The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (17 page)

In Paris the mood (as described by Goncourt) in the days immediately preceding the Battle of Châtillon had been one of ‘Let them come, let the cannon thunder! It’s been too long!’ When in fact the first cannon began to be heard in the distance, the streets filled with people anxious for news. Initially there were the usual
canards
of a ‘great victory’. Then the appearance of the abject flotsam from Châtillon brought with it the truth. Retribution for this first setback was promptly exacted on the wretched deserters. Angry crowds
seized them on the roads into Paris, spitting in their faces and threatening to lynch them, until the
Garde Nationale
escorted them—with many prods of rifle butts—into the centre of the city. Even the liberal-minded Madame Lambert wrote in her journal, ‘I could have watched, without flinching, while they shot the deserters’. (A week later Tommy Bowles in fact watched twenty-one of them ‘marched round the ramparts with their hands tied behind their backs, their coats turned inside out, and then led forth from the Porte de Maillot to be shot….’ But he added, ‘There are those, however, who maintain that they were not shot at all, but brought back by another gate with their coats turned the right side out’, and indeed there is no record that any were actually shot). Trochu’s official communiqué, couched in the age-old military formula for minimizing a catastrophe, said baldly: ‘Some of our soldiers withdrew with a regrettable precipitation….’ But there was no disguising the seriousness of Châtillon. With its loss vanished French hopes of maintaining any positions in advance of the ring of forts, which now automatically became the line of investment. Worse still, the performance of the Zouaves confirmed in Trochu’s mind all his pessimism about the troops under his command, so that henceforth he would view any major offensive out of Paris with the greatest reserve.

Some small consolation was found by the Parisians the day after Châtillon when they were told that a large mine had been exploded under a number of German spectators who had assembled to gloat over Paris from their newly-won position, and throughout the rest of September various small-scale engagements were fought nearby in attempts to retrieve something from the disaster. At Villejuif on September 23rd, the French troops already showed themselves in a much better light, but strategically the situation remained unchanged.
¹
Of these French attacks General von Blumenthal, Chief-of-Staff to the Prussian Crown Prince, wrote in his journal: ‘Our lines are so weakly held that, if the enemy should attack at one point with the whole of his force concentrated, we must be beaten back and have our line cut through. Fortunately, he does not understand his business, and wastes his strength striking out blindly in all directions’.

* * *

On the same day that Ducrot’s men were doing battle on the Châtillon Plateau, Jules Favre was discussing peace with Bismarck at Ferrières fifteen miles to the east of Paris. Ever since the deposition of Louis-Napoleon the new Republican Government had cherished illusions that peace on honourable terms had only to be asked for, provided of course the right way of asking could be found. A flurry of diplomatic activity had ensued. On September 6th Favre and Thiers told Lord Lyons that they wished the neutral powers to mediate on the basis of reparations, but no cession of territory. To this latter point Favre committed himself irrevocably, and rashly, in a circular letter to the chancelleries of Europe in which he declared that France would never surrender ‘an inch of her soil nor a stone of her fortresses’. In their interview with Lord Lyons, Thiers had tried to impress the British of the urgency of a solution by emphasizing the ‘Red menace’ in Paris, and indeed the following week Lyons was reporting back to Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, his own belief that ‘the Reds within are more likely to give permanent trouble than the Prussians without’. On September 7th, Favre was begging Washburne to ‘intervene to make peace’, and two days later he despatched Thiers to London on a similar mission. There Thiers found sympathetic courtesy, but was offered nothing more substantial by the Gladstone Government which, not uncharacteristically, was too preoccupied with domestic reforms. From London he travelled to Vienna, from Vienna to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Florence, even at one point withdrawing the Comtesse de Castiglione temporarily from oblivion in order to try those well-proven charms upon Bismarck, on France’s behalf. But nowhere did he gain more than evasive half-promises. Europe was by now thoroughlyin awe of Prussia.

