CHAPTER XLVII

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VERSAILLES AND THE SIEGE OF PARIS.

The Advance on Paris--Preparations for the Siege--General Trochu--The Francs-Tireurs--The Siege.

Versailles, originally a pleasure abode for the most powerful of the French monarchs, had at last become a place of entertainment and of public displays for the French people when, in 1870, after the defeat of Sedan, it acquired new importance from its occupation by the enemies of France.

After Sedan, the enemy hastened to Paris, well knowing that the occupation of this town, at once the head and the heart of France, would put an end to all resistance throughout the country. From the moment that intelligence was received of the German advance upon the capital, the new Government gave a fresh impulse to the works of defence commenced under the Regency; and gigantic efforts were necessary to arm the fortifications at such short notice. To defend the whole of the works around Paris a hundred thousand men were necessary.

But Paris could muster three or four hundred thousand National Guards, animated by the most ardent patriotism, invincible behind their ramparts, and of which a select portion could face the enemy’s fire with the intrepidity of old troops. It was they who went to guard the ninety-four bastions forming a continuous girdle round the city. Paris was in a bubbling ferment of patriotism; everyone, young or old, rich or poor, hastened to have his name inscribed and to ask for a rifle. Agitation reigned everywhere, yet without producing the least disorder. Already, on the 19th of August, a committee of defence for the fortifications had been formed, composed of distinguished military officers and statesmen; and under the direction of this committee between sixty and seventy thousand men were employed to organise the resistance on the ramparts, where everything was deficient. All the gates of Paris were isolated from their approaches by the prolongation of the moat, drawbridges being now utilised. Beyond the moat, obstacles of all kinds were heaped up to arrest the assailants--branches of trees, broken glass, planks bristling with nails, and so forth: useless and almost infantine precautions, considering the formidable means employed by the Germans to reduce Paris from a distance.

Within the city boundary all was movement, animation, fever. Gun-carriages were passing to and fro freighted with enormous cannon; other pieces of ordnance were lying in the interior of the bastions, awaiting their frames. On the parapets guns already mounted were established in hollows dug out for the purpose. Two million bags of earth were piled up, from behind which the defenders could fire in safety upon the foe.

In the forts the same activity, the same preparations might be observed. Six were occupied by the marines. As the French fleet could play only a very insignificant part in this war, these men, with their guns of long range, were summoned from the sea-ports; and they were destined to render their country splendid services in the capital. With marvellous rapidity they fitted their own forts with cannon and earthworks.

At the beginning of the war the artillery were terribly short of arms. By the regulations each bastion should have been provided with eleven pieces. At that time there were only three to reply to the Krupp guns of the foe. By way of reserve, Paris was habitually furnished with two parks of artillery, each consisting of 250 pieces: but not one piece remained, the whole supply having been sent eastward. The ammunition for the cannon was terribly limited, being only sufficient to afford the guns ten shots apiece. The lack of artillerymen was even more lamentable; in some forts the entire force consisted of a man in charge of the battery. Towards the middle of October, however, the numbers of the artillery were rapidly raised to 13,000 officers, under-officers, and soldiers, thanks to the patriotism of retired officers of the marines and of the Gardes Mobiles of the Seine, the Seine-et-Oise, the Drôme, the Rhone, the Loire Inférieure, and the Pas-de-Calais.

By this time, too, 2,140 cannon had been mounted at the city boundaries, and the inadequate supply of powder had been increased six-fold. The director of all this prodigious activity was the indefatigable Minister of Public Works, M. Dorian, whose services, moreover, in ensuring the water supply were altogether invaluable.

Whilst such enormous progress was being made with the works of defence, the enemy was the reverse of idle. Its columns, meeting no obstacle on their way, were rapidly marching towards Paris. The news of their approach redoubled the activity of the Parisians. Everywhere in the capital warehouses were improvised in which were heaped up waggon-loads of hay and straw, sacks of corn, and provisions of all kinds. The church of Notre Dame des Champs was turned into a forage-depot: in front of the École Militaire a large supply of mill-stones was placed, in view of grinding the corn. The streets were constantly traversed by immense herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, which were about to be stalled and penned on the exterior boulevards, in the open spaces, and even in the avenues of the Luxemburg. Everyone laid in as large a stock of provisions as his resources would allow: rice, vermicelli, macaroni, potatoes, hams, sugar, coffee, vanished in a twinkling from the grocers’ shops. Yet the purchasers knew better than to eat freely of their provisions. They could not tell how long the siege would last.

[Illustration: GENERAL TROCHU.]

