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My Days of Adventure

E >> Ernest Alfred Vizetelly >> My Days of Adventure




The new Government was fully installed by Tuesday, September 6. It had
already issued several more or less stirring proclamations, which were
followed by a despatch which Jules Favre addressed to the French
diplomatic representatives abroad. As a set-off to the arrival of a number
of dejected travel-stained fugitives from MacMahon's army, whose
appearance was by no means of a nature to exhilarate the Parisians, the
defence was reinforced by a large number of Gardes Mobiles, who poured
into the city, particularly from Brittany, Trochu's native province, and
by a considerable force of regulars, infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
commanded by the veteran General Vinoy (then seventy years of age), who
had originally been despatched to assist MacMahon, but, having failed to
reach him before the disaster of Sedan, retreated in good order on the
capital. At the time when the Siege actually commenced there were in Paris
about 90,000 regulars (including all arms and categories), 110,000 Mobile
Guards, and a naval contingent of 13,500 men, that is a force of 213,000,
in addition to the National Guards, who were about 280,000 in number.
Thus, altogether, nearly half a million armed men were assembled in Paris
for the purpose of defending it. As all authorities afterwards admitted,
this was a very great blunder, as fully 100,000 regulars and mobiles might
have been spared to advantage for service in the provinces. Of course the
National Guards themselves could not be sent away from the city, though
they were often an encumbrance rather than a help, and could not possibly
have carried on the work of defence had they been left to their own
resources.

Besides troops, so long as the railway trains continued running,
additional military stores and supplies of food, flour, rice, biscuits,
preserved meats, rolled day by day into Paris. At the same time, several
illustrious exiles returned to the capital. Louis Blanc and Edgar Quinet
arrived there, after years of absence, in the most unostentatious fashion,
though they soon succumbed to the prevailing mania of inditing manifestoes
and exhortations for the benefit of their fellow-countrymen. Victor Hugo's
return was more theatrical. In those famous "Châtiments" in which he had
so severely flagellated the Third Napoleon (after, in earlier years,
exalting the First to the dignity of a demi-god), he had vowed to keep out
of France and to protest against the Empire so long as it lasted, penning,
in this connection, the famous line:

"Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là!"

But now the Empire had fallen, and so Hugo returned in triumph to Paris.
When he alighted from the train which brought him, he said to those who
had assembled to give him a fitting greeting, that he had come to do his
duty in the hour of danger, that duty being to save Paris, which meant
more than saving France, for it implied saving the world itself--Paris
being the capital of civilization, the centre of mankind. Naturally
enough, those fine sentiments were fervently applauded by the great poet's
admirers, and when he had installed himself with his companions in an open
carriage, two or three thousand people escorted him processionally along
the Boulevards. It was night-time, and the cafés were crowded and the
footways covered with promenaders as the _cortége_ went by, the escort
singing now the "Marseillaise" and now the "Chant du Départ," whilst on
every side shouts of "Vive Victor Hugo!" rang out as enthusiastically as
if the appointed "Saviour of Paris" were indeed actually passing. More
than once I saw the illustrious poet stand up, uncover, and wave his hat
in response to the acclamations, and I then particularly noticed the
loftiness of his forehead, and the splendid crop of white hair with which
it was crowned. Hugo, at that time sixty-eight years old, still looked
vigorous, but it was beyond the power of any such man as himself to save
the city from what was impending. All he could do was to indite perfervid
manifestoes, and subsequently, in "L'Année terrible," commemorate the
doings and sufferings of the time. For the rest, he certainly enrolled
himself as a National Guard, and I more than once caught sight of him
wearing _képi_ and _vareuse_. I am not sure, however, whether he ever did
a "sentry-go."

It must have been on the day following Victor Hugo's arrival that I
momentarily quitted Paris for reasons in which my youthful but precocious
heart was deeply concerned. I was absent for four days or so, and on
returning to the capital I was accompanied by my stepmother, who, knowing
that my father intended to remain in the city during the impending siege,
wished to be with him for a while before the investment began. I recollect
that she even desired to remain with us, though that was impossible, as
she had young children, whom she had left at Saint Servan; and, besides,
as I one day jocularly remarked to her, she would, by staying in Paris,
have added to the "useless mouths," whose numbers the Republican, like the
Imperial, Government was, with very indifferent success, striving to
diminish. However, she only quitted us at the last extremity, departing on
the evening of September 17, by the Western line, which, on the morrow,
the enemy out at Conflans, some fourteen miles from Paris.

