Part 12 (2/2)

_December 21st._

When the Fenians in the United States meditate a raid upon Canada, they usually take very great care to allow their intentions to be known. Our sorties are much like these Hibernian surprises. If the Prussians do not know when we are about to attack, they cannot complain that it is our fault. The ”Apres vous, Messieurs les Anglais,” still forms the chivalrous but somewhat naf tactics of the Gauls. On Sunday, as a first step to military operations, the gates of the city were closed to all unprovided with pa.s.ses. On Monday a grand council of generals and admirals took place at the Palais Royal. Yesterday, and all last night, drums were beating, trumpets were blowing, and troops were marching through the streets. The war battalions of the National Guard, in their new uniforms, spick and span, were greeted with shouts, to which they replied by singing a song, the chorus of which is ”Vive la guerre, Piff-Paff,” and which has replaced the ”Ma.r.s.eillaise.” As the ambulances had been ordered to be ready to start at six in the morning, I presumed that business would commence at an early hour, and I ordered myself to be called at 5.30. I was called, and got out of my bed, but, alas for n.o.ble resolutions! having done so, I got back again into it and remained between the sheets quietly enjoying that sleep which is derived from the possession of a good conscience, and a still better digestion, until the clock struck nine.

It was not until past eleven o'clock that I found myself on the outside of the gate of La Villette, advancing, as Grouchy should have done at Waterloo, in the direction of the sound of the cannon. From the gate a straight road runs to Le Bourget, having the Fort of Aubervilliers on the right, and St. Denis on the left. Between the fort and the gate there were several hundred ambulance waggons, and above a thousand ”brancardiers,” stamping their feet and blowing on their fingers to keep themselves warm. In the fields on each side of the road there were numerous regiments of Mobiles drawn up ready to advance if required. Le Bourget, everyone said, had been taken in the morning, our artillery was on ahead, and we were carrying everything before us, so towards Le Bourget I advanced. About a mile from Le Bourget, there is a cross-road running to St. Denis through Courneuve. Here I found the barricade which had formed our most advanced post removed. Le Bourget seemed to be on fire. Sh.e.l.ls were falling into it from the Prussian batteries, and, as well as I could make out, our forts were sh.e.l.ling it too. Our artillery was on a slight rise to the right of Le Bourget, in advance of Drancy; and in the fields between Drancy and this rise, heavy ma.s.ses of troops were drawn up in support. Officers a.s.sured me that Le Bourget was still in our possession, and that if I felt inclined to go there, there was nothing to prevent me. I confess I am not one of those persons who snuff up the battle from afar, and feel an irresistible desire to rush into the middle of it. To be knocked on the head by a sh.e.l.l, merely to gratify one's curiosity, appears to me to be the utmost height of absurdity. Those who put themselves between the hammer and the anvil, come off generally second best, and I determined to defer my visit to the interesting village before me until the question whether it was to belong to Gaul or Teuton had been definitely decided. So I turned off to the left and went to St. Denis.

Here everybody was in the streets, asking everybody else for news. The forts all round it were firing heavily. On the Place before the Cathedral there was a great crowd of men, women, and children. The sailors, who are quartered here in great numbers, said that they had carried Le Bourget early in the morning, but that they had been obliged to fall back, with the loss of about a third of their number. Most of them had hatchets by their sides, and they attack a position much as if they were boarding a s.h.i.+p. About 100 prisoners had been brought into the town in the morning, as well as two Freres Chretiens, who had been wounded, and for whom the greatest sympathy was expressed. Little seemed to be known of what was pa.s.sing. ”The Prussians will be here in an hour,” shouted one man; ”The Prussians are being exterminated,” shouted another. ”What is this?” cried the crowd, as Monseigneur Bauer, the bishop _in partibus infidelium_ of some place or other, now came riding along with his staff. He held up his two fingers, and turned his hand right and left. His pastoral blessing was, however, but a half success.

