Part 6 (2/2)

_October 14th._

According to the official account of yesterday's proceedings, General Trochu was anxious to discover whether the Prussians were in force upon the plateau of Chatillon, or had withdrawn from that position. The villages of Chatillon, Bagneux, and Clamart, were consequently attacked, and after an artillery and musketry engagement, the Prussian reserves were brought up, thus proving that the report that they had withdrawn was unfounded. The retreat then commenced under the fire of the forts.

About 100 prisoners were taken; in the evening they were brought to the Place Vendome. The newspapers are one and all singing peans over the valour of the Mobiles--those of the Cote d'Or most distinguished themselves. Although the whole thing was little more than a reconnaissance, its effect has been electrical. The battalions of the National Guard sing the Ma.r.s.eillaise as of old, and everyone is full of confidence. Some of the officers who were engaged tell me that the Mobiles really did show coolness under fire, and that they fought well with the bayonet in the village of Bagneux. Between carrying an advanced post and forcing the Prussian army to raise the siege, there is of course a slight difference, but I see no reason why these strong, healthy peasants should not become excellent troops. What they want are commanders who are old soldiers, and would force them to submit to regular discipline. The _Official Gazette_ contains the following decree: ”Every officer of the National Guard whose antecedents are of a nature to compromise the dignity of the epaulette, and the consideration of the corps in which he has been elected, can be revoked. The same punishment may be inflicted upon those officers who render themselves guilty of continuous bad conduct, or of acts wanting in delicacy. The revocation will be p.r.o.nounced by the Government upon a report of the Minister of War.” If the Government has enough determination to carry out this decree, the National Guard will greatly profit by it.

Yesterday evening at the Folies Bergeres a demonstration was made against the Princes of the Orleans family, who are said to be in command of an army at Rouen. It was determined to send a deputation to the Government on the subject. This move is important, as the Folies Bergeres is rather the rendezvous of the Moderate Republicans than of the Ultras.

A letter from Havre, dated October 4, has been received, in which it is stated that the ex-Emperor has issued an address to the nation. I do not know what his chances of restoration are in the provinces, but here they are absolutely hopeless. The Napoleonic legend was founded upon victories. Since the name of Napoleon has been coupled with the capitulation of Sedan, it is loathed as much as it once was adulated.

Apart from his personal following, Napoleon III. has not 100 adherents in Paris.

_October 15th._

Colonel Loyd Lindsay arrived here yesterday morning with 20,000 for the ambulances, and leaves to-morrow with the Comte de Flavigny, the President of the Ambulance Internationale. Mr. Herbert is getting anxious respecting the future of the dest.i.tute English still here; and with all due respect to our charitable friends at home, it appears to me that Paris is rich enough to look after its own wounded. The flag of the Cross of Geneva waves over several thousand houses, and such is the desire of brave patriots to become members of an ambulance corps, that the services of neutrals are declined.

_October 16th._

We are told that the ex-Emperor has issued a proclamation, _urbi orbique_, and that his agents are engaged in London and elsewhere in intriguing in his behalf. I cannot believe that they have any chance of gaining adherents to their master's cause in England. That halo of success which blinded a portion of the English press to the iniquities which were concealed beneath the Imperial purple has now disappeared.