Day by day the Parisians had received news of the gradual approach of
the German forces. On the 8th they heard that the Crown Prince of
Prussia's army was advancing from Montmirail to Coulommiers--whereupon the
city became very restless; whilst on the 9th there came word that the
black and white pennons of the ubiquitous Uhlans had been seen at La
Ferté-sous-Jouarre. That same day Thiers quitted Paris on a mission which
he had undertaken for the new Government, that of pleading the cause of
France at the Courts of London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. Then, on
the 11th, there were tidings that Laon had capitulated, though not without
its defenders blowing up a powder-magazine and thereby injuring some
German officers of exalted rank--for which reason the deed was
enthusiastically commended by the Parisian Press, though it would seem to
have been a somewhat treacherous one, contrary to the ordinary usages of
war. On the 12th some German scouts reached Meaux, and a larger force
leisurely occupied Melun. The French, on their part, were busy after a
fashion. They offered no armed resistance to the German advance, but they
tried to impede it in sundry ways. With the idea of depriving the enemy of
"cover," various attempts were made to fire some of the woods in the
vicinity of Paris, whilst in order to cheat him of supplies, stacks and
standing crops were here and there destroyed. Then, too, several railway
and other bridges were blown up, including the railway bridge at Creil, so
that direct communication with Boulogne and Calais ceased on September 12.

The 13th was a great day for the National Guards, who were then reviewed
by General Trochu. With my father and my young stepmother, I went to see
the sight, which was in many respects an interesting one. A hundred and
thirty-six battalions, or approximately 180,000 men, of the so-called
"citizen soldiery" were under arms; their lines extending, first, along
the Boulevards from the Bastille to the Madeleine, then down the Rue
Royale, across the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Elysées as far
as the Rond Point. In addition, 100,000 men of the Garde Mobile were
assembled along the quays of the Seine and up the Champs Elysées from the
Rond Point to the Arc de Triomphe. I have never since set eyes on so large
a force of armed men. They were of all sorts. Some of the Mobiles, notably
the Breton ones, who afterwards gave a good account of themselves, looked
really soldierly; but the National Guards were a strangely mixed lot. They
all wore _képis_, but quite half of them as yet had no uniforms, and were
attired in blouses and trousers of various hues. 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! Now and again
there appeared one which was really clever, which embodied a smart,
a witty idea; but how many of them were simply the outcome of a depraved,
a lewd, a bestial imagination! The most offensive caricatures of
Marie-Antoinette were as nothing beside those levelled at that unfortunate
woman, the Empress Eugénie.

Our last days of liberty were now slipping by. Some of the poorest folk of
the environs of Paris were at last coming into the city, bringing their
chattels with them. Strange ideas, however, had taken hold of some of the
more simple-minded suburban bourgeois. Departing hastily into the
provinces, so as to place their skins out of harm's reach, they had not
troubled to store their household goods in the city; but had left them in
their coquettish villas and pavilions, the doors of which were barely
looked. The German soldiers would very likely occupy the houses, but
assuredly they would do no harm to them. "Perhaps, however, it might be as
well to propitiate the foreign soldiers. Let us leave something for them,"
said worthy Monsieur Durand to Madame Durand, his wife; "they will be
hungry when they get here, and if they find something ready for them they
will be grateful and do no damage." So, although the honest Durands
carefully barred--at times even walled-up--their cellars of choice wines,
they arranged that plenty of bottles, at times even a cask, of _vin
ordinaire_ should be within easy access; and ham, cheese, sardines,
_saucissons de Lyon_, and _patés de foie gras_ were deposited in the
pantry cupboards, which were considerately left unlocked in order that the
good, mild-mannered, honest Germans (who, according to a proclamation
issued by "Unser Fritz" at an earlier stage of the hostilities, "made war
on the Emperor Napoleon and not on the French nation") might regale
themselves without let or hindrance. Moreover, the nights were "drawing
in," the evenings becoming chilly; so why not lay the fires, and place
matches and candles in convenient places for the benefit of the unbidden
guests who would so soon arrive? All those things being done, M. and Mme.
Durand departed to seek the quietude of Fouilly-les-Oies, never dreaming
that on their return to Montfermeil, Palaiseau, or Sartrouville, they
would find their _salon_ converted into a pigstye, their furniture
smashed, and their clocks and chimney-ornaments abstracted. Of course the
M. Durand of to-day knows what happened to his respected parents; he knows
what to think of the good, honest, considerate German soldiery; and, if he
can help it, he will not in any similar case leave so much as a wooden
spoon to be carried off to the Fatherland, and added as yet another trophy
to the hundred thousand French clocks and the million French nick-nacks
which are still preserved there as mementoes of the "grosse Zeit."

