The American ambulance was soon so well and so favorably known, that I heard of French officers who put cards in their pocket-books, on which they had written the request that if they were wounded they might be carried to l'ambulance américaine.
The great drawback we had to contend with was the impossibility of procuring new tents. Dr. Swinburne told me that at home they would have been condemned after a month's use, and new ones substituted. But in Europe the cloth is not to be had. We use cotton cloth, the French use linen. Cotton is lighter, is more porous in dry and fulls in wet weather. The result is that the air filters through it in the one case, and the water does not penetrate it in the other. In the absence of new canvas, the doctor thoroughly fumigated the old from time to time. This answered the purpose tolerably well, but did not exhibit the tent system in its perfection.
We had now reached the middle of January, and the end of the siege was rapidly approaching. The want of proper food, especially for young children, was producing its necessary results; and the death-rate had risen from about eight hundred—which is the average number of weekly deaths in Paris—to four thousand, and this without counting those in hospital which may be set down at one thousand more. The number of poor Germans supported by the Legation had also increased very greatly, and had risen to twenty-four hundred. We were compelled to hire another room, where the weekly allowance made them was paid and duly entered in books kept for this purpose; for every penny expended was regularly entered and vouched for. The poor German women were obliged to walk two or three miles on those cold winter days; for the workmen's quarter is far from that of the Champs Elysées. Mr. Washburne pitied these poor creatures, and gave them omnibus tickets for the return trip. He bought a cask of vin ordinaire, too, and gave a glass of warm sweetened wine to each of them. It did them infinite good.
Provisions were now running short; enough remained for a few days only. Even in this most vital matter there was blundering. A gentleman high placed in the office of the Minister of Commerce, the ministère which had charge of the supplies, told Mr. Washburne that there were provisions in Paris to last till March. We could hardly credit it, but it came to us from such high authority that we were staggered. He spoke positively, and said he had seen the figures. After the surrender this gentleman met a mutual friend, and said, "I am afraid your minister must take me for either a liar or a fool. I hope I am neither. The mistake we made at the ministère happened in this way: the minister appointed two officers; each was to take an account of all the food in Paris, in order that one account might control the other. When their statements came in, he added them together, but forgot to divide them by two."
Meantime 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. The German batteries fired from a height upon a fort in the hollow, and their shells, flying high, entered Paris. Still, when nearly two hundred lives were lost, and shells fell among us for nineteen days, people had a right to say that they were bombarded, and no Parisian will admit to this day that they were not. Artillery-men of all nations become not only very careless, but very wanton. The Germans were eager to hit something, and the public buildings of the Latin Quarter offered a tempting mark to the gunners. I was complaining to a French officer one day of the shameful manner in which the French Government troops during the Commune bombarded the quarter of the Champs Elysées, a quarter inhabited almost exclusively by friends of the Government, who were longing for the troops to come in. He told me that it was due to the wantonness of the artillery-men, and cited an instance which came under his own observation. A gunner at Mount Valérien pointed out to the captain of the gun a cart making its slow way through the distant plain toward Paris, and exclaimed, "O, my officer! see that cart carrying supplies to the enemy." "Where, where?" "There, near that white house." "Give it a shell." He fired, missed half a dozen times, but finally hit. It turned out to be the cart of a poor washer-woman, carrying the week's wash to her customers.
A few days before the surrender bad news came thick and fast. A sortie in the direction of Mount Valérien had been repulsed. Chanzy had been defeated. All hope of aid from that quarter had vanished, and but a few days' provisions remained. Will it be believed that even then Trochu "paltered in a double sense" with the suffering people? He published a proclamation in which he said the "Governor of Paris would never surrender." The next day he resigned, and appointed no successor. When, three days later, the city surrendered there was no Governor of Paris.
But even to the last moment there were people who had confidence in Trochu's proclamation. The Parisians are credulous, and readily believe what they wish to believe. Among the populace there was always a sort of half belief in the "Plan Trochu," which, as he often told us, when all else failed, was to save France. This plan he kept mysteriously to himself, or confided it only to a few bosom-friends. But I had it from a source I thought entitled to belief, that Trochu confidently anticipated a miracle in his favor in return for his devotion. St. Genevieve was to appear and save Paris. It is almost impossible to believe that, in the nineteenth century, and in that skeptical capital, a man of intelligence, cultivation, and varied experience, could be found who believed in a miraculous appearance of the saint; but Trochu was a strange compound of learning, ability, weakness, and fanaticism, and I have little doubt that he confidently anticipated the personal intervention of St. Genevieve to save her beloved city.
On the 24th of January, Vinoy took command. He suppressed the clubs, seized the violent press, and took other energetic measures. A mob attacked Mazas, and released the prisoners. They then tried the Hôtel de Ville a second time; but they had now a different commander to deal with, and they were beaten off with ease. Mr. Washburne and I happened to be in the neighborhood of the Hôtel de Ville, and saw something of this affair. We did not stay to the end, however, for we felt that it was not the proper place for us, accredited as we were to the Government the mob was attempting to overthrow. Had Vinoy or Ducrot been in command from the beginning, the result might have been different. There was no reason why the National Guard should not have made good soldiers; but they needed a discipline of iron. They were permitted to choose their own officers. This of itself was fatal. In the beginning of our war in some of the States the company officers were elected by the men. But the men themselves were the first to see the folly of this course, and petitioned that their officers might be appointed by the Executive. Had the officers of the National Guard been appointed by the Government, and when they halted at the barrier and refused to go farther, had a battery been ordered up, and a dozen or so of them shot, "pour encourager les autres," as the French said of Admiral Byng, they might have given a very different account of themselves in their combats with the Germans.
On the 27th of January, with seven days' provisions only in Paris, with every man, woman, and child on the shortest possible allowance, the city surrendered. An armistice was agreed upon, which was not, however, to apply to the armies of the East operating toward Lyons. It is said that the French commander in that quarter was not notified that the armistice did not extend to him. He was attacked, caught napping, and defeated.