Meanwhile the Prussians advanced, the more rapidly from feeling confident that no force could bar their passage and from being familiarly acquainted with the country. High-roads, country lanes, the veriest footpaths, were known to them, for in their ranks, to quote the words of a French historian, “was that crowd of Germans who had so long eaten the bread of France, and who were now guiding the invaders. We had thought them our guests, when they were simply our spies.” On the 11th of September the Prussians were reported to have arrived at La Ferté, on their way to Meaux; at Rebais, Coulommères, Crécy, and even beneath the walls of Soissons. On the 12th they entered Nogent-sur-Seine and Provins, where the railway-stations were abandoned in all haste. On the 14th the telegraph wires were cut between Melun and Mormant; and Prussian lancers, the so-called Uhlans--the name being borrowed from the lancers of Poland--showed themselves in the last-named town.

On the 15th a train fell into the hands of the Prussians as it arrived at Senlis; and on that same day the stationmaster at Joinville telegraphed to the Minister of the Interior--“Enemy to the number of about 10,000 marching upon Joinville. Our troops are concentrating on the forts. In an hour the enemy will be here.” Almost at the same time the Governor of Paris received the following despatch from Vincennes: “The Uhlans are between Créteil and Neuilly-sur-Marne. At this last point what seems to be the advanced-guard of the column reported this morning. Are informing and summoning everyone.”

Paris now clearly understood that the enemy was marching upon it, and in proportion as the Prussians narrowed the circle of iron with which they were surrounding Paris, the inhabitants hurried from all sides to the capital, accompanied by carriages laden with furniture hastily got together, with such articles of value as they had had time to bring away. “It was a sad procession,” says a writer who witnessed the scene. “The unhappy fugitives were abandoning their peaceful homes to an enemy who would destroy them. In what condition will they find on their return the house and the little garden, the grass plot and the beds of flowers in which they took so much delight?” As a matter of fact, the deserted houses were the very ones, and probably the only ones, that were plundered and devastated. Where a proprietor or his representative, even if it were only a servant, had been left, so that the foreign visitors could be accommodated and their needs attended to, things went on in a sufficiently regular manner. But where no responsible person had been left in charge, the soldiers, all of them young men of from twenty to twenty-seven years of age, used, in their rough play, the legs of chairs as missiles, and fragments of furniture of all kinds as firewood. In some suburban towns, Villeneuve, Saint-Georges, for instance, the houses occupied by successive detachments were before long a terrible scene of destruction--chairs, tables, and looking-glasses all smashed to pieces. In houses, on the other hand, where the owner or his substitute remained, no damage was done. In some cases the work of demolition was due not to recklessness and wantonness alone, but also to anger, the German invaders feeling indignant, they said, at being regarded in the light of barbarians. Then, as if to prove that they were not savages, they behaved with a certain savagery. It was on the 17th of September that Villeneuve, Saint-Georges, and Choisy-le-Roy were for the first time occupied, the object of the occupation being to get possession of the lines to Lyons and Orleans and dominate the course of the Seine so as to establish communications with Versailles, which was to be the headquarters of the invading army. The Prussians advanced without fear, knowing well that with the exception of a strong division commanded by General Vinoy, which had advanced from Mézières to Paris the day after the battle of Sedan, there were no regular troops to oppose them. The line of investment was, in the first instance, very thin, and it is said that some observation on the subject was made to Moltke by a member of his staff. “General Trochu could break through it, no doubt,” Moltke replied, “but he will not try.” On the 18th of September, it was reported that the Germans were approaching the walls of the capital in three large bodies, and the public was informed, through the columns of the official journal, that it must not be surprised if no further telegraphic communications reached it from outside. The same evening a number of dull, distant detonations were heard. The bridges of St. Cloud, Sèvres, and Vallancourt had been blown up. Paris was being gradually cut off from the rest of France, from the rest of the world. No more communications, no more despatches, no more news of any kind. The only means of correspondence left to the great city was by way of the air.

General Trochu, Governor of Paris, had plenty of troops, or at least of armed men, under his command. The number of regulars, scarcely more than thirteen thousand, which General Vinoy had brought from Mézières, was small indeed; but these, with National Guards, Gardes Mobiles, and volunteers of various kinds, made up an entire force of 400,000, nearly twice the number of the besiegers.

