Part 25 (1/2)

”At the same moment, namely, five o'clock,--on all the hills around Sedan, at all points of the compa.s.s, appeared a dense, dark ma.s.s of German troops, with their commanders and artillery. Not one sound had been heard by the French army, not even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand men were in a circle on the heights round the Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily and as silently as serpents. They were there when the sun rose, and the French army were prisoners.”

The battle was one of artillery. The German guns commanded every part of the crowded valley. Indeed, the fight was simply a ma.s.sacre.

There was no hope for the French, though they fought bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Imperiale, were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon was wounded very early in the day. The command pa.s.sed first to General Ducrot, who was also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a brave African general who had hurried from Algeria just in time to take part in this disastrous day. He told the emperor that the only hope was for the troops to cut their way out of the valley; but the army was too closely crowded, too disorganized, to make this practicable. One Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and reached Belgium.

That night--the night of September 1--an aide-de-camp of the Emperor Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the king of Prussia:--

MONSIEUR MON FReRE,--Not having been able to die in midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty.

I am your Majesty's good brother,

NAPOLEON.

The king of Prussia replied,--

MONSIEUR MON FReRE,--Regretting the circ.u.mstances under which we meet, I accept the sword of your Majesty, and I invite you to designate one of your officers, provided with full powers, to treat for the capitulation of the army which has so bravely fought under your command. On my side I have named General von Moltke for that purpose.

I am your Majesty's good brother,

WILLIAM.

Before Sedan, Sept. 1, 1870.

”The next morning early, a carriage containing four French officers drove out from Sedan, and came into the German lines. The carriage had an escort of only three hors.e.m.e.n. When it had reached the Germans, one of its occupants put out his head and asked, in German, for Count von Bismarck? The Germans replied that he was at Donchery.

Thither the carriage dashed away. It contained the French emperor.”

With Napoleon III. fell not only his own reputation as a ruler, but the glory of his uncle and the prestige of his name.

The fallen emperor and Bismarck met in a little house upon the banks of the Meuse. Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the open air. It was a glorious autumn morning. The emperor looked care-worn, as well he might. He wished to see the king of Prussia before the articles of capitulation were drawn up: but King William declined the interview. When the capitulation was signed, however, he drove over to visit the captive emperor at a chateau where the latter had taken refuge.

Their interview was private; only the two sovereigns were present.

The French emperor afterwards expressed to the Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the courtesy shown him. He was desirous of pa.s.sing as unnoticed as possible through French territory, where, indeed, exasperation against him, as the first cause of the misfortunes of France, was so great that his life would have been in peril. The next day he proceeded to the beautiful palace at Ca.s.sel called Wilhelmshohe, or William's Rest. It had been built at ruinous expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of Westphalia, and was then called Napoleon's Rest.

Every consideration that the German royal family could show their former friend and gracious host was shown to Louis Napoleon. This told against him with the French. Was the man who had led them into such misfortunes to be honored and comforted while they were suffering the consequences of his selfishness, recklessness, negligence, and incapacity?

Thus eighty thousand men capitulated at Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand French soldiers remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousands more in Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched, leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve beyond the limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine, already considered a part of the Fatherland. The Prussians did not reach Paris till September 19, two weeks after the surrender at Sedan,--which seemed rather a lull in the military operations of a war in which so much had occurred during one short month.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SIEGE OF PARIS.

Though the surrender of the emperor and his army at Sedan took place on September 2, nothing whatever was known of it by the Parisian public until the evening of September 4, when a reporter arrived at the office of the ”Gaulois” with a Belgian newspaper in his pocket. The ”Gaulois” dared not be the first sheet to publish the news of such a disaster; but despatches had already reached the Government, and by degrees rumors of what had happened crept through the streets of the capital. No one knew any details of the calamity, but every one soon understood that something terrible had occurred.

The Legislative a.s.sembly held a midnight session; but nothing was determined on until the morning, when the Empire was voted out, and a Republic voted in.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Every Parisian was in the street, and, wonderful to say, all faces seemed to express satisfaction. The loss of an army, the surrender of the emperor, the national disgrace, the prospect of a siege, the advance of the Prussians,--were things apparently forgotten. Paris was charmed to have got rid of so unlucky a ruler,--the emperor for whom more than seven millions of Frenchmen had pa.s.sed a vote of confidence a few months before. He seemed to have no longer a single friend, or rather he had _one:_ in the a.s.sembly an elderly deputy stood up in his place and boldly said that he had taken an oath to be faithful to the Emperor Napoleon, and did not think himself absolved from it by his misfortunes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _JULES SIMON._]

It was almost in a moment, almost without a breath of opposition, that on the morning of Sept. 5, 1870, the Empire was voted at an end, and a Republic put in its place. The duty of governing was at once confided to seven men, called the Committee of Defence. Of these, Arago, Cremieux, and Gamier-Pages had been members of the Provisional Government in 1848, while Leon Gambetta, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, and Jules Simon afterwards distinguished themselves.

Rochefort, the insurrectionist, made but one step from prison to the council board, and was admitted among the new rulers. But the two chief men in the Committee of Defence were Jules Favre and Gambetta.