A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4

W >> Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks >> Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4




"Here Count Castelnau interposed meekly to say, on behalf of the
emperor, that he had surrendered, personally, in the hope that his
self-sacrifice would induce the king to grant the army honorable
terms. 'Is that all?' Bismarck inquired. 'Yes,' said the Frenchman.
'But what is the sword surrendered,' asked the chancellor; 'is it his
own sword, or the sword of France?' 'It is only the sword of the
emperor,' was Castelnau's reply. 'Well, there is no use talking about
other conditions,' said Von Moltke, sharply, while a look of
contentment and gratification passed over his face, according to
Bismarck; one 'almost joyful,' writes the keen Captain d'Orcet. 'After
the last words of Von Moltke,' he continues, 'De Wimpffen exclaimed,
"We shall renew the battle." "The truce," retorted the German general,
"expires to-morrow morning at four o'clock. At four, precisely, I
shall open fire." We were all standing. After Von Moltke's words no
one spoke a syllable. The silence was icy.' But then Bismarck
intervened to soothe excited feelings, and called on his soldier-
comrade to show, once more, how impossible resistance had become. The
group sat down again at the red baize-covered table, and Von Moltke
began his demonstration afresh. 'Ah,' said De Wimpffen, 'your
positions are not so strong as you would have us believe them to be.'
'You do not know the topography of the country about Sedan,' was Von
Moltke's true and crushing answer. 'Here is a bizarre detail which
illustrates the presumptuous and inconsequent character of your
people,' he went on, now thoroughly aroused. 'When the war began you
supplied your officers with maps of Germany at a time when they could
not study the geography of their own country for want of French maps.
I tell you that our positions are not only very strong, they are
inexpugnable.' It was then that De Wimpffen, unable to reply, wished
to accept the offer made but not accepted at an earlier period, and to
send an officer to verify these assertions. 'You will send nobody,'
exclaimed the iron general. 'It is useless, and you can believe my
word. Besides, you have not long to reflect. It is now midnight; the
truce ends at four o'clock, and I will grant no delay.' Driven to his
last ditch, De Wimpffen pleaded that he must consult his fellow-
generals, and he could not obtain their opinions by four o'clock. Once
more the diplomatic peacemaker intervened, and Von Moltke agreed to
fix the final limit at nine. 'He gave way at last,' says Bismarck,
'when I showed him that it could do no harm.' The conference so
dramatic broke up, and each one went his way; but, says the German
official narrative, 'as it was not doubtful that the hostile army,
completely beaten and nearly surrounded, would be obliged to submit to
the clauses already indicated, the great headquarter staff was
occupied, that very night, in drawing up the text of the
capitulation,' a significant and practical comment, showing what stuff
there was behind the severe language which, at the midnight meeting,
fell from the Chief of that able and sleepless body of chosen men.

