Part 29 (1/2)
Meanwhile, pending the departure of the Emperor, Paris was in a ferment, but, to the careful observer, it was no longer the unalloyed enthusiasm of the first few days. There were just as many people in the streets; the shouts of ”a Berlin!” though, perhaps, not so sustained, were just as loud every now and then; the troops leaving for the front received tremendous ovations, and more substantial proofs of the people's goodwill; the man who dared to p.r.o.nounce the word ”peace” ran a great risk of being rent to pieces by the crowds--a thing which almost happened one night in front of the Cafe de Madrid, on the Boulevard Montmartre: still, the enthusiasm was not the same. ”There seems to be a great deal of prologue to 'The Taming of that German Shrew,'” said a French friend, who was pretty familiar with Shakespeare; and he was not far wrong, for the Christopher Sly abounded. The bivouacs of the troops about to take their departure reminded one somewhat more forcibly of operatic scenes and equestrian dramas of the circus type than of the preparations for the stern necessities of war--with this difference, that the contents of the goblet were real, and the viands not made of cardboard. ”They are like badly made cannons, these soldiers,” said some one else: ”they are crammed up to the muzzle, and they do not go off.”
In short, the more sensible of the Paris population began to conclude that a little less intoning of patriotic strophes and a good deal more of juxtaposition with the German troops was becoming advisable. The reports of the few preliminary skirmishes that had taken place were no doubt favourable to the French; at the same time, there was no denying the fact that they had taken place on French and not on German territory, which was not quite in accordance with the spirit of the oft-repeated cry of ”a Berlin!” In accordance with the programme of which that cry was the initial quotation, the French ought, by this time, to have been already half on their way to the Prussian capital.
That is what sensible, nay, clever people expressed openly.
Nevertheless, the cry continued, nor was there any escape from the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise,” either by day or night. Every now and then a more than usually dense group might be seen at a street corner. The centre of the group was composed of a woman, with a baby in her arms; the little one could scarcely speak, but its tiny voice reproduced more or less accurately the air of the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise:” a deep silence prevailed during the performance in order to give the infant a fair chance; deafening applause greeted the termination of the solo, and a shower of coppers fell into the real or pseudo mother's lap. On the 18th of July, the day of the official declaration of war in Paris, the Comedie-Francaise performed ”Le Lion Amoureux” of Ponsard.[78] At the end of the second act, the public clamoured for the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise.”
There was not a single member of the company capable of complying with the request, ”so the stage manager for the week” had to come forward and ask for a two-days' adjournment, during which some one might study it.
Of course, _the honour_ of singing the revolutionary hymn was to devolve upon a woman, according to the precedent established in '48, when Rachel had intoned it. From what I learnt a few days afterwards, the candidates for the _distinguished task_ were not many, in spite of the tacit consent of the Government. The ladies of the company, most of whom, like their fellow-actors, had been always very cordially treated by the Emperor on the occasion of their professional visits to Saint-Cloud, Compiegne, and Fontainebleau, instinctively guessed the pain the concession must have caused the chief of the State, and under some pretext declined. Mdlle. Agar accepted, and sang the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise,” in all forty-four times, from the 20th of July to the 17th of September, the day of the final investment of the capital by the German armies.
[Footnote 78: I believe there exists an English version of the play, ent.i.tled ”A Son of the Soil.” I am not certain of the t.i.tle.--EDITOR.]
It must not be supposed, though, that the Government had waited until the day of the official declaration of war to sanction the performance of the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise” in places of public resort. I remember crossing the Gardens of the Tuileries in the afternoon of Sunday, the 17th of July. One of the military bands was performing a selection of music. The custom of doing so during the summer months has prevailed for many years, both in the capital and in the princ.i.p.al garrison towns of the provinces. All at once they struck up the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise.” I looked with surprise at my companion, a member of the Emperor's household. He caught the drift of my look.
”It is by the Emperor's express command,” he said. ”It is the national war-song. In fact, it is that much more than a revolutionary hymn.”
”But war has not been declared,” I objected.
”It will be to-morrow,” was the answer.
The public, which in this instance was mainly composed of the better cla.s.ses, apparently refused to consider the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise” a national war-song, and applause at its termination was but very lukewarm.
I have already spoken of the scene I witnessed in connection with the departure of the Germans on that same Sunday early in the morning, and have also noted the demonstration in front of the German Emba.s.sy on the previous Friday night. I will not be equally positive with regard to the exact dates of the succeeding exhibitions of bad taste on the part of the Parisians, but I remember a very striking one which happened between the official declaration of war and the end of July. It was brought under my notice, not by a foreigner, but by a Frenchman, who was absolutely disgusted with it. We were sitting one evening outside the Cafe de la Paix, which, being the resort of some noted Imperialists, I had begun to visit more frequently than I had done hitherto. There was a terrible din on the Boulevards: the evening papers had just published a very circ.u.mstantial account of that insignificant skirmish which cost Lieutenant Winslow his life, and in which the French had taken a couple of prisoners. ”They” (the prisoners), suggested an able editor, ”ought to be brought to Paris and publicly exhibited as an example.” ”And, what is more,” said my friend who had read the paragraph to me, ”he means what he says. These are the descendants of a nation who prides herself on having said at Fontenoy, 'Messieurs, les Anglais tirez les premiers,'
which, by-the-by, they did not say.[79] If you care to come with me, I'll show you what would be the probable fate of such prisoners if the writer of that paragraph had his will.”