On September 15, we heard of some petty skirmishes between Uhlans and
Francs-tireurs in the vicinity of Montereau and Melun; on the morrow the
enemy captured a train at Senlis, and fired on another near Chantilly,
fortunately without wounding any of the passengers; whilst on the same day
his presence was signalled at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, only ten miles
south of Paris. That evening, moreover, he attempted to ford the Seine at
Juvisy. On the 16th some of his forces appeared between Créteil and
Neuilly-sur-Marne, on the eastern side of the city, and only some five
miles from the fort of Vincennes. Then we again heard of him on the
south--of his presence at Brunoy, Ablon, and Athis, and of the pontoons by
which he was crossing the Seine at Villeneuve and Choisy-le-Roi.

Thus the advance steadily continued, quite unchecked by force of arms,
save for just a few trifling skirmishes initiated by sundry
Francs-tireurs. Not a road, not a barricade, was defended by the
authorities; not once was the passage of a river contested. Here and there
the Germans found obstructions: poplars had been felled and laid across a
highway, bridges and railway tunnels had occasionally been blown up; but
all such impediments to their advance were speedily overcome by the enemy,
who marched on quietly, feeling alternately puzzled and astonished at
never being confronted by any French forces. As the invaders drew nearer
to Paris they found an abundance of vegetables and fruit at their
disposal, but most of the peasantry had fled, taking their live stock with
them, and, as a German officer told me in after years, eggs, cheese,
butter, and milk could seldom be procured.

On the 17th the French began to recover from the stupor which seemed to
have fallen on them. Old General Vinoy crossed the Marne at Charenton with
some of his forces, and a rather sharp skirmish ensued in front of the
village of Mesly. That same day Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador, took
his departure from Paris, proceeding by devious ways to Tours, whither, a
couple of days previously, three delegates of the National Defence--two
septuagenarians and one sexagenarian, Crémieux, Glais-Bizoin, and
Fourichon--had repaired in order to take over the general government of
France. Lord Lyons had previously told Jules Favre that he intended to
remain in the capital, but I believe that his decision was modified by
instructions from London. With him went most of the Embassy staff, British
interests in Paris remaining in the hands of the second secretary, Mr.
Wodehouse, and the vice-consul. The consul himself had very prudently
quitted Paris, in order "to drink the waters," some time previously.
Colonel Claremont, the military attaché, still remained with us, but by
degrees, as the siege went on, the Embassy staff dwindled down to the
concierge and two--or was it four?--sheep browsing on the lawn. Mr.
Wodehouse went off (my father and myself being among those who accompanied
him, as I shall relate in a future chapter) towards the middle of
November; and before the bombardment began Colonel Claremont likewise
executed a strategical retreat. Nevertheless--or should I say for that
very reason?--he was subsequently made a general officer.

A day or two before Lord Lyons left he drew up a notice warning British
subjects that if they should remain in Paris it would be at their own risk
and peril. The British colony was not then so large as it is now,
nevertheless it was a considerable one. A good many members of it
undoubtedly departed on their own initiative. Few, if any, saw Lord
Lyons's notice, for it was purely and simply conveyed to them through the
medium of _Galignani's Messenger_, which, though it was patronized by
tourists staying at the hotels, was seldom seen by genuine British
residents, most of whom read London newspapers.

