Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4

by Wolfgang Menzel

On the 5th of September the king of Prussia entered Rheims. On the 8th Laon surrendered. On the 15th advanced troops halted within three hours of the capital of France, making a half circle round its defences. This investment Ducrot—who had escaped from Sedan— attempted to prevent. His resources consisted in the Thirteenth Corps under General Vinoy, and the Fourteenth under General Renault, and 18,000 marines, excellent soldiers, a total of 88,000 regular troops. He had also in the camps of Vincennes and St. Maur 100,000 Garde-Mobiles, only very imperfectly disciplined; 10,000 volunteers from the provinces, resolute men, prepared to give their lives for their country; the National Guard, composed of sixty old and a hundred and ninety-four new battalions which, with other miscellaneous volunteers of Paris, numbered perhaps 200,000 men, not, however, thoroughly to be depended upon. Altogether the defenders numbered about 400,000, but of these only the 88,000 regular troops and the 10,000 volunteers from the provinces could be reckoned as trustworthy.

Nevertheless, the Third German Army had no difficulty in establishing itself in a position embracing the southern and southeastern front of the city, from Sèvres to the Marne; the Fourth Army faced the northeast and northern front, the cavalry the west front, so far as the windings of the Seine would permit it. On the 5th of October the crown prince took up his headquarters at Versailles, those of the king being at Ferrières, the seat of the Paris Rothschilds. Here took place, on the 19th October, the famous interview between the French foreign minister, Jules Favre, and Bismarck, in which the former made his declaration that France would surrender neither one inch of her territories nor one stone of her fortresses. The interview remained without result.

Meanwhile the fortress of Toul had surrendered. Strasburg, after a siege of six weeks, also surrendered, and, on October 27, Bazaine handed over Metz and an army consisting of three marshals of France, 6,000 officers, and 173,000 soldiers—an act for which after the conclusion of the war he was court-martialled, declared guilty of treason, and sentenced to death and degradation. The then president of the republic, Marshal MacMahon, commuted the death sentence into one of imprisonment for twenty years. Confined in the fort of the island St. Marguerite, near Cannes, Bazaine escaped, and lived in Spain till his death.

Bazaine's surrender made the Germans masters of one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, with 800 heavy guns, 102 mitrailleuses, 300,000 Chassepots, and placed at the disposal of the king an entire blockading army.

It was at this juncture that Gambetta astonished the world. Reaching Tours in a balloon from Paris, and there assuming the ministry of war, he became practically dictator of France. Thence he issued a proclamation to the people of France, urging them to continue their resistance to the bitter end, and directed that all men, capable of bearing arms, should lend their hands to the work, and should join the troops of the line at Tours. In this way he formed an Army of the North, and an Army of the Loire, and, later, an Army of the East. In all respects he displayed a fertility of resource which astounded. He obtained arms, uniforms, munitions, and other necessaries from foreign countries, especially from England. He bestowed the greatest pains in selecting as generals of the new levies men who should be real soldiers. Under his inspiring influence the war in the provinces assumed a very serious complexion. France had responded nobly to the call he had made upon her people. Early reverses gave vigor to the new levies, and they fought with energy against the Bavarians under Von der Than at Arthenay and Orleans, and against the division of Wittich at Châteaudun and Chartres. But they were fighting against increasing odds. Every day brought reinforcements to the Germans.

With the exception of a momentary gleam of success on the Loire, France met with nothing but disaster. In Paris matters were critical. Every one of the different sorties made by her defenders had been repulsed; the hope by which the spirits of her defenders had been buoyed was vanishing fast: famine was approaching with giant strides; the strong places outside the circle of her defences were falling one after another; the fire of the enemy was, by the nearer approach of their troops, becoming more concentrated and more severe. Peace must be had. On January 28th, then, there was concluded at Versailles an armistice for three weeks. Then a national assembly was summoned to Bordeaux to consider how peace might be restored. In that assembly Thiers received full administrative powers, including the power of nominating his own ministers. He himself, with Jules Favre, undertook the negotiations with Bismarck. To insure the success of those negotiations the armistice was twice prolonged. This was done at the instance of Thiers, for the conditions insisted upon by Bismarck were hard, and the French statesman struggled with all his energies to induce him to abate his demands. Especially did he strive to save Metz, or, at least, to receive Luxemburg in compensation.

But his endeavors were fruitless. The utmost that Bismarck would do was not to insist upon securing the still unconquered Belfort. Despairing of moving him further, Thiers and Favre gave way on the 24th of February, and signed the preliminaries of peace. They were, first, the transfer to Germany of the northeast portion of Lorraine, with Metz and Diedenhofen, and of Alsace, Belfort excepted; second, the payment to Germany by France of one milliard of francs in 1871, and four milliards in the three years following; third, the Germans to begin to evacuate French territory immediately after the ratification of the treaty; Paris and its forts on the left bank of the Seine and certain departments at once; the forts on the right bank after the ratification and the payment of the first half milliard. After the payment of two milliards the German occupation of the departments Marne, Ardennes, Upper Marne, Meuae, the Vosges, and Meurthe, and the fortress of Belfort should cease. Interest at five per cent to be charged on the milliards remaining unpaid from the date of ratification; fourth, the German troops remaining in France to make no requisitions on the departments in which they were located, but to be fed at the cost of France; fifth, the inhabitants of the sequestered provinces to be allowed a certain fixed time in which to make their choice between the two countries; sixth, all prisoners to be at once restored; seventh, a treaty embodying all these terms to be settled at Brussels. It was further arranged that the German army should not occupy Paris, but should content itself with marching through the city.

Meanwhile, negotiations between the statesmen and governments of Germany resulted in a proposal to King William that, as head of the confederation, he should assume the title of German emperor. A resolution to that effect was passed by the North German Reichstag on the 9th of December, and a deputation proceeded to the royal headquarters at Versailles, where, on the 18th of December, the imperial crown was offered to the brother of the king who had once refused it. Deeply touched, King William accepted, and in the palace of Louis XIV., surrounded by a brilliant assembly of princes, officers, and ministers of state, the venerable monarch was proclaimed Deutscher Kaiser.

Then at last was the dream of centuries realized. At last was the empire restored. Not the Holy Roman Empire, not the empire of the Middle Ages, but the empire as a national state.

Under the leadership of Bismarck, to whom the restoration of the empire was directly due, the new Reich began its organization as a united federation. Among its earliest difficulties was an ecclesiastical contest with the Church of Rome. Known as the Kulturkampf, this struggle was an effort to vindicate the right of the state to interfere in the affairs of all German religious societies. Another difficulty which demanded government interference was the Judenhetze, or persecution of the Jews, which reached a climax in 1881. A further difficulty was encountered in the quick growth of socialism. Two attempts on the life of the kaiser were attributed to it, and a plot being discovered, which had for object the elimination of the emperor and other German rulers, repressive measures resulted. Meanwhile an alliance offensive and defensive between Germany and Austria had been formed, into which Italy subsequently entered.