It may not be generally known, but it is nevertheless the fact, that just after the battle of Sedan, when the Prussians were already advancing upon Paris, the command of the Paris forts was offered to General Ripley, who had distinguished himself during the American Civil War by his energetic defence of Charlestown. The general visited Paris, was perfectly satisfied with all the material preparations, but had no confidence in the National Guards, whose slovenly appearance, absence of discipline, and, above all, want of respect for their officers, impressed him very unfavourably. It must be remembered, however, that Paris had but few regular troops in its garrison, only, in fact, the division which, the day after Sedan, General Vinoy had conducted from Mézières, in the immediate neighbourhood of Sedan, to the capital. Plenty of brave men, moreover, had joined the army as volunteers at the beginning of the campaign; and Paris had furnished a large proportion of the Francs-Tireurs who rendered such questionable service to the national cause. “What a villain,” says a writer on this subject, “was the Franc-Tireur in the eyes of the Prussians, who regarded him as a poacher of the worst kind, shooting men without a licence; and what a hero in the eyes of his own countrymen, and, above all, countrywomen, who saw in him the ideal of a patriot!” “Who are these Francs-Tireurs?” a Frenchman was one day asked by the present writer, at that period one of the war correspondents of the _Times_. “Young men of good education who wish to defend their country,” he replied. “Who are the Francs-Tireurs?” the same correspondent inquired of a young French lady. “Charming young men, and as brave as lions,” she replied; “I have the portrait of one of them in my brooch.”

Almost as much nonsense has been written about the Francs-Tireurs in the German papers as about the Uhlans in the French. They were not necessarily savages nor assassins, nor anything of the kind. In the occupied provinces they were simply insurgents, and they led everywhere the life of insurgents, belonged to the same class or classes of society from which insurgents usually come, and, like insurgents, were adored by their own people and shot as felons if they fell into the hands of the enemy.

The few I came across were certainly not the kind of persons likely to commit the acts of violence and rapine with which the Francs-Tireurs were generally credited. The Francs-Tireurs I met were loungers from the Parisian boulevards, who had put on the semblance of a uniform and gone out to see whether they could be of any use in stopping the advance of the Prussians, and they would no more have committed an act of highway robbery than General Garibaldi would have picked a pocket. But side by side with the Francs-Tireurs of good education--the Francs-Tireurs whose photographs were found worthy of being enclosed in lockets--there were Francs-Tireurs of a lower type: there were escaped prisoners, deserters, and fugitives, the last remnants of the great armies that had from time to time been cut in pieces, and the amalgam formed by these different elements was doubtless not a nice one. Even the gentlemanly Franc-Tireur, if fallen into bad circumstances, might be a dangerous person to meet; he would be ashamed to show himself in the character of a robber, and from sheer self-respect might begin by killing his victim.

The Prussians, however, could not, like the young ladies of France, distinguish between the noble-minded Franc-Tireur and the Franc-Tireur who was a mere cut-throat. What they required was that he should carry papers showing that he belonged to some regularly organised corps, that he should wear a uniform recognisable at gun-shot distance, and that the distinctive marks of the uniform should be “inseparable from the person.” Let him comply with these conditions, and the Franc-Tireur, if he fell into the hands of the enemy, instead of being shot or condemned to ten years’ imprisonment, was treated as a prisoner of war.

It seems hard to insist that William Tell shall put on a uniform “recognisable at gun-shot distance,” and that the distinctive signs of the uniform worn by Masaniello shall be “inseparable from the person”; but if William Tell dresses like a civilian he places his enemy at a notable disadvantage, and the same may be said of Masaniello, if Masaniello has nothing military about him but his cap, which he can get rid of at a moment’s notice and replace by a wide-awake or a cotton nightcap.

There were, I believe, some bodies of Francs-Tireurs regularly incorporated in the French army, and they, to the Prussians, were of course like any other French soldiers. Such were “Les partisans de Gers,” who had account-books showing that they were in Government service, whose officers carried commissions, and whose military character was admitted, though their only “distinctive marks” were a red sash worn over a black coat and a Calabrian hat. Neither, then, of the “distinctive marks” was inseparable from the person. It was evident, all the same, that the partisans of Gers were men who had assumed the character of soldiers in good faith, with the intention of supporting it to the end.

But the original, typical Franc-Tireur carried no papers, wore no recognisable uniform; nor were the chiefs of bands responsible to any superior officer.

As for the individual members of such bands, how were the Prussians to distinguish between them and men shooting at other men from unpolitical motives? And, apart from the customs of war, would not the common law, strictly administered, condemn them everywhere as brigands?

[Illustration: MAP OF THE FORTIFICATIONS AT THE SIEGE OF PARIS.]