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. There were gay crowds everywhere, on the Boulevards, on the
squares, along the quays, and along the roads skirting the ramparts. These
last were the "great attraction," and thousands of people strolled about
watching the work which was in progress. Stone casements were being roofed
with earth, platforms were being prepared for guns, gabions were being set
in position at the embrasures, sandbags were being carried to the
parapets, stakes were being pointed for the many _pièges-à-loups_, and
smooth earthworks were being planted with an infinity of spikes. Some guns
were already in position, others, big naval guns from Brest or Cherbourg,
were still lying on the turf. Meanwhile, at the various city gates, the
very last vehicles laden with furniture and forage were arriving from the
suburbs. And up and down went all the promenaders, chatting, laughing,
examining this and that work of defence or engine of destruction in such a
good-humoured, light-hearted way that the whole _chemin-de-ronde_ seemed
to be a vast fair, held solely for the amusement of the most volatile
people that the world has ever known.

Access to the Bois de Boulogne was forbidden. Acres of timber had already
been felled there, and from the open spaces the mild September breeze
occasionally wafted the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the
grunting of pigs. Our live stock consisted of 30,000 oxen, 175,000 sheep,
8,800 pigs, and 6,000 milch-cows. Little did we think how soon those
animals (apart from the milch-cows) would be consumed! Few of us were
aware that, according to Maxime Ducamp's great work on Paris, we had
hitherto consumed, on an average, every day of the year, 935 oxen, 4680
sheep, 570 pigs, and 600 calves, to say nothing of 46,000 head of poultry,
game, etc., 50 tons of fish, and 670,000 eggs.

Turning from the Bois de Boulogne, which had become our principal ranch
and sheep-walk, one found companies of National Guards learning the
"goose-step" in the Champs Elysées and the Cours-la-Reine. Regulars were
appropriately encamped both in the Avenue de la Grande Armée and on the
Champ de Mars. Field-guns and caissons filled the Tuileries garden, whilst
in the grounds of the Luxembourg Palace one again found cattle and sheep;
yet other members of the bovine and ovine species being installed,
singularly enough, almost cheek by jowl with the hungry wild beasts of the
Jardin des Plantes, whose mouths fairly watered at the sight of their
natural prey. If you followed the quays of the Seine you there found
sightseers gazing at the little gunboats and floating batteries on the
water; and if you climbed to Montmartre you there came upon people
watching "The Neptune," the captive balloon which Nadar, the aeronaut and
photographer, had already provided for purposes of military observation. I
shall have occasion to speak of him and his balloons again.

Among all that I myself saw on that memorable Sunday, I was perhaps most
struck by the solemn celebration of Mass in front of the statue of
Strasbourg on the Place de la Concorde. The capital of Alsace had been
besieged since the middle of August, but was still offering a firm
resistance to the enemy. Its chief defenders, General Uhrich and Edmond
Valentin, were the most popular heroes of the hour. The latter had been
appointed Prefect of the city by the Government of National Defence, and,
resolving to reach his post in spite of the siege which was being actively
prosecuted, had disguised himself and passed successfully through the
German lines, escaping the shots which were fired at him. In Paris the
statue of Strasbourg had become a place of pilgrimage, a sacred shrine, as
it were, adorned with banners and with wreaths innumerable. Yet I
certainly had not expected to see an altar set up and Mass celebrated in
front of it, as if it had been, indeed, a statue of the Blessed Virgin.

At this stage of affairs there was no general hostility to the Church in
Paris. The _bourgeoisie_--I speak of its masculine element--was as
sceptical then as it is now, but it knew that General Trochu, in whom it
placed its trust, was a practising and fervent Catholic, and that in
taking the Presidency of the Government he had made it one of his
conditions that religion should be respected. Such animosity as was shown
against the priesthood emanated from some of the public clubs where the
future Communards perorated. It was only as time went on, and the defence
grew more and more hopeless, that Trochu himself was denounced as a
_cagot_ and a _souteneur de soutanes_; and not until the Commune did the
Extremists give full rein to their hatred of the Church and its ministers.

