It is as hard for sober Englishmen to imagine a people delighting in edicts penned in that style, as it is for us to read without disgust any two consecutive pages of L'homme qui rit. Hugo's latest novel is well matched by his latest political utterances.
One encouraging sign is, that Paris journalism grows ashamed of itself: the lies, indeed, continue to the last: insincerity seems (since the first Napoleon's time) to have become inseparable from French bulletins; but the Siècle of the middle of November proves what a change had come on:—
'It is esprit which has ruined France; the esprit, we mean, of the boulevards, that esprit nine-tenths of which are made up of puns and jokes, of scepticism, of blague, and of which the remaining tenth is boastful nonsense and absurd lies.... So long as the Figaro, Paris Journal, Gaulois and all the rest keep up above the circulation of 500, which would suffice for the comic actors and actresses who ought to be their only readers, there is no hope of seeing France recover herself. Men talk with scorn of the Greeks of the lower empire who were arguing about the kind of light which shone on Mount Tabor, while Mahomet II. was breaching their walls. But these Greeks were eagles compared with our boulevardiers. They discussed a theologico-physical question, wild and absurd, no doubt, but still showing a capacity for lofty thought; our spirituel newspapers discuss the scandals which they rake up out of the moral sewers of the capital.... If the present war ends without having killed, not scotched, this esprit boulevardier, peace will be no use, it will be nothing but a halt in the mire.'
M. Leclercq's comment on this is—
'If we, whom the second Empire has so poisoned through its infamous press, have not energy enough to make a reaction against Parisian manners and Parisian esprit, we shall fall as low as our neighbours, and shall soon imbibe that scorn of truth and reason which they have shown.'
This, from a Belgian, is at least as humiliating to Paris as any of the Prussian victories.
From politics, as from warlike criticism, M. Leclercq abstains almost wholly: of course, he cannot help wondering at Bazaine's behaviour at Metz; as we heard it lately expressed by a great English financier, unable, like most financiers, to help liking the Emperor after all:—'I won't say Bazaine was a traitor; that is not quite fair upon him. But I will say that he thought more of his government than he did of France. He might have prevented the investment of Paris, there is not a doubt of it.' The decay of the Napoleonic idea is put in a startling light, when we reflect that Bazaine was, before the end of last September, almost the only Imperialist in France. Paris, which had been so delighted at the prospect of glory as to forget all about the coup d'état, went round as one man. In fact, Sedan was hurried on because Paris could not be trusted: there was no sincerity in the ex-Emperor's professions and concessions. The Parisians knew that, and though they had been ready enough to shout against the Prussians, they were only waiting for their opportunity to get rid of their own ruler. It is the old story of a house divided against itself. The poor men were mowed down at Sedan by shells from such a distance that they could not see whence they were fired, simply because it was 'useless' for Napoleon to go to Paris. The idea of really honestly trusting to the country, and giving pledges for future conduct, never presented itself as possible in 1870 any more than in 1814 and 1815.
On one point M. Leclercq finds just fault with the Republican government: they decreed a second expulsion of Germans from Paris, and they vowed not only never to yield an inch of French soil, but never to raze a stone of one of her fortresses:—'As to the soil (says our author), let the inhabitants decide; but the offer to dismantle Metz and Strasburg, and, above all, the little fortresses which have so long wished to be made open towns, would at once have set them right with all the noblest minds in Europe: to act as they did was to play into the hands of the King of Prussia.' But M. Leclercq is somewhat of a peace-at-any-price man.
He is a prophet, too, and delights in the thought that France, before long, will be a federation like the United States. Its provinces will then (he says) resume their old importance—'the life now heaped up in Paris will be spread abroad where it is needed.' Paris, no doubt, has done nobly, and there is, after all, a good side to her character. He is as little desirous as we are to deny this; but, then, the fault was mainly hers. Had she last autumn stood firmly by the Republican party, instead of falling so readily and blindly into the trap which Louis Napoleon laid for her, war would have been impossible. She enabled the Emperor to begin; and then, by her fickle restlessness, she hampered his movements and forced him to fight, as it were, with one hand tied up. Instead of Hugo's Paris-cerveau, M. Leclercq calls her Paris-spectacle, Paris-plaisir, Paris-panache, and he sees no future for France except in her humiliation: il faut trépaner (he says) le cerveau de la France.
The Papiers Secrets need not occupy us long; they were hardly worth the trouble of unearthing. The Government of National Defence might surely have found better work for men like De Kératry, Lavertujon, and Cochut, than to be rummaging among the rubbish found at the Tuileries, at St. Cloud, and at Meudon. If they had so destroyed the environs of Paris as to prevent the Prussians from finding shelter; if they had (as common sense would have dictated) fortified Versailles, connecting it with the enceinte by a strong military line, and used their abundant labour to make the works impregnable, it would have been far better than to have wasted precious time in docketing papers which are certainly disappointing. They reveal nothing, for we already know that the Empire was based upon corruption and espionnage; and all they do is to enable the curious reader to follow the ramifications of this imperial system into unsuspected corners.