The women crossed themselves, and the men muttered ”farceur.” The war which is now raging has produced many oddities, but none to my mind equal to this bishop. His great object is to see and be seen, and most thoroughly does he succeed in his object. He is a short, stout man, dressed in a ca.s.sock, a pair of jack-boots with large spurs, and a hat such as you would only see at the opera. On his breast he wears a huge star. Round his neck is a chain, with a great golden cross attached to it; and on his fingers, over his gloves, he wears gorgeous rings. The trappings of his horse are thickly sprinkled with Geneva crosses. By his side rides a standard-bearer, bearing aloft a flag with a red cross.

Eight aides-de-camp, arrayed in a sort of purple and gold fancy uniform, follow him, and the _cortege_ is closed by two grooms in unimpeachable tops. In this guise, and followed by this etat major, he is a conspicuous figure upon a field of battle, and produces much the same effect as the head of a circus riding into a town on a piebald horse, surrounded by clowns and pets of the ballet. He was the confessor of the Empress, and is now the aumonier of the Press; but why he wears jack-boots, why he capers about on a fiery horse, why he has a staff of aides-de-camp, and why he has two grooms, are things which no one seems to know. He patronises generals and admirals, doctors and commissariat officers, and they submit to be patronised by him. Half-priest, half-buffoon, something of a Friar Tuck and something of a Louis XV.

abbe, he is a sort of privileged person, who by the mere force of impudence has made his way in the world. Most English girls in their teens fall in love with a curate and a cavalry officer. Monseigneur Bauer, who combines in himself the unctuous curate and the das.h.i.+ng dragoon, is adored by the fair s.e.x in Paris. He knows how to adapt his conversation to the most opposite kind of persons, and I should not be surprised if he becomes a Cardinal before he dies.

The arrival of Dr. Ricord was the next event. He was in a basket pony-chaise, driving two ponies not much larger than rats. A pole about twelve feet high, bearing the flag of the Geneva Cross, was stuck beside him, and it was knocking against the telegraph wires which ran along the street. The eminent surgeon was arrayed in a long coat b.u.t.toned up to his chin and coming down to his feet. On his head was a kepi which was far too large for him. He looked like one of those wooden figures of Noah, when that patriarch with his family is lodged in a child's ark.

Having inspected the bishop and the doctor with respectful admiration, and inst.i.tuted a search for some bread and wine, I thought it was time to see what was going on outside. On emerging from St. Denis everything except the guns of the forts appeared quiet. I had not, however, gone far in the direction of Le Bourget, which was still burning, when I was stopped by a regiment marching towards St. Denis, some of the officers of which told me that the village had been retaken by the Prussians--the artillery, too, which I had left on the rise before Drancy, had disappeared. At a farmyard close by Drancy I saw Ducrot and his staff.

The General had his hood drawn over his head, and both he and his aide-de-camp looked so glum, that I thought it just as well not to congratulate him upon the operations of the day. In and behind Drancy there were a large number of troops, who I heard were to camp there during the night. None seemed exactly to know what had happened. The officers and soldiers were not in good spirits. On my return into Paris, however, I found the following proclamation of the Government posted on the walls:--”2 p.m.--The attack commenced this morning by a great deployment from Mont Valerien to Nogent, the combat has commenced and continues everywhere, with favourable chances for us.--Schmitz.” The people on the Boulevards seem to imagine that a great victory has been gained. When one asks them where? They answer ”everywhere.” I can only answer myself for what occurred at Le Bourget. I hear that Vinoy has occupied Nogent, on the north of the Marne; the resistance he encountered could not, however, have been very great, as only seven wounded have been brought into this hotel, and only one to the American ambulance. General Trochu announced this morning that 100 battalions of the National Guards are outside the walls, and I shall be curious to learn how they conduct themselves under fire. Far be it from me to say that they will not fight like lions. If they do, however, it will surprise most of the military men with whom I have spoken on the subject. As yet all they have done has been to make frequent ”pacts with death,” to perform unauthorised strategical movements to the rear whenever they have been sent to the front, to consume much liquor, to pillage houses, and--to put it poetically--toy with Amaryllis in the trench, or with the tangles of Nearas' hair. Their General, Clement Thomas, is doing his best to knock them into shape, but I am afraid that it is too late. There are cases in which, in defiance of the proverb, it is too late to mend.