"From this conference General de Wimpffen went straight to the wearied
emperor, who had gone to bed. But he received his visitor, who told
him that the proposed conditions were hard, and that the sole chance
of mitigation lay in the efforts of his Majesty. 'General,' said the
emperor, 'I shall start at five o'clock for the German headquarters,
and I shall see whether the king will be more favorable;' for he seems
to have become possessed of an idea that King William would personally
treat with him. The emperor kept his word. Believing that he would be
permitted to return to Sedan, he drove forth without bidding farewell
to any of his troops; but, as the drawbridge of Torcy was lowered and
he passed over, the Zouaves on duty shouted 'Vive l'Empereur!' This
cry was 'the last adieu which fell on his ears' as we read in the
narrative given to the world on his behalf. He drove in a droshki
toward Donchery, preceded by General Reille, who, before six o'clock,
awoke Bismarck from his slumbers, and warned him that the emperor
desired to speak with him. 'I went with him directly,' said Bismarck,
in a conversation reported by Busch; 'and got on my horse, all dusty
and dirty as I was, in an old cap and my great waterproof boots, to
ride to Sedan, where I supposed him to be.' But he met him on the
highroad near Frenois, 'sitting in a two-horse carriage.' Beside him
was the Prince de la Moskowa, and on horseback Castelnau and Reille.
'I gave the military salute,' says Bismarck. 'He took his cap off and
the officers did the same; whereupon I took off mine, although it was
contrary to rule. He said, "Couvrez-vous, done." I behaved to him just
as if in St. Cloud, and asked his commands.' Naturally, he wanted to
see the king, but that could not be allowed. Then Bismarck placed his
quarters in Donchery at the emperor's disposal, but he declined the
courtesy, and preferred to rest in a house by the wayside. The cottage
of a Belgian weaver unexpectedly became famous; a one-storied house,
painted yellow, with white shutters and Venetian blinds. He and the
chancellor entered the house, and went up to the first floor where
there was 'a little room with one window. It was the best in the
house, but had only one deal table and two rush-bottomed chairs.' In
that lowly abode they talked together of many things for three-
quarters of an hour, among others about the origin of the war--which,
it seems, neither desired--the emperor asserting, Bismarck reports,
that 'he had been driven into it by the pressure of public opinion,' a
very inadequate representation of the curious incidents which preceded
the fatal decision. But when the emperor began to ask for more
favorable terms, he was told that, on a military question, Von Moltke
alone could speak. On the other hand, Bismarck's request to know who
now had authority to make peace was met by a reference to 'the
Government in Paris'; so that no progress was made. Then 'we must
stand to our demands with regard to the Army of Sedan,' said Bismarck.
General von Moltke was summoned, and 'Napoleon III. demanded that
nothing should be decided before he had seen the king, for he hoped to
obtain from his Majesty some favorable concessions for the army.' The
German official narrative of the war states that the emperor expressed
a wish that the army might be permitted to enter Belgium, but that, of
course, the chief of the staff could not accept the proposal. General
von Moltke forthwith set out for Vendresse, where the king was, to
report progress. He met his Majesty on the road, and there 'the king
fully approved the proposed conditions of capitulation, and declared
that he would not see the emperor until the terms prescribed had been
accepted'; a decision which gratified the chancellor as well as the
chief of the staff. 'I did not wish them to come together,' observed
the count, 'until we had settled the matter of the capitulation';
sparing the feelings of both and leaving the business to the hard
military men.

"The emperor lingered about in the garden of the weaver's cottage; he
seems to have desired fresh air after his unpleasant talk with the
chancellor. Dr. Moritz Busch, who had hurried to the spot, has left a
characteristic description of the emperor. He saw there 'a little
thick-set man,' wearing jauntily a red cap with a gold border, a black
paletôt lined with red, red trousers, and white kid gloves. 'The look
in his light gray eyes was somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of
people who have lived hard. His whole appearance,' says the irreverent
Busch, 'was a little unsoldierlike. The man looked too soft, I might
say too shabby, for the uniform he wore.' While one scene in the
stupendous drama was performed at the weaver's cottage, another was
acted or endured in Sedan, where De Wimpffen had summoned the generals
to consider the terms of capitulation. He has given his own account of
the incident; but the fullest report is supplied by Lebrun. There were
present at this council of war more than thirty generals. With tearful
eyes and a voice broken by sobs, the unhappy and most ill-starred De
Wimpffen described his interview and conflict with Von Moltke and
Bismarck, and its dire result--the army to surrender as prisoners of
war, the officers alone to retain their arms, and by way of mitigating
the rigor of these conditions, full permission to return home would be
given to any officer, provided he would engage in writing and on honor
not to serve again during the war. The generals, save one or two, and
these finally acquiesced, felt that the conditions could not be
refused; but they were indignant at the clause suggesting that the
officers might escape the captivity which would befall their soldiers,
provided they would engage to become mere spectators of the invasion
of their country. In the midst of these mournful deliberations Captain
von Zingler, a messenger from Von Moltke, entered, and the scene
became still more exciting. 'I am instructed,' he said, 'to remind you
how urgent it is that you should come to a decision. At ten o'clock,
precisely, if you have not come to a resolution, the German batteries
will fire on Sedan. It is now nine, and I shall have barely time to
carry your answer to headquarters.' To this sharp summons De Wimpffen
answered that he could not decide until he knew the result of the
interview between the emperor and the king.' 'That interview,' said
the stern captain, 'will not in any way affect the military
operations, which can only he determined by the generals who have full
power to resume or stop the strife.' It was, indeed, as Lebrun
remarked, useless to argue with a captain charged to state a fact; and
at the general's suggestion De Wimpffen agreed to accompany Captain
von Zingler to the German headquarters.

"These were, for the occasion, the Château de Bellevue, where the
emperor himself had been induced to take up his abode, and about
eleven o'clock, in a room under the imperial chamber, De Wimpffen put
his name at the foot of the document drawn up, during the night, by
the German staff. Then he sought out the emperor, and, greatly moved,
told him that 'all was finished.' His majesty, he writes, 'with tears
in his eyes, approached me, pressed my hand, and embraced me,' and 'my
sad and painful duty having been accomplished, I remounted my horse
and road back to Sedan, '"la mort dans l'âme."'