Why, then, did not the Francs-Tireurs, for their own sake, form themselves into regular bodies and never show except in uniform? The reason was simple enough. They did not wish to be always soldiers. They desired now and then to retire into private life, and to profit by the privileges of the civilian. As troops, moreover, in the service of the Government they would have had to drill, to do regular military duty, to subject themselves, in short, to discipline, for which, as a rule, they had no taste. Otherwise, why, instead of becoming Francs-Tireurs, did they not join the Garde Mobile or the regular army, from which they could, in the most legitimate manner, have been detached for partisan warfare?

In less than a fortnight after the battle of Sedan, the King of Prussia, advancing towards Versailles, had established his headquarters at Férrières. It was here on the 18th and 19th of September, 1870, in the château belonging to Baron Rothschild, that Jules Favre, Vice-President of the Government of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs, conferred with Count Bismarck; when the latter declared his readiness to sign an armistice on condition that three fortresses, Strasburg, Phalsburg, and Toul, were placed in the hands of the Germans. To the minister who (borrowing a phrase from the oath of the Templars) had declared that “not one inch of our territory, not one stone of our fortresses should ever be ceded,” these conditions were for the moment obviously unacceptable. On the 20th of September the Germans took possession of Versailles, which was unable to offer the least resistance, and soon afterwards the town became the headquarters of the Great General Staff, with General von Moltke at its head; also of the King of Prussia and Count Bismarck.

[Illustration: THE PRUSSIANS ENTERING PARIS.]

Versailles now became the headquarters of correspondents from all parts of the world, and a grave question--that of the maintenance of war-vessels in the Black Sea--having arisen between England and Russia, it was to Versailles that Mr. Odo Russell was sent, on the part of the English Foreign Office, to make representations to Count Bismarck, who had undertaken, in his own language, the part of “honest broker” between the Powers at variance.

An interesting account of the occupation of Versailles by the Germans was published three years after the conclusion of peace. It would be useful for the future historian, whose possible wants have been so much studied of late years, if the municipal authorities of other French towns which during the war of 1870 fell into the power of the Germans would put together and publish the official documents relating to the occupation, as the authors of this volume have done in regard to the occupation of Versailles. Strictly speaking, the authors of the work in question are the Prussians themselves. But the materials, in the form of requisitions, summonses to appear, condemnations to pay, proclamations, menaces and occasional remissions of punishment, were collected by M. Rameau, Mayor of Versailles, and by him entrusted for publication to M. Delerot, who, considering the hatred he felt and was bound to feel for the conquerors and oppressors of his country, showed commendable moderation in his manner of presenting the papers. Invasion must always be intolerable to the invaded. No Brussels conferences or Geneva conventions, however much they may alleviate the miseries of the battle-fields, can soften the hard lines of a foreign occupation in its general features; and M. Delerot would not be more--he would be something less--than human were he able to take a perfectly just view of the conduct of the Prussians in France. The truth is that they behaved badly if we judge them by a high ideal standard; admirably if we judge them by the standard of what has been done by former invaders engaged in invasions on the same vast scale and of the same momentous character as that of 1870.

The book in question is too full of matter for one to give an idea of its contents, either by means of notes or by a connected series of extracts. But some notion of its general character may be conveyed by the reproduction of a few stories from it.

The king, to begin with the most important of all the personages assembled at Versailles, was in the habit of receiving anonymous letters from all parts of the occupied country, and it would appear that he was quite ready to answer them. Not, however, knowing the authors of the epistles, he was obliged to content himself with writing notes for replies on the margin of these curious documents. To one correspondent, who charges him (on the strength of an accusation originally made by M. Jules Favre) with having declared, on entering France, that he made war “not on the French people, but on the Emperor Napoleon,” he justly answers, “Je n’ai jamais dit cela.” To a correspondent who insults and curses him, and who signs himself “Un Français qui ne t’aime pas,” he quietly remarks, “Il me semble!” One writer addresses him, in allusion to the siege of Strasburg, as “Sire Bombardeur!” Another, after exhausting all the terms of abuse he can think of in the French language, calls him, in plain English, “old rascal.”