Officers in a position to know, a.s.sure me that no really serious sortie will be made, but that after two or three days of the sham fights, such as took place to-day, the troops will quietly return into Paris. The object of General Trochu is, they say, to amuse the Parisians, and if he can by hook or by crook get the National Guard under the mildest of fires, to celebrate their heroism, in order that they may return the compliment. I cannot, however, believe that no attempt will be made to fight a battle; the troops are now ma.s.sed from St. Denis to the Marne; within two hours they can all be brought to any point along this line, and I should imagine that either to-morrow or the next day, something will be done in the direction of the Forest of Bondy. Trochu, it is daily felt more strongly, even by calm temperate men, is not the right man in the right place. He is a respectable literary man, utterly unfit to cope with the situation. His great aim seems now to be to curry favour with the Parisian population by praising in all his proclamations the National Guards, and ascribing to them a courage of which as yet they have given no proof. This, of course, injures him with the Line and the Mobiles, who naturally object to their being called upon to do all the fighting, whilst others are lauded for it. The officers all swear by Vinoy, and hold the military capacity both of Trochu and Ducrot very cheap. In the desperate strait to which Paris is reduced, something more than a man estimable for his private virtues, and his literary attainments is required. Trochu, as we are frequently told, gave up his brougham in order to adopt his nephews. Richard III. killed his; but these are domestic questions, only interesting to nephews, and it by no means follows that Richard III. would not have been a better defender of Paris than Trochu has proved himself to be. His political aspirations and his military combinations are in perpetual conflict. He is ever sacrificing the one to the other, and, consequently, he fails both as a general and as a statesman.

In order to form an opinion with regard to the condition of the poorer cla.s.ses, I went yesterday into some of the back slums in the neighbourhood of the Boulevard de Clichy. The distress is terrible.

Women and children, half starved, were seated at their doorsteps, with hardly clothes to cover them decently. They said that, as they had neither firewood nor c.o.ke, they were warmer out-of-doors than in-doors.

Many of the National Guards, instead of bringing their money home to their families, spent it in drink; and there are many families, composed entirely of women and children, who, in this land of bureaucracy, are apparently left to starve whilst it is decided to what category they belong. The Citizen Mottu, the Ultra-Democratic Mayor, announced that in his arrondiss.e.m.e.nt all left-handed marriages are to be regarded as valid, and the left-handed spouses of the National Guards are to receive the allowance which is granted to the legitimate wives of these warriors. But a new difficulty has arisen. Left-handed polygamy prevails to a great extent among the Citizen Mottu's admirers. Is a lady who has five husbands ent.i.tled to five rations, and is a lady who only owns the fifth of a National Guard to have only one-fifth of a ration? These are questions which the Citizen Mottu is now attempting to solve. As for the future, he has solved the matrimonial question by declining to celebrate marriages, because, he says, this bond is an insult upon those who prefer to ignore it. As regards marriage, consequently--and that alone--his arrondiss.e.m.e.nt resembles the kingdom of heaven. I went to see, yesterday, what was going on in the house of a friend of mine in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, who has left Paris. The servant who was in charge told me that up there they had been unable to obtain bread for three days, and that the last time that he had presented his ration ticket he had been given about half an inch of cheese. ”How do you live, then?” I asked. After looking mysteriously round to see that no one was watching us, he took me down into the cellar, and pointed to some meat in barrel. ”It is half a horse,” he said, in the tone of a man who is showing some one the corpse of his murdered victim. ”A neighbouring coachman killed him, and we salted him down and divided it.” Then he opened a closet in which sat a huge cat. ”I am fattening her up for Christmas-day, we mean to serve her up surrounded with mice, like sausages,” he observed. Many Englishmen regard it as a religious duty to eat turkey at Christmas, but fancy fulfilling this duty by devouring cat. It is like an Arab in the desert, who cannot wash his hands when he addresses his evening prayer, and makes s.h.i.+ft with sand. This reminds me that some antiquarian has discovered that in eating horse we are only reverting to the habits of the ancient Gauls. Before the Christian religion was introduced into the country, the Druids used to sacrifice horses, which were afterwards eaten. Christianity put an end to these sacrifices, and horse-flesh then went out of fas.h.i.+on.