"So soon as the convention was signed, the king arrived, accompanied
by the crown prince. Three years before, as the emperor reminds us in
the writing attributed to him, the king had been his guest in Paris,
where all the sovereigns of Europe had come to behold the marvels of
the famous Exhibition. 'Now,' so runs the lamentation, 'betrayed by
fortune, Napoleon III. had lost all, and had placed in the hands of
his conqueror the sole thing left him--his liberty.' And he goes on to
say, in general terms, that the king deeply sympathized with his
misfortunes, but nevertheless could not grant better conditions to the
army. 'He told the emperor that the castle of Wilhelmshohe had been
selected as his residence; the crown prince then entered and cordially
shook hands with Napoleon; and at the end of a quarter of an hour the
king withdrew. The emperor was permitted to send a telegram in cipher
to the empress, to tell her what had happened, and urge her to
negotiate a peace.' Such is the bald record of this impressive event.
The telegram, which reached the empress at four o'clock on the
afternoon of the 3d, was in these words: 'The army is defeated and
captive; I myself am a prisoner.'

"For one day more the fallen sovereign rested at Bellevue to meditate
on the caprices of fortune or the decrees of fate. But that day, at
the head of a splendid company of princes and generals, King William,
crossing the bridge of Donchery, rode throughout the whole vast extent
of the German lines, to greet his hardy warriors and be greeted by
them on the very scene of their victories. And well they deserved
regal gratitude, for together with their comrades who surrounded Metz,
by dint of long swift marches and steadfast valor, they had overcome
two great armies in thirty days.

"During the battle of Sedan, the Germans lost in killed and wounded
8,924 officers and men. On the other hand, the French lost 3,000
killed, 14,000 wounded, and 21,000 captured in the battle. The number
of prisoners by capitulation was 83,000, while 3,000 were disarmed in
Belgium, and a few hundreds, more or less, made their way by devious
routes near and over the frontier, to Mezières, Rocroi, and other
places in France. In addition, were taken one eagle and two flags, 419
field guns and mitrailleuses, 139 garrison guns, many wagons, muskets,
and horses. On the day after the surrender, the French soldiers,
having stacked their arms in Sedan, marched into the peninsula formed
by the deep loop of the Meuse--'le Camp de Misère' as they called
it--and were sent thence in successive batches, numbered by thousands,
to Germany. Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which
had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and the
Paris politicians."

Here closes the first and most dramatic phase of the war. Thereafter
the enemy was smitten hip and thigh. At once hurry orders were given
to open the line which led from Nancy to Paris. What followed must be
briefly told.

On the 5th of September the king of Prussia entered Rheims. On the 8th
Laon surrendered. On the 15th advanced troops halted within three
hours of the capital of France, making a half circle round its
defences. This investment Ducrot--who had escaped from Sedan--
attempted to prevent. His resources consisted in the Thirteenth Corps
under General Vinoy, and the Fourteenth under General Renault, and
18,000 marines, excellent soldiers, a total of 88,000 regular troops.
He had also in the camps of Vincennes and St. Maur 100,000
Garde-Mobiles, only very imperfectly disciplined; 10,000 volunteers
from the provinces, resolute men, prepared to give their lives for
their country; the National Guard, composed of sixty old and a hundred
and ninety-four new battalions which, with other miscellaneous
volunteers of Paris, numbered perhaps 200,000 men, not, however,
thoroughly to be depended upon. Altogether the defenders numbered
about 400,000, but of these only the 88,000 regular troops and the
10,000 volunteers from the provinces could be reckoned as trustworthy.

Nevertheless, the Third German Army had no difficulty in establishing
itself in a position embracing the southern and southeastern front of
the city, from Sèvres to the Marne; the Fourth Army faced the
northeast and northern front, the cavalry the west front, so far as
the windings of the Seine would permit it. On the 5th of October the
crown prince took up his headquarters at Versailles, those of the king
being at Ferrières, the seat of the Paris Rothschilds. Here took
place, on the 19th October, the famous interview between the French
foreign minister, Jules Favre, and Bismarck, in which the former made
his declaration that France would surrender neither one inch of her
territories nor one stone of her fortresses. The interview remained
without result.