Mention must not be omitted of the part played, in connection with the invasion, by the money-lender attached to the Prussian forces. He was no miserable camp-follower bent on securing much plunder by small advances of ready money, nor private bill-discounter prepared to “oblige” officers with loans on notes of hand. He was an officially recognised financial agent, representing a syndicate of foreign bankers, who, to enable the municipalities and the occupied towns to execute the requisitions and pay the contributions imposed on them, offered, with a generosity rare in time of war, to lend the necessary funds in return for promises to pay, secured on the local taxes. The arrival of Herr Betzold was announced in the _Moniteur de Versailles_, the official journal published by the Germans throughout the occupation; and a few days afterwards his benevolent project for enabling destitute French municipalities to satisfy the most exorbitant Prussian demands was made known through the columns of the little sheet, which thus found itself transformed for a time into a financial newspaper. A second time attention was called to the advantages to be derived from the scheme; but neither the eloquent articles of the _Moniteur de Versailles_ nor the friendly personal representations of Herr Betzold himself had any effect upon the municipality. The mayor refused to pledge the future resources of the town, or rather, refused to pledge them to the Prussians. A loan was found indispensable, but the bonds were offered to and taken by the inhabitants. The interest was fixed at five per cent., principal and interest both to be paid off within three months of signing the peace.

While on the subject of contributions and the means taken to enable the conquered populations to pay them, I may point out--what some professors of international law are perhaps unaware of--that the Prussians no longer recognise the right of maritime Powers in time of war to seize merchant vessels belonging to the enemy. The contribution of 1,000,000 francs per occupied department, to which M. Delerot devotes some pages, was ordered by way of reprisal, and as an indemnity for the losses inflicted upon German commerce by French men-of-war.

The most serious charge brought by M. Delerot against the Prussians is that at Bougival they attacked and wounded a certain number of the inhabitants, on the ground, and apparently under the distinct impression, that they had been fired at with an air-gun: an instrument which, as M. Delerot assures us, is found only in scientific laboratories. The Prussians to whom the outrage in question is attributed were temporarily retreating in face of a sortie from Paris; and according to M. Delerot, they simply deluded themselves into a belief that the inhabitants of Bougival had assumed towards them an attitude which, under the circumstances, inhabitants are likely enough to adopt.

The fact that a formal trial was instituted, and that it resulted in two of the inhabitants being found guilty and shot, would seem to show that there must have been some sort of evidence against them, though M. Delerot will have it that the Prussians were under a delusion on the subject. It is clear, however, from the facts, adduced as such by M. Delerot himself, that the Prussians wished, not so much to act with severity as to be thought severe. The object, indeed, of most punishments in civilised warfare is, not to punish offenders retributively and in a spirit of vengeance for what they have done, but to deter other possible offenders from imitating their example. No one imagines that there is anything morally wrong in a civilian’s wishing to defend his country. But if troops do not molest the civil population, they consider that they have a right to require in return that civilians shall not molest them. One day, then, when a number of peasants taken in arms were brought to Versailles, the Prussians announced loudly their intention to shoot them. But M. Delerot and his friends observed that, instead of being taken to the place of execution, the peasants were imprisoned. On leaving Versailles, the Prussian authorities gave up to the mayor a list of the persons thrown into gaol during their occupation; and M. Delerot republishes it, with the names of the prisoners, the offences charged against them, and so on. The list certainly shows that many persons were incarcerated on trivial accusations: among others a servant-girl for having returned a box on the ears to an officer; someone else for having been found “in possession of a diary containing insulting expressions addressed to the King of Prussia”; a third for having recognised a Prussian spy; a fourth for having “followed Count Bismarck.” M. Delerot would, perhaps, have preferred that this last victim of precautionary measures should have been allowed to pursue Count Bismarck, who, walking out alone, was sometimes completely mobbed; so that on one occasion he reproached his pursuers with their ignorance of the “usages of war,” adding that if some impetuous young officer found himself surrounded in such a manner, he would probably make use of his sword. Thus, if Count Bismarck ended by objecting altogether to followers, he did not do so until they had become a serious nuisance.

The arrest of a man who had “recognised” a Prussian spy is interesting as an example of an action perfectly innocent, and, indeed, praiseworthy in itself, but which of necessity entailed upon its author a period of forced seclusion. A spy recognised, even by one individual, is a spy lost unless the individual who has recognised him be at once removed from public life.

To a large extent, M. Delerot’s work, independently of the fact that it is well put together and contains a mass of valuable and interesting information, is impartial. “Impartiality!” exclaims Victor Hugo in his “Napoleon le Petit.” “Strange virtue for an historian, which Tacitus never possessed!” Thereupon Victor Hugo proceeds to “déchirer” his victim “en style de Juvenal.” M. Delerot claims to have seen things, and to state them precisely as they took place. But, with the best intentions, such an attitude would be impossible for a citizen and official of Versailles writing the moment after the occupation had come to an end, with the wound constantly and inevitably inflicted on his patriotism still fresh. He has nothing extenuated, and he has set down much, if not in malice, at least in anger. But he has striven, though not always with success, to render justice to the Prussians, especially to the Crown Prince, Count Moltke, and even Prince Bismarck.

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