The publication of the papers discovered in the Tuileries has stripped despotism of its tinsel, and has revealed the vile and contemptible arts by which a gallant nation has been enslaved. The Government of Napoleon, as Mr. Gladstone said of that of Bomba, ”was a negation of G.o.d upon earth.” His councillors were bold bad men, ever plotting against each other, and united alone in a common conspiracy to grow rich at the expense of their country, _creverunt in exitio patriae_. His court was the El Dorado of pimps and parasites, panders and wantons. For eighteen long years he retained the power, which he had acquired through perjury and violence, by pandering to the baser pa.s.sions of his subjects, and by an organized system of fraud, mendacity, and espionnage. Beneath his blighting rule French women only sought to surpa.s.s each other in reckless extravagance, and Frenchmen lost the courage which had half redeemed their frivolity. Honest citizens there were, indeed, who protested against these Saturnalia of successful villany and rampant vice, but few listened to their warnings. They were jeered at by the vulgar, fined, imprisoned, or banished by Ministers and Magistrates. All that was good, n.o.ble, and generous in the nation withered in the uncongenial atmosphere. The language of Pascal and of Corneille became the medium of corrupting the minds of millions. The events of the day were some actress who had discovered a new way to outrage decency, or some new play which deified a prost.i.tute or an adulteress. Paris became the world's fair, to which flocked the vain, the idle, and the debauched from all corners of the globe. For a man to be rich, or for a woman to find favour in the eyes of some Imperial functionary, were ready pa.s.sports to social recognition. The landmarks between virtue and vice were obliterated. The Court lady smiled in half-recognition on the courtezan, and paid her homage by endeavouring to imitate her dress and her manners. Cardsharpers and stockjobbers, disreputable adventurers and public functionaries were intimate friends. No one, able to insult modest industry by lavish ostentation, was asked how he had acquired his wealth. Honour and honesty were prejudices of the past. What has been the consequence? It is a comment upon despotism, which I hope will not be lost upon those who extol the advantages of personal government, and who would sacrifice the liberty of all to the concentrated energy of one. The armies of France have been scattered to the winds; the Emperor, who knew not even how a Caesar should die, is a prisoner; his creatures are enjoying their booty in ign.o.ble ease, not daring even to fight for the country which they have betrayed. The gay crowd has taken to itself wings; an emasculated bourgeoisie, grown rich upon fas.h.i.+onable follies, and a mob of working men, unused to arms, and distrustful even of their own leaders, are cowering beneath the ramparts of Paris, opposing frantic boasts, pitiful lamentations, unskilled valour, to the stern discipline of the legions of Germany, whose iron grasp is contracting closer and closer every day round the vaunted capital of modern civilization. You know better than we do what is pa.s.sing in the provinces, but I can answer for it that the Parisians, low as they have fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan. t.i.tania, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every n.o.ble attribute, and then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and exclaims, ”Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now.” So it was and so it is with Paris and Napoleon, ”None so poor to do him honour now.”

The Government is daily becoming more and more military, and the Parisian Deputies are becoming little more than lay figures. M.

Gambetta, the most energetic of them, has left for the provinces. MM.

Jules Favre, Picard, and Pelletan are almost forgotten. Rochefort devotes himself to the barricades, and M. Dorian, a hard-headed manufacturer, is occupying himself in stimulating the manufacture of cannon, muskets, and munitions of war. These gentlemen, with the exception of the latter, are rather men of words than of action. They do neither harm nor good. Of General Trochu, into whose hands, by the mere force of circ.u.mstances, all civil and military authority is concentrating, _Bonum virum, facile dixeris, magnum libenter_. He is, I believe, a good general and a good administrator. Although he awakens no enthusiasm, confidence is felt by the majority in his good sense. It is thought, however, that he is wanting in that energy and audacity which are requisite in a leader, if victory is to be wrested from the Germans.

He forgets that time is not his ally, and that merely to hold Paris until that surely inevitable hour arrives when the provisions are exhausted will neither save France nor her capital. He is a man slow to form a plan, but obstinate in his adherence to it; unwilling to move until he has his forces perfectly under control, and until every administrative detail is perfected--better fitted to defend Troy for ten years than Paris for a few months--in fact, a species of French M'Clellan.