Meanwhile the fortress of Toul had surrendered. Strasburg, after a
siege of six weeks, also surrendered, and, on October 27, Bazaine
handed over Metz and an army consisting of three marshals of France,
6,000 officers, and 173,000 soldiers--an act for which after the
conclusion of the war he was court-martialled, declared guilty of
treason, and sentenced to death and degradation. The then president of
the republic, Marshal MacMahon, commuted the death sentence into one
of imprisonment for twenty years. Confined in the fort of the island
St. Marguerite, near Cannes, Bazaine escaped, and lived in Spain till
his death.

Bazaine's surrender made the Germans masters of one of the strongest
fortresses in Europe, with 800 heavy guns, 102 mitrailleuses, 300,000
Chassepots, and placed at the disposal of the king an entire
blockading army.

It was at this juncture that Gambetta astonished the world. Reaching
Tours in a balloon from Paris, and there assuming the ministry of war,
he became practically dictator of France. Thence he issued a
proclamation to the people of France, urging them to continue their
resistance to the bitter end, and directed that all men, capable of
bearing arms, should lend their hands to the work, and should join the
troops of the line at Tours. In this way he formed an Army of the
North, and an Army of the Loire, and, later, an Army of the East. In
all respects he displayed a fertility of resource which astounded. He
obtained arms, uniforms, munitions, and other necessaries from foreign
countries, especially from England. He bestowed the greatest pains in
selecting as generals of the new levies men who should be real
soldiers. Under his inspiring influence the war in the provinces
assumed a very serious complexion. France had responded nobly to the
call he had made upon her people. Early reverses gave vigor to the new
levies, and they fought with energy against the Bavarians under Von
der Than at Arthenay and Orleans, and against the division of Wittich
at Châteaudun and Chartres. But they were fighting against increasing
odds. Every day brought reinforcements to the Germans.

With the exception of a momentary gleam of success on the Loire,
France met with nothing but disaster. In Paris matters were critical.
Every one of the different sorties made by her defenders had been
repulsed; the hope by which the spirits of her defenders had been
buoyed was vanishing fast: famine was approaching with giant strides;
the strong places outside the circle of her defences were falling one
after another; the fire of the enemy was, by the nearer approach of
their troops, becoming more concentrated and more severe. Peace must
be had. On January 28th, then, there was concluded at Versailles an
armistice for three weeks. Then a national assembly was summoned to
Bordeaux to consider how peace might be restored. In that assembly
Thiers received full administrative powers, including the power of
nominating his own ministers. He himself, with Jules Favre, undertook
the negotiations with Bismarck. To insure the success of those
negotiations the armistice was twice prolonged. This was done at the
instance of Thiers, for the conditions insisted upon by Bismarck were
hard, and the French statesman struggled with all his energies to
induce him to abate his demands. Especially did he strive to save
Metz, or, at least, to receive Luxemburg in compensation.

But his endeavors were fruitless. The utmost that Bismarck would do
was not to insist upon securing the still unconquered Belfort.
Despairing of moving him further, Thiers and Favre gave way on the
24th of February, and signed the preliminaries of peace. They were,
first, the transfer to Germany of the northeast portion of Lorraine,
with Metz and Diedenhofen, and of Alsace, Belfort excepted; second,
the payment to Germany by France of one milliard of francs in 1871,
and four milliards in the three years following; third, the Germans to
begin to evacuate French territory immediately after the ratification
of the treaty; Paris and its forts on the left bank of the Seine and
certain departments at once; the forts on the right bank after the
ratification and the payment of the first half milliard. After the
payment of two milliards the German occupation of the departments
Marne, Ardennes, Upper Marne, Meuae, the Vosges, and Meurthe, and the
fortress of Belfort should cease. Interest at five per cent to be
charged on the milliards remaining unpaid from the date of
ratification; fourth, the German troops remaining in France to make no
requisitions on the departments in which they were located, but to be
fed at the cost of France; fifth, the inhabitants of the sequestered
provinces to be allowed a certain fixed time in which to make their
choice between the two countries; sixth, all prisoners to be at once
restored; seventh, a treaty embodying all these terms to be settled at
Brussels. It was further arranged that the German army should not
occupy Paris, but should content itself with marching through the
city.