In connection with religion, there was another sight which impressed me on
that same Sunday. I was on the point of leaving the Place de la Concorde
when a large body of Mobiles debouched either from the Rue Royale or the
Rue de Rivoli, and I noticed, with some astonishment, that not only were
they accompanied by their chaplains, but that they bore aloft several
processional religious banners. They were Bretons, and had been to Mass, I
ascertained, at the church of Notre Dame des Victoires--the favourite
church of the Empress Eugénie, who often attended early Mass there--and
were now returning to their quarters in the arches of the railway viaduct
of the Point-du-Jour. Many people uncovered as they thus went by
processionally, carrying on high their banners of the Virgin, she who is
invoked by the Catholic soldier as "Auzilium Christianorum." For a moment
my thoughts strayed back to Brittany, where, during my holidays the
previous year, I had witnessed the "Pardon" of Guingamp,

In the evening I went to the Boulevards with my father, and we afterwards
dropped into one or two of the public clubs. The Boulevard promenaders had
a good deal to talk about. General Ambert, who under the Empire had been
mayor of our arrondissement, had fallen out with his men, through speaking
contemptuously of the Republic, and after being summarily arrested by some
of them, had been deprived of his command. Further, the _Official Journal_
had published a circular addressed by Bismarck to the German diplomatists
abroad, in which he stated formally that if France desired peace she would
have to give "material guarantees." That idea, however, was vigorously
pooh-poohed by the Boulevardiers, particularly as rumours of sudden French
successes, originating nobody knew how, were once more in the air.
Scandal, however, secured the attention of many of the people seated in
the cafés, for the _Rappel_--Victor Hugo's organ--had that day printed a
letter addressed to Napoleon III by his mistress Marguerite Bellenger, who
admitted in it that she had deceived her imperial lover with respect to
the paternity of her child.

However, we went, my father and I, from the Boulevards to the
Folies-Bergere, which had been turned for the time into a public club, and
there we listened awhile to Citizen Lermina, who, taking Thiers's mission
and Bismarck's despatch as his text, protested against France concluding
any peace or even any armistice so long as the Germans had not withdrawn
across the frontier. There was still no little talk of that description.
The old agitator Auguste Blanqui--long confined in one of the cages of
Mont Saint-Michel, but now once more in Paris--never wearied of opposing
peace in the discourses that he delivered at his own particular club,
which, like the newspaper he inspired, was called "La Patrie en Danger."
In other directions, for instance at the Club du Maine, the Extremists
were already attacking the new Government for its delay in distributing
cartridges to the National Guards, being, no doubt, already impatient to
seize authority themselves.

Whilst other people were promenading or perorating, Trochu, in his room at
the Louvre, was receiving telegram after telegram informing him that the
Germans were now fast closing round the city. He himself, it appears, had
no idea of preventing it; but at the urgent suggestion of his old friend
and comrade General Ducrot, he had consented that an effort should be made
to delay, at any rate, a complete investment. In an earlier chapter I had
occasion to mention Ducrot in connexion with the warnings which Napoleon
III received respecting the military preparations of Prussia. At this
time, 1870, the general was fifty-three years old, and therefore still in
his prime. As commander of a part of MacMahon's forces he had
distinguished himself at the battle of Wörth, and when the Marshal was
wounded at Sedan, it was he who, by right of seniority, at first assumed
command of the army, being afterwards compelled, however, to relinquish
the poet to Wimpfen, in accordance with an order from Palikao which
Wimpfen produced. Included at the capitulation, among the prisoners taken
by the Germans, Ducrot subsequently escaped--the Germans contending that
he had broken his parole in doing so, though this does not appear to have
been the case. Immediately afterwards he repaired to Paris to place
himself at Trochu's disposal. At Wörth he had suggested certain tactics
which might have benefited the French army; at Sedan he had wished to make
a supreme effort to cut through the German lines; and now in Paris he
proposed to Trochu a plan which if successful might, he thought, retard
the investment and momentarily cut the German forces in halves.

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