After Thiers had left London, Favre decided to communicate directly with Bismarck and ask for an audience. Bismarck agreed, and—still full of optimism—Favre set out for Meaux where King Wilhelm had last been reported to have his headquarters. In fact, the two parties passed each other on the road and, fatigued, Favre had to retrace his footsteps to Ferrières where Bismarck was sleeping. Rapidly his illusions were dispersed as he discovered Bismarck disposed to negotiate no less harshly with him, the plenipotentiary of the Republic, than he had with de Wimpffen, Louis-Napoleon’s man, at Sedan. Deep into the night he pleaded with Bismarck in the great Rothschild palace at Ferrières, which Crown Prince Frederick amiably described as ‘a chest-of-drawers standing with its legs in the air’. But on every point the agile lawyer was out-manoeuvred. Bismarck, who had often expounded the advantages of smoking during negotiations, studied his adversary with cool detachment, puffing
smoke at him, while Favre, a non-smoker, fidgeted nervously. The new, extortive temper of the triumphant Prussians was reflected in all Bismarck said. At last, with unmodified brutality, he posed Prussia’s demands: Alsace and part of Lorraine. ‘I am certain’, he added with a touch of prophecy, ‘that at a future time we shall have a fresh war with you, and we wish to undertake it under every advantage’. Favre pointed out that no French Government could survive yielding to such a demand. ‘You want to destroy France!’ he exclaimed, and then burst into tears.
¹
Bismarck went on to make it clear that the Prussians would not even consider a temporary armistice without the prior surrender of the fortresses of Toul and Strasbourg, which were still holding out.

The interview was at an end. To one of Bismarck’s entourage, Favre as he left the Château de Ferrières looked ‘crushed and depressed, almost despairing’. Apart from humiliation, only one thing had been achieved for France; the beginnings in a shift of British public opinion. Queen Victoria had herself telegraphed King Wilhelm to beg him ‘to display magnanimity’ at Ferrières, and she had been manifestly snubbed. Moreover, as the harshness of Bismarck’s terms were revealed, the feeling spread in Britain that Prussia was no longer the injured party and had now put herself in the wrong by her determination to continue the war. But what immediate value could France derive from this incipient British sympathy?

Back in Paris the Provisional Government was shocked and outraged by what Favre had to tell. Gambetta at once telegraphed the Prefects of Paris: ‘Post up in all Communes the summary of Favre’s interview with Bismarck…. Paris, incensed, swears to resist to the end. Let the provinces rise up!’ For France, with her back pinned to the wall by the rapacity of the Prussian General Staff, it now seemed there was no option but to fight tooth and nail. A decisive watershed, not only in the course of the Franco-Prussian War, but in the whole history of European relations, was about to be traversed. Henceforth warfare would no longer be a polite contest between professional armies on the eighteenth-century model, but a jungle-law ‘survival of the fittest’ struggle between peoples—of a kind of which the French
levée en masse
of the 1790’s had provided a foretaste. An indelible mark would be carried by Europe into the twentieth century.

Gambetta’s telegram immediately posed the question: how in
fact were the unoccupied provinces to be marshalled for total war; in particular, so that they could march to the aid of Paris? Since Trochu had virtually stripped the country of its last organized forces (now incarcerated in Paris), new armies would also have to be raised. After the revolution of September 4th, opinion in the provinces where Bonapartism was strongest had been frankly apathetic, and many local commanders were paralysed by a lethargy of despair. But, as the actual approach of the Prussians provoked new fears, the last news reaching Paris from outside before the investment was more encouraging; Gustave Flaubert, now a lieutenant in the local
Garde Nationale
, was writing (perhaps rather optimistically) to his niece from Rouen about ‘armies being forced; in a fortnight there will be perhaps a million men about Paris,’ and to Maxime du Camp (on September 29th) ‘I guarantee that within a fortnight all France will rise. Near Mantes a peasant has strangled a Prussian and torn him apart with his teeth. In short there is now a genuine will to fight….’ But who was to exploit and canalize this will; in fact, to lead the provinces? As soon as the Government of National Defence had come into power, there had been discussions as to whether it should stay in Paris, or retire into the provinces. Few of its members then seriously believed that any army was capable of totally blockading Paris from the rest of France; but what really decided the issue
was
the instinctive belief that ‘Paris was France’. After a great deal of discussion, by September 11th the Government had decided to stay put and instead send Crémieux as a one-man delegation to Tours. Crémieux was seventy-four, inexperienced and (like so many of his colleagues) a talkative lawyer rather than a man of action. Almost at once the confusion and chaos at Tours proved too much for him, and—just two days before the investment—Glais-Bizoin and Admiral Fourichon were sent as reinforcements. It was a remarkably inept selection, for they too were old and doddery and were at once equally overwhelmed by events. What was needed was a Churchill. But was there such a man among France’s new leaders, and even if there was how could he be got out of besieged Paris?