We are now in a position, according to our military authorities, to hold out as long as our provisions last. If Paris does this, without being so heroic as her citizens imagine that she already is, she will have done her duty by France. Nicholas said, when Sebastopol was besieged, that winter was his best ally; and winter will soon come to our aid. The Prussians are a long way from their homes; if the provinces rise it will be difficult for them to keep their lines of communication open, and to feed their troops. It may also be presumed that they will be hara.s.sed by the 300,000 armed men who are cooped up here, and who are acting on the inner circle. Cannon are being cast which, it is expected, will render the sorties far more effective. On the other hand, the question has not yet been solved whether the Parisians will really support the hards.h.i.+ps of a siege when they commence, and whether there will not be internal dissensions. At present the greatest confidence is felt in ultimate success. The Parisians cannot realise to themselves the possibility of their city being taken; they are still, in their own estimation, the representative men of ”la grande nation,” and they still cite the saying of Frederick the Great that, were he King of France, not a sword should be drawn without his permission, as though this were a dictum that a sage had uttered yesterday. They feed every day on the vaunts and falsehoods which their newspapers offer them, and they digest them without a qualm. While they expect the provinces to come to their aid, they are almost angry that they should venture to act independently of their guidance. They are childishly anxious to send out commissaries to take the direction of affairs in Normandy and Touraine, for the provincials are in their eyes slaves, born to serve and to obey the capital. Indeed, they have not yet got over their surprise that the world should continue to move now that it is deprived of its pivot. All this folly may not prevent their fighting well. Fools and braggarts are often brave men. The Parisians have an indomitable pride, they have called upon the world to witness their achievements, and the thought of King William riding in triumph along the Boulevards is so bitter a one, that it may nerve them to the wildest desperation. If, however, Bazaine capitulates, and the armies of the Loire and of Lyons are only the figments of their own brains, it may be that they will bow to what they will call destiny. ”Heaven has declared against us,” is an expression that I already hear frequently uttered. It is indeed as impossible to predicate here, as it is in London, what may be the mood of this fickle and impulsive population a week hence. All I can positively say is, that at the present moment they are in ”King Cambyses' vein.” We ought not to judge a foreign nation by our own standard, but it is impossible not to re-echo Lord Bolingbroke's ”poor humanity” a hundred times a day, when one reads the inflated bombast of the newspapers, and hears the nonsense that is talked by almost everyone; when one sees the Gaul marching off to the ramparts convinced, because he wears a kepi and a sword, that he is a very Achilles; when regiments solemnly crown a statue with laurel crowns, and sign round robins to die for their country. All these antics ought not to make one forget that these men are fighting for the holiest of causes, the integrity of their country, and that the worst of Republics is better than the best of feudal monarchies; but I confess I frequently despair of their ever attaining to the dignity of free men, until they have been further tried in the school of adversity.

Yesterday M. Jules Favre, in reply to a deputation from the Club of the Folies Bergeres, stated that he was not aware that the Orleans Princes were in France. ”If the army of succour,” he said, ”comes to us, we will extend our hands to it; but if it marches under the Orleans banner, the Government will not recognise that banner. As a man, I deplore the law which proscribes this family; as a citizen and a politician, I maintain it. Even if these Princes were to abdicate their dynastic pretensions, the Government will remember Bonaparte, and how he destroyed the Republic in 1851, and energetically protest against their return.” This reply when reported to the Club was greatly applauded. Probably none of its members had ever heard the proverb that beggars ought not to be choosers.

The event of the day has been the arrest of M. Portales, the editor of the _Verite_. This newspaper, after a.s.serting that the Government has received news from the provinces, asks a series of questions. In the afternoon the editor was arrested, and this morning the _Official Gazette_ thus replies to the queries: No news has been concealed. The last official despatch received is one from Gambetta, announcing his safe arrival at Montdidier. The Government has received an old copy of the _Standard_, but this journal, ”notoriously hostile to France,”

contained sensational intelligence, which appeared absolutely untrue.

To-day it has received a journal of Rouen of the 12th, and it hastens to publish the news derived from this source. Bismarck never proposed an armistice through Burnside. The General only unofficially informed Trochu that Bismarck's views were not altered since he had met Favre at Ferrieres, when he stated that ”if he considered an armistice realizable for the convocation of an a.s.sembly, he would only grant it for forty-eight hours; he would refuse to include Metz, or to permit provisions to enter Paris, and exclude from the a.s.sembly our brave and unhappy compatriots of Alsace and Lorraine.” The _Official Gazette_ then gives extracts from the Rouen paper, which are very contradictory. Our newspapers, however, in commenting on them, come to the conclusion that there are two armies in the field well equipped, and that they have already achieved important successes. The situation also of Bazaine is proved to be excellent. _Quem Dem, &c._

Two of the mayors have ordered all crucifixes to be removed from the ambulances in their arrondiss.e.m.e.nts. Their conduct is almost universally blamed. The enlistment of the Amazons, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government, still continues. The pretty women keep aloof from the movement; the recruits who have already joined are so old and ugly that possibly they may act upon an enemy like the head of Medusa.

_October 17th._

The newspapers to-day almost universally blame the arrest of M.

