Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

“ The morrow of Lord Lyons's departure, Sunday, September 18, was our last day of liberty. The weather was splendid, the temperature as warm as that of June. All Paris was out of doors. We were not without women-folk and children. Not only were there the wives and offspring of the working-classes; but the better halves of many tradespeople and bourgeois had remained in the city, together with a good many ladies of higher social rank. Thus, in spite of all the departures, "papa, mamma, and baby" were still to be met in many directions on that last day preceding the investment. ”

“ Some of the National Guards of the district were not unnaturally disgusted by the spectacle which the Boulevards presented only a few hours after misfortune had fallen on the French arms. Forming, therefore, into a body, they marched along, loudly calling upon the cafés to close. Particularly were they indignant when, on reaching Brébant's Restaurant at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, they heard somebody playing a lively Offenbachian air on a piano there. A party of heedless viveurs and demoiselles of the half-world were enjoying themselves together as in the palmy imperial days. ”

“ The rise of Prussia—which had become head of the North German Confederation—was without doubt a menace not only to French ascendency on the Continent, but also to France's general interests. On the other hand, the prestige of the Empire having been seriously impaired, in France itself, by the diplomatic defeats which Bismarck had inflicted on Napoleon, it seemed that only a successful war, waged on the Power from which France had received those successive rebuffs, could restore the aforesaid prestige and ensure the duration of the Bonaparte dynasty. ”

“ We who are the wealthiest nation in Europe spend on our armaments, in proportion to our wealth and our population, less than any other great Power. Yet some among us would have us curtail our expenditure, and thereby incur the vulnerability which would tempt a foe. Undoubtedly the armaments of the present day are great and grievous burdens on the nations, terrible impediments to social progress, but they constitute, unfortunately, our only real insurance against war, justifying yet to-day, after so many long centuries, the truth of the ancient Latin adage—Si vis pacem, para bellum. ”

“ Moltke had not anticipated a long siege of the French capital. He had imagined that the city would speedily surrender, and that the war would then come to an end. Fully acquainted with the tract of country lying between the Rhine and Paris, he had much less knowledge of other parts of France; and, moreover, although he had long known how many men could be placed in the field by the military organisation of the Empire, he undoubtedly underestimated the further resources of the French, and did not anticipate any vigorous provincial resistance. ”

“ Hardship sits on one but lightly when one is only seventeen years of age and stirred by early ambition. All the world then lay before me, like mine oyster, to be opened by either sword or pen.
At a later hour, by the light of a solitary guttering candle, in the little cabinet upstairs, I wrote, as best I could, an account of the recent fighting and the loss of Le Mans; and early on the following morning I prevailed on a railway-man who was going to Rennes to post my packet there, in order that it might be forwarded to England viâ Saint Malo. ”

“ To what despair would not millions of women be reduced? How would they dress, even supposing that they should contrive to dress at all? The thought was appalling; and as one and another great couturier closed his doors, Paris began to realize that her prestige was indeed in jeopardy.
A day or two after the investment the city became very restless on account of Thiers's mission to foreign Courts and Jules Favre's visit to the German headquarters, it being reported by the extremists that the Government did not intend to be a Government of National Defence but one of Capitulation. ”

“ I was with my mentor Brossard and my brother Edward one night in June when a "Madeleine-Bastille" omnibus was overturned on the Boulevard Montmartre and two or three newspaper kiosks were added to it by way of forming a barricade, the purpose of which was by no means clear. The great crowd of promenaders seemed to regard the affair as capital fun until the police suddenly came up, followed by some mounted men of the Garde de Paris, whereupon the laughing spectators became terrified and suddenly fled for their lives. With my companions I gazed on the scene from the entresol of the Café Mazarin. ”

“ They made no attempt at defence; hungry though they were, they abandoned even their pots and pans, and fled in the direction of Pontlieue, which formed, as it were, a long avenue, fringed with factories, textile mills, bleaching works, and so forth. In vain did their officers try to stop the fugitives, even striking them with the flats of their swords, in vain did Lalande and his staff seek to intercept them at the Rond Point de Pontlieue. Nothing could induce them to stop. They threw away their weapons in order to run the faster. At La Tuilerie not a gun was fired at the Germans. ”

“ Thiers had been an Orleanist all his life, and among the Paris working-classes there was a general feeling that the National Assembly would give France a king. This feeling tended to bring about the subsequent bloody Insurrection of the Commune; but, as I wrote in "Republican France," it was precisely the Commune which gave the French Royalists a chance. It placed a weapon in their hands and enabled them to say, "You see, by that insurrection, by all those terrible excesses, what a Republic implies. Order, quietude, fruitful work, are only possible under a monarchy." ”

“ In or near the Rue de Bourgogne we found a fairly quiet wine-shop, where we rested and refreshed ourselves with cannettes of so-called Bière de Strasbourg. We did not go at that moment to the Hôtel-de-Ville, whither a large part of the crowd betook itself by way of the quays, and where the Republic was again proclaimed; but returned to the Place de la Concorde, where some thousands of people still remained. Everybody was looking very animated and very pleased. Everybody imagined that, the Empire being overthrown, France would soon drive back the German invader. ”

“ Only those who, like Captain Hozier of The Times, had closely watched Prussian methods during the Seven Weeks' War in 1866, clearly realized that the North German kingdom possessed a thoroughly well organized fighting machine, led by officers of the greatest ability, and capable of effecting something like a revolution in the art of war.
France was currently thought stronger than she really was. Of the good physique of her men there could be no doubt. Everybody who witnessed the great military pageants of those times was impressed by the bearing of the troops and their efficiency under arms. ”

“ The strategy adopted by the Germans at Sedan and in the battles around Metz had greatly impressed the generals who commanded the French armies during the second period of the war. One might really say that they lived in perpetual dread of being surrounded by the enemy. If there was a lack of concentration on Chanzy's part, if he sent out one and another flying column, and distributed a considerable portion of his army over a wide area, it was precisely because he feared some turning movement on the part of the Germans, which might result in bottling him up at Le Mans. ”

“ Only here and there could one see a man of military bearing; most of them struck happy-go-lucky attitudes, and were quite unable to keep step in marching. A particular feature of the display was the number of flowers and sprigs of evergreen with which the men had decorated the muzzles of the fusils-à-tabatière which they mostly carried. Here and there, moreover, one and another fellow displayed on his bayonet-point some coloured caricature of the ex-Emperor or the ex-Empress. What things they were, those innumerable caricatures of the months which followed the Revolution! ”

“ The big railway-station of Le Mans was full of reinforcements for the Army of the Loire. After strolling about for a few minutes, my father and I sat down on the platform with our backs against a wall, for not a bench or a stool was available. Every now and again some train prepared to start, men were hastily mustered, and then climbed into all sorts of carriages and vans. A belated general rushed along, accompanied by eager aides-de-camp. ”

“ All boys, I suppose, come into the world with pugnacious instincts. There must be few, too, who never "play at soldiers." My own interest in warfare and soldiering had been steadily fanned from my earliest childhood. In the first place, I had been incessantly confronted by all the scenes of war depicted in the Illustrated Times and the Illustrated London News, those journals being posted to me regularly every week whilst I was still only a little chap at Eastbourne. Further, the career of my uncle, Frank Vizetelly, exercised a strange fascination over me. ”

“ Then the gate is closed, and from behind the finely-wrought ornamental iron-work Gambetta briefly addresses the little throng which has recognized him, saying that the Empire is dead, but that France is wounded, and that her very wounds will inflame her with fresh courage; promising, too, that the whole nation shall be armed; and asking one and all to place confidence in the new Government, even as the latter will place confidence in the people. ”

“ There is splendid material to be derived from the golf-girl, the hockey-girl, the factory- and the laundry-girl—all of them active, and in innumerable instances far stronger than many of the narrow-chested, cigarette-smoking "boys" whom we now see in our regiments. Briefly, a day may well come when we shall see many of our so-called superfluous women taking to the "career of arms." However, the attempts made to establish a corps of women-soldiers in Paris, during the German siege, were more amusing than serious. ”

“ Here and there a street was blocked with army vans and waggons, whose drivers were awaiting orders, not knowing which direction to take. Officers and estafettes galloped about on all sides. Then a number of wounded men were carried in carts, on stretchers, and on trucks towards the railway-station. Others, with their heads bandaged or their arms in slings, walked painfully in the same direction. Outside the station there was a strong cordon of Gendarmes striving to resist all the pressure of a great mob of disbanded men who wished to enter and get away in the trains. ”

“ I attended the clubs held in the churches, when women often perorated from the pulpits. I saw Thiers's house being demolished; and when the end came and the Versailles troops made their entry into the city, I was repeatedly in the street-fighting with my good friend, Captain Bingham. I recollect sketching the attack on the Elysée Palace from a balcony of our house, and finding that balcony on the pavement a few hours later when it had been carried away by a shell from a Communard battery at Montmartre. Finally, I saw Paris burning. I gazed on the sheaves of flames rising above the Tuileries. ”

“ Then stores were bundled into trucks, whistles sounded, engines puffed, and meanwhile, although men were constantly departing, the station seemed to be as crowded as ever. When at last I got up to stretch myself, I noticed, affixed to the wall against which I had been leaning, a proclamation of Gambetta's respecting D'Aurelle de Paladines' victory over Von der Tann at Orleans. ”

“ The Paris garrison, it is true, was no real criterion of the French army generally, though foreigners were apt to judge the latter by what they saw of it in the capital. The troops stationed there were mostly picked men, the garrison being very largely composed of the Imperial Guard. The latter always made a brilliant display, not merely by reason of its somewhat showy uniforms, recalling at times those of the First Empire, but also by the men's fine physique and their general military proficiency. ”

“ All being ready, we crossed the massive drawbridge of the Porte de Charenton, and wound in and out of the covered way which an advanced redoubt protected. A small detachment of light cavalry then joined us, and we speedily crossed the devastated track known as the "military zone," where every tree had been felled at the moment of the investment. Immediately afterwards we found ourselves in the narrow winding streets of Charenton, which had been almost entirely deserted by their inhabitants, but were crowded with soldiers who stood at doors and windows, watching our curious caravan. ”