On September 23rd a possible answer to the second question was sent, literally, from above. A number of balloons had been located in Paris; though most of them were in various states of disrepair, including the famous
Céleste
, which had dazzled visitors by its captive flights over the Great Exhibition of 1867, now described as being like a ‘sieve’. One of them, the
Neptune
, had been sufficiently patched up, however, to be wafted out of Paris on the 23rd, over the heads of the astonished Prussians. Its intrepid pilot, Duruof, had landed safely at Evreux beyond the enemy’s reach with 125 kilograms of dispatches,
after a three-hour flight. Four other balloons took off in quick succession, with (astonishingly enough) none of their crews being shot down, captured, or otherwise coming to grief. The blockade seemed to have been broken, and a means of communicating with the provinces created reliable enough for the Minister of Posts, M. Rampont, to decree the establishment of a regular ‘Balloon Post’.

As soon as the idea was mooted of ballooning a new plenipotentiary to Tours, the fearless Ducrot volunteered. As France’s most vigorous military leader, with an untarnished reputation, he would have been a good choice; but, as Bismarck had placed a price on his head, the risks of his balloon descending in the Prussian camp were considered too grave to undertake; besides, Trochu considered him indispensable in Paris. Few other voices in the Government had quite matched Ducrot’s enthusiasm. Rochefort had become unusually silent, and Favre—declaring (according to Trochu) that ‘the post of peril was in Paris’—turned positively green at the thought of the hazardous voyage. As Trochu admitted afterwards with commendable honesty, ‘Monsieur Gambetta was the only one of us who could regard without apprehension the prospects of a voyage in a balloon’, and as Minister of the Interior Gambetta did seem to be a logical choice when it came to organizing a
levée en masse
in the provinces. Gambetta’s more remarkable attributes were not then apparent. He was only thirty-two and of an extremely unpromising physical appearance. The son of an Italian grocer living in Cahors, he was described by Rochefort as ‘inclined to thinness, with long black hair, a Jewish nose, and an eye which protruded so terribly from its socket as to lead one to fear lest it should escape altogether…’ (an operation later cured this defect). His morals were deplorable, some of his personal habits worse, and a careless Bohemian life had prematurely aged him so that his beard and his mass of unkempt black hair were already streaked with grey. But before the age of thirty he had established himself as one of the great orators of France, and above all his meridional blood endowed him with something notably lacking in the other men of September 4th—passion. One of his staunchest admirers, Minister Washburne (who had also been among the first to recognize his qualities), recalled how at the famous Baudin Trial where he had first made his name, Gambetta ‘poured forth a torrent of eloquence, denunciation and argument which seemed to completely stun the court… Mirabeau, in his palmiest days in the National Convention, was never his superior’. In the judgment of another contemporary, ‘There was authority even in his laugh… and it seemed natural for others to obey as for him to command.’ All that he seemed to lack was military experience.

The decision to entrust Gambetta to a balloon was reached on October 3rd, but it was not until four days later that a favourable wind allowed him to start. By 11 a.m. on the 7th, a huge crowd had assembled round the launching-pad that had been set up in the Place St.-Pierre, Montmartre, the highest point of Paris and close to where the Sacré-Cœur now stands. There had been a big disappointment the previous day when the count-down ceased after two small trial balloons had disappeared into thick fog at an altitude of a few hundred feet. But now all augured well. There were loud cheers as Gambetta arrived, wrapped up in a great furred cloak prepared by some kind feminine hand. A farewell embrace from the veteran Socialist, Louis Blanc, a command of ‘
Messieurs les voyageurs, en ballon!
’, and Gambetta climbed into the open wicker basket. The crowd commented on Gambetta’s apparent nervousness, on the paleness of his normally florid face, on how he clutched at the rigging and how an additional rope had to be thrown round the shrouds to prevent his falling out. His apprehension was more than understandable. From a man embarking on this kind of balloon journey in 1870 probably at least as much real courage was demanded as from an early American or Soviet astronaut in the 1960’s; and for the balloonists there were no helping hands or batteries of computers on earth, ready to guide them down, no flotillas standing by to pick them out of the sea, and only in the matter of ‘re-entry’ did they have more control over their flight than the astronauts. Over their head billowed a great bag of highly inflammable coal-gas that needed just one stray enemy bullet to turn it into a ball of flame. Needless to say, no other Minister of any nation had yet entrusted himself to such a vehicle, even for the briefest flight. As the anchor ropes were cast off, Gambetta managed to recover his nerve sufficiently to unfurl a tricolour, displaying a characteristic sense of theatre. Teams of men guided the unpredictably bobbing, flimsy elephant into the air so as not to foul nearby roofs. At last the
Armand Barbès
began to rise freely, spinning and jigging with a sickening motion, accompanied by great cries of ‘
Vive la France! Vive la République!
’ from below, until it slowly disappeared out of sight to the west. If this was not actually France’s ‘finest hour’ of the war, it was certainly the beginning of it.