Portales. This gentleman, with M.E. Picard, started, just before the siege commenced, a paper called _L'Electeur Libre_. It was thought that M. Picard's position as a member of the Government rendered it impossible for him to remain the political director of a newspaper, so he withdrew, but appointed his brother as his successor. This did not please M. Portales, who with most of the staff left the _Electeur Libre_, and founded _La Verite_. It is, therefore, somewhat suspicious that this new paper should be the only one whose editor has been imprisoned for circulating ”falsehoods.” In the first place, almost every French newspaper of any circulation trades upon lies; in the second place, it appears that in this particular case the _Verite_ only put in the sensational form of questions a letter from the _Times_'

correspondent at Tours. This letter it publishes to-day, and appeals to the public to judge between M. Portales and M. Picard. The fact is that this population can neither tell nor hear the truth. The English papers are one and all in bad odour because they declined to believe in the Emperor's victories, and if a _Daily News_ comes in here with an account of some new French reverse, I shall probably be imprisoned. Government and people have laid down this axiom, ”bad news false news.” General Trochu again appears in print in a long circular letter to the commandants of the corps d'armee and the forts. He desires them each to send him in a list of forty men who have distinguished themselves, and their names and no others will appear in the order of the day. ”We have,” says the General, ”to cause this grand thought, which monarchies decline to recognise but which the Republic should hold sacred, to penetrate into the minds of our officers and soldiers--opinion alone can worthily recompense the sacrifice of a life; remember that if you make a bad choice of the men you recommend, you will gravely compromise your responsibility towards me, and at the same time the great principle which I would have prevail.” The General is a very copious writer, and it seems to me that he would do well to remember that if he can only drive away the Prussians, he will have time enough afterwards to introduce his ”grand thoughts” into the army. Two things, says Thiers, impose upon Frenchmen--military glory and profound silence. Trochu has the first to win, and he apparently scorns the latter. He is a species of military doctrinaire, and he finds it difficult to avoid lecturing soldiers or civilians at least once a day. I was looking at him the other day, and I never saw calm, serene, self-complacency more clearly depicted upon the human countenance. Failure or success will find him the same--confident in himself, in his plans, and his grand thoughts. If he eventually has to surrender, he will console himself by coupling with the announcement of his intention many observations--very wise, very beautiful, very lengthy, and very stale.

Mr. Herbert tells me that there are more English here than he had imagined. He estimates their number at about 4000, about 800 of whom are dest.i.tute. The funds at his disposal for them would have already run short had not Mr. Wallace again largely contributed to them. They are fed with rice and Liebig, but the great difficulty has been to find fat to add to this mess. The beasts that are killed are so lean that it is almost impossible to obtain it except at an extravagant price. Tallow candles have been seriously suggested, but they too are scarce. The English, as foreigners, cannot claim rations, and were it not for the kindness of Mr. Herbert and Mr. Wallace, they would, I am afraid, really starve. All their rich fellow-countrymen, with the exception of Mr.

Wallace, have left Paris, and even if they were here they would not be able to do anything unless they had money with them, as it is impossible to draw on London. Winter is coming on, and clothes and fuel as well as food will be wanted. I would suggest to the charitable in England to send contributions to Mr. Herbert. I can hardly suppose that Count Bismarck would decline to let the money pa.s.s through the Prussian lines.

I hear that Mr. Washburne has obtained a half permission to send his countrymen out of the town, if so, I think it would be well if the poor English were also to leave; but this, of course, will require money.

The Nuncio has managed to get away; he declined to take letters with him. E. Washburne, United States Minister, Lopez de Arosemana, Charge d'Affaires of Honduras, Duke Aquaviva, Charge d'Affaires of Monaco, and the other members of the Corps Diplomatique still here, have signed and published a protest against the refusal of Count Bismarck to let their despatches to their respective Governments leave Paris sealed. That Mr.

Washburne should be indignant I can well understand; but although I do not personally know either Lopez de Arosemana, or Aquaviva, Charge d'Affaires of Monaco, I can understand Count Bismarck not being absolutely satisfied with the a.s.surance of these potent signors that nothing except official despatches should pa.s.s under their seal. That the Prince of Monaco should be debarred for a few months from receiving communications from his representative in Paris, may perhaps be unpleasant to him, but must be a matter of the most profound indifference to the rest of the world.

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