_La France_ thus speaks of the last despatch of Gambetta:--”At length we have received official news from Tours. We read the despatch feverishly, then we read it a second time with respect, with admiration, with enthusiasm. We are asked our opinion respecting it. Before answering, we feel an irresistible impulse to take off our hat and to cry 'Vive la France.'” The _Electeur Libre_ is still more enraptured with the situation. It particularly admires the petroleum lamp, so different, it says, to those orgies of light, which under the tyrant, in the form of gas, gave a fict.i.tious vitality to Paris. The _Combat_ points out that no fires have broken out since September 4--a coincidence which is ascribed to the existence since that date of a Republican form of government. I recommend this curious phenomenon to insurance companies.

The newspapers, one and all, are furious, because they hear that the Prussians contest our two victories at Villiers. ”How singular,”

observes the _Figaro_, with plaintive morality, ”is this rage, this necessity for lying.” It is notorious that, having gained two glorious victories, we returned into Paris to repose on our laurels, and I must beg the Prussians not to be so mean as to contest the fact.

_December 23rd._

Since Wednesday the troops--Line, Mobiles, and marching battalions of the National Guard--have remained outside the enceinte. There has been a certain amount of spade work at Drancy, but beyond this absolutely nothing. The cold is very severe. This afternoon I was outside in the direction of Le Bourget. The soldiers had lit large fires to warm themselves. Some of them were lodged in empty houses, but most of them had only their little _tentes d'abri_ to shelter them. The sentinels were stamping their feet in the almost vain endeavour to keep their blood in circulation. There have been numerous frost-bitten cases. When it is considered that almost all of these troops might, without either danger to the defence, or without compromising the offensive operations, have been marched back into Paris, and quartered in the barracks which have been erected along the outer line of Boulevards, it seems monstrous cruelty to keep them freezing outside. The operations, however, on Wednesday are regarded as very far short of a success. General Trochu does not venture, in the state of public opinion, to bring the troops back into Paris, and thus confess a failure. The ambulances are ordered out to-morrow morning; but I cannot help thinking that the series of operations which were with great beating of drums announced to have commenced on Wednesday, will be allowed gradually to die out, without anything further taking place. The National Guards are camped in the neighbourhood of Bondy and Rosny. They have again, greatly to the disgust of the Mobiles and Line, been congratulated in a general order upon their valorous bearing. As a matter of fact, there was a panic among these braves which nearly degenerated into a rout. Several battalions turned tail, under the impression that the Prussians were going to attack them. One battalion did not stop until it had found shelter within the walls of the town. General Trochu's attempt, for political ends, to force greatness upon these heroes, is losing him the goodwill of the army. On Wednesday and Thursday several regiments of the Line and of the Mobiles bitterly complained that they should always be ordered to the front to protect not only Paris but the National Guards.

