite of our present grief.” In accordance with the terms agreed upon, the process began of disarming the citizen soldiers, of whom groups along the thoroughfares showed by their gloomy style and demeanour those pent-up feelings of disaffection which were soon to break out in the horrors of the Commune.
The conditions to which Paris and its people had been reduced were urgent. Severe cold, absolute want of fuel, the insufficient scale of food to which all were officially limited, prevailing sickness and mortality by disease, added to the recurring influx of wounded as a result of desultory conflicts beyond the line of fortifications, combined to render further resistance impossible.
All establishments set apart for the reception of wounded were overcrowded. Not alone food, but appliances were insufficient in quantity and kind. In many instances private families had received wounded into their houses, and so crippled their own resources. The result of the recent sortie and action at Montretout was an accession to the numbers requiring care and accommodation of three to five thousand, for actual statistics were unobtainable; professional and other attendants were insufficient to meet the demands on their services; while, as if still further to complicate matters, the Germans sent several hundred wounded French into the city, and so lightened the work of their own establishments.
In some ambulances such scenes were to be seen as French and German wounded occupying adjoining beds; no longer “enemies,” but helpless; unable to communicate with each other; many destined to quit the place in death, for hospital diseases setting at defiance disinfection and all other supposed preventive measures proved fatal to a large proportion of patients within those establishments. A heavy offensive odour, that of pourriture, pervades wards and corridors of the buildings, extending to the streets or boulevards immediately adjoining. In the mortuary of a large hospital the scene presented was too horrible for detailed description.
The defence now ended had been carried on at a cost in human life in respect to which reliable statistics were unobtainable. According to one account, deaths on the field of battle and in ambulances amounted among troops of the line and Mobiles to 50,000; to another to 63,000; to a third to 73,000; neither estimate taking into account mortality by disease and privation among the non-military inhabitants. On the capitulation of Paris the troops who became prisoners of war numbered about 180,000; the fortress guns “captured” by the enemy 1,500 field pieces and 400 mitrailleuses; in addition the gunboats on the Seine, locomotives, and rolling stock.
While making my round among the ambulances, I was somewhat surprised to hear myself accosted by name by a wounded man who occupied one of the beds past which I was moving. At once I entered into conversation with him, naturally enough expressing sympathy for him. He briefly informed me that he was in the 101st (British) Regiment, and landed with that corps at Gosport on the occasion of its first arrival in England from India; that he remembered me on duty there; that having left the regiment he joined the Francs Tireurs of Paris at the beginning of the siege; that fifty per cent. of his comrades had perished by shot, disease, or at the hands of the Germans, into which they may have fallen as prisoners; that he himself had not slept in a bed for three months until brought to the ambulance wounded. He was but one example of the material of which such volunteers were composed, and a similar story to his could doubtless be told by many others.
Under the circumstances to which we were now reduced, welcome was the news that supplies of food sent to the besieged from England and elsewhere had arrived in proximity of the outskirts; credit must be accorded to the supreme officers of the investing force for the rapidity with which those supplies were forwarded to the now starving people within, so that on the last day of January many waggon loads were received, and forthwith distributed. On that day also postal communication with the outer world was re-established, though with the proviso that letters dispatched should be unsealed.