Meanwhile, negotiations between the statesmen and governments of
Germany resulted in a proposal to King William that, as head of the
confederation, he should assume the title of German emperor. A
resolution to that effect was passed by the North German Reichstag on
the 9th of December, and a deputation proceeded to the royal
headquarters at Versailles, where, on the 18th of December, the
imperial crown was offered to the brother of the king who had once
refused it. Deeply touched, King William accepted, and in the palace
of Louis XIV., surrounded by a brilliant assembly of princes,
officers, and ministers of state, the venerable monarch was proclaimed
Deutscher Kaiser.

Then at last was the dream of centuries realized. At last was the
empire restored. Not the Holy Roman Empire, not the empire of the
Middle Ages, but the empire as a national state.

Under the leadership of Bismarck, to whom the restoration of the
empire was directly due, the new Reich began its organization as a
united federation. Among its earliest difficulties was an
ecclesiastical contest with the Church of Rome. Known as the
Kulturkampf, this struggle was an effort to vindicate the right of the
state to interfere in the affairs of all German religious societies.
Another difficulty which demanded government interference was the
Judenhetze, or persecution of the Jews, which reached a climax in
1881. A further difficulty was encountered in the quick growth of
socialism. Two attempts on the life of the kaiser were attributed to
it, and a plot being discovered, which had for object the elimination
of the emperor and other German rulers, repressive measures resulted.
Meanwhile an alliance offensive and defensive between Germany and
Austria had been formed, into which Italy subsequently entered.

On March 9, 1888, the Emperor William I. died. His son, Frederick, at
that time suffering from a cancerous affection of the throat, became
kaiser. Three months later he also died, and William II. succeeded
him.

The latter's first step of any importance was to get in front of half
a million bayonets. Coincidently he declared that those bayonets and
he--or rather he and those bayonets--were born for one another.
Incidentally he announced that he was a monarch, specially conceived,
specially created, specially ordained by the Almighty.

The step and the remarks were tantamount to a call to quarters. It
would be dramatic to state that the circumjacent territories trembled,
but it is exact to affirm that there was a war scare at once, one
which by no means diminished when a little later he showed Bismarck
the door.

As already noted, the refounding of the empire was Bismarck's work. To
achieve his purpose he had--to again quote Colonel Malleson--defied
parliaments and people. He had led his master and his country over
abysses, in the traversing of which one false step would have been
fatal. Aided a great deal by the wretched diplomacy of Austria, by the
deterioration of the powers of the French emperor, and by his sublime
audacity, he had compelled to his will all the moral difficulties of
the undertaking. Von Boon and Moltke had done the rest. No longer,
however, was he allowed to put forth his hand to sustain the work
which he had created. For him it had been better to die, like Von
Boon, like Moltke, keeping to the end the confidence of his sovereign,
than to feel himself impelled, dismissed from office, to pour out his
grievances to every passing listener, to speak in terms not far
removed from treason of the sovereign who had declined to be his
pupil. Was it for this, he must have muttered, that I forced on the
war which gave Prussia Schleswig and Holstein in 1864; that I
compelled unwilling Austria to declare war in 1866; that, by the
freest circulation of exaggerated statements, I roused a bitter
feeling in Germany against France, and excited the statesmen, and,
above all, the mob, of Paris in 1870?--for this, that, the work
accomplished, an empire given to the Hohenzollerns, I might be cast
aside like a squeezed-out orange? Well might these be his thoughts,
for it was he who made possible the task of German unity, though in a
manner which will commend itself only to those who argue that the end
justifies the means.

A journalist wrote a pamphlet on the subject. In it he compared the
kaiser to Caligula. For his pains he was sent to jail. He might better
have been sent to school. Caligula was a poet in love with the moon.
The kaiser is a poseur in love with himself. One of Caligula's many
diversions was killing his people. Such slaughter as the kaiser has
effected consists in twenty-five thousand head of game. The career of
Caligula is horrible, yet in the horrible is sometimes the sublime.
The career of the kaiser has been theatrical, and in the theatrical is
always the absurd. The single parallel between the two lies in the
fact that all young emperors stand on a peak so lofty that, do they
look below, vertigo rises, while from above delirium comes. There is
nothing astonishing in that. It would be astonishing were it
otherwise. What does astonish is the equilibrium which the kaiser, in
spite of his words, his threats and actions, has managed to maintain.
Regarded as a firebrand and a menace to the peace of Europe, with the
exception of two big blunders--an invitation to King Humbert to
promenade with him through Strasburg, and the message which he sent to
President Kruger of the Transvaal after the failure of the Jameson
raid--with these exceptions he has exhibited a regard for
international etiquette entirely immaculate, and not always returned.

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