The marching battalions are composed of unmarried men between twenty-five and thirty-five, and why they should not be called upon to incur the same risks, and submit to the same discipline as the Mobiles, it is difficult to understand. We may learn from the experience of this siege that in war, armed citizens who decline to submit to the discipline of soldiers are worse than useless. The lesson, however, has not profited the Parisians. The following letter appears in the _Combat_, signed by the ”adjoint” of the 13th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. The defence on the part of this munic.i.p.al functionary of a marching battalion, which, at the outposts, broke into a church, and there parodied the celebration of the ma.s.s, is a gem in its way:--

”The marching companies of this battalion left Paris on the morning of the 16th to go to the outposts at Issy. The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be--copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses--in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that a.r.s.enal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race. The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding death; and all the writers whose pens are dipped in the ink of reaction and Jesuitism are eager to discover any eccentricity in which soldiers who are going under fire for the first time permit themselves to indulge. The Intendance, with that intelligence which characterises our military administrations, had put off the departure of the battalion for several hours. What were the men to do whilst they were kept waiting, except drink? This is what these brave fellows did. Mars, tired of Venus, sung at the companions.h.i.+p of Bacchus. If the G.o.d of Wine too well seconded the G.o.d of War, it is only water drinkers who can complain; it is not for us, Republicans of the past and of the future, to throw stones at good citizens in order to conceal the misconduct of the old Bonapartist Administration which still is charged with the care of our armies.”

General Blaise has been killed at Villa Evrard. The buildings, which go by this name, were occupied on Wednesday by General Vinoy's troops. In the night a number of Prussians, who had concealed themselves in the cellars, emerged, and a hand-to-hand fight took place. Some of the Prussians in the confusion got away, and some were killed. Several French officers who ran away and rushed in a panic into the presence of General Vinoy, who was at Fort Rosney, announcing that all was lost, are to be tried by Court Martial. The troops when they heard this were very indignant; but old Vinoy rode along the line, and told them that they might think what they pleased, but that he would have no cowards serving under him. Pity that he is not General-in-Chief.

A curious new industry has sprung up in Paris. Letters supposed to be found in the pockets of dead Germans are in great request. There are letters from mothers, from sisters, and from the Gretchens who are, in the popular mind, supposed to adore warriors. Unless every corpse has half a dozen mothers, and was loved when in the flesh by a dozen sweethearts, many of these letters must be fabricated. They vary in their style very little. The German mothers give little domestic details about the life at home, and express the greatest dread lest their sons should fall victims to the valour of the Parisians, which is filling the Fatherland with terror and admiration. The Gretchens are all sentimental; they talk of their inner feelings like the heroines of third-rate novels, send the object of their affections cigars and stockings knitted by their own fair hands, and implore him to be faithful, and not forget, in the toils of some French syren, poor Gretchen. But what is more strange is that in the pocket of each corpse a reply is found which he has forgotten to post. In this reply the warrior tells a fearful tale of his own sufferings, and says that victory is impossible, because the National Guards are such an invincible band.

The number of the wounded in my hotel has considerably diminished owing to the deaths among them. For the Societe Internationale to have made it their central ambulance was a great mistake. Owing to the want of ventilation the simplest operations are usually fatal. Four out of five of those who have an arm or a leg amputated die of pyaemia. Now, as in the American tents four out of five recover; and as French surgeons are as skilful as American surgeons, the average mortality in the two ambulances is a crucial proof of the advantage of the American tent system. Under their tents there is perfect ventilation, and yet the air is not cold. If their plan were universally adopted in hospitals, it is probable that many lives which are now sacrificed to the gases which are generated from operations, and which find no exit from buildings of stone or brick, would be saved. ”Our war,” said an American surgeon to me the other day, ”taught us that a large number of cubic inches of air is not enough for a sick man, but that the air must be perpetually renewed by ventilation.”

