'One of my letters appeared in the Daily News. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:
'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you'—he thought for a while—'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the Times, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the Daily News, and Mr. Landells of the Illustrated London News, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.
'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-à-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: "Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attaché, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew—but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'
No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.
'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have no notion how I shall get back…. Perhaps I shall come from Paris when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent in Europe….
'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his patriotic exultation.
'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from the field of Wörth, and the pen of the Procureur-Impérial of Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August 16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Bavière." This pleasant boy was afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the gainers by the officer's hospitality.
'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.
'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the "Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La déchéance! La déchéance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the Corps Législatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their undress képis on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the Empire that force wore…. Labouchere kept on making speeches to the crowd in various characters—sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la République!" and the Captain in command at last cried "Vive la République!" too, and withdrew his men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of the doom of the man he hated.
'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional Government, and I drew the moral—on a day of revolution always have a bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.