[Footnote 79: It was, in fact, an English officer who shouted, ”Messieurs des gardes francaises, tirez;” to which the French replied, ”Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers; tirez vous memes.” But it was not politeness that dictated the reply; it was the expression of the acknowledged and constantly inculcated doctrine that all infantry troops which fired the first were indubitably beaten. We find the doctrine clearly stated in the infantry instructions of 1672, and subsequently in the following order of Louis XIV. to his troops: ”The soldier shall be taught not to fire the first, and to stand the fire of the enemy, seeing that an enemy who has fired is a.s.suredly beaten when his adversary has his powder left.” At the battle of Dettingen, consequently, two years before Fontenoy, the theory had been carried _beyond_ the absurd by expressly forbidding the Gardes to fire, though they were raked down by the enemy's bullets. Maurice de Saxe makes it a point to praise the wisdom of a colonel who, in order to prevent his troops from firing, constantly made them shoulder their muskets.--EDITOR.]
So said; so done. In about a quarter of an hour we were seated at the Cafe de l'Horloge, in the Champs elysees, and my friend was holding out five francs fifty centimes in payment for two small gla.s.ses of so-called ”Fine Champagne,” _plus_ the waiter's tip. The admission was gratis; and the difference between those who went in and those who remained outside was that the latter could hear the whole of the performance without seeing it, and without disbursing a farthing; while the former could see the whole of the performance without hearing a note, for the din there was also infernal. Shortly after our arrival, the band struck up the inevitable ”Ma.r.s.eillaise,” but the audience neither listened nor applauded.
This was, after all, but the overture to the entertainment to which my friend had invited me, and which consisted of a spectacular pantomime representing an engagement between a regiment or a battalion of Zouaves and Germans. As a matter of course, the latter had the worst of it; and, at the termination, a couple of them were brought in and compelled to sue for mercy on their knees. I am bound to say that the thing hung fire altogether, and that, but for the remarkable selection of handsome legs of the Zouaves, not even the hare-brained young fellows with which the audience was largely besprinkled would have paid any attention.
In the whole of Paris there was no surer centre of information of the state of affairs at the front than the Cafe de la Paix. It was the princ.i.p.al resort of the Bonapartists. There were Pietri, the prefect of police, Sampierro, Abatucci, and a score or two of others; all cultivating excellent relations with the Chateau. There was also the General Beaufort d'Hautpoul, to whom Bismarck subsequently, through the pen of Dr. Moritz Busch, did the greatest injury a man can do to a soldier, in accusing him of drunkenness when he came to settle some of the military conditions of the armistice at Versailles. He was, as far as I remember, one of the two superior French officers who estimated at its true value the strategic genius of Von Moltke. The other was Colonel Stoffel. But General d'Hautpoul was even better enabled to judge; he had seen Moltke at work in Syria more than thirty years before. He was in reality the Solomon Eagle of the campaign, before a single shot had been fired. ”I know our army, and I know Helmuth von Moltke,” he said, shaking his head despondingly. ”If every one of our officers were his equal in strategy, the chance would then only be equal. Moltke has the gift of the great billiard-player; he knows beforehand the exact results of a shock between two bodies at a certain angle. We are a doomed nation.”
As a matter of course, his friends were very wroth at what they called ”his unpatriotic language,” and when the news of the engagement at Saarbruck arrived they crowed over him; but he stuck to his text. ”It is simply a feint on Moltke's part, and proves nothing at all. In two or three days we'll get the news of a battle that will decide, not only the fate of the whole campaign, but the fate of the Empire also.”
Two days afterwards, I met him near the Rue Saint-Florentin; he looked absolutely crestfallen. ”We have suffered a terrible defeat near Wissembourg, but do not breathe a word of it to any one. The Government is waiting for a victory on some other point, and then it will publish the two accounts together.”
The Government was reckoning without the newspapers, French and foreign.
The latter might be confiscated, and in fact were, such as the _Times_ and _l'Independance Belge_; but the French, notwithstanding the temporary law of M. emile Ollivier, were more difficult to deal with. I am inclined to think that if they had foreseen the terrible fate that was to befall the French armies they would have been more amenable, but in the beginning they antic.i.p.ated nothing but startling victories, and, as such, looked upon the campaign in the light of a series of brilliant spectacular performances, glowing accounts of which were essentially calculated to increase their circulation. When MM. Cardon and Chabrillat, respectively of the _Gaulois_ and _Figaro_, were released by the Prussians, they told many amusing stories to that effect, unconsciously confirming the opinion I have already expressed; but the following, which I had from the lips of Edmond About himself, is better than any I can remember.
A correspondent of one of the best Paris newspapers, on his arrival at the head-quarters of ”the army of the Rhine,” applied to the aide-major-general for permission to follow the operations. He had a good many credentials of more or less weight; nevertheless the aide-major-general, in view of the formal orders of the Emperor and Marshal Leboeuf, felt bound to refuse the request. The journalist, on the other hand, declined to take ”no” for an answer. ”I have come with the decided intention to do justice, and more than justice, perhaps, to your talent and courage, and it would be a pity indeed if I were not given the opportunity,” he said.
”I am very sorry,” was the reply; ”but I cannot depart from the rules for any one.”
”But our paper has a very large circulation.”
”All the more reason to refuse you the authorization to follow the staff.”
The journalist would not look at matters in that light. He felt that he was conferring a favour, just as he would have felt in offering the advantage of a cleverly written puff of a premiere to a theatrical manager. Seeing that his arguments were of no avail, he delivered his parting shot.
”This, then, general, is your final decision. I am afraid you'll have cause to regret this, for we, on our side, are determined not to give this war the benefit of publicity in our columns.”