_December 24th._

The papers publish extracts from German newspapers which have been found in the pockets of the prisoners who were taken on Wednesday. The news from the provinces is not considered encouraging. Great stress is laid upon a proclamation addressed by King William to his troops on December 6, in which it is considered that there is evidence that the Prussians are getting tired of the war. We hear now, for the first time, that Prussia has ”denounced” the Luxemburg Treaty of '67, and forgetting that the guarantee of neutrality with respect to these lotus-eaters was collective, and not joint and several, we anxiously ask whether England will not regard this as a _casus belli_. ”As soon as Parliament a.s.sembles,” says _La Verite_, ”that great statesman Disraeli will turn out Mr. Gladstone, and then our old ally will be restored to us.” The _Gaulois_ observes that ”the English journalists residing at Paris keep up the illusion that Paris must fall by sending to their journals false news, which is reproduced in the organs of Prussia.” ”These journalists,” adds the _Gaulois_, ”who are our guests, fail in those duties which circ.u.mstances impose upon them.” Every correspondent residing abroad must be the guest, in a certain sense, of the country from which he is writing; but that this position should oblige him to square his facts to suit the wishes of his hosts appears to me a strange theory. Had I been M. Jules Favre, I confess that I should have turned out all foreign journalists at the commencement of the siege. He, however, expressed a wish that they should remain in Paris, and his fellow-citizens must not now complain that they decline to endorse the legend which, very probably, will be handed down to future generations of Frenchmen as the history of the siege of Paris. The Prussians will not raise the siege for anything either French or English journalists say. The Parisians themselves must perceive that the attempt to frighten their enemies away by drum-beating and trumpet-blowing has signally failed. Times have altered since Jericho. It is telling the Prussians nothing new to inform them that the National Guard are poor troops. For my part, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to learn some morning that the German armies round Paris had met with the fate which overwhelmed Sennacherib and his hosts. I should be delighted to be able to hope that the town will not eventually be forced to capitulate; but I cannot conceal from myself the truth that, if no succour comes from without, it must eventually fall. I blame the French journalists for perpetually drawing upon their imagination for their facts, and in their boasts of what France will do, not keeping within the bounds of probability; but I do not blame them for hoping against hope that their armies will be successful. I am ready to admit that the Parisians have shown a most stubborn tenacity, and that they have disappointed their enemies in not cutting each other's throats; but this is no reason why I should a.s.sert that they are sublime. After all, what is patriotism? The idea entertained by each nation that it is braver and better and wiser than the rest of the world. Does not every Englishman feel this to be true of his own countrymen? It is consequently not absurd that Frenchmen should think the same of themselves. The French are intensely patriotic--country with them is no abstraction. They moan over its ruin as though it were a human being, and far then be it from me to laugh at them for doing so. When, however, I find persons dressing themselves up in all the paraphernalia of war, visiting tombs and statues in order to register with due solemnity that they intend to die rather than yield, and when, after all this nonsense, these same persons decline to take their share in the common danger on the score that they have a mother, or a sister, or a wife, or a child, dependent upon them, and when month after month they drum and strut up and down the Boulevards, I consider that they are ridiculous, and I say so. When a man does a silly thing it is his own fault--not that of the person who chronicles it. Was it wise, for instance, of General Ducrot to announce a fortnight ago that he was about to lead his soldiers against the enemy, and that he himself intended either to conquer or die? Was it wise of General Trochu six weeks ago to issue a proclamation pledging himself to force the Prussians to raise the siege of Paris. The Prussians will have read these manifestoes, and they will form their own estimate respecting them. That I call them foolish does not ”keep up illusions in Germany.”

The other day the members of an Ultra club, in the midst of a discussion respecting the existence of a divinity, determined to decide the question by a general scrimmage. I think that these patriots might have been better employed. It does not follow, however, that I do not regret that they were not better employed. The siege of Paris is in the hands of General Moltke, and the _Gaulois_ may depend upon it that this wary strategist is not at all likely to give up the task by any number of journalists informing him that he is certain to fail.

I have got a cold, so I have not been out this morning. I hear that some of the troops have come in from Aubervilliers, and several regiments have marched by my windows. At Neuilly-sur-Marne and Bondy, it is said, earthworks are being thrown up; and it is supposed that Ch.e.l.les will, as the Americans say, be the objective point of any movement which may take place in that direction. The _Patrie_ has been suspended for three days for alluding to military operations. It did more than allude, it ventured to doubt the wisdom of our generals. As many other journals have done the same I do not understand why the _Patrie_ should have been singled out for vengeance.

CHAPTER XV.

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