On the outbreak of war in 1870, the American Legation was requested to undertake the protection of North German subjects in France, and procured the consent of the French government thereto. Thirteen distinct nationalities, European and South American, eventually came under the same protection, and caused plenty of employment. Partly on this account, when the representatives of the great European powers had left Paris for Tours, after the downfall of the Empire, the United States Legation remained, and its members endured the unpleasant experiences of the siege. To Colonel Hoffman, however, the anticipation of this was a matter of perfect indifference—or rather he looked forward to it with some degree of liking. ‘I had quite a curiosity to be a besieged. I had been a besieger at Port Hudson, and thought that I would like to experience the other sensation. The sensation is not an unpleasant one, especially in a city like Paris. If you have been overworked or harassed, the relief is very great. There is a calm or sort of Sunday rest about it that is quite delightful. In my experience, the life of the besieged is altogether the most comfortable of the two.’ And the writer professes to think that the suffering endured in famous sieges, and the heroism of the inhabitants, have been much exaggerated. There were, however, many points of considerable difference between the circumstances attendant upon the siege of Paris and that, say, of Saragossa or Plevna. The Germans never made a bombardment in earnest. ‘We were being bombarded, but after a very mild fashion. I have since talked with a German general who commanded at the quarter whence most of the shells entered the city. He assured me that there never was the slightest intention to bombard Paris. If there had been, it would have been done in a very different style.’ But shells fell during nineteen days into the city, and nearly two hundred people were killed by the explosions. In both bombardments, that by the Germans and afterwards by the French government troops, much of the mischief done is reported to have been caused by the mere wantonness of the artillerymen, who under such circumstances are eager to hit something, it matters little what it may be. Indifference acts also on the side of the besieged, and during the worst of the bombardment, men and boys were to be seen lurking in the Champs Elysées near the Arch, and darting to secure the fragments of an exploded shell while they were still too hot to hold, or crying Obus! and suddenly squatting, to watch the effect upon elderly gentlemen passing by. A large business was done in these fragments as relics after the siege.
As regards provisions, the members of the Legation were of course as well off as it was possible to be under the circumstances. The staple diet, however, which Mr Washburne and the Secretary preferred to expensive luxuries, was ‘our national pork and beans, and the poetic fish-ball.’ Occasionally they indulged in small portions of elephant, yak, camel, reindeer, porcupine, &c., at an average rate of four dollars a pound. This meat came from the Jardin d'Acclimation, where it was found impossible to get food for the animals. Colonel Hoffman gives the preference among these varieties of flesh to that of the reindeer, which resembles venison, but he thinks all these meats but poor substitutes for beef and mutton. Horseflesh was the main stay of the population in the way of fresh meat; it was rationed and sold by the government at reasonable prices, nine and a half ounces per day being allowed to each adult. It is ‘poor stuff at best,’ says the writer. ‘It has a sweet, sickening flavour. The only way I found it eatable was as mince mixed with potato.’
The transmission and receipt of intelligence gave rise to some of the most memorable experiences of the siege, and what was done by balloons and pigeons is likely to form a precedent for similar episodes in all time. The French had always a fancy for ballooning, and were probably in advance of the rest of the world in this respect. They soon started a service of mail-balloons twice a week from Paris, despatching them at first in the afternoon; but it was found that they did not rise quickly enough to escape Prussian bullets, and the hour of departure was therefore changed to one in the morning. The speed of the balloons was sometimes marvellous. One descended in Norway on the very morning it left Paris. Another fell into the sea off the coast of Holland a few hours after its departure, and the passengers were rescued by a fishing-smack. Out of ninety-seven balloons despatched, ninety-four arrived safely—about the proportion, says Colonel Hoffman, of railway trains in these later times. Two fell into the hands of the enemy, and one was supposed to have been drifted out to sea and lost. A balloon was seen off Eddystone Lighthouse; and a few days afterwards a gentleman spending the winter at Torquay received a letter from the rector at Land's End, stating that a number of letters had drifted ashore, supposed to have been lost from a balloon, and among them was one addressed to him. It proved to be a balloon-letter from Colonel Hoffman, and is still preserved as a souvenir of the siege—and the sea. The pigeon experiment Colonel Hoffman considers proved a failure, as so few birds succeeded in reaching their destination. Two or three times, however, a carrier arrived safely, bringing with it one of those marvels of scientific skill, which under the microscope revealed correspondence equal to the contents of a good-sized newspaper.
Not nearly sufficient, in the writer's opinion, was done in the way of sorties from Paris. He contends that the garrison should have made a sortie every night, with sometimes a thousand and sometimes a hundred thousand men. ‘Had they done so,’ he says, ‘they would have soon worn out the Germans with constant alertes, and with comparatively little fatigue to themselves. But the entire French army was in want of organisation.’ On the other hand, the members of the naval service have Colonel Hoffman's warmest admiration. ‘The officers,’ he says, ‘are a very superior class of men, and the sailors under them fought gallantly during the war, for there was a large number of them detailed to the army. They felt strongly the deterioration of the sister-service.’ The colonel was once dining at a Versailles restaurant near a French naval officer, when one of the army, accompanied by two non-commissioned officers, entered and made a great disturbance. ‘Cette pauvre armée française! cette pauvre armée française!’ muttered the naval officer.
[SHAMROCK LEAVES.]
BEGGARS.
The poorhouse and the policeman have considerably abated Irish mendicants, especially in the towns; but in the country and in remote places, ‘the long-remembered beggar’ is still an institution. The workhouse is held in abhorrence by this class of vagrant, and any amount of suffering is preferred to the confinement, the enforced cleanliness, and the discipline it involves. The Irish poor are, as a rule, indifferent to creature comforts. They love their liberty under hedge and open sky; and resemble the dog in the fable, who preferred his precarious bone and freedom to the good feeding and luxuries of his tied-up friend. A wretched old woman, decrepit and barefoot, appearing on the hall-door steps of a house she was in the habit of visiting, would be remonstrated with in vain by her patrons, however delicately the obnoxious subject, the poorhouse, was approached.
‘Now, Biddy, it is all very well in summer to go about; but in this bitter wintry weather, would it not be better to go where you would have a good bed and shelter, and be warmed and fed and comfortably clothed, instead of shivering about, ragged and hungry? Why not try—only for a while, you know, till summer comes back—why not try the poorhouse?’