'I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet's nest about my ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.'
Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day.
II.
'Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of 1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr— splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe's. His cavalry were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery (escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard, the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland.
'Ours were what schoolboys would call second choice. Oh, such men! and without boots, without overcoats, facing arctic weather in wooden shoes and old sacks—facing the Prussians, too, with old muzzle- loading guns; but they fought well, and their leader, a man of genius, made the most of them. I returned two or three times to England—that is, to Dover—to eat and buy things I could carry, for I could hardly get anything at Lille, where, by the way, I heard Gambetta make his great speech. It was the finest oratorical display to which I ever listened, though I have heard Castelar, Bright, Gladstone, the Prime Minister Lord Derby, Gathorne Hardy, and Father Félix (the great Jesuit preacher) often, at their very best.
'Picking up Auberon Herbert, who was on his way to Versailles to wait for the surrender of Paris in order to take in food to his brother Alan, who was serving as a doctor on the ambulance inside, I went to the siege of Longwy. Like all the fortresses of France bombarded in this war, with two exceptions, it surrendered far too easily.
'From Longwy we passed on to Montmédy, at which latter place we witnessed the immediate effects of a fearful railway accident, a collision in a tunnel between a trainful of French prisoners and one of recruits for the Prussian Guards. The scene in the darkness and smoke, with the stalwart, long-bearded Landwehr men, who formed the garrison of the town, holding blazing torches of pine and pitch, and the glare from the fires of the upset engines, was one which would have delighted Rembrandt. When a rush of water, a cataract from the roof of the lately blown-up tunnel, suddenly occurred, adding to the horror of the night, the place was pandemonium. Almost the only men unhurt in the front carriages, which were smashed to pieces, were the Mayors of the villages on the line, travelling compulsorily as hostages for the safety of the trains. I made military reflections on the advantage of blowing up tunnels, as against the practice of destroying bridges and so forth.'
Sir Charles was one of the first in Paris after the siege (which was raised by an armistice on January 29th, 1871), taking in with him a large quantity of condensed milk, of which he made presents to his Paris friends. The purpose of the armistice was to enable regular conditions to be signed between the conqueror and the conquered. The Imperial Government had declared war on Prussia; but the Empire had fallen and the existing Government was only provisional. It had a branch in Paris, another branch in Bordeaux, and between these the investing army barred all intercommunication. The purpose of the armistice was to allow the holding of elections throughout France to return a National Assembly, which in its turn should appoint Ministers fully authorized to treat for peace. The elections did but emphasize the division between Paris and the provinces, for in Paris an Ultra-Radical representative was returned, while in the country a considerable majority of monarchical deputies were elected. Republican France feared, and not without cause, some attempt to re- establish a dynasty.
When, on February 20th, the new Government, with Thiers at its head, signed preliminaries of peace, a condition was included which stipulated that the Prussian troops should formally enter Paris and remain for three days in possession of all the forts before evacuating the place. The National Guard, refusing to obey orders, entrenched itself in Montmartre; the seat of government was transferred to Versailles, lately the Prussian headquarters; fighting broke out in the streets, and the control of the city was seized in the name of the Commune.
So began the second siege, in which revolutionary Paris stood at bay against those whom they called 'the Prussians of Versailles,' while the real Prussians, still occupying part of the exterior line of forts, looked on, impartial spectators. Sir Charles writes: