Wickham Hoffman

“ The French are so government-ridden that they are unable to take the initiative in any thing for themselves. I have seen a strong, bold man, a guide in the Pyrenees, stand wringing his hands and crying, while his house was on fire, waiting for the soldiers to come and save his furniture and put out the flames. ”

“ In the mean time the alarm was given to the transports. Farragut had sent us an officer to say that the Arkansas was coming, that he should stop her if he could, but that he feared that he could not. The troops were got under arms, and our two batteries ordered to the levee. A staff officer said to General Williams, "General, don't let us be caught here like rats in a trap; let us attempt something, even if we fail." "What would you do?" said the general. "Take the Laurel Hill, put some picked men on board of her, and let us ram the rebel. ”

“ In face of cavalry and infantry retreating in disorder—and every officer knows how contagious is a panic—the First Division of the Nineteenth Army Corps steadily advanced, not a man falling out, fell into line, and quietly awaited the enemy. ”

“ Washburne's practice, too, was not in accordance with his precepts. If we heard of any part of Paris where shells were likely to burst and bullets to whistle, Washburne was sure to have important business in that direction.
I was not in my house when the shell exploded. I generally came home to dinner after dark. If there is any thing thoroughly disagreeable, it is to have shells tumbling and bursting about you when you are at dinner. It is bad enough at breakfast, but the dinner-hour should be sacred from vulgar intrusion. ”

“ They also held the Bourse, the Bank of France, the "Finances," and many other "coignes of vantage." But "coignes of vantage" are of very little use when the heart to defend them is lacking. In a very few days these men, outnumbering the Communists two or three to one, backed by the power of the Government and [245] the wealth of Paris, and by the moral support of the Germans and of the civilized world, had disbanded, taken refuge in flight, and left their families, and their property, and their beautiful city to the tender mercies of the mob. ”

“ On our homeward march the enemy opened on us, and we lost two or three men. I felt saddened at the loss of any men while in some measure under my command, and reported this loss first to the general. I was much comforted when he replied, "Lose men! of course you lost men. Reconnoissances in force always lose men!"
A few weeks previous to my visit to the fleet, Farragut had attempted to run by Port Hudson, with a view to communicate with Porter at Vicksburg, but more especially to blockade the mouth of the Red River. ”

“ I staid at head-quarters in a tent reserved for guests, and messed with the general and his staff. Grant has the reputation of being a taciturn man, and he is generally so. But when seated on a summer's evening under the awning in front of his tent with his staff, and, perhaps, a few friends about him, he took his share of the conversation. He was full of anecdote, especially of army life. He talked very freely, not hesitating to express [106] his opinions of men and things. Grant contended that no commanding officer could succeed in the long run, if he were not an honest and an honorable man. ”

“ You can not cut down a tree on your own land without its permission. During the siege you could not kill your own ox without leave from the Minister of Commerce. If you had providently laid in a larger supply of fuel than he thought you needed, he took possession of it, and paid you Government prices for what was then almost priceless. An American lady resident in Paris had a cow. The cow ran dry, and she wanted to convert it into beef. She came to the Legation to secure Mr. Washburne's intervention to obtain for her permission to kill her own cow. ”

“ Had we effected a lodgment even with a small force, we could have maintained our position in the angle between the parapet and the river until re-enforcements reached us. At the points selected for the assault of the 27th of May—had we succeeded in getting in—we should have found ourselves exposed to attacks in front and on both flanks, and should probably have been driven out again.
The siege of Port Hudson was tedious and bloody. Banks ordered an assault. It was made, and resulted in a miserable repulse. He was asked why assault when the place must inevitably be starved out in a few weeks. ”

“ The battle which now ensued at Pleasant Hill formed no exception to the rule which Smith's corps had established. The rebels, too, had been re-enforced, and attacked us in the afternoon with great spirit. But they soon found the difference between an affair with a single brigade of infantry, and one with three divisions fully prepared and admirably handled; for Franklin and Smith had made all the dispositions. They drove in the left of our first line, where we had a Five Points New York regiment (rowdies, by-the-way, always make the poorest troops) ”

“ In the beginning of our war in some of the States the company officers were elected by the men. But the men themselves were the first to see the folly of this course, and petitioned that their officers might be appointed by the Executive. Had the officers of the National Guard been appointed by the Government, and when they halted at the barrier and refused to go farther, had a battery been ordered up, and a dozen or so of them shot, "pour encourager les autres," as the French said of Admiral Byng, they might have given a very different account of themselves in their combats with the Germans. ”

“ It is certainly pleasant for the embassadors. They have the right of direct communication with the sovereign, for they are held to represent the person of their own sovereign, which the ministers do not. At Paris, at the court festivities, they occupied arm-chairs by the side of the Emperor and Empress, while the ministers were seated on benches in a loge. They had precedence on the reception-days of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. A minister might have waited two hours; an embassador dropped in, and entered before him. Some of them, like Lord Lyons, did not abuse this privilege. ”

“ It was a [270] touching souvenir of peaceful domestic life in the midst of the worst ravages of war.
Mr. Washburne and Lord Lyons complained to Jules Favre of this persistent bombardment, for the property destroyed and the lives endangered were largely American and English. He replied that it was "bad shooting," but he smiled as he said so, and evidently did not believe it himself. It was sheer wantonness, that irrepressible desire of artillery-men, of which I have before spoken, to hit something—an enemy if possible, a friend if no enemy offers. ”

“ Colonel Bonaparte escaped in this way. He was on the "Black List" of the Commune for arrest, and arrest then meant death.
As the siege progressed, the bombardment became more and more severe. The beautiful avenue of the Champs Elysées was like a city of the dead. Not a living creature was to be seen upon it for hours. From time to time a man would emerge cautiously from a side street, gaze anxiously up the avenue, then start on a run to cross it. ”

“ That enterprising journal had its staff of couriers, who were always at our service during those days of irregular postal communication. At the Hôtel des Réservoirs several German princes, officers of the army, were lodged—intelligent, agreeable, cultivated gentlemen. They were only too glad to have the pleasure of the society of American ladies, for of course they could not visit the French; and no class of men long for and appreciate ladies' society like educated officers on campaign in an enemy's country. ”

“ We wintered at Franklin, preparing for a spring campaign to the Red River. The climate of Louisiana is delicious in winter. I have tried both the South of France and Italy, but know no climate equal to that of Louisiana. The summer, en revanche, is intensely hot, and lasts from May to October, the thermometer ranging from 86° at night to 96° in the day-time. Yet the heat is not stifling. You feel no particular inconvenience from it at the time; but two seasons affect the nervous system seriously, and a white man must from time to time get the Northern or the sea-air. ”

“ Washburne arrived in France, and entered upon the duties of his office. In the mean time I had been promoted, at the request of General Dix, to be secretary of legation. At Mr. Washburne's request, I was retained in that position. Paris was uneasy and restless. Conspiracies against the empire were rife. The Republicans, as they called themselves—Radicals is a better name for the majority of them—became bold and defiant. France was jealous, too, of the renown acquired by Prussia at Sadowa. ”

“ But the French armies seem from the beginning to have been badly organized, badly led, and conscious that they were so, and discouraged accordingly. I have General Sheridan's authority for saying that the position of the French at Sedan was a very strong one; and while it was inevitable that they should be defeated by superior numbers, they ought to have held their ground for three days. I have no doubt that our troops under Sheridan would have done so. He spoke in the highest terms of the gallantry of the French cavalry, which was sacrificed to encourage the infantry. ”

“ But there was no time in Paris when money would not buy good food, though it could not buy fuel, for that had been seized by the Government. Very late in the siege a man brought to the Legation a piece of filet de bœuf of six pounds, for which he asked four dollars a pound. Mr. Washburne and I did not indulge in such luxuries, living principally upon our national pork and beans, and the poetic fish-ball. A young American happened to be in the office, however, who took it at once, and paid his twenty-four dollars. ”

“ It is bitter, relentless, and cruel; and is, no doubt, a sad legacy of the bloody Revolution of 1789, and of the centuries of oppression which preceded it. At the beginning of the war the peasants in one of the villages not far from Paris thrust a young nobleman into a ditch, and there burned him to death with the stubble from the fields. They had nothing particular against him, except that he was a nobleman. In Paris the [261] mob threw the gendarmes, when they caught them, into the Seine, and when they attempted to struggle out upon the banks hacked off their hands. ”

“ Whether this criticism is just or not, depends upon the loyalty or disloyalty of the troops. If they were true to their colors and ready to fight the mob, as they afterward did, there never was a more cowardly and disgraceful surrender than the retreat to Versailles, as unwise and unmilitary as it was cowardly, for it discouraged the respectable citizens, and abandoned to the mob all the advantages of position, immense war material, and the unbounded wealth of the capital. ”

“ As, in the stillness of an April evening, we made our slow way up the bayou amidst a tropical vegetation, festoons of moss hanging from the trees and drooping into the water, with the chance of being fired on at any moment from the dark swamp on either side, the effect upon the imagination was striking, and the scene one not easily forgotten. ”

“ The Louisiana, the Arkansas, the Manassas, the Tennessee, the Albemarle—great things were expected of them all, and they did nothing.
But we were as far from the capture of Vicksburg as ever. Fever attacked our men in those [46] fatal swamps, and they became thoroughly discouraged. The sick-list was fearful. Of a battery of eighty men, twenty only were fit for duty. The Western troops, and they were our best, were homesick. Lying upon the banks of the Mississippi, with transports above Vicksburg convenient for embarkation, they longed for home. ”